Review of Gintama Season 5

First things first. My "reviews" system is explained on a blog entry. Which can be found through my profile. ------ I'm going to keep this "review" more of a opinion of Gintama's overall and then this season specific. Anyhow. What I have always loved regarding Gintama, is its content of everything. I love the comedy, its absurd, random, can be vile, dirty, sweet, anyhow, everything. Have laughed countless times in this franchise. Also the humor they have also is heavily reference based, a.k.a parodies of different anime, shows, manga, live stuff, real world, anime production and so on. Anyhow, comedy/parody side of this franchise i absolutely love. Now, 2ndside of this show is the serious dramas, epic battle shounens and so on.. There are arcs that are fully comedy, arcs that are fully serious and mixtures of both. Serious side is usually quite dramatic and managed to somewhat tear me up now and then. Whilst the action sequences are absolute bliss as well. They are just presented in a really cool manner. And extra points when sometime the add artistic element.

Of course it has its slice-of-life side and pseudo-romance. Those are weaker side, but ain't the focus. But when sometimes those are the "focus", then they are done in enjoyable method.

To sum up overall gintama's, I love the serious side and the silly side.

Art and sound (voice acting/ost/op/ed) is something I loved in all gintamas across the board. They just click with me, bliss to look at, bliss to hear. Music (op/ed) specifically are hyped up and upbeat, which generally I don't like, but gintama is the exception where I love them. Art is cool, sometimes artistic, sometimes simple. It has a bit of everything that makes it enjoyable. And gore is absolutely satisfying as well. (well, the blood to be specific)

Well, the serious side of stories in this anime are superb in my opinion. (or the overall idea of story that moves now and then). But wouldn't say comedic side of series story is any worse. When at times comedy side has "story". It's usually quite enjoyable.

Regarding characters I don't have much to say other than that variety, stereotypes of "off-stereotypes" is very large. As well characters with depth but as well with oddity is as well in great selection. Main team. Gintoki the lazy dirty slob with superb second side of seriousness and caring about friends/allies. Shinpachi the poor straight-man-act sidekick, who adds great value to the team. Kagura, the battle race girl that doesn't act like girl almost at all, or in another words a dirty slob girl in a sense.
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Now, to this season specific.

I found it a bit disappointing. Mainly because usually in gintama we have overly serious arcs or fully comedic, whilst this one had a bit of mixture of both, which somewhat ruined the experience. Plus the artistic presentation felt this time around a bit lacking. Maybe because of another studio, who knows. But anyhow, it didn't feel as superb. Rather than gintama it felt as watching just another good battle shounen anime in modern day with simplified animation.

I mean it definitely was not any bad, just didn't have the punch Gintama usually has. Might be because it was short series, maybe because it focused too much moving on with story. It'll be shame to see it finalized in this manner.

Rest I pretty much loved as usual in Gintama franchise.