Gintama Review

The trick is that the joke arcs and the serious arcs run on the same cast. Sorachi spends dozens of episodes on toilet humour, censorship gags, and open contempt for his own sponsors, which is exactly what makes Benizakura, the Shinsengumi Crisis, and Farewell Shinsengumi land, since the audience has spent years with these people at their most undignified. Gintoki works because the show refuses to explain him until it has no choice. The Yorozuya and the Shinsengumi are written as a real found family, and the deaths, when they come, stay permanent.

Sunrise's production is functional rather than beautiful, with flat backgrounds, long dialogue scenes, and animation that visibly conserves budget for the sword fights, though the drama arcs find genuine weight in their direction. The barrier to entry is enormous: the humour is dense with Japanese pop-culture reference, the pacing is deliberately shapeless, and the first fifty episodes are the weakest. Anyone who clears that finds one of the medium's most complete long-running works.