Gintama'

After a one-year hiatus, Shinpachi Shimura returns to Edo, only to stumble upon a shocking surprise: Gintoki and Kagura, his fellow Yorozuya members, have become completely different characters! Fleeing from the Yorozuya headquarters in confusion, Shinpachi finds that all the denizens of Edo have undergone impossibly extreme changes, in both appearance and personality. Most unbelievably, his sister Otae has married the Shinsengumi chief and shameless stalker Isao Kondou and is pregnant with their first child.

Bewildered, Shinpachi agrees to join the Shinsengumi at Otae and Kondou's request and finds even more startling transformations afoot both in and out of the ranks of the the organization. However, discovering that Vice Chief Toushirou Hijikata has remained unchanged, Shinpachi and his unlikely Shinsengumi ally set out to return the city of Edo to how they remember it.

With even more dirty jokes, tongue-in-cheek parodies, and shameless references, Gintama' follows the Yorozuya team through more of their misadventures in the vibrant, alien-filled world of Edo.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Sakata, Gintoki Main

Sugita, Tomokazu Japanese

Kagura Main

Kugimiya, Rie Japanese

Shimura, Shinpachi Main

Sakaguchi, Daisuke Japanese

Katsura, Kotarou Supporting

Ishida, Akira Japanese

Hijikata, Toushirou Supporting

Nakai, Kazuya Japanese

Okita, Sougo Supporting

Suzumura, Kenichi Japanese

Takasugi, Shinsuke Supporting

Koyasu, Takehito Japanese

Hasegawa, Taizou Supporting

Tachiki, Fumihiko Japanese

Tsukuyo Supporting

Kaida, Yuuko Japanese

Kamui Supporting

Hino, Satoshi Japanese

Azuma, Fukashi Producer

Fujita, Youichi Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Kobayashi, Katsuyoshi Sound Director

Yoshimura, Ai Episode Director, Storyboard

Reviews

Apr 4, 2011

emashu

Recommended

When you REALLY love a certain anime and hear it's going to end, you weep a little inside. So is Gintama, and the news of the new season were salvation to many sad Gintabros all over the globe.
That's right. The #1 show is back - and I am damn excite, son.

To any of you who haven't watched the first season, please do. but if you wouldn't want to commit yourself to a 201 episode show, feel free to just skip ahead to season two and try an episode or two. The storyline's arranged in inconsistent arcs, meaning you can pick it up from any arc ... - as long as you get an explanation on the origins of the different characters.

I assume all of you know the general setting - a Samurai who lives in a modern era in which aliens are a part of our (humans) daily lives. There's an ongoing ban on swords, so being a Samurai is obviously forbidden by law.
Though there's no rule against a wooden sword, is there?

In the last year, our friendly studio Sunrise had enough time to stack up material for a long-lasting second season, while our beloved mangaka had time to improve and write arcs which without a doubt - have the Gintama effect. Holding tears in your throat, and two minutes later laughing like a maniac - only to be in tears again a few minutes later. The long touchy speeches are back, the unexpected plot turns are back, everything we longed for in this Gintama-less year, is back.

It might be important to specify the fact that Gintama is now well funded, and is in HD. Can you imagine seeing Gintoki pick his nose in 720p?! Insane!!!
The first arc is the comeback we all wished for, every character you knew is making an appearance, though you should ready yourself for a surprise - they've all changed.

I promise this - starting at the first 15 seconds up to the end of the 24 minutes of awesome, you'll be smiling, laughing, perhaps even crying if you're touchy. Enjoy.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Apr 4, 2011

Detective

Recommended

Edit after episode 13: I cried big wet tears at the excellent storytelling and well placed character development. SUCH. BIG. TEARS.

I was skeptical as hell for the return of the Gintama anime. To be honest, I went into this anime wanting to slam it as hard as possible, especially upon seeing it's overbearingly high-score. But I won't, because to be frank, I can't.

I don't really think a lot of reviews, complex and heavily-illustrated need to be written about this anime to get a feel for what it's about so let me get straight to the point: It's ridiculous over-the-top comedy, plain and simple. Of course ... you can't forget the awesome stories built from these insane gags, too.

The scripting, the scenario, specifically the way that the anime envelops you inside - making you a returning character as well, are all ingeniously meshed together.

And of course, after five years... brought to you in 16:9 format.

...With even better songs than ever (hard to believe, I know).

If you haven't seen Gintama before, I recommend checking it out, and I know 201 episodes sounds like a grueling task, but after seeing the pilot episode for the second series, I was left more than satisfied. This episode is reason alone to watch the over two-hundred preceding it.

Even if you're familiar with Gintama and think you're ready for Gintama', let me be the first to tell you; you aren't.

Note: I don't believe this review needs to be edited every week, as most episodes are either episodic or self-contained within an arc. If you've braved the first 201 episodes, don't miss season two.

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Feb 11, 2019

Optigisa

Not Recommended

Preliminary (12/51 eps)

This series should have been called Kintama instead of Gintama, due to how terrible it is. Why did I give this second season a 3/10, but gave the "vastly inferior" first season a 6, you say? Well, little Johnny, there comes a time when a man realizes that he has went through so much bullshit, to the point where he just stops looking for the small hidden gems in that pile of bullshit, and just gives up. If I were to describe my experience with Gintama metaphorically, I would compare it to a man who works for days in a mine just to find that ... one little ring, I would compare it to an unhappy marriage where one of the married couple is in it for the money. You see, Johnny, Gintama has these good things about it, but it also has these bad things about it too, and the negatives are far too obvious for me to say that this deserves all the praise it gets. Gintama can be good if you force yourself to enjoy it, shut your brain off and endure the boring parts as well just to get to the good parts.

Story - 4

Gintama's story was never interesting to me and never hooked me in, just a bunch of filler episodes with no plot or substance, some of the episodes in the beginning were good, the vast majority weren't. I had to force myself through sixty hellish episodes for the first serious arc to show up. I've said it many times and I'll say it again, if a show takes 60 episodes to start getting interesting, then it is a failure of a show. The story during the first season was generic at best, it had these boring episodes that were 20 minutes long, but felt like a movie or a lecture, and had uninteresting side characters who magically showed up to ask our hero Gintoki for help. It also became a bit interesting and emotional at other times, with good written characters who had unique qualities about them and gained some form of character development (mostly the main villains and the Shinsengumi). The narrative was all over the place, Gintama had a serious arc that made you cry at first, but the next episode was all about poop jokes and toilet paper. I'll give the show credit for having interesting arcs, even though it had no continuity and was random. Those interesting arcs that made me cry in Gintama's first season were not present here, the funny episodes were not present here, the boring and stupid episodes were though.

Instead of having one good episode at the very least, this season insults your intelligence by presenting you with characters who come out of nowhere and are still unfunny (insert the same lame joke used by Sarutobi about her love for Gintoki, or Zur- I mean Katsura saying "Zura ja nai, Katsura da" for the millionth time), gags that did not make me laugh one bit (Oh no, another lame DBZ parody) and villains that were laughable at best (Insert loser ninjas who wanted to kill Sarutobi and lame empress who wanted to take over Gintoki's town). With the first season, the parodies were actually funny at times, since they were actually well made and had a good premise and buildup to begin with. An example of this would be Gintama episode 119, which was one of the funniest episodes in the series, and it managed to do a DBZ parody the right way. This season also had no good serious arcs, villains just show up and then are magically beaten by our annoying mary sue MC and his very annoying sidekick (you know which sidekick I am talking about). Characters are shown to die, but are healthy and alive, standing atop of buildings the next day! Wow! Gintama might as well insert the Dragon Balls into the show as an explanation for this amazing plot armor, that would actually make sense and would be funny. The story is just uninteresting, cheesy and another generic shonen at this point, the only difference is that filler is said to be canon here. Nobody dies, heroes win in the end and the plot moves at a very slow pace.

Art - 6

The art became more detailed this time, and the quality improved over the previous season, but you can only go up when you are already at rock bottom. Some of Gintama's characters look stupid, Shinpachi is an example of looking boring and bland with nothing interesting about him. Shinpachi's sister, Shimura Tae, is a carbon copy of Shinpachi but with no glasses and with taller hair (Gintama even makes a joke about this, most characters are based off of Shinpachi's bland design). I gave the art a 6 because some of the characters had good designs (My lovely Kagura, Kondo, Hijikata and Sugo).

Characters - 5

There are really well written characters in Gintama, and then there are the one dimensional annoying pieces of filth in Gintama. The good ones I already mentioned countless times above in this review, the Shinsengumi. The Shinsengumi are the ones who made me endure more than 200 episodes of this show. Hijikata was funny in every gag he was in (2 of my favorite episodes involved the guy), his backstory and his development were brilliant, and his shining moments were fun to watch. Sugo was amazing as well, his character was by far the most developed in the whole show, his backstory was emotional and made me cry, and he had his bad-ass moments too. These characters did not only feel real, three dimensional and brilliant, but they also had an interesting chemistry between them, seeing them interact with each other was the best part of this show. Kondo was also a good and interesting character, though he did become annoying at times. Ito and Housen were one dimensional villains at first, but slowly became more developed as their arcs went on, and their goals and ideals started to make more sense by the time their arcs concluded. Kagura by far has the best backstory of the bunch, and episodes involving her were so sweet to watch, her relationship with others, and the contrast she has with her brother made me want to see them meet and interact (Unfortunately, I dropped the show, sorry Kagura). Gintoki is a good character, having him be a grown up loser was interesting to see when all you find in shonen are these optimistic happy go lucky young protagonists, though the fact that he can beat any character through plot armor annoys me.

Okay, these were all the good characters. Now unto the awful ones. Shinpachi, this guy is so bad to the point where even some fans don't like him, he has to be the most annoying character I have ever seen in all of Anime. If he is not screaming in your ears every 5 seconds, or explaining the joke to you and ruining it in the process, be certain that he is doing another equally annoying thing to piss you off. Shinpachi is a creepy character and a big hypocrite, he has this fan club where him and his Otaku followers obsess over a pop singer called Otsu, he tells his followers that they should not love any other girl, instead their love should be devoted to this pop singer, who will not even look them in the eyes. Shinpachi is not only satisfied with being a creepy weirdo as we can see, he also goes next level and becomes infuriating when he beats up his Otaku followers for having normal relationships with other females. He's also a hypocrite because he does the same shit, yet nobody beats him up.

"Oh, but it's a just a gag and it's funnay!!!" - Random Gintama fan who thinks poop jokes are funny. Listen, if you think that being a creep and an asshole who beats up others is comedy, then I just feel sorry for you.

Katsura is a character who can be funny and unpredictable at times (Episode 110), but he's sort of one dimensional as a whole. His entire character is not developed in the first 201 episodes of the show, so I just gave up on him becoming an actual developed character. Instead, he became predictable. Whenever Katsura shows up, all he does is say his iconic phrase, call Kagura boss, do something stupid and place bombs on the Shinsengumi. This is what his entire character boils down to. I want to like Katsura as I have found moments where he's shown actual development, and episodes where he's made me die laughing, but until now he's not a good character. I dropped this second season at around episode 21, and Katsura still had not developed by then.

Sarutobi is also a character who is committed to one unfunny gag, predictable. Tsukuyo is introduced for fanservice and for the shippers to ship her with Gintoki, I find her to be more annoying that Otae, that's an accomplishment in itself. Otae is a bully, though her relationship with Kyubei was certainly executed well, and she had a bit of depth and some funny moments.

Enjoyment - 5

Had some interesting arcs, good characters and funny episodes. Also had boring arcs, annoying characters and unfunny episodes. My enjoyment was a 5. Whenever Gintama surprised me with three or five good episodes, and I finally was beginning to think that the show was starting to become consistently good, it came back to punch me with three or five terrible episodes. Whenever it surprised me with a well made, exciting and tear jerking arc, it came back to disappoint me with a boring arc I had no interest in. A show that is good for only half of it's entirety, does not deserve the praise it gets.

Overall - 4

This season was bad, I thought maybe Gintama's second season would develop some characters or have a death or two, maybe avoid plot armor and become a bit more well written? The writer instead kept writing generic arcs with bad villains instead of good ones this time. And no I'm not going to watch more episodes for it to become "good"

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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