Gintama (9.15)

Gintama is a anime adapted from a manga of the same name. As of May 2016 the manga has sold over 50 million units. The anime adaptation by Sunrise debuted in April, 2006 and ended in 2010 with over 200 episodes.

The story is set in a late Edo period where “humanity is attacked by aliens called and the samurai of Japan join the battle against the aliens, but when the shogun realizes the power of aliens, he betrays the samurai and surrenders to the aliens called the Amanto. The shogun writes an unequal contract with aliens which allows the aliens to enter the country and places a ban on carrying swords in public. The swords of samurai are taken away so they can no longer resist the aliens. After that, the shogunate becomes a puppet government.” – Wikipedia

I found the story of Gintama to be far too inconsistent. The arcs are barely connected. The main protagonists Gintoki is a samurai that works doing “odd jobs.” His crew features, Shinpachi and a Amanto girl named Kagura. Some people find the writing to be the highlight of the series. Gintama switches from humor to drama, I find that shift in tone to be difficult to square. It’s difficult to go from joking about testicles to stories about child sex slaves.

I found the humor to be terrible. I personally hate bathroom humor, Gintama has plenty of that. Someone defecates in their pants, bloody anuses, or jokes about testicles. A lot of the humor is so juvenile that I couldn’t find it funny. Sometime this humor can work but I found it largely lacking. Finally, the animation was average at best. Gintama could of have been better, I found the idea of a samurai sci-fi anime to be interesting in theory, Gintama just did executed it well.