Remembering Love: Gintama and The Art of Randomness
This post is dedicated to TRazor’s project, Remembering Love, which is a series of post where bloggers blog about their favorite anime they rewatched. This project will be going on for the whole month of May, and each post will had to be put out on Sunday. In my timezone here, I’m kinda way overdue though. For the first week, I’ll be going for a more unusual choice, Gintama.
Humors in anime, are always a hit and miss. Sometimes the timing is wrong, or sometimes, the execution is wrong, resulting in “awkward humors.” If there’s any anime that actually do comedy justice though, it’s Gintama. The anime’s strongest points isn’t the bizarre settings, the epic fight scenes, nor the addicting music, but it is the comedy which manifested Gintama into an anime with such grand pleasures.
Gintama’s ultimate weapon is their randomness. The anime also make a lot of random parodies too, and is one of the better show in applying parodies into one’s shows. If you had watched a lot of popular titles, chances are, you would have a good laugh watching the parodies in play in Gintama. The show also uses a wide array of parodies, not just limiting themselves to eastern anime. It made references to popular manga, music, athletes and even iconic figures, like Obama.
Because of Gintama, every other comedy themed anime I watched had been disappointing, perhaps none can defeat the phenomenal execution of Gintama’s comedy. Truthfully enough, Gintama can easily overshadow any comedy anime to ever exist in the anime world, and only a few would at best, barely put up a good fight.
Gintama will forever be the best and most humorous anime I will ever had the chance to experience. It seems like it has ended now.. but who knows.. Gintama is infamous with their trolling after all.
List of Participants – Week 1
deluscar 
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This pleases me. And I agree. Gintama is my all time favourite comedy and nothing comes even remotely close – well, I guess Nichibros but even that isn’t quite Gintama standard.
The “Katsu-rap dayo!” always kills me. That said though, one thing I have noticed is that, as Gintama has aged, its become more dramatic and the action has been gradually getting more serious. To which I can only applaud it for it actually manages to avoid being a 1 dimensional comedy. Gintama is a comedy first of all but actually it has some rather touching moments, epic speeches and great action – the Jirochou fight is proof of that, man that was hectic.
I’d say Gintama has actually matured into a well rounded show with comedy still being the primary focus but at times abandoning comedy entirely and showing us that it can be serious when it wants to, it just chooses not to for the most part. Definitely one of my all time favourite anime.
I can certainly see that. So far, for all the comedy anime, only Beelzebub comes close, and that’s only the best it can achieve. “Comes close” It just can’t beat Gintama.. no others can.
Katsura’s antics in general always kills me. The way he and Elizabeth always appear out of nowhere always kills me. Just as soon as Katsura appears, you know something “epic” is always going to happen soon. He’s in my list of All-Time Fav Characters fyi :D
The drama is good at developing character developments too. They are good indeed though imo, what Gintama do best is still comedy first and foremost, it’s the comedy which makes us love Gintama from day one, and it’s the comedy which makes us love Gintama up to this day. Yes epic speeches, dat strawberry milk speech :D That fight is certainly intense, but my favorite fight scene is still the Gintoki Vs Hosen during the Yoshiwara arc.
And it make a good choice. The drama, like I said, it’s good for developing their characters, sort of a “support” to reinforce the already awesome anime. By ultimately going to back to comedy still, it tells us that Gintama, is still the comedy anime, Gintama we all come and love.
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Another potential choice I considered for remembering love, as Gintama has been generally the standard of comedy for me as well. Nothing has come close to it, and I (and others) can only wait until the anime restarts once again :D
The anime is indeed pretty much the foundation for most comedy, especially it’s use of parodies. It’s sad that it’s ended indeed but I’m sure they are just trolling us again. Speaking of trolling, I wonder what are they going to do with that “possible” second movie they talk about. The movie where they focus on Gintoki during his Joui days.
Well no, the anime caught up to the manga, so I won’t say this is completely outright trolling as usual. Also, what second movie? I don’t remember anything about that…
I don’t remember the exact episode, but remember after the benizakura hen movie, the characters in the main series was commenting about the release. Then, they show us a short movie trailer, detailing Gintoki during his White Demon days. Then, at the very end of the episode, they make a One Piece parody.
I’ve really wanted to get into Gintama, but I just never could. Maybe that’s because i decided to go with the manga, and this style of humour works better in animated format. Kinda like Nichibros.
Gintama is indeed one of those shows that I truthfully recommend watching the anime instead. The supreme voice acting and the impact of the jokes, all deliver so flashily when it’s anime.
Katsura is the only person that me watch the show over and over again. Not just his gags, epicness… well actually his gags lol. the obama reference he made was just so bloody perfect. it’s the only anime ive seen that trolled so hard i was thinking they’d be one day arrested for taking it too far haha.
obams – yes we can! lol
Gintoki is pretty awesome too, and so is Hijikata, but just nothing can beat the man of ultimate randomness, Katsura :D I lol’ed so hard when he did that too, lmao.
Sadly, I haven’t seen this yet. i wasn’t able to made it through episode two. I know that lots of people are praising this series but myself just won’t let me watch it. I have to say though that I’ve enjoyed the madao clips I’ve seen from youtube.
Episode 1 felt like it has no direction at all. I didn’t like it’s faux plot(?) even though majority of the show are just random stuff, like what you’ve mentioned.
I might give it a chance when motivation kicks in seeing Gin-san is voiced by Sugitan, haha.
That means you’re still in the character introduction parts. I suggest to proceed along the show more to judge it further^^ The madao jokes are actually one of the least enjoyable jokes in my opinion, they are more “treasures” to be found in Gintama :D
Well, I think the contrast is nice. Samurai, in a world full of technology, and it just sits so damn well with the randomness of Gintama.
He’s a good seiyuu no doubt, and does Gintoki justice :D
I didn’t like very much of the first episodes. But remember this! Gintama really gets better after couple episodes. In episode 51 the real Gintama begins! :)
I think Gintama already “begin” in the early 20+ episodes xD I remember the death note + food parody episode was around the early twenties if I’m not mistaken. That was one of the most epic Gintama episode ever :D
Vice Captain Hijikata has taught the importance of mayonnaise in daily human life (as if!) I miss all the censored references XD
Ginpachi-sensei has also shared his teachings on the importance of strawberry milk! :D They will be back soon ;p
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lol @ that video. I had no idea Gintama was this kind of anime, now I’m disappointed in myself for not even looking into it before.
You can always watch it now :) Or… whenever you’re free enough to do so. I originally wanted to share more funny videos but I can’t due to copyright issues, lol..
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I could have write an essay of how fucking awesome Gintama is. Oh wait, I already did… twice!
http://kluxorious.blogspot.com/2011/05/my-top-10-reasons-why-you-must-watch.html
http://kluxorious.blogspot.com/2011/12/life-without-gintama-isnt-life-worth.html
I salute to your awesomeness :D
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