Pros & Cons:
+ Incredibly high peaks as far as comedy goes
+ Parodies anything and everything in brilliant fashion
+ Tons of diverse and original characters
+ Superb voice acting
- Quite mediocre when the comedy misses its mark, or when it tries to be serious
- Not much of an overarching story
- Surprisingly poor video resolution for its airing time
Taking place in an alternate reality in feudal Japan where aliens have invaded and conquered everything, Gintama is a story about... yeah what is it about really? It primarily follows a freelance samurai named Sakata Gintoki as well as his two friends/coworkers, and shows how they manage to make a living in the crazy new world that their country has become. Primarily though the show does just about anything and everything you can possibly imagine as no matter how strange or far-fetched an idea may seem, it is never too far-fetched for Gintama. Entire episodes taking place inside toilet booths? Alien giants causing havoc in town due to their unfortunate extraterrestrial love lives? Having storylines based on the results of a character popularity poll the series once held in Japan? A hilarious degree of fourth-wall breaking? Gintama has it all. It's really something you need to experience for yourself in order to properly get an image of just how silly it can be.
I'd like to say Gintama is *the* comedy anime that just about every anime fan can watch. With endless references to and parodies of hundreds and hundreds of other manga and anime, as well as an incredibly diverse sense of humour, it is highly unlikely that there won't be any point of the series that will be entertaining for any individual viewer, regardless of what their sense of humour may be like. The author seemingly knows perfectly how to appeal to almost any audience in this day and age as far as comedy goes, as the funny parts can go from being very complex and intelligent to being straight-up toilet humour. Because of this I'd also like to believe that the more anime/manga you've watched/read prior to watching Gintama, the more gags you will be able to understand and thus enjoy the series more. Thus this is not really an anime for newbies, but for anyone reasonably familiar with the anime industry then the sky is the limit.
Of course as is always the case with comedy, it is somewhat hit or miss. What makes Gintama stand out however is how amazingly high its peaks actually are. Occasionally the show displays moments of absolute comedic genius, as when Gintama is at its best it is probably the funniest anime ever made. Because of this there are certain individual episodes that stand out as some of the overall best episodes I have ever seen. It's physically impossible for *everything* to be funny however, and with such an enormous amount of gags there will still sadly be an overwhelming amount of time that will not entertain you. And given how incredibly long the anime is, when you put it in that sort of context you'll unfortunately realize that the amount of mediocre hours that Gintama contains is actually extremely high.
Case in point; Gintama is the most inconsistent anime I have ever seen to this day. It is a series that sometimes will make you cry with laughter, and sometimes bore you out of your mind. The comedic elements aside, it also has its fair share of more typical battle shounen-esque story arcs spanning a couple of episodes every so often. Ironic as it is, this is probably the biggest weakness of the entire show. When the series goes into a more serious mode it quite frankly feels more like a chore to watch through than anything else a lot of the time. While the story arcs generally aren't bad per se, they're nowhere even close to the same level as the better comedy episodes are. Like I mentioned before, the stereotypical long-running shounen series are not anything I enjoy very much at all, and thus when Gintama enters a similar sort of atmosphere it just comes across as a massive drop in quality for a couple of episodes. Of course once it's done with that part then it might immediately peak up to masterpiece-level again, it happens more than once throughout the series' progression. Like I said, extremely inconsistent.
As you might expect from such a huge series, the character cast of Gintama is massive. In addition to our silver-haired Shounen Jump-addicted samurai protagonist Gintoki, there's also the super strong humanoid alien Kagura who can eat an infinite amount of food and always wears a China dress, as well as the ultra-tsukkomi character Shinpachi who on his spare time is the captain of a famous pop-singer's personal fan club. The supporting cast consists of a guy who never gets his name said correctly, a super sadist, a mayonnaise-addicted freak, an old hag of a landlady, a ginormous dog, a 180 centimeters tall white penguin-like... "thing" who communicates by writing on signs, as well as several hundreds of others. There's an endless amount of characters to familiarize yourself with but given how long the anime is there's plenty of time for that.
The animation though... taking its time of airing into account it's honestly rather poor. For a series that finished as late as 2010 it still utilizes a 4:3 aspect ratio for the full duration of the show. Really? That aside the character designs are pretty clean and distinct, and the animations themselves are passable at least. I still feel that the show is a couple years behind as far as the technical levels go however, which may or may not be bothersome depending on whom you ask.
The soundtrack is very good however. Since the series is sometimes dramatic and sometimes about as non-serious as you can possibly get, it's pretty important that the music manages to reflect that diverse atmosphere in order to not drag it down, and it succeeds in doing this quite excellently. I don't think there was a single moment during these full 201 episodes where the audio ever felt truly out of place. The opening and ending themes are naturally in the double digits given the series' length, some of them being pretty awesome, and some of them were pretty meh.
What really stands out though is the voice acting. Now I haven't read the manga but as far as I've been told the main reason the anime is so much higher rated than the manga is because of this very reason. The effort put in by many of the voice actors/actresses is phenomenal, and it helps emphasize and exaggerate the gags immensely. I can only imagine how much less interesting many of the jokes in Gintama would have been if the people speaking them had been half-assing it, but as it is it's something that really deserves some special credit. I'd especially give a shoutout to Sugita Tomokazu's versatile performance as Gintoki as well as Sakaguchi Daisuki's incredible tsukkomi role as Shinpachi, which never fails to entertain and impress you. And if you thought Kugimiya Rie could only do loli tsundere characters, well think again.
Overall though, in the end it comes down to a numbers game for me. All the good aspects aside, the bottom line is still that sometimes the show is a comedic masterpiece, and sometimes it's a quite stereotypical and boring shounen series. Therefore trying to judge the entire anime with a single number feels a bit wrong to me, as sometimes I want to give it a 10 and sometimes more like a 5. But if I have to give it some sort of average, then in the end I'll have to resort at keeping it at a 7. As it is, despite the incredibly high peaks the anime has, it is still sadly outnumbered by the number of quite average episodes that will mostly fail to make you laugh. Of course it probably depends a lot on how you weigh quality versus quantity so I'm sure different people will find this fact to be more or less of an issue than others.
Gintama is perhaps the most famous comedy anime in existence and not without good reason. It is the one show that can and will make fun of anything and everything, and do so in style. It also probably has the highest peaks I have ever seen in comedy, and at times it can literally make you laugh until you cry. Unfortunately it doesn't do this quite as often as I would like, and a lot of the time it feels like you're drumming your fingers on the table in impatience while waiting for the show to get back into its element again.
However seeing as humour is one of the most subjective aspects of the human mind, I would still recommend essentially everyone to at least try watching Gintama (though perhaps not quite yet if you're still very new to anime). It takes a while before the show really gets going and even when it does it is still very up and down. That being said I know that there are a lot of people who found themselves seemingly rolling on the floor laughing during just about every episode of this anime, so who knows; maybe you'll be one of them too? I can't make any promises but as long as the potential exists that Gintama may be the most humorous experience of your life then I would eagerly recommend you to at least give it a chance. I mean what could there possibly be to lose?
