Gintama°

Spoiler free review

There's no simple way to begin dissecting a show as directionless as this, so I’ll start by addressing the comedy. You think it would try to be more innovative and varied with its selection as the show goes on, but the same juvenile gags keep on getting repeated each season. I mean, there is a reason why I haven't laughed in over 100 episodes. If the show fails to make me laugh, it can at least do something by changing up the style to prevent me from getting bored. With each passing episode, the show starts to feel more like watching a slide ... show presentation seeing the same repetitive style used constantly.

In the first season, it made hard attempts to balance a decent amount of comedy and drama, even if I personally thought those attempts weren’t really successful. Everything after that feels completely half assed That’s the problem: noting in this show can be taken seriously. This was always first and foremost a comedy (as much as it wants to be).

Why should I ever feel sympathy for a characters that just scream in my ear 90% of the time just because they have some tearjerking backstory? What’s the point in getting worked up over a character's death if they're just going to turn out to be perfectly fine the next episode? What’s the point in putting the slightest bit of investment into that one guy if I know he’s just going to be running around naked once this arc is done taking him seriously?
Every arc just turns out to be

The arcs themselves are mediocre at best, and I'm only talking about the serious arcs. Even though they are a huge improvement in terms of pure entertainment compared to the episodic parts, they're still feel very underwhelming.

I have to admit, I really did want to like this show. From an aesthetic point of view it has remarkably high production values compared to other long running shounen that improve with each season. It was stupid enough to believe the writing would improve along with it let alone completing 4 seasons of this crap.