Why Do So Many People Hate Gintama?

Gintoki_Coyle said:
Guess they just don't have a sense of humour

ResKori said:

I don't see how a westerner could find this anime funny enough to dedicate their time to watch so many episodes.

emraanash said:
It’s always baffled me how Gintama fans think a series with pretty much 80% filler and 20% story is a “masterpiece” and the “best anime ever!!1!”

Gintama is overrated trash. It has a slow start, corny parodies, lame repetitive gags, no concise plot and has "serious arcs" when it's supposed to be a comedy first and foremost. What a complete mess of a series.

Plot: (1/10)
The comedic episodes that take up 80% of the series is just their to flesh out the characters, the world and repeat the same jokes over again. Don’t let these gintama tards fool you saying “you have to watch every episode to understand the story”. It’s unnecessary padding that has no affect on the actual plot, hence why it’s filler. You can skip them, look up the serious arc episodes and watch those and you’d still be caught up with the story.
The serious arcs are short, over-dramatic, have fake deaths, bland sword fights and are filled with the same overused shounen troupes like nakama power bullshit or villains giving long, cliche monologues. None of the arcs are even better than your average shounen arc, especially the overrated Shogun Assassination arc.

The whole structure is a mess. Some episodes are dedicated to the odd jobs, then the shinsengumi, one moment is serious then half way through it’s comedy. 3 episodes would be comedy, then the next 4 would be “mini serious arcs”, the plot’s all over the place!

Characters: (1/10)
The characters are over the top, unrealistic and have barely any development. Seriously, if you compare the Odd Jobs Trio from the first episodes to the latest episodes in the 2018 season, you’ll see that they’re pretty much exactly the same characters.

The worst part is the comedy is terrible. It’s as if it was written for 12 yr old weebs. The constant abusive punches/kicks, repetitive gags, overused references to other shows, cheesy dialogue, childish parodies and poop jokes are shit. Also, there’s so many references to Japanese culture that even the average viewer wouldn’t get the humor.

Overall (1/10):
Seriously, if you want to watch a episodic comedy series, then you might as well watch Spongebob instead because it at least doesn’t take 60+ episodes to “get good” like Gintama.

Avolion said:


He did a solid argument about the flaws of the show. What's stupid about it?

emraanash said:


The worst part is the comedy is terrible. It’s as if it was written for 12 yr old weebs. The constant abusive punches/kicks, repetitive gags, overused references to other shows, cheesy dialogue, childish parodies and poop jokes are shit.

Avolion said:


I don't think he meant "anime exclusive" fillers not found in the manga tbh, there is a term adopted among the fandom which is "cannon fillers", basically moments which do not have a huge impact at all on the main plot and serve mainly as padded out moments for various reasons.

Take Naruto for example, the fillerlist site lists only the episodes which really are anime exclusive as fillers, meaning everything from the manga(including those episodes/moments which pads things out), are counted as "cannon". But those moments never serve any especially productive purpose for like 95% of their screentime, so one could basically call them cannon fillers which the show would have been better without. One major example os the war arc which introduces so much bullshit like so many shallow characters, so many unnecessary fights and dragged out moments which completely ruin the show. And this is just WITHOUT fillers.

Also characters not being developed and stay the same all the time get stale and unlikeable by some people, so I don't see why that's not valid criticism, especially if you do not like the comedy(which tbh is rather definition of shounen clichés and childish behaviour).

Avolion said:


Are you sure? I think he meant most of the comedy eps were fillers in actuality when he generalised them as fillers. He did say "flesh out the characters" after all. Don't take everything everyone says literally.

I can understand the thing about Gin and why someone would relate to him as a character. I don't think people shit on Gintama cause of Gin tbh, people complain more of it's lack of cohesive narrative, repetitive and childish humour and many characters being used for a couple of jokes mostly.

Then here's the thing with Gintama: Is it necessary to have so much content filled with humor? Only a few of the jokes really did make me smirk. Most of them were nothing out of the extraordinary tbh and relied heavily on references and gags. If character interaction if it's greatest strengh according to you then surely that makes most of the comedy rather redundant and unfun? And if that's the case, even if it does make the characters somehow more deeper and charmy the main "plot" itself is rather insufferable in comparsion.

Avolion said:


Yeah, but there are different interpretations of fillers which I explained earlier.

I mean what I said, "references and gags"(i.e. When the characters aren't doing any special interactions to be fleshed out)

Oh so it does get a bit calmer regarding references? Guess I'll have to watch a bit longer and see where this is headed. Currently at it's first serious arc, hopefully it will make a better impression than the past 50+ eps have. Not going to expect anything though.

Avolion said:



Yes it can, like I said earlier, the community has adopted terms like cannon filler and as long as the eps make little to no progress at all they may still be deemed as fillers. I bet Gintama tards use that "it's comedy so it's not filler" argument all to often to excuse the shows lacking plot. And just because you over analyse things that doesn't mean something gets deeper, there is always a certain overview for everything and analysing too much can lead to pretentious over thinking where lots of untruthful things get said. I'm not denying that Gintama has any depth, but is it reasonable for 300+ eps? I don't think so.

Also a show doesn't "get better", if the show doesn't change after a certain point in the beginning then it stays the same all the time regardless of how many plot twist, ups and down etc it has. The "get better" argument is one of the most overused and shallow arguments there are.

Watched the first serious arc, wasn't that special tbh. They way things are going, I'll have to agree emraanash. This show really is one of the most overhyped I've seen.

Avolion said:


I know Gintama is all about the comedy, was just implying there are some people who try to sell it off as something deeper when it's not. In all honesty, I don't see how Gintama deserves colossal ratings only because of it's comedy when it's story is a big mess. Peoples standards scare me sometimes.

Naruto started off as a battle shounen with themes like friendship, nakama power and had various power ups and dragged battles, continued to be so until the end basically with it's writing quality being either consisten or took a nose dive(see war arc). One Piece started off as a pirate adventure about Luffy and his crew sailing through various islands, battling various groups, getting various power ups/hidden plot power, had lots of nakama power, revenge, dreams etc as themes and continues to be like that, never changing really and the writing is the same, was consistent and then overdid itself and crashed(which is what discouraged me from continuing to watch).

Meanwhile old classics like Evangelion managed to keep their themes and characters consistent and well performed from the beginning to the end without being too shallow or overdoing it's writing or being dragged out.

No it's not a retarded sentence, you probably didn't understand what I meant. It may get better within it's own standard, but the content, the way it plays out etc stays the same.

Avolion said:


I think we have different standard on what is great then. And I'm sure the vast majority of people who rated Gintama highly simply did so because it's an easygoing show with simple elements, no complexity, requires no thinking etc, they do not want to be critical towards it because they feel too attached to it, and that's the problem with many popular, long going shows, they generate irrational fanbases which praise something like it's holy, never caring about the flaws. Take One Piece for example, how can you call it good from a story perspective when it basically repeats itself and has overstayed it's welcome long ago? Does a story actually need 900+ eps to function properly.

Again, I'm saying what the STORY itself manages to achieve, not what COULD be considered great in a biased form of view. What something manages to achieve with it's narrative in general is different from actually enjoying the content.

Wrong, the objective quality doesn't improve if you are overdoing your story, some parts may be better than others like Skypea arc, Impel Down arc from One Piece but once you overuse your tropes and recycle the same story over and over again with just some slight changes, it becomes obvious the show has grown many gray hairs and lost its edge. That's why many shorter anime are actually better story wise than the long running ones. They know how to keep their content more moderate and have quality instead of quantity which drags out and waters itself down. Not every short is ofc better but I know quite a lot which are.

Again, you failed to understand what I meant. The story from an overview perspective ≠ The story from a continuous perspective. Once it's done it's done. You cannot mend some flaws which have taken place in the past and attempt to write them off, it simply doesn't work like that. Storytelling is a VERY delicate thing, not something to be misused in favor of some tricks and tweets.

Eva never streched it's story and thus never suffered from superfluous content(which was the point of my argument), it simply requires you to understand its themes and messages properly for it to appeal to you. I can guarantee it has some of the best stories there is.

If pretentious works aren't your thing then I can suggest shows like Cowboy Bebop, Monster, Ping Pong etc, they know how to manage reasonable storytelling for their given length and all of them are well executed.

Avolion said:


Never said I wouldn't watch it, naturally I will eventually watch and complete all of it. The thing is, at my level, who has watched tons of shounen and other kind of shows can see a certain pattern, and that pattern stays pretty clear and with the help of just a bit of cynicism and guesswork I can pretty much see where this is going with Gintama, especially since some critical people are bold enough to say how it is, and no I'm not just talking about the guy you quoted, I'm talking about those who dared to post negative reviews of the show which bringed up valid points about the shows flaws.

Also popularity ≠ quality, the only reason Gintama is rated so highly on this site is because of hype and people having low standards. Generally speaking the scores on MAL mean dogshit and are completely unreliable as a measurement of quality of the shows.

Take shows like Simpsons and Family Guy, they had their golden days early on but later declined in quality as a result of drying out on what they could do, the jokes and satire simply thinned out with time and such is the fate of every show which wages on too long and losing its edge, comedy is no exception.

I think you should look things up and analyse things a bit more in order to understand what I actually meant with my storytelling arguments because as it seems to me right now, you don't quite have the brightest picture of what I meant.

Something can have a certain mixed quality during it's lenght and have their valleys and peaks, but in the end it always follows a certain pattern. It's more of a question of how fresh something is and when it enters banality, consistency matters also.

Also erased? Wtf, what kind of thought did you have there out of curiosity?

Avolion said:


It's not the most popular sure but it has enough of a fanbase and fans who overhype it which the high score makes evident. And again, MAL doesn't mean too much, this site is a rather poor source of information regarding the exact popularity for each and every show. Some shows like Doraemon and Doremi had a popularity only in Japan while being rather niche in the west. MAL is a site dominated by western users. Meaning there is a huge chance Gintama is much more popular in Japan considering it's very "Japanese" way of being with all of the references being about other anime/manga and Japanese pop culture. Clearly meant for a Japanese public.

Am I bad at explaining it or are you bad at understanding it? Let's think like this: Using Hunter X Hunter as an example. The biggest issue with HxH is it's rather unfocused story. Meaning the plot basically shape-shifts into different stories each arc, not that the stories themselves are terrible or anything but from an overview perspective, HxH simply doesn't know what it wants to tell in the end. Yes, the main plot is Gon wanting to find his father Ging, but along the way lots of things occur with little actual relation to each other story wise, the story being about a noir style conflict in Yorkshin doesn't play out well later in Chimera Ant when it's suddenly about an apocalyptic scale conflict with different cast. So in short: It does improve in quality in it's own standard like it did for the two arcs I mentioned. But it doesn't improve from being an unfocused story overall with it's main plot(Gon finding his father) being rather thin compared to the rest of the events occurring. Now I'm not saying HxH is a bad show or anything, it's good for a battle shounen overall, but it has glaring issues when it comes to conveying a coherent narrative. Ofc it wasn't meant to be the most ambitious thing ever and I still enjoyed it for what it was, but that doesn't really excuse it's flaws.

Now let's take another long running(but significantly shorter) one: Monster. That show builds it's premise, characters and plot consistently all the way through without losing focus on what it actually wanted to tell from the beginning. How everyone has a darker side in their psyche, how anyone can be anything mentally if they program themselves to it and follows the story of Tenma tracking down and finding things out about Johan. It STAYS focused all the way through it's 74 eps run, even if it takes small detours it does so to develop the themes and such and doesn't distract the main plot too much.

Now I'm not saying deeper stories is EVERYONE'S cup of tea or anything(that would be ridiculous), but some critical fellas like me prefer to tackle things a bit harsher. I wasn't on a high horse, just being honest, it's only natural to develop critical senses when you have enough experience.

Naturally it's perfectly fine if everyone isn't as critical as me, I understand well that every soul doesn't want to go the same length or even be that much of a critic to begin with. But hey, what's wrong with acting as a voice of reason and bringing some sensible thought to the situation every now and then? I respect your affection towards Gintama and why you like it with it's type of humour and charm but I hope you understand why me and others(including the guy you called stupid) dislike the show for obvious reasons. Comedy is a rather subjective thing and it's even harder to like it when someone prefers actual engaging, deeper storytelling. Sure, haven't watched all of it yet but I HIGHLY doubt I would change my mind about it knowing myself.

Sorry for late reply lol, was busy with other things.

emraanash said:
It’s always baffled me how Gintama fans think a series with pretty much 80% filler and 20% story is a “masterpiece” and the “best anime ever!!1!”

Gintama is overrated trash. It has a slow start, corny parodies, lame repetitive gags, no concise plot and has "serious arcs" when it's supposed to be a comedy first and foremost. What a complete mess of a series.

Plot: (1/10)
The comedic episodes that take up 80% of the series is just their to flesh out the characters, the world and repeat the same jokes over again. Don’t let these gintama tards fool you saying “you have to watch every episode to understand the story”. It’s unnecessary padding that has no affect on the actual plot, hence why it’s filler. You can skip them, look up the serious arc episodes and watch those and you’d still be caught up with the story.
The serious arcs are short, over-dramatic, have fake deaths, bland sword fights and are filled with the same overused shounen troupes like nakama power bullshit or villains giving long, cliche monologues. None of the arcs are even better than your average shounen arc, especially the overrated Shogun Assassination arc.

The whole structure is a mess. Some episodes are dedicated to the odd jobs, then the shinsengumi, one moment is serious then half way through it’s comedy. 3 episodes would be comedy, then the next 4 would be “mini serious arcs”, the plot’s all over the place!

Characters: (1/10)
The characters are over the top, unrealistic and have barely any development. Seriously, if you compare the Odd Jobs Trio from the first episodes to the latest episodes in the 2018 season, you’ll see that they’re pretty much exactly the same characters.

The worst part is the comedy is terrible. It’s as if it was written for 12 yr old weebs. The constant abusive punches/kicks, repetitive gags, overused references to other shows, cheesy dialogue, childish parodies and poop jokes are shit. Also, there’s so many references to Japanese culture that even the average viewer wouldn’t get the humor.

Overall (1/10):
Seriously, if you want to watch a episodic comedy series, then you might as well watch Spongebob instead because it at least doesn’t take 60+ episodes to “get good” like Gintama.

cythraul said:
People simply get butthurt because gintama is rated higher than their favorite anime. All those 1/10s that gintama 2015 got kinda confirm it.