I want a life for Christmas.
Let me first address the minority among you, the ones actually wanting to know whether Gintama is worth watching - the ones looking for a proper review. Everybody knows the type - every time a season begins or concludes, a few of these pop out of the woodwork looking to "get into Gintama" or "catch up with Gintama" or whatever. I've had a number of them irl as well.
I understand your confusion. For every 10/10 review claiming Gintama is the best thing since frozen bread, there are probably 5 users with it being dropped, a score of 1/10, and an incredibly helpful tag of "overrated". Every time you decide to take the plunge, a voice in your head asks you - is it truly going to be worth it? In that 300+ episode runtime, you could be doing something useful (or watching other anime, I don't really care) - are you going to invest that time on poop jokes?
Truth is, I can't help you, and I don't think anyone can.
I will say this - when Gintama peaks, it is going to be one of the best anime you've ever seen. It will fully deserve that overblown 9+ score, which ranks it above other hot favorites and makes people salty. It's when it peaks that causes all the polarization, in my opinion.
Say you don't like toilet humor. Then for you, the show might peak during its parody bits.
I also know some who consider references to be the lowest form of comedy. Maybe the self-deprecating gags or the ones parodying tropes instead of other media are more your cup of tea.
"I don't really like anime comedy but I'm checking Gintama out coz of its high score" - the action arcs might be where the show peaks for you. (Seriously though the score doesn't make it less of a comedy)
These are only a few examples but the point I'm trying to make is Gintama is mixed bag of goodies which aren't limited to a single style or genre. The more among them you like, the more you are inclined to like the show as a whole, and vice versa.
Consequently, there is no teaser for Gintama - X episodes you can watch that will tell you exactly what the show is. People might say the show gets good after a certain episode - I think that's more of them finding the first instance where the show peaked for them. I dare say your experience would be different.
This isn't to say don't watch Gintama. But barreling through the show expecting 9+ quality right from the start will more often that not turn you away.
One possible way to watch is to get to know the main cast (~10 episodes) then check out some of the top comedy episodes (there probably are a few threads listing them here and there) - if you like them, great, the show has a definite peak for you, and you can decide to keep watching or not. If you don't, well, 300 episodes is honestly a lot, and most of it is comedy of the same or lower quality.
Onto this season then.
Honestly, this season was just regular Gintama. There were good episodes and bad episodes, similar to the previous seasons. Bad episodes, however, seem much more prominent when the season is 13 episodes, compared to 50 or 200. Variances in quality have been present throughout Gintama's run, and I don't necessarily feel this season is weak at least in terms of source material.
The biggest negative for me is the existence of a "Slip Arc" when it could have been adapted in order, with perhaps a break before SA began. I also expected the characters to make a lot more fun of the honestly moronic decision to skip stuff. Whatever. I've made my peace with BNP. Getting a complete adaptation is not something very common, and I suppose I should count my blessings.
The lack of budget saving background shots still irks me, though. It probably is fucking weird to want fillers, but the self parody segments were one of the biggest positives of Gintama comedy. The humor itself is great, but the love the staff felt for the show really shines through in the bonus segments, like Gintoki getting sleep paralysis for example. I just don't get that from any of the BNP seasons, not just this one. The switch from Sunrise to BNP makes me feel like overseeing an employee who went from giving 110% to 100%. I can't really complain, but I'm still disappointed.
In any case, whatever my feelings about BNP are, with the multi-colored poop segment of the Excalibur arc I can finally say unironically that I lost brain cells while watching Gintama. I appreciate the fact that they were trying to stick to the manga, which didn't have mosaics. But I can't believe that no one looked at the final product and went, "hey, this is unbelievably fucking stupid!" Or they did, and the staff just ran with it anyway. Lampshade stupid things, for god's sake. Make a character say that rainbow poop is shitty, no pun intended. It's moments like these where BNP refuses to utilize the reputation Gintama has built up over the years which make me hate them. Combine this with the ever-present janky zoomed out scenes - or scenes where the camera focuses on the background instead of the characters - to save budget instead of just airing the fucking static BG, and there's no love lost between me and BNP.
I don't mean for this to turn into another rant - I've accepted that this is the best we're going to get. This season is still weak, but for me it's more due to these small shortcomings that add up instead of the comedy being weaker or stale. I just hope this reduced budget goes to animating the multitude of fights in the SS arc in gloriously high quality. I want Gintama to go out with a bang, not fizzle towards its end.
tl;dr - same Gintama comedy, weaker execution, basically another BNP season 8/10
