If you take away anything from this review, just don't watch this season in the intended order. It would fit much better between Gintama' and Gintama° (yes, I do actually think it's funny).
For short, the Slip Arc is a return to the basis of Gintama, a back to the usual style, with 5 arcs and a few standalone episodes fitting in a 13 episode duration. Not only is it moving away from what happened at the end of Gintama° and during Gintama. where the story started ramping up, it's actually inferior to what happened before.
Older seasons of Gintama had a pretty large amount of episodes which means they could afford to make 5-6 episodes arcs, which, in my opinion are always better than the rest. However, with only 13 episodes to show for it, the Slip Arc's longest arc is only 3 episodes, which doesn't leave much wiggle room to make a good story, although that singular 3 episode arc was quite good.
For the people who dislike Gintama getting more serious, it's probably a breath of fresh air, but for people like myself who actually enjoyed the main story pacing up, well it feels like some people at Bandai were desperate for money, they probably wanted to fund that Gintama Rumble thing that was mentioned.
A shame really, I have a busy week and not much time for anime. Still a decent season, just a step down compared to everything else.
