For one, there were huge flashbacks in the fight, something which I think is actually perfect as the flashbacks really enhanced the emotions in this fight. The fight feels super personal, violent but despite that, surprisingly thematic rather than just pure actionfest. Speaking of Takasugi, in an arc all about changes and the breaking of status quo, Gintoki and Takasugi, the main protagonist and antagonist of the story finally faced off, something which had been teased since immemorial times. He’s not dying, but I assume we definitely won’t be seeing him on screen for quite a long while, with other character possibly replacing the main antagonist role.Įven in a near-death situation, Gintoki is still petty as fuck, and that’s why we all love him. Zenzou and Gintoki were in near-death situations a couple of times, and even Takasugi, Taka-fucking-sugi is hospitalized and in critical condition. You can feel the characters are literally fighting for their life, augmented by the fact that I had already been spoiled by the Shogun’s death, so I know for a fact that death -is- possible in Gintama, which really fuels the intensity of these fights.
I immediately realized I’m in for a long ride after the scene where our main characters were fending off a huge group of Yato clan, the Yato clan is the strongest combatants in the universe and the characters were having trouble just fighting one of them, much less a group-their dominance is established well, which goes back to what I said about psychology in shounen action. This arc also instantly reminded me why I like Gintama’s action scenes so much-emotional and bone-crushing impact. Even better, it’s different than it’s peers in that it’s fights are actually short (longest fights I had seen lasted around 3 episodes, but so many shit progressed in that 3 episodes I could had sworn it about equates 30 episodes in other shounen). It all seems simple but can be surprisingly tricky to execute.Īnd Gintama, even before this arc, is a master among masters in this aspect of shounen. When an opponent is about equal your strength, there will be a very competitive back-and-forth. When an opponent is too weak, you can beat him in a moment’s notice or you can choose to take him lightly. When an opponent is too strong, you struggle or even might need to gang up on him. Unlike other anime, shounen action has a good grasp of basic psychology in a fight. Seriously, you can talk shit about shounen all you want but there’s a reason why action is always so synonymous with shounen, because quite frankly they just have the best grasp how action genre works. Watching this arc, I really forgot how good shounen action can be. Will the police system be abolished? What other changes will the new Shogun make? After all, the next arc is quite literally called “Farewell, Shinsengumi”. With the current Shogun gone and the new one taking over, I also have a feeling there will be a significant shift in how the politics and the in-universe of Gintama works. The best thing about this is that the death doesn’t seem pointless, because if anything, this arc represents changes. Unfortunately 300 episodes isn’t anything to sneeze at, and at some point, Gintama just has to “pull the trigger”. With the predictability that everyone will live, Gintama’s serious arcs made it through sheer character investment, excellent fight scenes and great writing. Indeed, throughout 300 episodes, there haven’t been a single death in all the serious arcs (the good guys, at least) they had so far. At the same time, this approach is also a weakness because in order to continually take these serious arcs seriously (no pun intended), aforementioned, death is inevitable.īecause otherwise, it’s just impossible to treat them seriously after seeing the characters with bloodshot-eyes about to murder the hell out of each other, when in the end, all the good guys will just survive.
Best gintama arcs series#
Being a shounen, Gintama can mix in drama and seriousness to spice the show up rather than just being an “episodic comedy”, while episodic comedy is good for shorter anime, Gintama is a long-running series and this approach is one of the reasons behind it’s longevity. Gintama being both a shounen and a comedy is it’s greatest weapon, but also it’s greatest weakness. Now that when I think about it, it may also be inevitable too. This guy is totally triggering his own death flag.
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