[yasr_overall_rating]
“Gintama” takes place in an alternate Edo-period Japan, where an Alien race has taken control, forcing Samurai to lay down their swords. Once feared as the “White Demon,” former samurai Gintoki Sakata now works as an everyday handyman–until a master swordsman tasks Gintoki and his friends with finding the cursed sword Benizakura to keep it from falling into the wrong hands.
Based on the best-selling manga, “Gintama” is set in an alternate Edo-period Japan and it’s totally whack. Aliens have invaded and assumed control over Japan, forcing the samurai to forgo their duty, power, and ultimately lay down their swords. And what’s left is a strange world of alien cat, fish, goat, and anything under the sun-people and a handful of misplaced samurai awkwardly trying their hand at ordinary jobs, or for some going beyond the pale and advertising as an everyday odd-job-handyman, like former samurai Gintoki Sakata (Shun Oguri). Gintoki takes on the young Shinpachi Shimura (Masaki Suda) and the adorably vicious Kagura (Toshiro Hijikata) and the trio gets up to some delightfully weird hijinks and makes time to defend their world from a demonic A.I. sword.
I had no idea what I’d be getting into when experiencing, “Gintama.” And I say experience because that is indeed what it is, an experience. Watching “Gintama” was akin to being inebriated but forgetting that you had a drink to begin with. A situation where you keep asking yourself, “Where am I? How did I get here?” and looking for someone to tell you the truth and then suddenly you realize you did this to yourself and you better hold on tight for the ride to come.
Some of the humor was probably lost in translation or in “fandom” but despite that, I laughed at the non-stop absurdity and the quick-witted tongue-in-cheek moments that I was able to catch without having any previous familiarity of the “Gintama” manga or any manga/anime in general.
As for the plot and characters of “Gintama,” this is my take: You have Gintoki, who is brash and childish but an excellent swordsman and is also known as “the White Demon.” And then there’s Shinpachi, a glasses-wearing Gintoki apprentice whose sister, Tae Shimura (Masami Nagasawa), comes off as a demure Jekyll Hyde BDSM Madam. And finally, there’s Kagura, a girl of an alien race with an aptitude for martial arts, who has an insatiable appetite and rides a giant dog called Sadaharu. Gintoki is serious about his weekly parfaits, there are lots of dramatic and fervently animated yelling, and a slew of villains including but not limited to the emo-esque samurai Takasugi Shinsuke (Tsuyoshi Domoto), a scantily clad gun-toting high strung gal that is totally not amused by Kagura’s antics, a Lolita obsessed man that proclaims he’s not a pervert but simply a “feminist”(easily the most unnerving character), and the serial killer Nizo Okada (Hirofumi Arai) who wields the “living” sword and is fearsome in his own right.
Let’s just say, shit’s intense and very busy. But there’s never a dull moment. While I am obviously not an authority on anime/manga, and know that a lot of the fan-gems of “Gintama” were lost on me, I did thoroughly enjoy partaking in the world “Gintama” offered. It was bizarre and fun, but also more than that. You can tell the cast, and everyone involved in making this live-action film were 100% committed and seemed to be having a blast with such intensity that it was definitely catching.
Available on Blu-ray & DVD Tuesday, March 6th
