on samurai and space aliens
Oct. 6th, 2010 12:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xparrotSo...and I hesitate to say it because it's been a while since I've felt like this and it's a fragile unsure thing, but...I may be falling for a new anime series. (Or an old series, rather, but one new to me.) A shounen series, a fight shounen series, with all the ridiculous completely OTT badassery and nakamaship and epic inspirational speeches and dramatic flashbacks and CRACK CRACK CRACK ZOMFG DID I MENTION CRACK that that implies.
The series, as referenced in my last post, is Gintama; I'm a little more than a hundred eps in (it's (only ;_;) 200 eps. It's a Shounen Jump series; that's not especially long. Right? RIGHT? ^^;) and...if my soul isn't devoured yet, it's definitely being gnawed on.
(Rather like this:
Both pic and joke taken from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
naye's marvelous intro post here. I swipe without shame because this is at least 70% her fault for pimping the series to me to begin with XP)
Which is slightly embarrassing, because...it's Gintama. This is the series which the author mentions in the second volume that readers are ashamed to ask for by name in the bookstore. Because its name is Gin Tama - "銀魂", "Silver Soul", a perfectly reasonable shounen title, except that it just happens to sound an awful lot like "Kin Tama" - "金玉" - "Golden Balls". In Japanese, "golden balls" is slang for exactly what you think it should be slang for.
And that right there gives you a good idea of what kind of series Gintama is. This is a series in which the mangaka believes that toilet humor is a) hysterical, and b) if at all possible should involve actual toilets. (There is an entire episode centered around the intense drama of four men trapped in four stalls with no toilet paper between them. I am neither prevaricating nor exaggerating.) And I don't even like toilet humor; love me a good bit of slapstick (a well-timed pratfall is a thing of beauty; it's one of the reasons Scrubs pwned me) but stuff with fluids just icks me out.
But never fear; Gintama's got slapstick, too. And puns and parody and more meta than you could shake a SPN-shaped stick at (Gintama might win the Most Meta Show of All Time award. Putting aside the idiosyncrasy of the hero Gintoki's JUMP obsession - in which "Gintaman" is his least favorite series - and how many episodes open with the chars discussing how they're running out of manga to adapt so they're going to have to pad the anime and how can they do that? Well, how about opening with the chars filling time having a pointless conversation? - there's the time when a girl is coming on to Shinpachi, and they make it as far as a love hotel before he starts panicking - "Oh no, I can't have sex, we're in an afternoon timeslot, the PTA will complain! But maybe they can cover it up with science shots, flower pollination...")
So, yes. CRACK. And CRACK and did I mention the CRACK?
Here's the thing, though. I love crack comedy, adore it to bits - but I have a limit with it; there's only so much I can take before I start to get itchy for more. The only way I can really enjoy a series is if I like the characters in it, and once I start liking characters and their relationships, then I start craving seeing them in more difficult situations, seeing their true mettle tested and their true friendships proved. It's the problem I have watching a show like Psych, that I love it but it leaves me frustratedand writing death fic; it's why I've been enjoying White Collar and why I liked Scrubs, for giving me more sometimes.
Gintama gives me more. Gintama provides, in epic shounen arcs that should seem hopelessly out of place and yet somehow work, even if it leaves you scratching your head trying to figure out how the same mind which brings you a guy with his ass sticking the wrong way up out of the front of a centaur costume (okay, that was hysterical, one of the funniest anime images I've seen since Bon Clay chased Carue up the cliff in Arabasta) can also write such intense human drama. And it's not one of those relative things, either, where a little bit of drama seems major only because it's in comparison to the wackiness otherwise. Gintama's drama can get pretty heavy even for your average shounen series. People die - not the leads; but a new char introduced in an arc has only maybe a 50% shot of surviving it, and some of those chars are really likable, and even if they're villains can be sympathetic. (Plus, being a shounen series, the drama rarely involves romance, is almost always about friendship and family and how unbreakable bonds form between people whether they like it or not.)
And there's squee. Oh geeze there is squee. I'd forgotten just how much I love incredible shounen badassery. There is nothing quite like the spirit of an anime getting its fight shounen on, with the chars making their epic speeches as they do the absolutely impossible and you're cheering them on all the way. We just watched the Shinsengumi revolution arc - which has to be one of the best examples of Gintama's insanity, because Hijikata's...condition, shall we say...is completely absurd cracktastic parody that's the crux of a quite serious plot and there is no way it should work at all, and yet...and yet it does.
So. That's Gintama.
I can't pimp the show* out without some major caveats. For all the awesomeness of the drama, it is a comedy first, and if the humor doesn't work for you then the show won't either; you need the comedy to get to know (and love) the chars. And it's not for someone new to anime; so much of what it is relies on parodying other anime (especially shounen) that I don't think it would make sense if you don't have some background (it also helps if you know some basic Japanese history, since the setting is an insane historical AU - it's the Meiji Restoration, except instead of aliens from America opening Japan, it was aliens from outer space. ...Yeah. This is why the Shinsungumi are majorly awesome characters.)
* I've been watching the anime, haven't read much of the manga, but it's a very close adaption - the manga chapters I've looked at have mostly been adapted scene-by-scene, word-for-word. Plus the anime has pretty animation, and Nakai Kazuya, and Koyasu Takehito, and awesome fansubbers doing a diligent translation replete with notes explaining the references.
To give you a better idea, here's a couple openings. (sorry for the lack of subs; couldn't find any good versions on YouTube with 'em). The first is a fair general introduction, with all the crack and hints of more:
And then the 5th opening (mild spoiler warning for the appearance of chars who don't get introduced for many, many episodes) which is gorgeous and dramatic and the song rocks and it has that flashback of Gintoki as Shiroyasha, the "White Demon" (and no, I will never get over my thing for shounen heroes with split personalities, most especially if those alter egos have badass names) - and then he comes to himself and he's with his kids and the storm is passing and the sun is coming out and oh, shounen, it's been a while, but I love you. I really, really do.
The series, as referenced in my last post, is Gintama; I'm a little more than a hundred eps in (it's (only ;_;) 200 eps. It's a Shounen Jump series; that's not especially long. Right? RIGHT? ^^;) and...if my soul isn't devoured yet, it's definitely being gnawed on.
(Rather like this:
Both pic and joke taken from
naye's marvelous intro post here. I swipe without shame because this is at least 70% her fault for pimping the series to me to begin with XP)Which is slightly embarrassing, because...it's Gintama. This is the series which the author mentions in the second volume that readers are ashamed to ask for by name in the bookstore. Because its name is Gin Tama - "銀魂", "Silver Soul", a perfectly reasonable shounen title, except that it just happens to sound an awful lot like "Kin Tama" - "金玉" - "Golden Balls". In Japanese, "golden balls" is slang for exactly what you think it should be slang for.
And that right there gives you a good idea of what kind of series Gintama is. This is a series in which the mangaka believes that toilet humor is a) hysterical, and b) if at all possible should involve actual toilets. (There is an entire episode centered around the intense drama of four men trapped in four stalls with no toilet paper between them. I am neither prevaricating nor exaggerating.) And I don't even like toilet humor; love me a good bit of slapstick (a well-timed pratfall is a thing of beauty; it's one of the reasons Scrubs pwned me) but stuff with fluids just icks me out.
But never fear; Gintama's got slapstick, too. And puns and parody and more meta than you could shake a SPN-shaped stick at (Gintama might win the Most Meta Show of All Time award. Putting aside the idiosyncrasy of the hero Gintoki's JUMP obsession - in which "Gintaman" is his least favorite series - and how many episodes open with the chars discussing how they're running out of manga to adapt so they're going to have to pad the anime and how can they do that? Well, how about opening with the chars filling time having a pointless conversation? - there's the time when a girl is coming on to Shinpachi, and they make it as far as a love hotel before he starts panicking - "Oh no, I can't have sex, we're in an afternoon timeslot, the PTA will complain! But maybe they can cover it up with science shots, flower pollination...")
So, yes. CRACK. And CRACK and did I mention the CRACK?
Here's the thing, though. I love crack comedy, adore it to bits - but I have a limit with it; there's only so much I can take before I start to get itchy for more. The only way I can really enjoy a series is if I like the characters in it, and once I start liking characters and their relationships, then I start craving seeing them in more difficult situations, seeing their true mettle tested and their true friendships proved. It's the problem I have watching a show like Psych, that I love it but it leaves me frustrated
Gintama gives me more. Gintama provides, in epic shounen arcs that should seem hopelessly out of place and yet somehow work, even if it leaves you scratching your head trying to figure out how the same mind which brings you a guy with his ass sticking the wrong way up out of the front of a centaur costume (okay, that was hysterical, one of the funniest anime images I've seen since Bon Clay chased Carue up the cliff in Arabasta) can also write such intense human drama. And it's not one of those relative things, either, where a little bit of drama seems major only because it's in comparison to the wackiness otherwise. Gintama's drama can get pretty heavy even for your average shounen series. People die - not the leads; but a new char introduced in an arc has only maybe a 50% shot of surviving it, and some of those chars are really likable, and even if they're villains can be sympathetic. (Plus, being a shounen series, the drama rarely involves romance, is almost always about friendship and family and how unbreakable bonds form between people whether they like it or not.)
And there's squee. Oh geeze there is squee. I'd forgotten just how much I love incredible shounen badassery. There is nothing quite like the spirit of an anime getting its fight shounen on, with the chars making their epic speeches as they do the absolutely impossible and you're cheering them on all the way. We just watched the Shinsengumi revolution arc - which has to be one of the best examples of Gintama's insanity, because Hijikata's...condition, shall we say...is completely absurd cracktastic parody that's the crux of a quite serious plot and there is no way it should work at all, and yet...and yet it does.
So. That's Gintama.
I can't pimp the show* out without some major caveats. For all the awesomeness of the drama, it is a comedy first, and if the humor doesn't work for you then the show won't either; you need the comedy to get to know (and love) the chars. And it's not for someone new to anime; so much of what it is relies on parodying other anime (especially shounen) that I don't think it would make sense if you don't have some background (it also helps if you know some basic Japanese history, since the setting is an insane historical AU - it's the Meiji Restoration, except instead of aliens from America opening Japan, it was aliens from outer space. ...Yeah. This is why the Shinsungumi are major
* I've been watching the anime, haven't read much of the manga, but it's a very close adaption - the manga chapters I've looked at have mostly been adapted scene-by-scene, word-for-word. Plus the anime has pretty animation, and Nakai Kazuya, and Koyasu Takehito, and awesome fansubbers doing a diligent translation replete with notes explaining the references.
To give you a better idea, here's a couple openings. (sorry for the lack of subs; couldn't find any good versions on YouTube with 'em). The first is a fair general introduction, with all the crack and hints of more:
And then the 5th opening (mild spoiler warning for the appearance of chars who don't get introduced for many, many episodes) which is gorgeous and dramatic and the song rocks and it has that flashback of Gintoki as Shiroyasha, the "White Demon" (and no, I will never get over my thing for shounen heroes with split personalities, most especially if those alter egos have badass names) - and then he comes to himself and he's with his kids and the storm is passing and the sun is coming out and oh, shounen, it's been a while, but I love you. I really, really do.
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no subject
Date: 2010-10-06 07:48 pm (UTC)Why don't I have a wonderful Gintama icon?YES. To all of this. You've nicely described everything I adore about this series~ I'm a horrible, rabid Shinsengumi fangirl, but everyone in this series....everyone!...is so amazing, and brilliant, and complicated (except the ones that, you know, aren't >.<). And the ops and eds are phenomenal. I knew once they played Pray the first time that I'd be hooked.
It's so cool to see someone else gushing over this series; I'm so glad you liked it, too!
no subject
Date: 2010-10-06 08:03 pm (UTC)I gotta admit, after the last Shinsengumi arc, I'm kind of fangirling on them badly (...okay, I loved Hijikata & Okita already, but now the show's making me love Kondou as much and it's kind of embarrassing because, uhhh, Kondou...but he's so sweet and loyal and emotional and awwww...)
Though Gin-chan is probably my favorite character, if I have to pick one. He is so very very special.
Yay to know there's other fans, and there will likely be more gushing to come! Also a chart for the chars because I have one in mind.
and maybe fic if I cannot convince my brain that no one wants to read epic dramatic Gintama fic ^^;;;;;;no subject
Date: 2010-10-07 01:13 pm (UTC)Also, also, yes! Shinsengumi arc: ftw. I don't know how Hijikata's "condition" turned into this epic dramatic and tear-worthy plot, but I DON'T CARE. *fangirls*
Special is also definitely a work for Gin-chan. >.< I adore that boy, and all of his "interesting" friends.
Everyone EVER wants to read epic dramatic Gintama fic, EVEN IF THEY DON'T KNOW IT YET! XDno subject
Date: 2010-10-07 07:58 pm (UTC)Also, also, yes! Shinsengumi arc: ftw. I don't know how Hijikata's "condition" turned into this epic dramatic and tear-worthy plot, but I DON'T CARE. *fangirls*
IT IS INSANE. ALSO AWESOME!
...I may love this series too much for its own good, for all its specialness...
Ahahahahh that's good considering I appear to be 2K words into it ^^;;;;;;;;;;no subject
Date: 2010-10-08 06:14 pm (UTC)...No such thing. No really~
Yay! Totally looking forward to it, as I do EVERYTHING you write, EVERno subject
Date: 2010-10-06 11:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-06 11:51 pm (UTC)If you're going to watch it, you might want to skip eps 1-2 (they're usually together as one file) and start with ep 3 - for some reason the pilot of the show is set sometime into the actual series (and showcases a whole bunch of chars with no introductions); ep 3 is the actual beginning of the story, when Shinpachi meets Gintoki.
Have fun with it! If you're in the mood for cracktastic shounen I can't recommend anything better ^^
no subject
Date: 2010-10-07 07:16 am (UTC)The characters and the crack and the drama and the way it goes from WTF am I reading!!? to SQUEEE at random turns, and... oh Gintama. So very, very special. ^___^
no subject
Date: 2010-10-07 09:16 am (UTC)...eheheh, when I'm out of anime I might end up going to the manga anyway; I'm already looking at what we've watched going OH NOES ONLY 90 EPS LEFT WHATEVER SHALL I DO?? It's amazing how the series and its unexpected stealth squee worms its way into your heart...
no subject
Date: 2010-10-07 01:48 pm (UTC)I do think I should watch the anime at some point, because there's seiyuu and music and pretty colors! But I'm also lazy, and I like curling up with a manga away from the computer. ^^
no subject
Date: 2010-10-07 07:54 pm (UTC)But yeah...the anime is fun, and whenever they need filler they seem to just let the seiyuu the loose, so...!
Not at all apropos of that:
Date: 2010-10-10 01:02 am (UTC)Get thee to a Netflixery and see it, like, yesterday.
You will be blown away by the MUNCLE connection to the story and success of this amazing woman. Major props to the rights-holders for letting the director use show footage in the movie, and to the writers for inspiring this remarkable young woman (back when she was one) in the first place.
Re: Not at all apropos of that:
Date: 2010-10-10 01:48 am (UTC)