on Gintama'

[xparrot]

Gintama 211, second ep into the Kabuki-chou arc, and DAMN. I love this series because of, not in spite of, all its crack - but that once a year or so when it drops the comedy and gets its fight shounen on....yowza. The hiatus didn't change that any. And they were clearly saving their budget for this one, too, because it looks gorgeous:



Right after this, Gintoki taking on Jirocho in the graveyard, was one of the two scenes in this arc that I was most looking forward to seeing animated. It did rather the opposite of disappointing.

I love Gintoki and Otose's unique relationship, that he's the pathetic stray she couldn't help but take home, and he skips on the rent and calls her "baba" and she blows smoke in his face and yells and sends Tama after him - but she understands him. Gintoki's very good at understanding people, reading their hearts, but Otose might be the only one who knows him better than he knows her. And she showed him kindness, and she's maybe the first person he dared promise to protect after the war, his first step back to life - and he knows he can never fully repay her, and maybe doesn't realize that being her family is enough.

I also may have a little tiny thing for seeing my heroes completely lose it. Shiroyasha especially, because he's so dangerous, so completely rabid-dog vicious, for all that he's not out of control - I love that Gintoki's not one of those shounen split-personality type fighters; unlike Kenshin or Ginji, or Goku or Kagura, he doesn't lose his mind or his conscience. He just gets really fucking motivated.

And there's just something about seeing this:



become this:



...Yeah.



I love that he doesn't say anything, he just yells (oh Sugita~!) and keeps flinging himself at his enemy. And even for a shounen, the moment that his bokutou is shattered mid-swing and Gintoki grabs the spinning shard out of the air and stabs it into Jirocho's shoulder is about an eleven on the scale of badass battle.



Of course being the first confrontation, no badassery is enough.



Not that Shiroyasha gives a damn.





But it's not a serious arc unless Gintoki is nearly killed, and while he's been hurt worse, he's maybe never been as badly beaten as this, that we've seen:



(you know you're in an anime when the weather cries for you.)



They re-animated the flashback, too, so soft and lovely.



"Baa-san..."



Otose-san...! Gin-saaaan...! *wibble*

Next ep now please? Bring on the aaaaaangst!

Comments

[gure.livejournal.com]

Hi! We need more of us! And yes, I was the one that left the review. ^^;

I'm one of those weird rabid seiyuu fans-- so the reason I started watching Gintama back then was because of the cast list. I remember reading a couple of chapters of the Gintama manga, but the anime left me with a larger impact. Because like you've said, though the story is good, it being beautifully animated is what really won me over. (And Sugita is the PERFECT Gintoki.)

As for One Piece, it's the other way around for me. One Piece is also my Ultimate Favorite Manga OF ALL TIME (YAY! OUR TASTES ARE THE SAME, LOL), but the anime less so. True, I enjoy the seiyuu cast, but the manga is on a whole different level. Nothing can compare, which leaves the anime much more lacking in comparison. The animation is also pretty low quality and the manga art is so much better.

But yes! One Piece is on a completely different level from the rest of all JUMP series in history, seriously. It's the only series I've religiously kept up with since the first chapter. Odacchi's storytelling skills is epic, a work of genius-- I think I've read the manga front to current chapter at least 20 times over the years. I can't believe I've been loving this series for 10+ years. It's never happened to me before!

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

*laughs* Now all this sounds familiar! I am a borderline rabid seiyuu fan myself - I've watched more than one series thanks to the seiyuu (Seki Tomokazu was my first seiyuu crush, way back when - Fushigi Yuugi was my gateway anime series - and he's lead me to many a show; Sugita Tomokazu is new to me through Gintama but rapidly rising in the ranks, and yeah, I cannot imagine anyone else pulling off Gintoki. ...And then I love Seki Toshihiko, so now I've got some weird trinity there...)

And OP, yes - I got into the series originally through the anime (back in, hmm, '04, so it's not been 10 years yet for me but getting there...!) but definitely prefer the manga - the anime with its budget can't hope to match Oda's art (it's more dynamic than the animation for all that it's still shots!)(excepting Strong World, which is gorgeous) and the pacing, argh (if only they'd just take a year off like Gintama!) But the seiyuu are fantastic (Nakai! Hirata! Yamaguchi Kappei! Tanaka Mayumi!), and it's fun to be able to watch it with someone...

But yeah, the true One Piece is Oda-sensei's manga. I actually was way behind - didn't read it for about 2 years (Impel Down/Marineford happened right around a time I really wasn't in the mood for depressing stories ^^;) and only just caught up with an epic reread of the entire series in the last month - totally revived my love; as you say, it's a genius work, pretty much unparalleled. I really don't think you could have a better shounen series, and if it continues to the end as strong as it's gone so far (and with Odacchi I'm expecting it will!), it'll be one of the greatest stories of anything of all time.

[gure.livejournal.com]

Haha! ST trinity?

Seems like we've both tread on similar paths. :) I've been a seiyuu-fan as long as I can remember. It started with Tenku Senki Shurato who's voiced by Seki Toshihiko. So Seki Toshihiko was my first seiyuu crush ever. So yay! He holds a special place in my heart.

Then my love for seiyuu just went haywire for a while (though it stopped a couple of years ago), but it's tempered to a steady flare these days. There's a select list of seiyuu I still keep tabs on, though, and I still enjoy their works. :)

I've actually discovered Sugita in some seiyuu magazine from way back. It was a after his debut in Masou Kishin Cybuster-- I think it was early 2000s-- just before his big role in Chobits. But I remember a small black and white article of him and a couple other upcoming seiyuu-- and now they're all big-name seiyuu. It's amazing to see their progress, lol. But I remember watching the Fuyo/Tama arc in Gintama, and loled a little bit of the Chobits-reference.

As for the One Piece anime, I do enjoy it once in a while. I don't watch it religiously, but I do go back once in a while after reading the manga to scenes where I think I would like to watch some seiyuu action, haha. And I do love the cast, Tanaka Mayumi's the perfect Luffy, and I can't imagine anyone else as Zoro other than Nakai Kazuya. All the One Piece staff have awesome chemistry together, and I think that's what makes it so fun, even if the animation is subpar. I love it when they talk about their drinking parties and family parties with Oda-- it makes the 'nakamaship' even more awesome. :)

There was a period where I stopped reading One Piece for about a month so I could just catch up all at once later (think it was the Thriller Bark arc), but it didn't work-- I've developed a need for a weekly fix. It's quite sad. T_T;

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

I grew up a fan of Western cartoons, and Gargoyles got me interested in following voice actors (Keith David still has one of the top 10 hottest voices on the planet) so when I got into anime, listening for seiyuu came naturally to me. Was very pleased to find I was not alone in the Japanese side of fandom! (though I don't really read much in the way of seiyuu articles or anything; I've always been more about stalking actors' roles rather than their lives.) I'm not obsessive about it, but I will be more inclined to watch a show if I know it has one of my favorites.

Seki Toshihiko I think I first saw as Legato in Trigun, but I got to know him best in Saiyuki (which is one of the more extreme cases of the seiyuu being the only thing it has going for it. And the manga is one of my all-time faves. But the anime is just! so! bad!)(I do madly want Saiyuki/Gintama/OP x-over fanart, because the Nakai-Hirata-Ishida Akira confluence is too much fun to pass up.)

Ahh, Sugita got his break in Chobits! That probably explains how he got Kyon in Suzumiya Haruhi (have never seen the Chobits anime, though I've read the manga...I have a, hmm, let's call it a love-hate relationship with CLAMP. ^^;) Getting him for Gintoki was a stroke of genius, though! He's got such a crazy range, you can barely recognize him on the more extreme emotional ends - and since Gintoki runs the full spectrum from hysterical loon to scary badass, yeah, he's perfect for it.

I haven't kept up with the OP anime for a while (except, as you say, for certain moments - okay, I'll admit it, I love the way Tanaka Mayumi makes Luffy scream! The end of Sabaody...yow.) but lately I've been watching Water 7 with my bro (he's never gotten around to reading the manga, and hadn't seen the anime since Skypiea, so was getting tired of me talking about it and spoiling future awesomeness) and yeah, the animation fails to add anything to Oda's art, but the seiyuu do give it an extra bit of wow, really put their heart & soul into it.

There was a period where I stopped reading One Piece for about a month so I could just catch up all at once later (think it was the Thriller Bark arc), but it didn't work-- I've developed a need for a weekly fix. It's quite sad.

Ahahah that's what's happened to me with Gintama; I'd wait and watch the arcs all at once, but I can't last that long!

[gruskek.livejournal.com]

I watched the Chobits anime ages ago and I think it was the first role I heard Sugita in. He was very good :) Hideki is a character that could easily feel bland if not acted well, he pulled him off nicely, though. Around the same time I watched X-TV and apparently Sugita played Subaru there. I hadn't really noticed it was the Chobits guy xD He was very subdued in that role. I guess that shows his range too :)

The Chobits anime was pretty good, but due to censorship issues they changed some of the plot, which made for a weird and hardly conprehesnible ending. Only after I'd read the manga I got what it was all about.

[xparrot.livejournal.com]

Heh, yeah, I can kind of imagine how censorship might interfere. Though what I recall of the manga's ending was somewhat confusing itself...CLAMP's not exactly known for their coherent storylines! XP

[gruskek.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the manga's ending was pretty odd as well, but still a vast improvement on what I first saw in the anime xD