on samurai and space aliens

So...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 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. ( and I go on for some time explaining how there's a soul in these balls after all; mostly spoiler-free pimping minus a few references to specific gags )

( And a couple of the openings, to give you a taste: )