After being back on the air for several episodes, Gin’s feeling the need for a break already.
What They Say:
Zenzo and the members of Odd Jobs have set up a flawless defense against the Lethal Punishers. However, the enemy happens to show up while Gintoki and the other Odd Jobs members are out shopping, and Zenzo’s plan is ruined! Kagura and Sadaharu return first, but soon fall asleep. The first assassin, who specializes in attacking his targets while they’re asleep, draws near… What will happen in the battle between the ultimate Punishers and Lethal Odd Jobs!?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Sometimes Gintama can find itself a little too self involved, which is something that happens for the first several minutes of this episode as it has a ballad performed about Hasegawa, “The God of Cardboard,” with a little inset of the guitar and singing going on while clips from the past with the character play out. It starts off cutely enough but when it runs for a couple of minutes, it’s almost sleep inducing because of the style of it. Thankfully, the show wants to change things up a bit after that with a Gintama movie special announcement that gives us a high quality, dark edged looking piece which is also quiet, but at least has a little more impact to it as it shows Gin in battle mode, done in black, white and red, as they’re covered in blood and ready to do what needs to be done. Unlike the music piece, this does at least attract some attention as he pairs up with Katsura against an army.
With all of this quasi-movie material being thrown at the viewer, including a cute 3D gag with a special type of glasses, it all comes down to the cast watching all of this in the theater with a whole lot of griping. Because of how they’ve been off the air for awhile and how they lied about making a movie for so long, going this route turns out to be a good bit of fun. But like other episodes of this nature, where it gets a little self-referential in a way, it goes over the top with the way they argue and fight, turning the theater screening into a combat zone (even with someone naked the whole time) and it gets held against them in an amusing way. They’re told flat out that the way they interact with each other is exactly why their film made a quarter of what the latest One Piece film at the time did, which hits them pretty hard.
All of this takes up the bulk of the episode and it feels like at times that it goes by fast. The song sequence ends up bringing the show to about the seven minute mark and then we get just under ten minutes worth of the film version and the comedy that’s derived from the viewing of it with the cast members. The episode does bring in more material afterwards with a Takasugi piece and Gin as a teacher which has amusing references to other shows. There are good momenths throughout all of these pieces, but something about it feels like it just doesn’t come together cleanly. Structure has never been a huge component of Gintama as it’s always just gone for what works for it at the moment and to hell with the consequences, but the style used here keeps it from having a consistent vision that works. Instead, you either like a segment or not, as it doesn’t feel like it’s something that can find a middle ground.
In Summary:
Between the first year of episodes that I had seen on DVD and the return of the show this year, I find myself having a bit of a love/hate relationship with the series. Gintama has a number of moments of brilliance, but it has a lot of material that falls flat for me as well. It’s not a show that’s been consistent for me in what I like about it, which isn’t a surprise considering the overall size of the cast and the way they can jump from gag to gag and from setting to setting in the space of a heartbeat while trying to make it flow right. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and this episode is one of those pieces. I really liked the whole movie segment but the other pieces around it largely fell flat for me. Sometimes a show can be too self aware and referential, but that’s part of the deal with Gintama.
Grade: C+
Simulcast By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
