An assassin with glass of the wrong prescription is a recipe for disaster. Even more so when it’s Sa-chan.
What They Say:
The Odd Jobs TV has broken down! But it turns out that it was just Sa-chan inside. Gintoki tells Sadaharu to throw her away with the TV, but Sa-chan’s precious glasses are broken in the process. Gintoki reluctantly buys Sa-chan a new pair of glasses, but they’re bottle bottom glasses that are clearly the wrong prescription. Sa-chan is overjoyed that Gintoki has given her a present, but the new glasses are responsible for a chain of failures on her assassination job. Her superiors now question her commitment and her life is in danger!
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Life in the Odd Jobs household continues to be chaotic as things just happen that can easily confuse people. The start of this episode, which is just a launching point to a whole separate piece, involves Gin being frustrated by the TV they have as it doesn’t work. Only it’s not their TV that they’ve had all this time but something else which Kagura was given recently by a traveling salesman. Naturally, it doesn’t work and it gets complicated when Sa-chan arrives in the house and Gin has Sadaharu chew up and destroy the TV and to put it and her out in the trash. It’s quick gag, one that works effectively, but it sets up things as Sa-chan’s glasses are ruined and that puts her into a real pickle.
The glasses have quite a history for her as they’re things from her past with great meaning, but she can’t get them fixed easily for a couple of reasons, including the fact that her dear grandmother would castigate her for holding onto the past when she needs to move on. Sa-chan has had a lot of things happen in her life since taking on the glasses and working as an assassin, so we get a variety of flashbacks showing her during these times where she seems largely competent, which in itself is amusing as the show plays things very seriously. These come as in the present she’s trying to figure out how to get by as the glasses Gin got her to hold her over aren’t the right type and she ends up screwing up significantly for it. Enough so that she’s going to have to face some punishment for the error of her ways.
The episode has a fairly somber feel to it overall, which is something that the Gintama series does from time to time in order to provide a little balance. It does work fairly well overall since we’ve seen this side of all the characters before and they still get in some comedy here and there to help lighten the mood when appropriate. Sa-chan hasn’t been a favorite of mine from what I’ve seen of her in the first years worth of episodes that I’ve seen, but she has her charms and in this episode she gets a chance to shine as a person and as an assassin. Getting to see her time from the past works effectively to show us how she excelled but we also get some good comedy from her right from the start. The time spent with her superior and showing the results of the punishment she has to go through helps to really cement her as a fun character overall while reinforcing her determined nature when it comes to doing what she feels is right.
In Summary:
Gintama manages to spread things out a fair bit, though obviously it’s focus is on Sa-chan herself. Gin and the Odd Jobs crew get to have a fun sequence where they take over for her briefly, though it’s never as clear as you’d think. Getting them involved in Sa-chan’s job is not something that go well for a whole variety of reasons, but the end results are ones that will make you laugh and that’s what counts. I did appreciate the serious time spent here as it shows a bit more of who Sa-chan is as we usually see her just being silly or inept, so adding that layer, or just expanding on it, is pretty welcome. With this being the first part of the storyline, there’s more fun to be had in the next one to be sure and hopefully we’ll see more of Gin and the gang as they screw up while trying to help out. This isn’t a laugh out loud episode, but it has some keen moments and comes across as pretty well balanced and fun in the right ways.
Grade: B
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.
