If you are one of the people who consumes anime, the normal thing is that you have seen series like Dragon Ball, Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, and others of that style, it is normal for the genre taking into account that they are mainstream, they are series that They follow a very similar structure and are rooted in the type of content that a magazine like Shonen Jump should have, which is precisely for teenagers. Today I am going to talk about a very different anime, Gintama, which breaks completely with any archetype that you want to attribute to it, this one has everything. It is a series of comedy, action, aliens, samurai and a long etc.
His story places us in Edo (That's how Tokyo was called), where aliens, called Amanto here, colonize. This happened because like a few years before they invaded Earth and won the battle against the samurai of this country. This is where our protagonist comes in, Gintoki Sakata, a samurai with a wooden sword who has a job where he does practically anything. Gintoki participated in that war, losing comrades in the process, and running out of motivation and direction after it was over. After they took him in, Gintoki formed a job called the Yorozuya, where they basically do whatever, and which is made up of the other two protagonists, Shimpachi and Kagura, and himself.
The first thing I have to say about Gintama is that it is primarily a comedy series. It is not like Fullmetal Alchemist, which is an action series, suspense but with small comedy scenes, Gintama is the opposite, a series of a lot of comedy, but with action and suspense. That's why when they ask me if Gintama is an action series, I always say that it practically only has comedy, because it is mainly that, that is its genre, and I honestly could not ask for more, because it is a very good anime in that sense.
In Gintama, literally anything can happen. How it has a world where there are aliens and a lot of other creatures, it has a lot of ground to give us very crazy and ridiculous situations that will make you wonder what the hell you are seeing. This series does not skimp on using quite pronounced themes, that is, themes that normally not even a shonen anime would use. I don't want to expand here, but what Gintama made clear to me is that he has jokes that not every teenager would understand.
Of course, it has all kinds of humor, it is not just Japanese comedy. He has many ways of liking the viewer, and this is when I talk about the supporting characters. Here the secondary characters are something else, they have a lot of prominence, it is very important to talk about this by the way, because something that normally fails in many series of this genre is that when they have secondary characters with great potential they do nothing but waste them or detract from them. In Gintama the secondary ones are very important, they always appear on the screen, and I have to say that it has a great repertoire of unique and very different characters.
This is where the second side of the coin comes in. Gintama also has action, but what is it like? In Gintama there are the arcs as well, as in practically any shonen, which are a series of chapters that are based on a specific theme or enemy, and the truth despite the fact that Gintama is mainly about comedy, it gives a lesson to many of the gender in this regard. The sagas of this series are exciting, funny and sad at the same time, they are a sea of emotions that has nothing to envy to any proclaimed shonen.
I will not say any spoilers, but what I do have to clarify is that they do not expect Gintama to be an action series, that is a big mistake when it comes to enjoying it throughout its more than 300 episodes, as I said the most are comedy, and of those more than 300, at least more than 200 are comedy, so do not expect that this series is going to give you a serious arc every time, as it usually is in an average shonen. As I said at the beginning, Gintama is a very different series from the others, and I am not kidding when I make this statement.
In short, would I recommend Gintama? Yes, but you have to know that not everyone is going to like it, at first you will notice that it is very strange, but with time you get used to it. It is difficult to see its first 50 or 60 episodes, because during all of them they introduce you to the characters that build the plot and the comedy chapters that characterize this series so much. You have to see it if you know where you are getting into, but as such I consider it one of the best in the genre without any doubt.