Gintama plays true to its gyagu (gag manga) genre where short jokes and comedy are played out in an exaggerated tone for its easy-to-understand humour. While this particular genre may not sit well with the general audience, fans who have watched the anime or read the manga will appreciate the authenticity of it.
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The live-action ‘Gintama’ is purely made for the fans.
Otherwise, this Japanese comedy may not be appealing to you. Based on the popular anime, Gintama is seen as one of the most highly-anticipated live-action films to look out for. While this may be true, backed by the strong box-office results in Japan, the general moviegoer may feel otherwise.
Gintoki Sakata (played by Shun Oguri) is a lazy samurai who lives in a world where samurais are despised and are forbidden from owning swords. Aliens rule the place after winning the war years ago. While many the humans and aliens coexist on the land of Edo, an unspoken hatred and oppressive hostility remain a ticking time bomb, waiting to explode.
Gintoki teams up with Shinpachi (Masaki Suda), a nerdy young boy who still believes in the samurai spirit; and Kagura (Kanna Hashimoto), an outspoken young alien lady who has a huge appetite and sass to fight.
The obstacle that most manga-to-movie or anime-to-movie films face is the condensation of the story - trying to fit hours of content into an hour to two hours feature. With that in mind, there may be stories that are cut, characters that seem immaterial, and the lost of context for newcomers understanding the film for the first time. For Gintama, there are too many characters introduced, with little to no context for their motive or drive to join the trio, which complicates the arching theme of finding the Benizakura, a super-sword has the ability to absorb new information.
For one, the film doesn’t take itself too seriously - with the usual occasional exaggerated gags and facial expressions that one would have seen in anime shows and manga drawings. The actors play up the campiness of their characters and even takes a jab at themselves right at the beginning of the film. I mean, there’s even a human in a mascot costume character named Elizabeth, liken to a pale penguin on the verge of throwing up… He, however, has pretty good comedic timing and delivers his scenes well despite the lack of human expressions.
Gintama plays true to its gyagu (gag manga) genre where short jokes and comedy are played out in an exaggerated tone for its easy-to-understand humour. While this particular genre may not sit well with the general audience, fans who have watched the anime or read the manga will appreciate the authenticity of it.
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