#ULTIMATELY. any time i conclude a gintama reading conflict with 'sorachi is an imperfect writer' im not mad at him for it lol.

[joelletwo]

gintama time loop reading that i had while watching

(laid out for my own reference. this doesnt have to interest u guys.)

okay so like. watching gintama and getting to kintoki arc. what i knew was 1. i was getting into the anime art style changes i had varying feelings about which signaled 2. i was getting into the back half of gintama 3. what i knew about the back half of gintama is that utsuro exists, gintoki did something fucked up on that cliff that ppl cant stop talking about and drawing parallels to with every arc of gintama, and ppl (i sensed) think the writing of the ending is stupid

kintoki arc has yorozuya and tae promise:

before breaking Gintama The Series into a distorted au where the chars are WILDLY different but still play out their roles to their arc-concluding purposes. birthing in me the image of a gintama that can fill any shaped-hole you put it in and still have the same basic inherent form it moves towards (whatever happened on that cliff, which i sensed was being gestured at in kintoki arc w the beheadment seppuku but had no idea the fucking. extent of lol)

gintama making formal changes (ugly or lovely art style shifts, at some point a radical change in thrust of story with the introduction of utsuro as a final and plot-twisty villain) but (hoping that it's) remaining the same at heart... or being railroaded into being the same. somehow the yorozuya promise became about. being cognizant of being in the narrative timeloop** and being subjected to Circumstances. being cognizant that something was being taken from u (catharsis of ending--) and also inflicted on u (--replaced with episodic and genre-typical* endless storylines)

(*not a slam. just that gintama's storylines are all about like. accepting the horrors. which is a journey of experiencing the horrors in order to come to terms with them that is harrowing to be subjected to over and over and over again. [cest la vie]

**and timeloop was also being flavored by me understanding yoo joonghyuk orv's regressions as about the endless iterative failures of making progress on a journey of recovery from trauma. all timeloops are about that to me now.)

thought shelved until obi-one's arc where, although i understood him as an oboro figure, he was performing a shouyoutsuro role of being a dearly missed mentor figure who comes back for happy family times yayyyyy but oh no he came back Wrong (a disabled cyborg programmed to betray against his own will). and Evil (needs to be taken down, and the shimuras-through-gintoki have to be the ones to dismantle their own happiness that it turns out was always retroactively tinted by this grief).

the presentation of nostalgia as longing for a return to the past that cant actually be achieved. or rather, you can achieve it, but Time changes things, and the past you get back won't actually be the same.

this helps me shift what i know about utsuro (shouyou but Wrong) into being about. what actually isnt that textually present in the series? but has to be assumed, i think? bc like? of course? the desire to have shouyou back (tho now i ask: whose? gintoki's? again, not really... in the text?). you can have shouyou (idealized gintama timeperiod where everyone is happy and innocent) back! you can have all the shouyou (early days swagful gintama anime that i am constantly missing as i move into the future material) back that you want! and its gonna fucking suck (for the chars and for the audience)!

and that basically ends up being the framing thought i take with me into utsuro's introduction................... it gets lost the more i actually see him and late-game gintama for myself and gain the context i never had for everyones blogging i was seeing. but. still. the theme i understood to be what gintama was telling me. you cant get back what you lost. and if (when) you try, you only come face to face with what was damaged in the losing.

however...................................

the further i got into silver soul and through to the ending the more it was............ interesting but confusing that, as i put it, the chars were "fighting the representation of the dangers of Nostalgia with More Nostalgia"?

and still i dont know what to do with the ultimate last-pages ending of gintama being a return to the status quo (with cosmetic changes). yay we defeated the evil specter of our past that haunted us and kept us in the desire timeloop. now we can get back to the episodic timeloop that we spent the fight with the specter... desiring to get back. hm. well!