#finished takasugi vs gintoki in the shogun assassination arc again

[wordswhisperinthedark]

Sakata Gintoki, chained by promises to protect, burdened by his failures to do so

*head in hands*

[danykvyat]

So I finished Gintama and I've already started rewatching a couple of my personal favourite episodes (yeah I’m hyper-fixating) but how GOOD some of those earlier arcs were really emphasises how stagnant the ending was. The ending was ok, it wasn't awful, but it was....Meh. I’m late to the party so I’m sure it’s been said a million times before but having all the characters regress back to how they were at the beginning sucked. Nothing changed. For a series that always preached about life being worth living in spite of the change, pain and grief living brings, that sucked. It sucked. 

Shogun Assassination and Farewell Shinsengumi are the high points of the series because the events in the arcs are personal for ALL the characters. By Shogun Assassination our core characters have all come to know and care for Shige Shige so wanting to stop his assassination is a poignant goal for everyone. Farewell Shinsengumi deals with the fallout of failing to achieve that goal, culminating with the Shinsengumi willingly becoming rebels to save Kondo, again, one of THE core characters in the show. Both arcs feel high stakes because they are. They’re centred around established and pre-existing characters we've spent hundreds of episodes with. Our characters' actions feel meaningful. The battles we get feel meaningful. It all feels like it'll build to something even more meaningful because what happens in those arcs force our characters to grow and change.

And then we get Utsuro’s introduction and it all goes downhill from there. Sorachi wrote himself into a corner by making Shoyo Utsuro. The second he did that he had to commit to the ending being Gintoki, Katsura and Takasugi shaving Shoyo. Anything else would not be thematically fulfilling. And he didn't do that. 

It means Silver Soul is (un)intentionally reduced to a really straightforward good vs bad story for all the characters EXCEPT the Joui 3. The rest of the characters (mostly) have no personal ties to Shoyo. They’re stopping Utsuro et al predominantly because they're bad people out to destroy the Earth. That's it. It doesn't feel high stakes because Utsuro is never going to blow up the earth. That's just not going to happen. So it’s not interesting. You could replace almost all of the characters in Silver Soul with no-name background characters and nothing really changes. 

Which makes the ending we did get even more baffling to me because Sorachi clearly realises that or else he wouldn’t have pushed for the ending to go past what had been the agreed end date. And yet the narrative still essentially punishes Gin for his choice to behead Shoyo by having both Takasugi and Shoyo die in the end. Shoyo doesn't get to save his student. Katsura doesn't get to stop Gin from having to cut down someone dear to him again. Takasugi never gets to heal and move on from his trauma. There is zero catharsis. 

And then we flash forward with no reflection from any of the characters on what just happened and to make that worse we find out every character has failed to achieve their goals and everyone has regressed back to being the same character as they were at the beginning. Except we’re meant to be happy about that. It’s…..a choice.

Like I said, I’ve seen worse endings, and if I’m being generous it’s a nice safe ending for the Yorozuya. But I never felt like GinTama was a safe series. Utsuro being Shoyo caused a fundamental flaw with the story that Sorachi never really resolves so just wraps it up with a ‘See! It’s still a hijinks comedy series!’ which by the end, no it was a lot more than that.

Also Sorachi did the Shimuras so dirty. SO dirty.