#gintama meta

[yu-sigao]

I just finished Gintama and I'm still in awe. It's been a day and I still don't know how to collect my words of how deeply this anime struck me.

Utsuro was a beautiful villain. The way I interpret him is that he is almost pure yin - cold, dark, destructive, and all consuming, like, well, an 虚 ("utsuro", void.) But in East Asian cosmology, while yin is death, it is also fertility. It is the feminine component of the universe and required for land and animals to reproduce. So within a field of yin, there will always be a seed of yang.

This seed of yang is of course, Yoshida Shouyou. Just as yin inevitably grows yang, Utsuro talks of Shouyou's emergence as inevitable in episode 328.

"The one that hated humans, the one that feared humans, and the one that longed to be human... They were all me. It was inevitable that he would appear to stop them. The only Utsuro that stood up to Utsuro."

He even usually wears white compared to the black of Utsuro's cloak. Shouyou is warm, kind, nurturing, and active; it's said he never stopped fighting against Utsuro, even if at first he lost. And arguably that fighting is what got him killed. Utsuro slays him internally as Gintoki slays him externally, and when his body is burned in fire - a classic symbol of yang - Utsuro reemerges. The seed has sprouted, grown, withered, and returned back to fertilise the earth. Yang flows back into yin.

What I find interesting is the decidedly feminine metaphors that Oboro and Utsuro himself use to describe the formation of his different personas. He is said to have "given birth" to countless versions of himself (again also from episode 328), which further strengthens the association between Utsuro and yin.

This is not the first time a birthing/maternal metaphor has been used in Gintama. Consider Shouyou's speech to a child Gintoki:

"There's no difference between a monster and the child of a monster. They are both inhuman beings that are only born within a bloody pool of sin. And a monster's sword cannot cut another monster. So, Gintoki, stop trying to grow stronger by imitating me... You have to grow stronger than me by using your own sword, the sword of a human." - (episode 317.)

If in this metaphor, Utsuro is the parent and Shouyou is the offspring, then what does that make Shouyou? Shouyou subtly implies he considers himself a monster. Is this true? If you view Shouyou as a parental figure to Gintoki, Katsura, and Takasugi, then what does that make them?

Gintoki was called a corpse eating demon as a child, and by the time he was fighting in the Joui wars and forced to execute Shouyou, he had not shed that reputation. He instead became known as the Shiroyasha - white demon. Clothed in the colours of yang like his master who longed to be human, but a monster nonetheless. And a monster's sword cannot cut another monster. That is why when Gintoki kills Shouyou, Utsuro is born, and the cycle starts anew. It is only after 300+ episodes of character development that he becomes human, and can put an end to Utsuro.

"The people here must be what you were to me. Just as the eternal monster from that day became human by meeting you... Meeting you kids, the little monster with sad eyes from that day has also become human, hasn't he?" - (Shouyou to Gintoki in Gintama: The Final.)

But the cycle is never over. A baby implied to be Takasugi's reincarnation is born in the Altana gates at the end. At first I thought this was a cheap trick, and that Sorachi only did this to keep fans happy, but it does fit the theme of eternity and neverending cycles.

Gintama, to me, is about cycles, and the difference between productive and unproductive cycles. The Naraku's name refers to a sort of Buddhist hell, and they dress like Buddhist monks. The relevance of the Buddhist theme of reincarnation in regards to Utsuro's story should be obvious. But instead of a march towards enlightenment, Utsuro's numerous lifetimes are more like an ouroboros eating it's own tail. He did unto others what was done unto him, escalating into a plot to destroy Earth, which got him nowhere but perpetuating pointless samsara. He destroys himself as he begets himself, experiencing moral degradation and isolation as he shies away from even his other selves.

Or a cycle can be like making a philosopher's stone, which is what Gintoki experienced: a process of continuous refinement that produces objects of further and further purity. To use Buddhist terms, enlightenment is an ongoing process. The work of becoming human takes as long as your life will. And Gintoki is made human by his relationships with Shinpachi, Kagura, and every single person he met over the course of the story, while Utsuro remained so focused on himself, he destroyed his other selves.

Utsuro recognises his mistake upon his death:

"Humans are hollow beings. But because they know that, they take root in the heart of others, never fading, even after death, and continue to live forever, is it?" - (Gintama: The Final)

His hollowness and eternity did not have to mean all this pain. He denied the version of himself, Shouyou, that went against his omnicidal death wish, and was life giving instead. In giving life, Shouyou became mortal, and was given death. In death, Shouyou became more influential and powerful than Utsuro, having touched the heart of people who would come back to defeat him. The immortal becomes mortal becomes immortal. Yin flowing back into yang flowing back into yin.

In the end, everything goes back to where it started, yet everything is new again. The Yorozuya are back, and Edo is still Edo, even as Tokyo looms on the horizon. I can only hope for the baby we see at the end, that if they are immortal, they will have a kinder life than Utsuro/Shouyou did. That they will be more human than monster. The monster's child became human, after all.

[dont-touch-the-flower-child]

Nobume & Matako as foils

This was going to be part of a longer analysis, but in the end I decided to make a short separate post for it that I could refer to later.

I'm going to list a few similarities Nobume and Matako have, and within these similarities we could compare the differences and their implications.

Both girls are orphaned at a young age and forced to become a killer.

Nobume was orphaned by Naraku (which serves the Bakufu) and then trained to become an assassin. Her own will was not accounted for in the process; she did not have a say.

Matako lost her parents because of the Bakufu (her father executed for fighting in the joui war, her mother persecuted to death by association) and she wanted to avenge them with the pistols her father left behind. Though she was similarly a victim, Matako actively chose the path of rebellion for herself.

Both met their father figure, who end up becoming their commander, in a moment of rebellion. (self-explanatory)

Isaburo and Takasugi also happen to be working towards the same objective (toppling the Bakufu, exposing the Tendoshu)

They are both adored by their respective father figures, and the attachment is strong.

Though both Isaburo and Takasugi appear to have trouble navigating their relationship with their daughter. (Isaburo's pretty obvious; I plan on elaborating on Takasugi's case later)

They are both similar in temperament with their respective father figures.

Isaburo and Nobume are stoic and detached; Takasugi and Matako are hot-tempered and reckless.

(Also, within the revived Kiheitai, Matako is the only member whose initial motive is the same as Takasugi's: revenge. This could imply great similarities in their characters.)

Now, onto the greatest difference between Nobume and Matako: their personalities.

Nobume spent her entire life following orders. First under Naraku, and then under Isaburo. Isaburo was the one who wanted to support Takasugi's cause, and Nobume felt she "had to go along". Isaburo is plotting rebellion under the guise of following orders; as the Mimawarigumi followed his orders, they all became his pawn.

Matako meanwhile, belongs in the Kiheitai, which is pretty much rebellion and resistence incarnated. (I'd like to remind people that, despite their great loyalty to Takasugi, every major member of the Kiheitai has acted independently of Takasugi's will at some point—even against it sometimes.) I also feel like pointing out how Matako's an independent thinker as she is the only one to question the use of the Benizakura sword as it's too dangerous, and the only one to question if the Kiheitai's alliance with Harusame is a good idea. She even correctly deduced that Takasugi was in danger in that moment, something not even Bansai caught on.

(See, this is why I dislike portrayals of Matako as a simple-minded fangirl who blindly follows Takasugi around. I also think she deserves more serious moments where she acts and gets recognized as the competent person she is.)

Nobume, due to her parallel with Oboro (which deserves its own post), very likely got the same detached, emotionless personality from being brought up in Naraku. An authoritarian organization with little warmth and affection to speak of.

Matako, meanwhile, expresses a much wider range of emotions. She cries freely, plays the exasperated tsukkomi/straight man, and is a vibrant, lively girl. I can only imagine that if she's able to turn out like this, then the Kiheitai must be very different from Naraku in all asepcts.

For some reason, this post turns out to be longer than I intended. I'd like to share some speculations of how Matako was brought up by the Kiheitai, and how I think Takasugi feels about her. So, more posts incoming.

[sweettsubaki]

Sakata Gintoki, king of static characters who doesn't really change throughout the series (yes I know it's the definition) but impacts his environment so much you could almost believe he does.

[regnigt]

It's an underrated part of Katsura's character development how he realizes in the Benizakura arc that no, he *can't* just sneak away and deal with things on his own. His absence has consequences. He has friends who love him and will stir up all sorts of trouble to find him.

Not that Katsura doesn't still retain a self-sacrificial urge (in spite of all his "I'm a general so I must be careful" learnings), but arguably he keeps it better reined in from this point onwards. Seeing Shinpachi and Kagura in danger for his sake and then also Elizabeth and the rest of his men coming after him, even raising an anti-Kiheitai Joui alliance for his sake - all that made a lasting impression on him, I think.

(Now Gintoki, on the other hand, is always to ready to throw his life away and seems to genuinely find it hard to grasp how much that would hurt those he loves the most. He got a wake-up call in the Four Devas arc when it came to Shinpachi and Kagura, but mostly in practice that just meant he was more willing to accept that they could fight alongside him even in moments of greater danger, not being less personally reckless...)

[zaruba-needslove]

I still love Bansai’s monologue about Shinsuke. In a way... it was very sweet. Like it’s a side of that guy that probably only the people who had fought alongside Shinsuke would’ve known.

Tho to be fair, I forgot the proper orders of these caps lol. But still, these scenes were nicely put. Like neither Shinsuke, nor Gintoki... or even Katsura, thinks that doing all these things makes them a hero. They just did what they want.

Yet through the eyes of the other people fighting alongside them...

Perhaps they ARE heroes of their own rights.

[regnigt]

agroup of crows #prev:#gintama is so so so about being stuck#<- nodding nodding nodding#the way he breaks the fourth wall tells us this isn't his first time being a character in a story#the way he has performance anxiety about being the main character tells us he is kind of terrified doing it again#too much of a stoic to not let it happen to him but will he bitch about it. will he run away even after successful arcs. mhm

Something so interesting about gintoki is that he like already was a shonen hero, before gintama even starts. Like he was an orphan with a cool teacher and a ragtag group of friends. He fought in the war and became known as the shiroyasha through his teen years. And then we meet his as and adult. After the story has kind of ended. Where it begins instead is: ok, you did the shonen hero thing. Who comes out the other side? What are you after the credits roll? When you have to pay rent? What kind of adult do you want to be?

[zeravmeta]

loses 10 years of my life and has 20 added in an endless loop thinking about how gintoki is always primarily described by his inhumanity first and foremost because for all that he is an idiot goofball he is also a survivor of one of the bloodiest massacres in his series ever since he was a child and even surrounded by family and friends he has no qualms whatsoever with all the blood on his hands and equally has no problem further spilling blood to protect what he loves <- primary indication of humanity in gintama is using a sword to protect vs using a sword to kill and the measure of ones soul (and even gain one) is in how they weild a sword

[s2pdoktopus]

There's a whole ass AU behind the stupid drawing based on a stupid conversation with @tamanone. Something about Tatsuma and Takasugi forming a boy band and a meta humor about their voice actors having been in a band together. And them guesting in an Otsuu concert. There are a lot of stupid thoughts involved. And then tamanone described a stupid cute scene (Tatsuma serenading Takasugi in the backstage with Otsuu's Omae to p-chan nondakure) that I can't do any justice. I tried tho.

[dont-touch-the-flower-child]

Made one for Shinsuke while I'm. Emotional about the Silver Soul Arc

There have Always been hints of Shinsuke being more sensitive and sentimental than he lets on, and implications of him being a very kind and indulgent leader. The fact that he remembers the name and family life of a soldier of his, executed by the bakufu ten years ago. The implication that his soldiers trusted and loved him enough to confide in him. The fact that he would never cast away Kiheitai's name.

He kept Shoyou's book and he calls Katsura by Zura and he tells Matako not to follow him cuz he's going down a suicidal path, but he saves her without hesitation when it's suggested that being seen with him has implicated her.

When Bansai comments on Ito and say that the Kiheitai does Not take kindly to traitors, and that people who betray trust and abandon their companions cannot win their follower's hearts, he's talking about more than Ito. The Kiheitai values bonds and sentiments because Shinsuke as its leader values these things. Gintama has many leaders: Gintoki, Katsura, Kondo, Tatsuma, Shigeshige and more. All of them were able to win people over, and gather their forces, because they are kind and just leaders, and Shinsuke is no exception.

It's so rare for Shinsuke to express his tenderness through words, so when he finally says, as he's lost Bansai and his own life is on countdown, that he's been living a dream all along because the Kiheitai is with him...

...Well, it's kinda hard to not love him.

[inkonssstantgeissst]

Oh yes, for sure! Because if Shouyou had not found Gintoki, he would never have opened Shoka Sonjuku like he'd promised Oboro. Without Oboro, Shouyou had no reason to open Shoka Sonjuku, but nor could he go back to the Naraku, so he was just wandering, aimless; but then he hears about a corpse-eating devil that dwells on the battlefield, and some hope must have arisen in him, that maybe, maybe, he'll find a being like him, a being who he can relate to, who understands him -

And then he finds Gintoki, who is clearly just a human child. But look at him! He has wavy, silvery hair, like Oboro had - this must be fate! How could it not? And just look at him - here is Shouyou's second chance. Here is Shouyou's chance to succeed with this child where he had failed with Oboro.

So for sure, without Gintoki, Shouyou would never have opened Shoka Sonjuku and gotten to be a teacher. In that sense, yes, Gintoki was extremely important to Shouyou and had a very positive effect on him.

But at this point, Shouyou is already totally fucked. He is trying not to have what happened to Oboro happen to Gintoki, which means that he does everything completely different from how he did it with Oboro: he does not give Gintoki his blood, he does not tell Gintoki that he is immortal, he does not try to use Gintoki to live as a human, because he no longer believes that he can be human; he raises Gintoki to be a human so that he can destroy the monster that Shouyou is.

By this time, change for Shouyou is already impossible; the second chance he sees in Gintoki is not to live as a human, but to die as one. He does not seek understanding or companionship in Gintoki; he seeks his end. So yes, he was important to Shouyou in that way, as the one who would kill him. Oboro had sacrificed himself for him and suffered, and Shouyou will not let that happen again; he doesn't want to kill and cause suffering, anymore. He just wants to die. Gintoki is his way to finally do so. So yes, Gintoki is incredibly important to Shouyou; even as Utsuro, he has an intense interest in Gintoki. But it's not to change what he is and allow him to become human, like had been his goal with Oboro.

And here's the thing: Gintoki is the protagonist. Gintoki does not exist as a character to shape Shouyou; Shouyou is the one who exists as a character to shape Gintoki. Shouyou makes Gintoki who he is, so that Gintoki can become human, and can defeat him, and in doing so can make the show's whole point about humanity and connections with others. Shouyou needs to exist as the failure for Gintoki to overcome in order to succeed.

Gintoki is not the one who shapes Shouyou; Shouyou is the one who shapes Gintoki. Oboro is the character who shapes Shouyou, in order that Shouyou can shape Gintoki.

Gintoki is the main character: main characters, more than any other characters in a story, bend the entire story around them. In a sense, a story only exists for the sake of the development of the main character.

So the argument can be made that Shouyou was important to shaping Gintoki, because that was Shouyou's entire role as a character in Gintama, but the argument cannot be made that Gintoki was important to shaping Shouyou as a character, because that is not Gintoki's role as a character in Gintama, as evidenced by the very fact that Shouyou's conclusion is simply his death, not his successful change.

And what I was examining in the previous post was on the nature of change, not on the message of Gintama. I do not mean to say that Gintoki was not an important character to Shouyou, because he very clearly is, he is literally the one that immortal is kind of obsessed with due to his desire to die, but that Oboro is the one who changed the immortal, and the one who the immortal failed and which caused him to fail to even be able to change. Which is why Gintoki was the one who had to change and do what Shouyou could not: protect the ones he cares about, and in doing so accept himself, believe in himself, let go of his past identity as a demon and a monster's child, and become human.

Shouyou failed so that Gintoki could learn from that failure and succeed.

I was simply examining what would have been necessary for Shouyou to succeed; but as I plan on exploring in my fic, Shouyou's success means that Gintoki does not have to go through that struggle. There can be no Gintama, then.

So yes, Gintoki is important to Shouyou. But he is not to Shouyou what Oboro was to Shouyou. Oboro was Shouyou's beginning and Shouyou's end; Gintoki was Shouyou's legacy and recompense.

I have been having such Shouyou brainrot and contemplating the nature of change, where Shouyou failed and how he could have succeeded, that I had to write a thing.

Because to be honest I don't think Shouyou pondered it for very long before leaving the Naraku with Oboro, but it's sort of hard to tell how much time passes in the anime, they make it kind of seem like he decides to leave the Naraku like the next day after Oboro suggests opening his own school or something. So I feel like he leapt at the first flicker of hope, but then lost it just as quickly once Oboro dies, and then sort of wanders around for a while empty and thinking before he finds Gintoki and his hope is reignited to a certain extent.

But hope is a painful thing, and I don't think Shouyou had ever had it before Oboro, so I think it was truly devastating to him when Oboro appears to die having sacrificed himself to kill the Naraku that were after them.

(And damn, Oboro was a child, like yeah he made mistakes but you can't expect a child that age to be able to make particularly wise decisions, his life experience is so little and his brain isn't anywhere near fully developed, and Shouyou despite his thousands of years of life experience knows very little about matters like love and care.)

And where I was going with that is that I think Shouyou never truly changed because he was never able to rid himself of the belief that he is a devil/oni/monster, like we see him telling Gintoki that he is, and so I conclude that Shouyou was sort of defeated by defeatism and so was never able to free himself of his suffering or change and become anything like the human he craves to be, and which he plays at being but never truly becomes.

Because it's not easy, letting go of the detrimental ideas that you have come to internalize about yourself because of the world and your interactions with others.

Shouyou was never not empty; Utsuro, the void, was always a part of him.

And I think Shouyou had the right idea, with what he was saying to Takasugi, that it's ok to be lost, to lose your way and find the person that you want to be.

But I think Shouyou was never able to let go of his conception that he is a monster and never loses his internal emptiness.

And then Shouyou gave up and couldn't fight the void of himself any longer, and Utsuro kind of went back to what he knew because that's easy, but with an added aspect of intentional self-destruction that Shouyou had started when he let the Naraku capture and execute him, which he must have been planning to do from the moment he and Gintoki opened Shoka Sonjuku, because if he did not know that Oboro was alive and keeping the Naraku away than he could never have not expected the Naraku to find him. He probably never expected the school to last even as long as it did, and he must have seen Oboro in the Naraku and realized what he'd done, which would only have made him want to die even more.

Hope is a fragile thing, if you do not have belief, and after he lost Oboro, he didn't have anyone to reassure him that he isn't a monster, and that it's okay for him to be what he is.

The thing is that you will never be able to change if you hate yourself, because you will never be able to struggle in the necessary ways, because you believe the worst of yourself. If you are trying to become something that you are not, you are doomed to fail.

I have been thinking extensively about the nature of change, and what are the requirements for change to succeed, and I have concluded three things: that one must 1) have the right desire to change, 2) the belief that one can change, and 3) an acceptance of oneself. Because if one does not have a reason to change which one can hold onto, one will never be able to muster the motivation necessary; and if one does not have the belief that one can change, then one will never be able to muster the effort necessary; and if one hates and does not accept oneself, then one will never be able to overcome the failures that are inevitable on any journey.

It is not possible to learn to walk without falling; it is not possible to learn to fly without falling; it is not possible to learn how to do anything without failing. If you cannot handle failure, you will not succeed. There's a Japanese proverb, "Fall down seven times, stand up eight," which says it very nicely: you have to expect that you will fail, but keep trying anyway.

And Shouyou did have the desire to change, but it was not the right desire - it was a selfish one. He wanted to be human because he hates what he is. Because he hates what he is (a being who cannot die and only brings death), he tried to be other than what he is (saying that he will not kill anymore), and because he tried to be other than what he is, and tried to place those values on Oboro as well, Oboro who saw that Shouyou could not escape the Naraku without killing, believed he had to protect Shouyou, and so took it upon himself to kill them, which ended up destroying Shouyou's hope.

Because Shouyou didn't have the right desire, his self-defeating desire to be other than what he is, he also could not sustain belief that he could change. He could not change because he could not accept himself.

Shouyou failed and caused Oboro to die, confirming his belief that he is a monster and in his hopelessness he came to desire nothing more than to die. When he picks up Gintoki, we see in several instances that he literally seems to be grooming Gintoki to kill him. He does not trust Gintoki with what he is, and hiding what you are for fear of being hated and feared will always cause isolation and internal emptiness. You will always be starving and always be scared. And where there is fear there will always be violence, and where there is hopelessness there will always be longing for death.

Utsuro was empty, but Utsuro was also hopeless; but he at least accepted and used what he was and took his fate into his own hands, unlike Shouyou who always put his fate into the hands of others (his students), which did allow Utsuro to accomplish more than Shouyou had, in regards to leveraging relationships and changing his fate, but Utsuro was created because of Shouyou and Shouyou's desire to die; he was all the feelings and desires within Shouyou that Shouyou had been suppressing with his desperate but ultimately impossible desire to be human. To be human means to be alive; but to be alive also means to die. Shouyou wanted to be alive because he wanted to die. Ultimately, he never changed from the being that hates, fears and longs to be human.

In order for Shouyou to have truly changed, it would have required for him to have the right desire to change - not a selfish desire which he would cast upon Oboro and which would cause Oboro to feel the need to be the one to protect him, but a selfless desire which would allow Oboro to trust and rely on him to help him as well. This would have required the Shouyou to accept himself for what he is, for his abilities and what he's good at and what he has to work with. This would have required letting go of humans' perceptions of him as a devil/oni/monster, and just accepting himself as being a being who is not defined by any ideas or labels, and as such is fully capable of being an actor in charge of his own fate rather than a victim of nature or circumstance.

If you can let go of thinking of yourself as a monster and just accept yourself as being as you are, you open up the doors for change, because if you have limited yourself with a sense of identity then you have limited what you believe you are capable of, and if you have limited what you believe you are capable of then you have limited what you are indeed capable of. Because again, you need the right desire in order to have the right motivation, and you need the right belief in order to put in the right effort and be able to overcome the inevitable failures.

Ultimately, Shouyou's sense of self was absolutely fucked, and when he lost Oboro, he lost any ability to fix it, because Oboro was the first and only one to accept him for what he is and as such the only person to open those doors for Shouyou, which without Oboro shut closed and were never to open again - hope is a fragile, fragile thing, without belief, and Oboro would have been necessary in order for Shouyou to gain that belief and confidence in himself.

But Oboro destroyed this chance unwittingly, because he was a child who didn't know any better and was just trying to help this being he felt indebted to but whom he couldn't trust to protect either him or himself because Shouyou had refused to protect Oboro when he refused to teach him what he knew. So Oboro, having been told that Shouyou would not teach him, came to understand that he could not rely on Shouyou and therefore had to do everything himself.

Shouyou failed when he failed Oboro. In order for Shouyou to have succeeded, he would have had to put his relationship with Oboro above his own selfish desires to be human, and to have come at the idea of change from a different angle entirely.

The key to change is not to try to become something you're not, because that will always end in failure - they key to change is to become more of what you truly are: to become who you are underneath all the false ideas the world has made you believe about yourself.

Shouyou would have had to become and accept himself, as an immortal and non-human being, without the conceptions of himself as a monster, a devil, an oni, capable of nothing but death. There is absolutely no reason why, as an immortal being who knows better than anyone how to kill others, he cannot also be kind and generous and love others and live fulfillingly and without emptiness, as he is. And Shouyou never even came close to realizing this.

And I had been trying to figure out a way for him to be influenced to realize this in a way that would work with his canon characterization, but I couldn't quite, so in my fic he ended up just kind of realizing it, far more easily than I think he realistically could have, because I at least want to explore a universe in which he does succeed in this way.

The fic now has two chapters, the first a canon character study on Shouyou's desire to change and his failure to do so, and the role that Oboro played for him and Utsuro; and a second chapter which is the start of an AU where Shouyou succeeds in changing, and the role that Oboro plays in this, and how this ends up, how this ends up changing Shouyou's path and affecting his students.

But just in case people don't want to read a fanfic but are willing enough to read a tumblr post, I wrote out these thoughts in this format as well haha. But now if you read the fic after reading this you'll basically just be seeing these thoughts again, but more poetically/metaphorically/emotionally in character POV, and more of the causes/results etc. explored as far as the characters and events are concerned.

Anyways, this was most of the brainrot thoughts that has been eating my mind, so I'm leaving this here.

[regnigt]

Katsura thoughts

[some other old Gintama thoughts taken from my private Twitter] Zura has a tendency to downplay his own importance to the people he loves. At the same time he has a strong confidence in his own abilities.

And Shoyo, while still super important to him, seems *slightly* less so than he was for Gintoki and Takasugi. They got *everything* from their Sensei. Zura already had a foundation from his grandma's teachings.

But Gintoki and Takasugi were super important to Zura because he didn't have to be lonely anymore. Thinking of how he adopted Shoyo's hairstyle and way of dress as an adult... it feels like he from rather early on sort of felt like he should take on the mantle of being like Shoyo

And be mature enough, and strong enough, to handle that.

That he thinks it's fine for him to be the one to step back into the background and support his loved ones from there because he's got the strength for it. (So long as he's not completely alone, he still hates that.)

That's where his great confidence comes in.

He believes in his capabilities in general and his ability to endure. He doesn't, fully, believe he can be enough to other people on a personal level.

I wonder if he would sometimes, when growing up, look at Gin and Takasugi squabbling and wonder how soon it would take them to notice if he wasn't there. (Oh no, made myself sad.;__; )

Though at the same time they were his precious friends and comrades who chased away the loneliness.

[teatitty]

Gintoki is functionally the same at the end of Gintama as he was at the start but the character or progression he has is that he goes from being a lonely stray with very few personal connections to regaining a sense of community and family, having a shitton of connected personal relationships, all of which matter and impact his daily life

[regnigt]

GinTakaZura thought from Twitter

[reposting the content in some old tweets as I'll probably delete my private Twitter account soon]

sudden gintakazura thought: from takasugi's pov, i could see the angle that gintoki is the one his mind tends to dwell on, whether he races to match up to his skill or delights in hurting himself by hating him

and by contrast, katsura is someone takasugi has an easier time overlooking, or should one say compartmentalizing him, when he's not right there.

but when zura *is* there, then he does consume takasugi's thoughts, making him want to possess him/stir him up/leave his mark on him and even in a way compete with gintoki over zura.

although his flame might burn more intensely for gintoki, he wouldn't think of competing with zura over gin... that just never occurs to him.

it's okay for *takasugi* to prioritize fighting gintoki (or beating him, obsessing over him, etc) but it's not okay for zura to ignore takasugi in favour of gintoki!!

[regnigt]

Ooh!!!!

original joui trio is just a weirdo loop of them being upset that they couldn’t “protect” each other its legit insane. takasugi + katsura being upset they couldn’t protect gintoki from having to kill their sensei and gintoki + takasugi being upset they couldn’t “protect” katsura from his own sense of responsibility (takasugi kept calling him zura even when they declared they’d kill each other)  and gintoki + katsura being upset they couldn’t protect takasugi from himself like ill just kill myself

[pencilcult]

how come does this "high-end literature" book im reading for english class seem to do its meta thing worse than how gintama does meta

[teatitty]

Joui 4 headcanon after months of silence: they were all equally feared on the battlefield of the Amanto War for entirely different reasons. Gintoki's the only one who got folkloric status because his signature bright white clothing and hair cut an easily memorable image amidst so much bloodshed and dark palette's, but if anyone time travelled back to that period or spoke with people who knew the four of them during that time, you'd learn that Katsura, Takasugi and Sakamoto were all equally terrifying opponents to go up against

Here's my breakdown that matters to nobody but myself. Gintoki is a tank player. He can take hit after hit after hit and still get back up and deal just as much as he takes, hence his demon moniker, but if you think he's the only one to take down hoardes by himself you'd be wrong because Katsura was deadly efficient, always aiming for quick kill strikes and moving with a fluid grace few could match

In contrast, Takasugi and Sakamoto were similar fighters, being quick and agile on the battlefield with their core differences being that Takasugi had a similar defence stat as Gintoki whereas Sakamoto's unmistakable laughter sounded so deranged and manic to the minds of already paranoid soldiers that it could strike paralysing fear into most mobs