GINTAMA | Sarcasm, indecent jokes, parodies and no sense whatsoever...but still AWESOME!

My favorite ANIME series of all time has to be GINTAMA. Period. Why is that? Because of it's randomness. Gotta love the randomness, man. Everything about it is random. Just imagine this: The Samurai Era...in the future...with aliens invading the Earth....yeah...that's pretty much it.

To sum it all up, the story focuses on three main characters and their lifes fighting poverty: Sakata Gintoki, who is a samurai, with a wooden sword, a silver perm, and a sweet tooth. He's the founder of the Yorozuya, or a "Jack-of-All-Trades" shop.

In the past, he fought on the Great Joui War, which point was to fight against the Amanto, or the aliens who invaded the planet.

He has a dirty mouth, yet he still talks with wisdom in his very own way. But he talks about himself as a "child in a man's body" most of the times. He would do anything to get the latest JUMP issue.

He's a great swordsman, very strong, and with a strong belief of the Bushido code.

But normally he's just lazy, trying to avoid any kind of responsability.

The next character is Shimura Shinpachi, who is a samurai apprentice under Gintoki's guardianship...supposely. He works and lives with the Yorozuya. He and her sister Otae have inherited a dojo from their father, but they can't mantain it. So they both have to work to do so.

He's the centered-regular-normal character from the whole saga. Probably the least wacko of them all, because he's always trying to keep under control the team...and mostly every other character in the anime. 

Last but not least, Kagura is a member of the Yato Clan; the strongest warriors of the Amanto, who are normally hired as killers. She's an adorable girl at first glance, but she's a lousy talker, kind of a bully, no manners, and an infinite appetite. She hates sunlight, so she always carries with her an umbrella. And her pet is an alien giant dog, named Sadaharu, who likes to bite people's heads.

 

It's a very wide theme treated by the story, so there are many little stories within it.

And the variety of characters is the same.

To name a few; there's a sadomasoquist kunoichi who is practically blind without her glasses, a samurai rebel who's always correcting how people mention his name ("It's not Zura...it's Katsura"), with a weird pet that looks like an old guy with just a blanket over him with a face of a penguin, a Shinsengumi vicecaptain with an addiction to mayonaisse, a sadistic captain who's always trying to kill the vicecaptain, the commander who's always stalking Shinpachi's sister and is always being confused with a gorilla... amongst maaaaaany others.

  

  

The most particular thing about these series is that they are always making references and parodies of many other animes and real life events; including One Piece, Bleach, Naruto, Beelzebub, Dragon Ball, Evangelion, Kuroshitsuji, ...it even makes parodies of videogames, such as Super Mario Bros or Street Fighter, or movies like Star Wars y Rocky. I can't believe that they had all the permissions to do so, or how are they not receiving any kind of fine. But I don't care. It's genius.

  

 

It also tries to temper with the 4th wall; the characters are always trying to correct or critizice the way the author, or the animators made their stories or situations they have to deal with on a daily basis.

Furthermore, I extremely recommend it. It's brilliant and it will always make you laugh...in one way or another.