Incoming text explosion. Feel free to read or TL;DR if you want.
A word on Gintama’s 10 years.
By Bomber D Rufi.
So here it is. 10 years of ball busting action, and before (or after?) the translation for this week, I’m putting this up for the world to read.
My feelings are mixed.
For one thing I had to rely on math to figure out how many years I’ve been translating this thing (It’s a little over 4 years BTW.) Considering that math and I get along as well as Hijikata and Gintoki, this was an arduous task I never want to repeat. While on that sentiment, I enter and end each week’s translation of Gintama with that exact sentiment. ‘An arduous task I never want to repeat.’ Yet week after week after week I’m repeating it. Through rain or shine, sickness and health I keep translating Gintama despite it causing me both metaphorical and physical (ripping your hair out over how to properly convey a Sorachi-ism counts. I dare you to tell me otherwise.) pain. Yet I still put aside a block of time on Wednedays (or Thursdays) to do it.
I guess I could one could say that Gintama is a part of my life now. It’s that granddad that I don’t particularly look forward to seeing but end up enjoying my time with when I go. It’s more to me than a simple pastime, but I don’t think I’d think of it as a necessity. I dunno. So why do I say my feelings are mixed when it’s pretty obvious I have a tsundere relationship with this series? I—it’s not like I like physical and mental pain each week! I—I just have no life okay?!
In all seriousness, as Sorachi celebrates a landmark in his work, I do too as I just finished my Graduate degree. 2 years of my own ball busting action as Sorachi celebrates 10. I’m not sure what the Gorilla will do to commemorate the event, but I think it’ll involve strippers, blackjack and copious amounts of cheesecake. Something like that.
10 years is a long time, but there are lots of things that are ten years old and don’t really matter much.
Should Gintama be celebrated for reaching a decade of existence?
I think not.
Gintama is well…a series for losers.
Now before you decide to boycott my translations, let me explain myself. Sorachi and his ragtag bunch of losers (yup I said it again) have carved a niche in a magazine…no a genre of storytelling that rewards it’s risk takers, the stupidly stubborn, and most of all the victorious. As the Luffys and Ichigos run ahead to get stuff done, Gintama’s in the back gasping for air asking for five more minutes. Yet I love it. Yet we love it. Yet Japan loves it. I believe that it’s because while not everyone knows what success feels like, we all definitely have an idea of what failure is. In that way It’s easy to identify with the Gintama characters and universe which hell, starts out in the middle of a slow decent into fail hell. The samurai have been defeated and lost their swords, funky aliens are doing whatever they want, and the main character is only slightly avoiding diabetes. Say what you want but this is definitely no One piece.
No one in Gintama is ashamed of their failures either. You’d find it easier to get Hijikata to lay off smokes than to get one of the Gintama characters to admit they’re wrong. Otose says it best during the Jirochou arc. ‘Stubborn, impudent, determined and inflexible.’ All qualities that we are often told to play down in our real life drudgery. Yet Sorachi makes that stubbornness…dare I say it noble. Inspiring even. The characters aren’t out to win, they’re out to live. That’s what we do too right? Just get through day to day hoping to do a little better each time around.
Though there are times where life works out just right, making a moment of pure existential beauty. A broken down umbrella shared with friends during the rainy season, your buds coming together and helping you write a love letter to a girl you just met, going to a festival in disguise just to be with the girl you like (and she discovering a new side of you because of it.) or even something as simple as a job well done that doesn’t get cosmically screwed over. Gintama relishes those moments, baring those pure human moments as a part of its comic tapestry. Those moments that the other shounen seem to be afraid of showing off in that we’d think less of them. Stories are moments neatly lined up to present a narrative, often omitting parts that may bore or not be as weighty as others. While that makes for good reading, is that art imitating life? Gintama is quite honestly at its best when it’s a hodgepodge of all of those omitted parts put together in a haphazard way. What another writer would balk at including is what Sorachi leads his ‘A’ game with, because what are we if not searching for the occasional success but having to settle for what’s in front of us? Finding beauty in the little things to keep from neurotically obsessing over all that’s ugly? ‘The best lives are those that are lived while getting a little dirty’.
What is also impressive is how Sorachi can take a weird premise and turn it into even weirder (and poigent) social commentary. Be it Kyuubee’s unhappiness (or happiness?) with her gender which lead into a whole arc about discovering oneself and how gender does not define happiness, or virtual game otaku being schooled in how love is accepting all those less than pleasant things about a person. His unflinching attack on what we take for granted is shocking, tantalizing and most of all hilarious if not at least a little true. While this translator can do with less love hotels, it’s still a point well taken. For a guy who calls himself a Gorilla he really seems to have an understanding of humans.
And that is why I think Gintama has such staying power. It’s just so very human. Aliens and weird creatures might dot the series, but it all has such underlying human undertones that people can get it without having to think hard about getting it. Humans want to focus on what feels good, on what they succeed in doing, without realizing that there was a whole lot of crap they had to wade through to get to that point. Gintama is that wading process that we all have done…the stride after the fall we hoped that no one saw. It too is stuck being a loser for a while and therefore doesn’t judge you for getting tired and just wanting to exist. Yet, when the time comes it’ll push you out the door and tell you to chase your dreams. It’ll be there when you need it, for the struggle, for the loss and everything in between. It’ll nonchaluantly offer it’s hand when you fall, and mooch off of you when you succeed. It’s that bad friend that everyone has (and if you don’t have one, check in the mirror. You’ll see them.) that always seems to have the most unhelpful advice when you least need it, but won’t leave you hanging.
I guess what all my rambling is trying to get at here is…
At some point in our lives we will know a ‘Gintama’. At some point we will be a Gintama. A person completely and utterly in love with success but living with normalcy, and finding out that the view is actually much better than we previously allowed. Maybe at some point we’ll get tired of the Gintamas we hang out with, and end up being a Gintama to someone else. Gintama doesn’t end when the end of chapter text appears…in fact you could say that’s really where Gintama begins, since it’s only after the madcap comedy or human drama has been consumed for the week that suddenly we realize that ‘Oh wait, that reminds me of when I….’
10 years. I guess this is the part where I say ‘I hope for 10 years more!’ but honestly even if I said that, we all know Gintama isnt’ going anywhere even after Sorachi has the final chapter of the series mercilessly yanked from his desk by his editors before he can finish inking it. It represents us at our worst hoping for the best. A generational piece that defies its generation and the one after that and the one after that and maaaaaaybe the one after that. Is it a movement? Nah. That’d require doing actual work, and we all know how losers feel about work.
Gintama just is. It puts its full effort into effortlessly being itself.
And frankly, despite the text hurting my feelings every week, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
10年空知先生のためにおめでとう！しかし、あまり言葉を使用してください.
Now he's in an... ambivalent relationship with yet another "villain" again. Kamui, Sasaki and Nobunobu. On the other hand all of them seem to be against the Amanto Government, to a different extent. Not that I'm disappointed, I really enjoyed the arc, but I hope the next time we get the focus on one of them, instead of adding another "villain". Yet a serious Gintama arc rarely disappoints, so I guess I won't mind either way 
Even if it's just a recollection, that's pretty cool. And I always knew Mutsu was an especially awesome one!