Gintama

Having neither read the manga nor seen the anime, I rate this purely on the movie itself. Some parts of the movie are fascinating, some parts ridiculous (as I suppose was intended) and it jumps the shark regularly. I didn't find anything it it that made it stand out above other movies. Unless one is really into boogar picking and flicking, this is a mixed-impression flick that isn't serious enough to make a good story, nor is it funny enough to be a good satire film. I didn't find it boring, but neither was I enthralled. As solid a 5-star film as I've seen. Good CGI, and fairly good directing. The music was severely over-the-top and in places over-rode the film itself (which is never forgivable). That about sums it up.

The Gintama movie could have been better. The story was okay and entertaining and the characters interesting and likable. However, the CGI were very poor and the execution overall was weak, following the anime premisses so closerly, to the point that it was idiotic. Also, some, (not all) costumes looked quite fake. Other than that, the plot was nice, with many action scenes and some solid fights. The performances were good as well. So, five and a half out of ten.

My watching this movie was for a very strange reason - my public library has it and it is on BluRay, and there were zero requests. So I thought, "What the heck, I'll give it a try."

There is an audience for this type of movie but it definitely isn't me. In I suppose what is typical of Japanese movies of this sort we see lots of histrionics, very loud and animated characters speaking very rapidly and enthusiastically. For me I found it pretty much unwatchable.

I knew nothing of the Gintama universe when I came across this movie for the first time. I was simply browsing for something to fall asleep to during a long flight, but this actually made me fully wake up, as every frame was simply too much fun. Visual fun, meta jokes for creative types, social critique that doesn't take itself too seriously, all sorts of good stuff on many layers. Decent plot and great acting, very fitting for the genre (whatever the genre may be). Needless to say, I had to watch this movie on a bigger screen for a second time.

By itself it's already amazing, and it would have been possible to stop there. The movie did make me look up the manga/anime, too, for more context.

I caught this movie on a flight from the UK to Hong Kong. I am not an anime fan at all but spent a majority of my life in Japan. This movie was initially a time filler for me but I soon started to realise just how well played out the story is. It is often difficult to capture the essence of Japanese humour when it is interpreted into English as the basis of our humour is different. The translators of this movie have done such an amazing job and to read how the Japanese is interpreted I felt myself was unable to stop laughing. It is a brilliant movie that captures all of the neat things that are Japanese but manages to preserve them in the translation. I recommend you watch it, its a great movie!