Gintama Reviews Episode 81: A Woman’s Best Make Up is Her Smile

THE STORY THUS FAR: gintama paid tribute to kochikame by ushering in the mayuzom apocalypse, they actually followed through on the threat of a recap episode, and then the yagyu arc began and ace was overjoyed because KYUBEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!1

As this is the last episode of the Yagyu arc, let’s see if I can organize my thoughts into something more coherent than “Kyubei… just… like… 10 outta 10 man. 100 outta 10. 50,000 outta 10.”

Hijikata might be my favorite, but Kyubei is still the best character (outside of Gin-san and his war buddies, arguably). And while the characters are fairly inconsistent in how they refer to them (and the subtitler switches between male and female pronouns depending on the context), that’s fairly typical even in real life. Kyubei won’t even figure out their gender identity until the arc in season 3 devoted to it, so a few missteps are forgivable.

Moving on to the actual episode, the fight finishes up fairly quickly, and then the rest of the first half is devoted to Kyubei and Otae discussing their relationship and such. It’s very cute.

The second half focuses Kondo’s efforts to get out of his marriage with Princess Bubbles. The Shinsengumi can’t help and the Odd Jobs trio doesn’t want to, so it’s up to Otae to save the day. Mayo theorizes it’s because she actually likes Kondo, Otae says it’s because she didn’t want her brother to watch a dude screw a gorilla (an understandable sentiment), and I suspect it’s because status quo is God and the characters know it.

This episode brings a satisfying end to the Yagyu Arc. The high point of the arc was definitely the episode devoted to four guys having a battle of wits over a lack of toilet paper (which damn near killed me and my sister), but even outside that it was a great arc that introduced one of the best characters in the series. It was great seeing Otae get some character development, and Shinpachi doesn’t get to be relevant to the plot very often, so that was nice, too.

Next episode someone is in deep poopy, apparently. Till next time.

[ko-fi]