Gintama Series 3, Part 1 (Blu-Ray Set Review)
By: MithrandielFor those unfamiliar with the series, Gintama follows the adventures (and misadventures) of a freelance samurai for hire named Gintoki Sakata. Following the arrival of aliens, the Japanese government delegates Samurai to second-rate citizens, forbidding them from wielding swords and submitting to their new alien overlords. This is the world within which Gintoki must struggle to survive, taking on odd jobs alongside his companions Kagura and Shinpachi Shimura.
Blu-Ray Set Review
This set includes episodes 266-291, the first part of the 3rd season of Gintama, which has now been running for over 10 years. Despite having over 350 episodes under its belt, home video releases of Gintama have been difficult to find due to licensing difficulties. Therefore, it comes as little surprise that when Funimation first announced that they had the rights to release this arc late last year, it was to the delight of Gintama fans everywhere.https://twitter.com/FUNimation/status/941839821646921728This set covers the beginning of the most recent season of Gintama, which began airing in 2015. There are 7 "arcs" within this batch of episodes, two of which ("Kaientai" and "Reaper) lean more on the serious side. This is about the average breakdown for Gintama as a whole, which features the lions share of its content as comedy, with some brief (but powerful) arcs that construct a wider and thoroughly interesting world.Gintama's typical antics are abound in this collection; from body-swapping and gender swapping to makeshift confessional stands, Gintoki and his allies find themselves tangled up in all manner of ridiculous situations.It's a strong start to the season, and things only get wilder from there.
The set itself is a thicker case than most of their standard releases, which gives the discs inside plenty of room. It also features a 12-page artbook, though compared to artbooks we've seen in recent releases, it's pretty slim.
The main difficulty in picking up with this set is there's a lot of story and development in the 265 episodes that preceded this release. If you're caught up and are eager to get some Gintama on your shelf, this is a great buy. However, if you're unfamiliar with the series so far, you've got some backlog to catch up with first.If you're ready to buy, you can find it on Funimation's site here.If you haven't started on Gintama, but now are interested in watching, you can find it on Crunchyroll. Note - it's largely understood that Gintama has a slow start. Some folks took ~8-10 episodes to really get into the groove, but once you're in, you'll fall in love. Enjoy it!
