#benizakura

Few jokes, serious tone all around, took place during a dreary cloudy day or the dead of night

And yet none of the extended cast that make up the later arcs. No kyuubey, no tsukuyo, not even the shinsengumi.

It might be the only non-endgame serious arc that focuses solely on the three disciples' friendship.

I’m soooo sry I did not see this but this is so true 😭 I’ve always loved Benizakura endlessly and it’s one of my top arcs in Gintama.

Looking back it really does feel like an arc that somehow wandered in from much later in the series.

Anything to do with those three immediately becomes cinema to me and I hold this one especially dearly because Zura has always been sidelined when he should’ve never been and here I feel like we finally got to see some parts of him that weren’t buried under a million layers of comedy.

And as much as I like the Shinsengumi and everyone else I’m glad they didn’t have a hand in this. Even in the movie they were only shown briefly. It felt like we finally got our little moment between the trio even though they were actively trying to kill and hunt each other down lmao.

My favorite dog.

It has the stakes and tone of the middle or even later serious arcs but 80% of the key factions and characters that would come to define those arcs are either absent (shinsegumi, 4 devas) or haven't been established yet (Yoshiwara, Yagyu, Kamui, etc). It lacks the color and variety in characters and humor, and even the setting of the final battle is set to a dreary cloudy sky and ocean.

It's like if in Ocarina of Time they're was an early mini-boss like encounter where Link fights Ganondorf before even meeting the gorons and zoras.