GINTAMA - Mr. Ginpachi's Zany Class

Episode 10

Remember that Takasugi and his gang of rebe-... “delinquents” were supposed to be part of this show? It might have been easy to forget he was here, as Takasugi's screentime after his reintroduction has been relegated to post-credit shorts of him refusing to get out of bed to do anything. While that was kind of amusing in its own way, I guess the anime staff have decided they should probably get around to actually doing something with him, and not a moment too soon, as his presence seems to be setting the stage for a proper season finale.

Since Takasugi is the focus here, it only makes sense that the story for this episode circles back to the topic of school delinquents. This time there's a mysterious gang of delinquents who've been literally stealing the pants off their rivals and everyone has taken to calling them “MonHunters” since the monk pants they keep taking are considered an essential part of delinquent fashion (to which, while I appreciate the joke of using the rating system of Monster Hunter parts in their example of what makes for a dangerous delinquent, I do have to side eye that their default example of one was a black guy). Meanwhile, the principal is still looking for excuses to expel Takasugi. While Mr. Ginpachi opts to stay out of this, the Class 3-Z students fear that all this theft happening on Takasugi's turf might give his gang an excuse to run wild (although the man himself seems too busy losing at Street Fighter 2 to care much about what's happening).

Between these concerns and everyone rightly pointing out that the Disciplinary Committee/Shinsengumi squad has gotten way too much screen time lately, it falls to Shinpachi to infiltrate Takasugi's gang and ensure they don't stir up trouble. This infiltration mission mostly consists of a few rapid-fire parodies as Takasugi's gang tries to give Shinpachi a new haircut. A couple of them went completely over my head, but I did get a laugh out of Shinpachi getting cursed to rock the Vegeta mullet, since I guess Vegeta is nothing if not an angsty delinquent boy when you get down to it. When Shinpachi is forced to try robbing someone with this haircut, he ends up drawing the attention of the MonHunters, and we get what has shockingly been our only real action scene from this show as Takasugi's gang takes them out. It quickly becomes obvious that Takasugi was just using Shinpachi as bait, but he doesn't seem to be the only one doing that, as we see that there was another gang of delinquents looking over this whole ordeal: the Yatos, and they're determined to declare war on Gintama High. In the midst of everything else this show has been up to, I'd forgotten we haven't seen Kamui or the other members of the Yato race appear in this show beyond a cameo. These guys were the closest thing regular Gintama had to overarching antagonists besides Takasugi's crew. It only makes sense to transform them into a rival delinquent gang, and if this leans into his awkward sibling relationship with Kagura as the main series did, we could get some solid melodrama out of the deal.

Aside from that, I don't have much else to say about this episode. Unlike with the last couple of episodes, where that largely came down to them being dull, I can at least say that in this case, it's more because this was a reasonably funny episode that also served as setup, so my feelings on it will come down to exactly how well the Yatos are used here. I guess if I did have anything else to critique here, it's that despite setting up a pretty transparent Monster Hunter parody for this episode with the pants hunters, the references that got thrown in here were way too subtle for how loudly Gintama normally breaks the fourth wall. That there wasn't a single oversized sword or Rathalos in sight here just seems like a missed opportunity, and I'm shocked they didn't go for it. Come on, guys! It was right there!

Rating:

GINTAMA - Mr. Ginpachi's Zany Class is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.