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gintama live action
19 Aug 2017 05:09 pmVery surprised but very happy this movie showed in my country!
As people may/may not already know, Gintama is doing well at the Japanese box office and is now leading the pack as the highest grossing Japanese-made movie in 2017 (10th grossing overall on the domestic charts for the year), and I believe it hasn't completed its run yet. According to Box Office Mojo, it's sitting around USD$28.2 million. For comparison's sake, manga-to-movie historical fictions Rurouni Kenshin (the first one) finished up with USD$36.8 million and last year's Nobunaga Concerto ended similarly with USD$36.1 million. That's nothing on last year's surprise hit Kimi no na wa, which grossed a whopping USD$235 million, but is still a respectable result.
DO NOT READ ON IF YOU DON'T KNOW THE BENIZAKURA ARC
Like Rurouni Kenshin before it, Gintama has the good fortune to have a director who understands and is comfortable with the tone of the series. The movie mirrors the original in how well it switched between cool and funny and tense and silly, with an excellent sense of comic timing. Where direction is concerned, the only letdown is towards the end - one of the main reasons Gintama is so popular is that apart from making you laugh at unexpected times, it can also make you cry when you least expect it coming. What should have been a touching moment between the Joui trio (Sakamoto is still sad he's left out of the picture) didn't quite string out the emotions, and what should have been a sad regretful moment of a man dying for his mistakes again didn't quite hit the note it managed in the anime.
In terms of visual presentation, I confess I didn't come in with a high expectation. There's a lot of cheap-looking CG littered around, but then again, this is Gintama, it fits with the series' endless complaints of being poor anyway. Sadaharu looked ridiculously fake but I think most fans are happy that it's even there. The fights were, unsurprisingly, less impressive than Rurouni Kenshin, but there's reasonable care in the choreography so that they still look tense.
In terms of the characters, I think most people would be pleased. I guess my disclaimer would be that I've seen most of the actors in heaps of other stuff, so I no longer think of the actors as "hot" or "not hot".
Oguri Shun (I'm proud to say as expected XD) is en pointe as Gintoki, getting the characters overt laziness and understated coolness just right. Suda Masaki and Hashimoto Kanna are both pleasant surprises - mainly because I've seen Suda Masaki over-act things, but his Shinpachi had amazing comic timing, and managed to be sweet and brave and ordinary all at once. Hashimoto's acting is a little bit green but you wouldn't notice it in most scenes, and she certainly takes to Kagura's tomboyish violence with panache. And the cuteness of a thousand-year-beauty is pretty damn cute, all you otaku boys hating on her being "fat" needs to STFU and look at yourselves. Nagasawa Masami owned it as Otae, and there was just enough of the character to make it memorable without her coming across as a crazy annoying violent banshee.
The Shinsengumi's function in this movie is pretty much fanservice and the story wouldn't have lost anything with their absence. Their brief appearances don't quite capture the fascinating dynamics between Kondo, Okita and Hijikata, nor does it really give the actors to do much with their roles. The Mitsuba Arc fares better - but because of how iconic that story is, and how memorable the voice actors' portrayals had been, it was hard to live up to. Hijikata is the embodiment of tsundere, and the reason the Mitsuba Arc (and Shinsengumi Douran) were so beautiful was all the suppressed emotions were obvious without being spoken aloud. Less would have been a lot more with Hijikata in the Mitsuba Arc, but overall the Mitsuba Arc was better than expected.
Katsura was also another pleasant surprise. Don't get me wrong, I adore Okada Masaki, but he doesn't always get it right with his acting. Fortunately, you only see Zura's straight-laced samurai side here, and Okada was in command of all the brief appearances, managing cool and impressive even with less than 20 minutes of screen time (alright, he also had the coolest introduction, so the director's been kind to him).
Takasugi was its weakest link, and I guess it always was going to be hard. The Benizakura arc was the first proper introduction of the complex relationship between the Joui 4 - the first time Takasugi makes a deep impression as a main antagonist, and the last time for about 400 chapters for Zura to be cool. I am completely neutral about Doumoto Tsuyoshi and about Takasugi as a character, so I'm saying this without any emotional investment. I like his voice better than Koyasu Takehito (sorry Koyasu-san...) and he pulled off the costume and appearance, which is no small feat for a purple robe with gold butterflies, but he just didn't hit the unpredictably lethal and unexpectedly sensual aura that Takasugi projects. In fact, as we were discussing after watching the movie, Yamada Takayuki, with a few weird characters under his belt, would probably have done better as Takasugi than Elizabeth. The other person I can sort of see as Takasugi would be Odagiri Joe - he was great in S~Saigo no Keikan as a cultured antagonist who came across as domineering and dangerous without raising his voice, and also oddly sexy without trying to be.
Because Takasugi never commanded much fear, as a result the climax was nowhere near as tense as the original Benizakura was. The talks about "nakama" (comrade) and "tomodachi" (friend) also didn't strike as resonant a note. I may be confusing this with later in the story, but the thing about the Takasugi-Gintoki-Katsura relationship is that they fought back to back years ago and they treasured each other as comrades and childhood friends. At this point you don't know about the mess between Gintoki and Shoyo, but it's supposed to make you wonder how good friends have turned on each other, and what's driven Takasugi to abandon his "nakama", including his cold-hearted dismissal of Okada Nizou.
The best way to think of this movie is that it's made by fans for fans, and it's achieved being loyal to Gintama's tone and story, and largely got the characters right. For that alone, I think the fans are a lot more forgiving about the flaws in its visual presentation and the weaknesses in its climatic scenes (to be fair, the climatic fight between Gintoki and Nizou was just fine). It doesn't quite get it perfect for the more moving parts of Gintama, of friendship and comradeship and reasons for living, but overall it's a respectable effort and hasn't ruined the series for me.
Maybe with that box office return, they can get a bigger budget to put together a sequel? XDD Wishful thinking.
