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Gintoki is a sympathetic, understanding, helpful man. When Shinpachi whines about the finances, he takes great care to look no more bored than usual. When Kagura chokes on her rice, he often takes the time to punch her thoughtfully until she stops. When Catherine comes by to try to force the rent out of him, he doesn’t murder her and hide the body.
But like fuck is he going to put up with Zura moaning about his sorry-ass problems when the season’s new drama is starting.
“ – said to him, ‘you simply do not understand – ’” Zura is saying, sitting on the couch with his arms crossed. Gintoki didn’t invite him in – he never does. Zura is like the bad smell in the drains: no matter how hard you try to get rid of it, it keeps coming back.
“Zura, if you don’t get out I’m going to throw your ass out the window,” says Gintoki in his most sharing and caring voice. The one he uses to share his rage with rent collectors and gloomy terrorists who come back like goddamn boomerangs. Kagura is bouncing eagerly on the couch beside him, handy for assisting in any necessary defenestration.
“Your uncouthness would astound bears.”
“I don’t let them in the apartment. Just like you. Get out, Autumn of Solitude is about to start.”
“You are evicting your old comrade to watch a TV drama produced by aliens? You cannot even pronounce the characters’ names!”
“Zura, your lack of grasp is immeasurable. Autumn of Solitude is an Edo production.”
“That’s right,” chimes in Kagura. “51% of the cast are human! It’s a tale of heartbreak and bloodshed set right here in Edo.”
Gintoki nods. “Aa, they were filming down across from the conbini the other day. I had to wait for half an hour to buy JUMP.” It’s a quandary: he supports local programs, but JUMP is important, dammit.
“Gin-chan, it’s going to start!” Kagura solves the Zura problem by stomping firmly on his foot, causing him to fall off the couch and provide an unobstructed view of the TV. Gintoki turns on the remote, just as the clock ticks over to 7:00 and the screen switches to a view of Edo with the unmistakable sounds of a sword battle. On the floor, even Zura stops grumbling about his toes and looks up.
The three of them watch for several minutes, until the opening theme begins. And then,
“That man has stolen my identity!” announces Katsura, standing and pointing as the lead actor is shown on screen. Katsura Kogorou, played by Koushi Mitsuhiko. “He has simply changed his given name!”
They watch in horror as further characters are introduced. Sakamoto Ryouma, Takasugi Shinsaku, Hijikata Toshizou, Okita Souji, Kondou Isami.
“Wow, Gorilla-san looks good,” announces Kagura, the only one of the three not shell-shocked by the sudden bizarre turn of events.
A couple of women who never existed flash by, clearly intended to be love interests, and then the commercials begin.
“…Wait. Where am I? Oi! Where’s Gin-san?” Gintoki stands, pointing accusingly at the TV.
“These … TV people are using the Jyoui to profit by our blood and pain.” Zura is still staring at the screen in shock.
Kagura chews her sukkonbu meditatively. “Hijikata looked kind of stupid.”
“Go back! You forgot someone! End commercial now!” demands Gintoki
“Everything we fought for, exploited by nameless capitalists.”
“That bastard Okita had a big face, but he had good dramatic posture,” Kagura admits, grudgingly.
“Oi, don’t save Gin-san for season two! That never works! The main character has to be introduced in the first episode! What if it gets cut before season two airs?” Gintoki collapses back onto the sofa, head in his hands, while simultaneously Zura snaps up like a jack-in-the-box.
“We should be getting a share of the profits!”
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Zura doesn’t get a share of the profits, and Gintoki doesn’t appear in any episodes. Kagura pulls the chute early – she has to see them every day, she says, so why should she spend time watching them at night? So Gintoki and Zura end up watching the rest of it on their own, a one hour a week cringe-fest they can’t escape. Not because of any need to know what will happen – spoilers, Katsura ends up as a penniless terrorist watching dramas on someone else’s couch – but because, as Zura hisses in a scandalized tone, “They could be saying anything about us.”
It isn’t a good show. The writing’s weak, the sets are far too pristine, and the actors suffer from Chronic Overacting Syndrome. Hijikata can’t be onscreen without striking a pause, Takasugi practically screams all his lines, and Katsura positively gushes when it comes time for inspirational speeches.
To say it’s loosely based on historical events is like saying Shinpachi has some interest in Otsuu – it’s the truth, but only at a hundredth of its authentic volume. For one thing, Kondou Isami and the Shinsengumi appear to be competent, suave badasses – a notion which would boil the brain if applied to their real-life counterparts. For another the Jyoui forces, although clearly shown to be in the intellectual wrong, are thoughtful men with complete campaigns and selfless ideals – when in reality, especially at the end, they were a just bunch of young men fighting for what they had to lose. Or had already lost.
Gintoki and Zura lather the first two episodes of the twelve-part series – awash with “feel good” introductions – in a scathing vitriol:
“I certainly never behaved like that – I displayed grace and poise. Look, he just tripped on the engawa. Shameful.” Zura sniffs; Gintoki punches him in the arm.
“Like hell you even looked that good, Zura. Don’t mislead the children.” (“Not Zura; Katsura,” mutters Zura.)
“Oath of friendship? What sources were these fools using? Sakamoto put cicadas in my miso if I didn’t get up before him.”
“No one made speeches like that – we’d have beaten the crap out of them if they tried to, and pissed on them later while they were sleeping.” Gintoki clears a nostril thoughtfully.
“I find it highly unlikely that the Shinsengumi had any kind of leadership of that nature. That gorilla couldn’t lead his men out of the bathroom.”
“Although probably into it,” Gintoki adds.
“If we had had bathrooms.”
“Which we didn’t. Consider yourself lucky, Kagura. Gin-san grew up without even one-ply.”
It is at this point that Kagura jumps ship, declaring she has had enough of the old fogies’ trip down memory lane.
Episode three thankfully brings the end of the ridiculous bonding with the outbreak of the war. The episodes become darker and grittier, although not drastically so. And Gintoki and Zura shifts targets from the character portrayals to the historical inaccuracies.
“Rifles? We would have sold our souls for rifles. Hah, we didn’t even have archers most of the time – and the ones we did have couldn’t hit the Shogun’s ass from ten paces.”
“He has his hands together on the grip! Did they even hire coaches for this travesty? These men cannot hold their swords! Have they no shame?”
“Where the hell did they think we would have gotten umbrellas from? We marched in the rain, like men! And slept wet, too; if the floors didn’t stink when you left the billets, you weren’t trying hard enough.”
“Archrivals? The Shinsengumi? Pah, those fools hardly knew what city we were in.”
“Does that guy have ketchup down his leg? Look, you can see the little dried bits from around the lid! An infant could do better – aa, Sadaharu could. He could start by biting off the art director’s head – that would look good on screen.”
By episode nine or so, though, they’re running out of comments. More than half of the original Jyoui force are wounded, a third of the named characters dead. Food’s running out, no one will offer the scattered forces shelter, most of the remaining men have trench foot or dysentery, or both. Takasugi is ill with tuberculosis, Katsura and Sakamoto struggling to hold the exhausted and dispirited troops together. Gintoki and Zura watch it with pinched expressions, hardly wincing at the poor swordsmanship and overacting.
In episode ten Takasugi dies, and the commentary stops cold.
It’s untrue, of course. Takasugi never had tuberculosis, and he definitely didn’t die on the battlefield – and even today in his darkest moments Gintoki would never wish he had. But it’s not about him, and it’s not his face they see. It’s every comrade they thought they could save, tried to save, fought to save, and who ended up dead in the mud. And there were just so damn many. The men onscreen cry at their comrade’s death, but Gintoki looks over at Zura and sees the same hard-eyed, stony stare there he saw ten years ago. The same look they all wore constantly at the end, because there wasn’t a moment they weren’t staring death in the eye. When Zura turns, Gintoki knows by Zura’s clenching jaw that he’s wearing it too.
The shadow of it is still there when he looks in the mirror that night, just visible in the harsh bathroom light. Gintoki stares himself in the face until it goes away, then washes and goes to bed. There is nostalgia in nightmares, he rediscovers that night, but it’s not a good kind.
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He’s lying on the couch staring at the ceiling when Zura comes in a week later, excusing himself insincerely.
“What’re you doing here, Zura? The brain transplant requests registry is down the street,” Gintoki says without looking, still examining the constellations of Kagura’s snot stuck to the ceiling.
“Visited already, have you? Ah, and it’s not Zura, it’s Katsura.” He takes a seat on the second unoccupied couch, folding his hands into his sleeves. “Elizabeth suggested I donate mine to science, in order to conduct research to benefit posterity.”
“That’s a good idea. They could probably figure out a way to immunize children from your stupidity.”
“You should consider it: perhaps they could determine how to prevent your ridiculous perm from impacting future generations.”
Gintoki folds his hands behind his head. “Na, Zura,” he says expressionlessly, still staring straight up. “You wanna keep going?”
“Stop reliving it? We lost control over that a long time ago.” Zura sounds stiffly resigned. They both know the truth of it: once the past takes control, the present takes a back seat.
“Doesn’t mean we have to do it through a bunch of shitty actors with a stupid script.”
“You would rather the real thing?”
“I’d rather you and your stupid wig had never infested my apartment in the first place,” he grumbles, sitting up. Because Zura, damn him, is right.
They watch episode eleven in silence on opposite couches, Zura with his arms crossed and his eyes narrowed, Gintoki leaning back with his hand clenched on the back of the sofa. The war effort, unsurprisingly, falls apart. The remaining Jyoui forces are splintered, troops falling to the Amanto guns while the leaders flee. Katsura and Sakamoto retreat to Kyoto, Shinsengumi in fast pursuit. History is diverging sharply now, fact splitting from what the Shogunate’s current propagandists would like to have believed happened.
When it is finished, they sit in silence for a moment. Then Zura stands, dusts off his knees, and leaves.
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Gintoki is ready when Zura arrives for the last episode. He’s bought a pack of little puff marshmallows, strawberry flavour – they were the most garish thing he could find in the conbini – and some banana-flavoured milk. Of course, it’s not just Zura who would object to banana milk; no one in their right mind would drink it. Probably why it was on sale. Or that might have been the fact that it expired yesterday. Whatever the reason, Gintoki is prepared.
Zura arrives with the usual melancholy glare; it livens up to a look of burning disgust when he sees the tray of snacks on the table (still in their bags, of course – what is he, a housewife?).
“Have you fallen into the putrescent dregs of society already?” Zura demands, staring.
Gintoki picks up one of the little packets, splits it open, and pops the marshmallow in his mouth. “You tell me; you’re the one living with a monster that sleeps in the gutters.”
“Elizabeth suffers from fainting spells,” retorts Zura, sharply. “And she does not stuff her face with artificially sweetened synthetic products.”
“Sorry, can’t hear you over the sound of my chewing.” He sticks a finger in his ear to clean it for added effect. Zura drops into the seat opposite, glaring, and picks up the remote. Gintoki snatches it back from him, lobs a marshmallow at his face, and switches on the TV. Zura unwraps the marshmallow in sullen silence, a victim of his own standards of guest etiquette.
In a way, it’s so bad it’s … not that bad. Sakamoto is murdered in Kyoto, leaving Katsura as the sole survivor of the movement. He fades into the shadows as the Shinsengumi emerge, victorious, to protect the peace they forged. The new Edo welcomes the era they bring, while the Jyoui are at best forgotten in the new world that does not even mark their graves. It’s the truth, but only the kind that has many faces.
And then the credits are rolling, momiji drifting over screenshots from the episodes: the boys who wanted to make a difference, the young men who tried to, and the hardened adults who survived – after a fashion.
They sit there for a while, Gintoki slurping on his straw, Zura pulling his plastic wrapper into one long piece and then folding it up.
The war follows them like a tide, sometimes rising, sometimes ebbing. Right now, Gintoki can hear it just behind him, waiting for him to make a false move. And across from him is Zura, who has never yet lost the opportunity to.
It’s enough to galvanize him.
“That,” he announces, smacking down his milk box on the tabletop, “was a terrible drama. I can’t believe they filmed it here. I can’t believe that Kabuki-cho will forever be tainted by its awfulness. I should have let Sadaharu crap on their set. He wanted to, you know. Aa, Sadaharu, truly you have become a virtuous adult; your wisdom shall go unsurpassed by mere men.”
Zura stares flatly at the wall for several seconds, teetering on the brink while Gintoki waits. And then, lip twisting, “The direction was abysmal. Did you notice Sakamoto’s ridiculous nobility? Noble? A man who once got drunk and peed on a stage in front of an entire regiment?”
Gintoki’s eyes slide shut, relief a sharp shock to his system. He opens them again and glances across the room. “Don’t be such a prude, Zura, they loved it. Besides, you once went down to take a crap right in the middle of a street.”
“I was ill,” sniffs Zura. “But if we’re speaking of uncouthness, there was Ishii in the onsen in Mito.”
Gintoki nods sagely. “And Fukuda, in the one in Nagano. Or that time that bastard Hayashi found that wallet and decided to organize a group trip to the brothel… that’ll be seared into my memory for life. Oi – didn’t you owe me 100 mon after that? Hand it over.”
“They stopped converting that years ago.”
“That doesn’t mean anything – don’t try to weasel out of your debts, Zura. And I want the interest too! Pay it up, 4-mon coins, let’s see it!” Gintoki taps the table significantly.
“It’s not Zura, it’s Katsura! And what about the sword you broke in Shimonoseki? And the one in Kokura, two weeks later? Who got those for you when you were too lazy to find your own weapon?”
“You stole those from the supply sergeant! Don’t try to sell me your sob story, I was there. Hah, he tried to tan your skinny hide, too. Too bad you were too fast.” Gintoki shakes his head. “Ah, and to think I could have tripped you. You owe me, Zura.”
“I owe you?! You should be begging me to accept your money, you –”
Off to the side, forgotten, the credits finish and the TV ticks over to the next program.
END