However, despite the historical connotations that the Edo period brings, it's a Gag Series in one of its most warped states, filled with Shout Outs to everything under the sun (even fellow Shonen Jump series such as Bleach and One Piece are not immune to lampooning), over-the-top humour, ridiculous puns, sight gags and a liberal dash of action to top it all off. Gintama is the oft-anachronistic brainchild of Hideaki Sorachi, who had originally intended to create a manga inspired by an NHK drama about The Shinsengumi.
Joining him in his exploits are samurai-in-training Shinpachi Shimura, who winds up taking the brunt of much of the series' abuse and leads a pop idol fanclub Kagura, a young alien girl who spends most of the time eating, beating someone up, or just generally being an idiot and Sadaharu, Kagura's giant pet dog that gleefully chomps on everyone and anyone. Nowadays, Gintoki makes his living as a self-appointed freelancer, taking on any job he can for cash to pay his rent, but that doesn't seem to happen very often when there's sweets and Shonen Jump to be had. Enter Gintoki Sakata, a former member of said resistance group once an impressive swordsman, he dropped out because in the end, it really wasn't worth it to be fighting against a bunch of stupid foreigners in the first place. A resistance group set out and declared war on the Amanto to no avail, and the samurai were all but wiped from the map. In an Alternate Universe version of the Edo period, Japan was not visited by American flotillas and subtly encouraged to drop her tariffs and expand her international trade - but was visited by a race of space aliens known as the Amanto, who brought with them super-futuristic know-how and gadgets (resulting in things like mopeds, TVs and robots being invented earlier than usual), a ban on swords and the fall of the samurai caste as we know it.
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