30 Day Anime Challenge: Day 24 – Where is the rewind button?!

Day 24- Moment That Shocked You the Most in Any Anime

WARNING SPOILERS!

Once again I shall be talking about Gintama (I hope you aren’t too exasperated with me going on about it by now) and one of the scenes from Gintoki’s past. I think this scene has got to be hands down one of the most shocking scenes to me in any anime. That scene is when it is revealed that Gintoki “killed” his sensei in front of Takasugi and Katsura.

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I spent the entirety of Gintama wishing I could learn more about Gintoki’s past and see what he was like as a child and in the war as the series was always hinting that his past was a big, dark, messy deal. Then as soon as I saw this scene my brain just wanted to rewind to back to when I didn’t have this knowledge of what happened with Shouyo. I think the reason I found this so shocking is because the majority of Gintama is comedic, even in serious moments it can turn humorous and vice-versa and that arc just dropped some seriously dark stuff and I was not mentally prepared for any of it. I knew that Shouyo was “killed”, it’s easy to figure out that much earlier in the series but I did not see Gintoki “killing” him coming. I know why he had to do it but it just broke my little heart to see Gintoki have to do something like that and get backlash of Takasugi for doing nothing but trying to protect him and Katsura. It just shocked me and made me sad to think of all the horrific emotional baggage Gintoki has to carry around with him but he never really shows it. To top it all of Shouyo came back and turned out to be the big, bad villain of the entire series and messed me up even further.