The Fall Anime 2025 Preview Guide - GINTAMA - Mr. Ginpachi's Zany Class

Sakata Ginpachi is a high school teacher with his trademark silver, curly hair, dead-fish eyes, and a sloppily worn lab coat. He's in charge of Gintama High School's Class 3-Z: home to a ragtag group of frequent troublemakers, including idol otaku, stalkers, mayo guzzlers, sadists, delinquents, and many more. Follow Sakata Ginpachi as he navigates his rollercoaster life, nonchalantly resolving any trouble that comes his way; meanwhile, his unique students continue to raise hell!

GINTAMA - Mr. Ginpachi's Zany Class is based on Tomohito Ōsaki 's spinoff novel series of Hideaki Sorachi 's Gintama manga. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll, Hulu, and Anime.com.

If you're a Gintama fan, feel free to skip over this entry in the guide. I've never seen a single episode of the main anime, and the most I know about the series is that it has to do with aliens and the Shinsengumi—and that it's well-known for breaking the fourth wall. Oh, I also know that Elizabeth is Elizabeth. I have no idea what she is, but I know her name for some reason.

I have, however, seen more of these “popular anime reimaged in a school” comedies than I'd like to admit. Besides Isekai Quartet (which is about the actual canon characters being forced to play high school by an unknown force rather than them being reimagined as high schoolers), they're all pretty much crap. And as for GINTAMA - Mr. Ginpachi's Zany Class specifically… it does nothing to change that opinion.

I didn't laugh even once throughout this episode. In fact, the only part I found even mildly enjoyable was the cold opening, which explained the genesis of this spin-off—and tore it a new one in a far better way than I could ever hope to in this review. The rest of the episode was predictable—at least when it came to the jokes I could understand.

Basically, Ginpachi's class has to get an 80% grade on the next test in a class of their choosing. They decide that the best way to do so is to cheat, which somehow ends up with them actually studying properly for the test (and still failing). That's the main joke of the episode. The rest of the humor, for the most part, seems to be based on Gintama in-jokes. You need to know the characters, their relationships, or their personalities. And, knowing none of these, boredom ensued.

Judging by this first episode, I can say with confidence you shouldn't watch this unless you are a Gintama fan—and maybe not even then (though I'll let actual Gintama watchers make that call). Maybe that was obvious going in, but I don't feel bad giving it a shot.

The group sits there, jovial faces on the edge of a laugh, waiting for the speaker to deliver the punchline they know is coming—the punchline they have heard many times before. When it does, they erupt as one, while I sit somewhere between stone-faced and confused. One of them notices, puts on a sheepish smile, and whispers, “Sorry, I guess you just had to be there.”

That's how I felt watching this episode of GINTAMA - Mr. Ginpachi's Zany Class. Nearly every joke seems to be based on things I should already know about these characters—their likes, dislikes, and defining features. But as I have never seen even an episode of Gintama, I am completely in the dark.

The class turning into kids and animals meant nothing to me—I don't know how each animal relates to them personally or symbolically. Likewise, when they came to Ginpachi to talk about their problems, I felt like I only got the most basic layer of the joke—i.e., the strait man doesn't want to be the strait man or Ginpachi's fellow adult in Gintama doesn't like being reduced to a student in this show.

The only jokes in the entire episode I felt like I got on every level were some of the test questions—like the Dragon Ball joke or the questions taken off a patient intake form (which I've filled out a billion of myself over the years). But is that alone enough to keep me watching this show? Not in the least.

This is a show for the hardest of hardcore Gintama fans—those who are dying for more after the series' end. If you, like me, don't fall into that group, that's fine. The show is not for us. I can only hope that Gintama fans found this as hilarious as it baffles me.

Gintama is back…sort of? Classroom parodies are NOTHING NEW in the world of anime. The anime industry has spent a considerable amount of time milking that setting and showcasing its popularity to the average anime fan. So, in some ways, it makes sense to take a show that in no way, shape, or form has to do with school and see how these characters would act in that setting. I personally love over-the-top and ludicrous comedic anime, with School Rumble genuinely being one of my all-time favorite anime. However, what happens when you put a show that is already over the top in that setting?

I love how extreme Gintama is with its lampshading. I never finished the original manga or the anime, but I have seen a good chunk of the franchise, and I know that it's pretty standard for the series to poke fun at itself, the company that makes it, and the author who pens it. The series, which started with a full confession that it is essentially a cash grab that will disappoint the fans, was probably the funniest, if not the most obvious, joke in the entire episode. But outside of that, I will admit it was a bit hard for me to get into everything that was going on the minute we actually got into the classroom.

I think it's because, and it might shock some people, the episode was genuinely way too predictable. Gin is laid-back but jaded, and nothing about that really changes when you make him a teacher. He's still rude, he's abrasive, and he initially always seems like he's looking out for himself, but we know deep down he actually does care to an extent. Some of the characters act a bit younger than they usually do (remember, most of the cast are adults), but their jokes mostly revolve around certain character traits that we've seen from the show itself. The only difference is that they're all wearing school uniforms, and now they're in a classroom.

The problem with doing this type of parody for Gintama is that this premiere could've just been an episode of one of the earlier seasons of the show. Sometimes, Gintama would have an episode focused on an entirely different setting, lampshading a different genre. While I am happy that the show is self-aware enough to know that this is a tired premise, the show was still made, and it's expected to generate some profit, right? My biggest concern is whether this series will be able to generate as many laughs as the original series, given its more limited premise for an entire season. I feel like if anybody could pull that off, it would be Gintama, but I'm also cynical in my way, so who is to say?

OK Gintama, you made me laugh quite a bit during this episode so I'm going to assume that the first episode might've been a bit of a fluke. My original concern with this Gintama spinoff was that it wasn't gonna be able to maintain the same level of comedic quality as the mainline show because it was intentionally holding itself to a very specific setting. There are still a lot of obvious jokes in here and some that I feel are exaggerated in very weird ways—like Toushirou being obsessed with mayonnaise. However, I think the speed and energy and how the jokes were delivered helped keep things interesting.

The show is still taking shots at itself by pointing out how none of the story sections of the episode have anything to do with each other—and I get it Gintama, you really, really like Dragon Ball. But even though everyone is more or less satisfying the same roles that they did in the original show, these jokes still feel authentic. It's funny seeing Shinpachi yearn to not be the straight man. I liked how the opening skit with the different genre changing classroom and seeing everyone's confessions towards the end of the episode get progressively more unhinged was very funny. There's still some humor that's just sort of sitting there in the background and it seems like everybody has one specific quirk that they default to when there isn't an actually well-written joke. Sometimes, everything does just feel like white noise but this episode broke it up just enough with more hits than misses, so let's see how much longer they can keep this up.

I think I've sat down and watched maybe three episodes of Gintama beginning to end? I've seen a lot of clips and screencaps flying around the internet, but I've never managed to get into it for no reason other than that it's really long. The bits I've seen, such as the conversation about the most eligible men of Dragon Ball and the truck full of penises, are consistently laugh-out-loud funny, so I've never doubted its power as a gag series, but there's always something I want to watch just a bit more. Thus, I went into GINTAMA - Mr. Ginpachi's Zany Class- with mostly fresh eyes.

The opening gag is an extended bit about the circumstances under which this show, initially a four-page manga extra, came to be. I've always been impressed with how much lampshading Gintama gets away with, and this was no exception. From Ginpachi shouting about how it came to be, thanks to a producer bragging that he would get more Gintama made, to their ruthless mockery of Dragon Ball GT, every gag was at the expense of the producers, up until it concluded with the assertion that pretty much everything they'd said was true. Gintama follows the comedy philosophy that if you keep throwing gags at your audience, they'll remember the ones that made them laugh and forget the ones that fell flat, and you know what? It worked. I was thoroughly entertained.

Then Ginpachi-sensei wakes up, and the alternate universe story begins in earnest. Here's where it gets hairier for a newcomer; a lot of the humor relies on recontextualizing familiar characters and run-on gags. The effect is similar to trying to join a group of friends who have all known each other for decades, who have so many in-jokes and references that it feels like they're speaking half in code. The good news is that there are still jokes that don't rely on previous familiarity, and they are indeed funny. The cast of A-list voice actors has been playing these characters together for so long that their chemistry is totally effortless.

Unfortunately, this episode was a great illustration of how inadequate Crunchyroll's new subtitling system is. The backgrounds were stuffed with text-based gags that went untranslated. Perhaps you noticed that one of the calligraphy practice sheets was different, but did you know that it says “mayo”? Wonder who wrote that one, huh?

My impression of Gintama is that by the end of its run, it was basically an amalgamation of run-on gags held together by the most tenuous of threads. I have no idea if this is actually true, but based on the sheer number of in-jokes in Mr. Ginpachi's Zany Class, it's hard to imagine them having time for anything else.

The volume of insider knowledge required for most of the punch-lines made it abundantly clear to me that I am not getting everything I can out of the show. So much of the humor in the three completely disconnected skits that made up the episode depended on knowing each character's main gimmick that I spent about half the episode feeling completely lost. I don't know why it's funny that Mr. Ginpachi wasn't surprised at three students turning into gorillas! I could only wonder if Kagura's obsession with growing huge boobs was a reference, or if it was funny because she's just Like That, or if that was just a standalone joke. When one student doused everything in mayonnaise, I felt nauseated instead of amused. Well, actually, that one would have had the same outcome whether or not I was familiar with the show.

But when the gags stood on their own, or when I understood the reference, it made me laugh out loud more often than it didn't. There's real wit at work here, kept punchy by the comic timing and short skits that don't wear out their welcome. It doesn't matter that it makes zero sense that Ginpachi can transform his students with a word, because the closing gag of that bit made me cackle. Instead of the referential humor's punchline being, “Hey, remember this thing,” it usually warps things enough for it to qualify as a proper joke. Why yes, I would like to pour tartar sauce on L'arc~en~Ciel. ...What?