Guest Review: Gin Tama, Volume 14

Gin Tama, Vol. 14
By Hideaki Sorachi
Published by Viz Media

Review by Megan M.

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This volume of Gin Tama continues the arc began at the end of volume 13, in which Otae’s childhood friend, Yagyu Kyube, returned to Edo and claimed her as “his” bride. Gin and Kagura joined with Shinpachi to rescue her and Hijikata and Okits joined with Kondo to rescue her, to prevent Kondo from ending up married to an alien gorilla princess (the Shinsengumi are rather desperate to avoid that). This is actually an aspect of the plot that I don’t care for, given the treatment of the gorilla princess in volume 13, but it wasn’t followed up on here.

As this is shounen, where all disagreements must be settled by tournament-style fighting and grand declarations about loyalty to friends, the Yagyu do not simply dogpile the intruders and throw them out. Instead, Kyube proposes a contest: Kyube, the boyband-styled “Four Heavenly Kings” of the Yagyu, and an unnamed leader will fight the intruders. There are no assigned opponents and each combatant will have a plate strapped to their body. If a contestant’s plate is broken, they’re eliminated, and if the team leader’s plate is broken, the team loses. This results in a sequence of surprisingly brief fights and encounters that have both highs and lows.

The highs of these matchups include Hijikata (who eats mayonnaise on everything) fighting his opposite number (who puts ketchup on everything) and Kagura in Okita attempting to work together in a spectacularly failed teamup. The lows include four characters trapped in a bathroom with no toilet paper, using the situation to wage psychological warfare on each other. To be fair, if I were a 15-year-old boy instead of a 28-year-old woman, I might appreciate the literal potty humor more.

This is one of Gin Tama’s stronger volumes, but I can’t help but wish that it had focused more on Otae, Shinpachi, and Kyube, the three characters at the center of the story. That Shinpachi has a severe sister complex has always been a central aspect of his character, but it seems that we rarely get that from Otae’s perspective. Similarly, Otae’s friendship with Kyube is shown primarily from Kyube’s perspective, with Otae’s perspective on the matter only portrayed in terms of obligation, since Kyube lost an eye saving Shinpachi. I hope that the conclusion of the arc in upcoming volumes delves more into Otae’s thoughts on the matter. I also hope it addresses the subject of Kyube being a woman raised as a man a little more thoroughly. As presented here, it almost comes across as a way to include a lesbian plot while presenting it as heterosexual, but actually, the woman in love with the other woman was raised to think of herself as a man, and so her love is a man’s love for a woman. I’m simply not certain that this manga will handle homosexuality or transexuality with anything involving, well, maturity.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

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