I am the marathon type of manga reader. I prefer reading completed manga or picking up new titles which already have plenty of scanlated chapters. Unless I am very curious about the story development, I usually wait until there are a couple of chapters released to start reading again. Then I focus on finishing the manga or all the available chapters before I read any other. This is not the case with Gintama. I describe my reading style as slow and distracted.

Obviously, I do enjoy reading this tale of silly, easy going, airhead silver curly haired samurai, whose dream is to have a straight hair. If not I would not have been so persistent in reading it. The manga is jammed pack with gags, parodies and puns. Despite accusation of being a copycat and unoriginal because of them, it does have a story of its own and its characters are also very well developed. Hideaki Sorachi had exposed me to as many variety of plots and settings a mangaka can do in one title; amongst others: a video game face off, a naval siege, robotic coup de tat and my favorite, servitude in a haunted ryokan.