Gintama. Slip Arc

銀魂。ポロリ編 (Gintama. Porori-hen)

8.5(113,401)

MAL Score

Ranked #158

Popularity #1274

Action
Comedy
Sci-Fi
Gag Humor
Historical
Parody
Samurai

Episodes: 13
Duration: 23 min per ep
Aired: Oct 2, 2017 to Dec 25, 2017
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

After the heavy fallout of Iga, Kokujou Island, Rakuyou, and repeated dead ends against the Tenshouin Naraku and the Tendoshuu, *Gintama. Slip Arc* shifts into a nostalgic run of stories centered on the Yorozuya’s bread-and-butter: odd jobs around Edo. The tone returns to everyday chaos and the kind of trouble that finds Gintoki, Kagura, and Shinpachi when they least expect it.

Umibouzu, the famed space hunter, comes back to town and blows up over a rumor that Kagura has a boyfriend, laying the blame squarely on Gintoki’s shoulders as her supposed guardian. With sharp parodies, bold jokes, and the trio’s familiar camaraderie, the arc strings together unpredictable misadventures that land both comedic punchlines and surprisingly heartfelt moments.

Otaku Consensus

Gintama. Slip Arc lands as a confident late-series comedy reset: Chizuru Miyawaki and Bandai Namco Pictures preserve the franchise’s fast gag timing, meta detours, and shonen-parody staging instead of treating these skipped manga pieces as disposable leftovers. Critics and fans especially praise the anime format for elevating Sorachi’s comedy, with episode 12’s Gintama game gag singled out as a peak bit of self-referential fan service. Its real drawback is accessibility: the achronological placement and deep dependence on Gintama’s accumulated cast chemistry make it a poor starting point despite the lighter tone.

Why You Should Watch

Watch Gintama. Slip Arc if you want Gintama in pure sketch-comedy attack mode: fourth-wall breaks, samurai-era absurdity, alien-world nonsense, and shonen battle logic applied to embarrassingly trivial situations. It scratches the same itch as the most meta episodes of Saiki K. or the parody excess of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, but with the emotional shorthand of a long-running found-family cast already baked in. The 13-episode length also makes it unusually digestible for a Gintama season, especially after the heavier Iga, Kokujou Island, and Rakuyou material. This is for viewers who like comedy that understands anime grammar well enough to weaponize it: fake tension, overexplained strategy, dramatic timing, and punchlines that treat the medium itself as part of the joke.

Key Characters

G
Gintoki
Gintoki remains the ideal Gintama comedy engine: lazy, genre-aware, and somehow believable whether he is undercutting a heroic setup or getting dragged into a completely avoidable disaster.
K
Kagura
Kagura’s appeal in this arc comes from how easily she can shift a scene from bratty household chaos to sincere found-family warmth without losing the joke.
S
Shinpachi
Shinpachi functions as the series’ precision straight man, often making the absurdity funnier by reacting like the only person still aware that none of this should be happening.
U
Umibouzu
Umibouzu is a fan-favorite pressure bomb because his fearsome space-hunter reputation collides hilariously with his overprotective family instincts.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
The season’s structure is deliberately achronological, reflected in AniList’s Achronological Order tag at 79%; Porori-hen adapts comedy material skipped during the anime’s march through heavier late-series arcs.
2
Bandai Namco Pictures produced the 13-episode run, giving the arc a compact weekly rhythm from October 2 to December 25, 2017 rather than stretching the gag material across a longer cour.
3
The comedy identity is unusually explicit even by Gintama standards: AniList tags Parody at 96% and Meta at 65%, matching the web reception that highlights the show’s anime-industry jokes and genre-code manipulation.
4
Episode 12 drew particular fan-blog praise for its new Gintama game segment, a self-referential gag that turns franchise promotion into part of the comedy instead of a break from it.
5
Its reception is strong for a side-positioned comedy return: MAL lists it at 8.51 from 113,401 votes with a rank of #158, while AniList records an 82/100 score and 893 favourites.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: Hideaki Sorachi is credited as the original creator, and contemporary commentary around the series repeatedly frames his comedy as uniquely unhinged, including the Roxmanga line about wanting whatever Sorachi-sensei is smoking.
Fun fact 2: The opening theme is performed by BLUE ENCOUNT, while the ending theme is performed by Ayumikurikamaki, giving this short season a distinct 2017 musical identity separate from the surrounding Gintama entries.
Fun fact 3: Henry Thurlow is credited on two different production roles in the arc: key animation for episode 3 and second key animation for episode 8.
Fun fact 4: Online Gintama fans often recommend watching even the filler in release order; one cited Reddit discussion says there are only a handful of filler episodes and that they are still worth watching, which fits the franchise’s reputation for making side material part of the appeal.
Fun fact 5: A 2017 discussion thread jokingly introduced Slip Arc by calling Gintama the 3rd, 5th, 9th, 12th, 13th and 15th best anime of all time, a meta-fan joke built around the franchise’s habit of placing multiple entries high on ranking sites.