Gintama HijikataToushirou

Sorachi: People! Gintama has no plot!

Sorachi, after bombarding us fans with some really heavy feels and killing us softly: ...What? You didn't see that one coming?

Hijikata Toshizo’s tanto

This tanto (dagger) was owned by Hijikata Toshizo of the Shinsengumi (consignment)

Blade Length: 29.3 cm Blade Width: 2.63 cm Blade Thickness: 0.5 cm

Era: Late Edo period

Kozuka: His family crest is carved on shakudo copper, and the mouth and the hole (猪目透) on the back are lined with gold.

Tsuba: An arabesque pattern and plants are inlaid with silver and gold with a protruding iron brim.

Seppa: Copper gilded thinly with gold

Fuchigashira: Copper carved with his family crest

Menuki: Circular piece of copper carved with his family crest

Kojiri: Copper carved with his family crest and lined with gold.

Saya: Brown wood carved to imitate tree bark

Kaeshizuno: Copper carved with his family crest

Kurigata: Copper carved with his family crest with gold on the base

Koiguchi:  Copper gilded with gold

(For reference: Components of Japanese sword mountings)

Commentary from Aoi Art: At first glance, it looks simple, but if you look closely, it’s an extremely luxurious work. It is a work suitable for a person named Hijikata Toshizo. Unfortunately, there is no blade, but it is definitely the koshirae (mountings) of Hijikata Toshizo's dagger. It’s a well-made item. This work was exhibited at the Edo-Tokyo Museum and the Museum of Kyoto with the cooperation of NHK to promote “Shinsengumi!”, the 2004 taiga drama. Toshizo Hijikata was a vassal of the late Tokugawa shogunate and was the Vice-Commander of the Shinsengumi. It seems that Hijikata, who was a handsome man, was often liked by women, and he received many love letters from maiko in Kyoto.

From the book Shinsengumi Exhibition:  Hijikata Toshizo’s tanto koshirae Yokota Toshihiro collection With a total length of 43.8 cm, it has the same mitsudomoe design as the metal fittings of Izumi Mamoru Kanesada and the sword fittings that still exist in the Hijikata family. The Hijikata family crest is found in six places. It is thought to be the work of the Goto family in Kyoto. Unfortunately there is no blade. (Kimura)

Meet the Staff and Cast of Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond

The reboot of Blood Blockade Battlefront for the fall season with Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond came as a welcome to surprise to many hardcore fans of the series. It’s been over two years since the original production, a considerable amount of time for any series. Swapping out its director, the famous Rie Matsumoto, raised some concerns but the early half of the season has shown they haven’t compromised on quality. That shouldn’t be too much of a surprise considering the studio and may have even been predictable if you take a peek at the team behind Beyond.

    The Staff

For the uninitiated, Blood Blockade Battlefront & Beyond is the second season of the adaptation of the manga Blood Blockade Battlefront by mangaka Yasuhiro Nightow, whose name you might recognize as the creator of Trigun. Despite the international popular of Trigun’s anime, a growing group of fans consider Blood Blockade Battlefront to be his greatest work.

Shigehito Takayanagi has big shoes to fill in his role as director, replacing Rie Matsumoto for Beyond. Takayanagi is no stranger to over-the-top action series set in urban environments, however, having directed Tokyo ESP. He’s also familiar with Yasuhiro Nightow’s work, serving as storyboarder and episode director on the Trigun anime. Yasuko Kamo is on staff for series composition and screenplay, a long-time partner of Takayangi who worked with him previously on Dagashi Kashi and Galaxy Angel A.

Character designer and creature designer, Toshihiro Kawamoto and Koji Sugiura respectively, have returned to the series to provide the same slick characters and bizarre and quirky creatures as the original. Art director Junichi Higashi will be filling in Shinji Kimura. Higashi’s considerable resume includes RahXephon, the Escaflowne movie, and a number of iterations of Gundam, so even the eclectic urban fantasy of Hellsalem’s Lot should be well within his capabilities.

In fact, all the sights and sounds of Hellsalem’s Lot are sure to remain consistent between the seasons. One of the most notable features of the original series was its amazing background art transitioning between urban sprawls and the dream-like environments of the alterworld. Studios Kusanagi and Easter have reprised their roles providing background art along with studio Nam Hai. Taisei Iwasaki is also returning his role from the original Blood Blockade Battlefront, a musician whose only work in anime has been this series.

Frequent contributor to BONES productions, Legendary animator Yutaka Nakamura, has appeared twice in the series, showing up in episodes 1 and 5 with some tremendous action sequences...

    The Cast

The star-studded cast of the original Blood Blockade Battlefront have all made a return for Beyond. With no major serial narrative yet developed, there isn't much to say in regards to new major additions, but here’s a few names (or voices) you may recognize if you’re unacquainted with the original series.

The lead, Leonardo Watch, is played Daisuke Sakaguchi whose career highlights include Shinpachi in Gintama, Ace in One Piece, and Ewin from Mobile Suit Gundam Victory. Klaus von Reinherz is voiced by Rikiya Koyama, who may have one of the largest resumes on the cast with highlights including Kiritsugu in the Fate series, Yamato in Naruto Shippuden, Soma's father Jouichirou in Food Wars!, and Kogorou in Detective Conan. Zapp Renfro is voiced by Kazuya Nakai, who has had a strong career in shonen anime voicing Zoro in One Piece, Hijikata in Gintama, and the narrator in Magi.

Among the female leads, Chain Sumeragi is voiced by Yuu Kobayashi, who is Sasha in Attack on Titan, Konatsu in Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju, and Ayame in Gintama. K.K. is Ai Orikasa, who was the best girl Ryouko in the Tenchi Muyo series, Quatre in Gundam Wing, and Mitsuhiko in Detective Conan. If you hadn't noticed already, quite a few names who have played parts in One Piece, Gintama, and Detective Conan have found their way into the series.

Beyond has already shown it’s kept the same personality as the first season and Shigehito has managed to replicate Rie Matsumoto’s high-energy style of directing. It shouldn’t be too surprising, coming from the same studio with a considerable amount of the staff responsible for shaping the appearance and sound returning from the first series and BONES’ reputation for quality productions. Shigehito’s past experience with Nightow’s material certainly works in the series favor. Despite the gap in production between the two seasons, Beyond didn’t miss a beat.

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Peter Fobian is an Associate Features Editor for Crunchyroll, author of Monthly Mangaka Spotlight, writer for Anime Academy, and contributor at Anime Feminist. You can follow him on Twitter @PeterFobian.

By: [email protected]

Artist Analysis:Eikoh Hosoe

The subject of this image is of two people position in a serial way. This image is about the challenging perspective of how opposite body parts can correspond well together. As the image shows the women head in the arms of the man how ever their other body parts are blacked creating this theme of a sense of gothic and surreal environment.  

The Eikoh men and women series was during 1959-60.

Eikoh Hosoe is a japanese photographer and film maker. Hosoe studies the human body. The war could be seen to affect his work, As Eikoh was a contributor to expressive style which came about during the post war. Hosoe can be seen as a post Japanese photographer, changing his name from Toshihiro to Eikoh symbolising the new japan and to show his dismay of the atomic bombing he made a short experimental film on the subject. This could be suggested to have had an impact of ‘the men and women’ project as the Tatsumi Hijikata performance ‘ the originator of butoh’ a form of dance and theater which expressed the psychological and emotional confusion japans postwar.  

The photograph represents the raw truth about the human body which is that the human body is always seen in the light of beauty and photographer’s tend the edit the human body with the focus to perfect it. However Eikoh gives a new insight on how the human body can be presented and the images can be argued to look quite bold and strong turning normal human body parts into abstract sculptures character to individual body part. This link is valid as Eikoh uses dancers form Tatsumi Hijikata’s performance as models.

The title of Hosoe’s series is men and women this is very significant as the title represents themes such as separation, opposites. This contradicts the image as Hosoe’s bring two people together through distinctive body parts as seen in the image. Creating a sense of togetherness. this can also be linked back to the post war and how individuals may have felt separated but after the war came together. Hosoe showing the new japan as explained before. 

The face and arm have been distorted as it a perceived as if the women has no body. therefore they look like puzzle pieces fitted together. Hosoe has put a high contrast on the image highlighting the black and white colours presenting themes such as horror and gothic. The arm and ribs are highly defined however the grainy effect makes the body parts more raw. On the other hand, the composition is very strong as Hosoe has really carefully thought about angle positioning to get that illusion of the women with her body no their. The composition isn very important as the female subject eyes would not impact the audience with that extreme surreal feeling also the black shades around her eyes and her pupils being bleak create a strange atmosphere.  

Hijikata, panicking: Kondou-san, I think I'm gonna die.

Kondou, worried: Toshi, what happened?

Hijikata: *points at Mitsuba*

Mitsuba: *smiles fondly at Hijikata*

Hijikata, now screaming: I'M TELLING YOU KONDOU-SAN, SHE'S KILLING ME!!

REUNIONS THAT MADE YOU HAPPY CRY, GINTAMA EDITION.

Dad comes back home with his pretty smile (ver. 1)

Four best friends continue to maintain their beautiful, long-distance love/hate relationship, forever!

Dad comes back home with his pretty smile and so does the beautiful doggo! (ver. 2)

BONUS:

Find yourself such best friends who give you a ride underwater and play Dragonball with you even when you're thirty.

Can we all just appreciate our precious Toshi here coz he looks hella cute in that mayonnaise costume! God, I love you Mayora-oji!

Gintoki you did a great job there!😂

The best thing about Gintama is that you can hardly ever hate any character. LIKE, every single one of them is so damn brilliantly written, whether it's a villain or a side character or the main ones, all of them are SO awesomely unforgettable, you cannot say it otherwise. Everybody has their own role to play, everybody has their own story, everybody has their stupid jokes and everybody is somewhere, always, IMPERFECT, which makes them so damn appealing. The jokes, the intensity and even the tragedy, all of these makes them so damn good! I really didn't find ANYBODY I can actually HATE or say, they really didn't play a role, because even if they appeared in just one chapter/episode, they proved their importance, and that's what makes Sorachi-sensei such a great mangaka. His way of presentation, his gags, his work on them, I JUST LOVE IT. Gintama is soon going to end, say it or not, and as a hardcore fangirl I have my ships, but really, if my ships don't ever get canon or they may end up with somebody else, I really won't ever hate Gintama or Sensei (I know he's gonna give us a great end from what we're seeing ri8 now, no doubt about it) because that's how nicely he has given us, the Gintama fans, this big, awesome family and made us all fall in love with this, making us smile AND cry and still, loving it altogether. Thank you! Really THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS SORACHI-SENSEI!

I JUST

CAN'T

GET OVER

THIS FACE!

MUST PROTECC!😂👏👏

I'm a Hijimitsu trash....if you're too, you'll go watch it!

After story! So glad Gintama gave us the 3Z universe!