Gintoki Sakata

Sakata Gintoki (坂田 銀時, Sakata Gintoki) is the main protagonist of the Gintama series. He is the founder and president of the Yorozuya and as well a highly skilled samurai, having fought in the Joui War in the past. During the war, he became known as the Shiroyasha ("White Demon") due to his powerful swordsmanship and demonic white appearance.

Background
It is unknown where he was born, what happened to his parents and what he was doing before becoming a child scavenger. It is also unknown how long he was doing this. He gained the nickname "Corpse Eating Demon" from the nearby villagers due to being commonly seen wandering in desert battlefields searching corpses for food and weapons to survive. During one search, Gintoki encounters Yoshida Shouyou who had heard the rumors about the child and came to investigate it. Taking a liking to Gintoki and seeing himself in the child, Shouyou gave Gintoki his sword and asked him to come. Gintoki became Shouyou's first student on his newly opened school, Shoka Sonjuku, where he learned basic swordsmanship and academics. After gathering more students, all mostly poor, the school earns the attention and scrutiny of the wealthier people in the village. They also gained the attention of two military academics students who have become disillusioned with the academy and the people attending it, Katsura Kotarou and Takasugi Shinsuke. The two were attracted by the school's goal for the children, striving to achieve their own ideal of a samurai while struggling against themselves. The two will later join officially after helping to fend off some officials from trying to arrest Shouyou. Gintoki himself will later earn a rival, Takasugi.

Years later during the Kansei Purge, despite Gintoki's best efforts to stop them, the Tenshouin Naraku arrested Shouyou and burned down the school. Before leaving, Shouyou asked Gintoki to protect his fellow students, as a promise, to which Gintoki mentally agreed. After learning what happened, the students decided to join the ongoing Joui War on the Joui side to rescue their imprisoned teacher. They met Sakamoto Tatsuma during the fight and Gintoki gains the nickname Shiroyasha ("White Demon") due to his mostly white attire and silver hair and, of course, his ferocious fighting style. At one point, Takasugi asked Gintoki to protect Shouyou but in his stead though Gintoki never truly agreed and instead asked Takasugi for a promise, to stay alive. During a battle, after Sakamoto was taken off the front lines because of an injury, everyone except Katsura, Takasugi and Gintoki were killed while said trio were captured. Gintoki was forced to choose between killing Shouyou to save Katsura and Takasugi or the opposite. He decided to keep his promise to Shouyou and protected his friends but in turn "broke" his promise to Takasugi. Shouyou gives him a final "thank you" before Gintoki beheaded him. After their enemies left, the trio buried their teacher's head and their comrades' corpses and then went their separate ways, leaving the war. Sakamoto was only able to find Gintoki before he too left.

Sometime later, a wandering Gintoki overheard a man trying to offer his daughter to be executed in his place to a group of officials. The man was a Joui informant who had given up information on certain Joui and their families to these officials that belonged to a political faction in the government. Gintoki offered himself up in the daughter's place to protect her and both he and the informant were arrested. In jail he unknowingly met the girl that he saved, who was adopted by the executioner, the 16th Ikeda Yaemon. He saw Gintoki's deeds and, after executing Asaemon's father, declared that he had no right to execute the person who was a good man and then released him. Injured and starving he wandered in the cold winter night to a graveyard to die until he encountered Otose, leaving food offerings to her husband's grave where he was leaning on. He asked her if he could have the manjuu offerings she set out and she told him to ask her husband, who was receiving the offerings instead of her. Gintoki then ate her husband's manjuu without asking him saying that dead people don't talk. In return, he made a promise to her husband that he would protect Otose until she dies.

After this encounter, Gintoki became a tenant on the second floor of Snack Otose and founded the Old Yorozuyawith Kanemaru, Ikesawa and Furuhashi. Together their business flourished and they became famous. Nevertheless, for many reasons, Gintoki threw his partners into a river, ending up working in the Yorozuya alone until the start of the series.

Appearance
Gintoki has a natural perm which causes him no end of distress. His silvery-blue hair is in a perpetually messy state, which is sometimes exaggerated into a frizzy afro when Gintoki's hair is hit by extreme heat. He has indeterminate grey/green (in the manga) or bordeaux-colored (in the anime) "dead fish eyes" (comparison courtesy of Hijikata Toushirou), which are called such because they are nearly always half-lidded.

His standard outfit consists of a white yukata with a blue swirl pattern on the bottom and at the end of the sleeves, worn so that his arm only goes through the left sleeve and the right half droops down over his obi. Over this he wears a black belt buckled so that there is leftover dangling from the buckle, from which his bokutō Lake Toya hangs. Underneath, he wears a black red-lined shirt with a popped collar and black pants. He also wears knee-high black boots, buckled at the top and above his foot, which appear to add about half an inch to his height. It is shown that he has a closet full of replicas of this outfit, so whenever it gets destroyed he can appear in the next episode or chapter with a new one. All in all, his outfit suggests an air of laziness and may be a reflection of Gintoki's own personal sense of style, though it is revealed that his usual attire is actually the school jersey for the Zunborans (episode 292).

During the winter, he will sometimes wear a haori, thicker kimonos, or more layers of vary colors as well as scarves.

During the events of the Dekoboko Arc he switched genders due to a curse and was seen in his female form. In that form he had silvery-blue hair and was wearing Gintoki's normal clothes. Later, he wears a sleeveless white yukata with a blue swirl pattern on the bottom with a blue obi and black boots.

As with most Gintama characters, his outfit and appearance change regularly for the sake of gags.

Personality
Gintoki is extremely lazy. He is often seen wearing a dumb expression on his face and spends his days lounging around reading Shounen Jump whilst imparting wise and sage-like advice to his younger employees, even though he doesn't actually know what he's talking about most of the time. Due to his poverty and unwillingness to do mostly anything, he is always behind on his rent and often runs away when Otose, his landlady, comes to collect the payment. He often blows all of his savings on Pachinko and other gambling games, which Shinpachiand Kagura often scold him for. However, even though he is lazy, Gintoki is quite dedicated to his job and tries to help people with the best of his abilities (usually in a very strange and twisted way).

Gintoki's past continues to influence who he is and how he acts. He admitted to Umibozu in episode 42 that he believes that having a loving family is all someone really needs in life, due to his lack of a family during his childhood. He is very respectful of the memory of his teacher Yoshida Shouyou due to his actions (the arrest of his teacher is one of the main reasons he joined the Joui War. The other was to protect his friends who also joined the war). When Jiraia called himself Tsukuyo's teacher and yet harmed her both emotionally and physically, his ideal for what a teacher was supposed to be resulted in Gintoki becoming enraged and taking his anger out on Jiraia.

His inability to protect many of his friends in the Joui War still haunts him, especially the crushing guilt and regret that consumed him when the Tendoshu forced him to execute his own teacher in front of Takasugi and Katsura. As a result, he is very protective of his current friends and holds very little value to his own life. This carelessness can be seen in how Gintoki can plow through armies without tiring, apathetic to the serious injuries he sustains whilst cutting down his enemies. He told Kawakami Bansai, during the Shinsengumi Crisis Arc, that the only reason he fought in the Joui War was to protect his friends and not his country or the samurai way.

The more comical stories depict Gintoki as a coward, attempting to leave behind many of his friends to save his own life. However, he is willing to risk his life for anyone and he is shown to be extremely caring towards his friends, and has killed Naraku members, terrorists and Amanto to protect them. He is extremely frightened of ghosts, but will usually deny their existence so that he doesn't look like a coward. His fear for the supernatural is shared by Hijikata and usually results in quite a few comic interactions between the two.

He has many childish personality traits despite his age, and has even called himself a "child in a man's body." One such trait is his insatiable love for sweets, which has placed him at a risk of getting diabetes several times. His favorite food is chocolate parfait and he loves chugging down strawberry milk whenever he gets access to it.

He loves alcohol, but his tolerance for sake is not high. At one point, his tendency to act like a complete idiot while being completely smashed resulted in the major female characters Otose, Shimura Tae, Kyuubei, Sarutobi Ayame and Tsukuyo deciding to teach him a lesson by playing a prank on him along with Zenzou during the Scandal Arc.

Gintoki seems to dislike his curly perm hair, stating in Episode 5 that his lack of girlfriends is due to his hairstyle.

Though several female characters have shown an interest in Gintoki, such as Shimura Tae, Sarutobi Ayame and Tsukuyo, it is shown that most of their love is unrequited. However, he does have a huge crush on the weather girl, Ketsuno Ana, and once stated he wished to marry her (possibly because of her smile). While Gintoki does not seem to care for any of the women he knows, he still gets excited when he sees random beautiful women, for example, when he was spying on the women in an indoor pool with binoculars and got super excited until he found out the woman he had taken a liking to was Tsukuyo. After realizing this he lost all interest, commenting on how she is a "drunk terminator". He also got excited when he saw a girl with "big jugs" not realizing the girl was actually Kyuubei.

According to Tama, Gintoki is quite a sadist, much like Okita Sougo. This may possibly explain why Sougo feels a certain attachment to him as he addresses Gintoki as "Danna" ("Boss"). This can be showed as he always mistreat Sarutobi, Katsura and Hijikata is various extreme ways and his tendencies on quitting easily on certain moments which can lead to a punishment and someone's death, in which he can handle easily and even enjoy it. He actually has some knowledge on certain sadistic and abusive fore-play showed throughout the series, as he hires prostitutes for Shinpachi and Sarutobi obsession on him. He admits being a sadist, liking to see Ketsuno Ana (who he has a crush on) being abused and his tendency to abuse everyone he is attached to.

Despite or due to all of these traits Gintoki possesses an immense amount of charisma and has amassed a quite large group of friends. When it is needed, he is able to impart words of wisdom and can make those around him feel much more alive even with his inappropriate jokes and deadpan statements. This ability has given him very loyal allies, friends and even former enemies. As Hinowa pointed out, he was able to affect Tsukuyo (who is usually a dead-serious and cold-blooded woman) and even made friends with the Shogun, despite the situation always turning out less than ideal whenever the latter would be around.

Story
See also: Gintoki Sakata/Story

Crossover Appearances
Project X Zone 3: A wakening of the Trailblazer

Gintoki Sakata appears as a Pair Unit teaming up with Finn the Human.