Sakata gintoki the protagonist of beloved gintama series created by mangaka Hideaki sorachi
His whole character is absurdist, I might not be wrong if I said he is a deconstruction of generic Shonen protagonist, a lazy, dim-witted, sarcastic character, so funny and hilarious yet so deep in character writing.

Appearance

He is a 27 y/o middle aged man, normal build, silver wavy hair with his special dead-fish eyes and a yukata with leather fit.
The first thing Sorachi did was reject the idea of teen, immature protagonist, gintoki might be absurd but is shown as a responsible adult, his laziness and dead-fish eyes, completely contrast with his hidden behavior, he uses wooden sword, as to not violate the rules of state and nor the bushido of samurai, his special white yukata + leather outfit reflects his acceptance of situation, no matter what happens to the world I will embrace the world, keep enduring it.
So while he appears as a lazy, unreliable oddjobs to others, his friends clearly knows what type of man sakata gintoki is.

WRITING

I got bored dividing ts into sections (breaks my flow of writing🥀) so now I will give all in one writing.

His journey from the very 3rd episode (3rd coz first two were filler 🥀) isn't only about developing his character, there are two essential types of character development first is experiencing the life and growth of a character from 0, and the other is characters who r already developed and yet keep developing as the story progress, we get the background and what made the character as he was on the very first episode. Gintoki falls in later, his character development is not as turning and visible like eren, but a lot hidden and internal, just like his personality, A little kid killing to survive and eat a monster , on the certain day meets another monster, they both keep pushing each other and understand the meaning of humanity, while both of them never had one in first place, sakata gintoki was never shining, charismatic protagonist, yet he felt very close.

Life gave him many hardship, suffering, to the point where he thought he was happy the thunder struck down on him again, destroying his only home, his school, to the point where he had to go on war despite knowing they will lose and they actually lost, SpoilerShow

Takasugi:
_"Zura… The sword in your hand… who taught us how to use it? Our samurai code, our way of living. Who taught us these? The one who gave us a world to live in, was without a doubt… Shouyou-sensei. Yet, this world… took him from us. What can I do but declare war on it and destroy the world that took him from us? Zura, what do you have to live for? How can we live in a world that deprived us of our master? I can't stand it!"_ (why not italic 🥀)

Katsura:
"Takasugi, do you know how many times I have also wanted to reduce this world to smoldering ashes? However, that man has always endured it... Gintoki... He who has the most reason to hate this world has always endured it."

This dialogue is one of my favorite from gintama, katsura's admiration of gintoki of how he is living and enduring his life even though so many cruel things had happened to them and a lot more to him, and takasugi's view on gintoki about how he is still going on with his daily life even though he has to carry the burden which he was not able to shared with his friends, his agony and guilt to make gintoki suffer coz of his recklessness (even tho it was no one at fault), he simply want to destroy, his admiration of gintoki is different than everyone else.

Gintoki who had thought he will never be able to carry that same burden, yet without knowing he was carrying it --yorozuya, otose snacks, the stray dogs of shinsengumi, Madao🥀, an obsessive hardcore masochist kunoichi (just crack her bro 🥀), and bunch of wierdos like him was surrounding him, making a family they never thought will be.

Gintama might have one of the best if not the best fond-family cast in whole of animanga.

Coming to his philosophical/thematic depth, gintoki is an absurdist, existential, altruist character, he is like a character wearing comedy mask to hide his suffering.
His whole character is based on the theme of soul, philosophy of an absurd samurai who makes his own busido (code) and executed with peak symbolism of wooden sword, his journey of shouldering the burden on his soul, saving everyone and the one in needs yet the he never revealed his problem, but the people surrounding him was not dumb, if he would not share the burden not letting his soul be happy, they would simply snatch it from him, carrying the dividing the happiness (and throwing all the suffering on madao 🥀), He had been running from his past, running and running, thinking he is still on same place, thinking his sword won't reach his past, but true thing was he had already reached his destination, his sword has already gone beyond the point of past, to the futuristic city of edo, 1st street kabukicho, over otose snacks corner, yorozuya no gin-chan (did i just leaked his address 🥀).

Yes I can see .... You have grown into fine man sakata gintoki




At the end his business is still in loss 🥀🤣✌️



P.s. I had completely forgot I was in any cult 🥀 srry funkytown residents, it's all weebwarriorgotsotightIhadtoskipthenight's fault