Edo still looks like Edo, except the aliens won. Swords hang at the hip, honour comes up in conversation, and the Amanto who conquered the country run it now.

Gintoki Sakata kept the sword and lost the cause. He set up Yorozuya, a freelance odd-jobs shop that takes on whatever a client can pay for, and he works it with Shinpachi Shimura and Kagura. The job list is the engine of the thing: household nonsense, lost causes, and every so often the kind of trouble that wants a swordsman.

Hideaki Sorachi wrote and drew all of it, and the premise came out of a negotiation. His editor asked for a historical series. Sorachi wanted characters he could build to his own taste, so he dropped a science fiction invasion into the Edo setting and gave himself both registers to work in. Comedy carries most chapters. The story plays its samurai material straight whenever it decides to mean it.

It lasted. Weekly Shonen Jump serialized Gintama from December 2003 to September 2018, Jump Giga carried it into February 2019, and the last chapters went out on a dedicated Gintama app that May and June. Collected, it comes to 77 tankobon volumes, which is a great many odd jobs.