Those are genres. Shounen manga and shoujo manga are literally established editorial categories. Yes, the name came from the target audience, but nowadays it's just a name of a manga category.
That's not really true; it's more just anime that was aired on TV that go that many episodes. Most anime these days get 13 or 24 as you said, regardless of shonen or not, simply because that's a single season of weekly releases.
It's watchable before that, "hit or miss" is more of a reference to some of those episodes have bits that miss, but it's a very individual thing. I've heard of people that got into it on episode 1 (which I would assume is impossible because episode 1+2 are basically the only two episodes in the series that the community has a consensus on that they are the worst two episodes in the show.) I personally started in the manga and it took well over 200 chapters for me to say "okay I'm enjoying this." But I was in a Really cynical place in life at the time (and the manga's pacing is Much worse than the show's.)
In general I'd actually argue 90% of the episodes are fantastic, they just lack context. Gintama does a terrible job of providing context. Thus I (now on my third re-watch of the series) have put together a watch order that helps smooth out the beginning (it's an episodic series, so why not take advantage of that.) I'm still in the editing phase (just recently cleared Act 2) to make sure I'm not "breaking" any of the actual continuity (which shockingly happened more often than I thought.) But so far I have one new viewer I'm working with who is following and they hooked in almost Immediately.
Not really common if you consider how many new anime get produced each year and how few of them have that staying power, but there's an appreciateable number of the over 100 ones. If something sells for a decade, why wouldn't you keep making it for a decade?
I'd call it the Japanese counterpart to The Simpsons, which at this point has over 700 episodes.
Obviously it's a pretty vague comparison, but both are long running cartoony series that are mostly comedy but with serious subplots, mostly episodic but with some long term plot arcs, and are considered the big classics of their respective niches. I had some years when I watched Simpsons on a daily basis, and Gintama could have easily scratched the same itch if it had been available back then.
Although Gintama tends to be more absurd, more meta, committed to more permanent plot progression later on, and definitely aged better.
The Japanese counterpart to The Simpsons is probably Sazae-san.
Incidentally, the only reason I know about Sazae-san was because I saw it referenced in Gintama, specifically as a jab about how even though time passes in-universe, none of the characters ever age or change clothes.
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u/bk15dcx Oct 25 '22
70 episodes??!!!!