Gintama 698 [Last]: “For everyone out there who read Gintama for these long 14 years, thank you so much. And I’m so very sorry. So uh, with this week, Gintama will no longer be running in Jump, but it’s not actually ending at all. I think a good number of you out there probably realized that when we announced there was 5 chapters to go and we were doing a gorilla wedding. Going from a gorilla to a conclusion to the story in 5 chapters was impossible even for a gorilla. So on that note, you see, Jump has a system where you notify the editorial department about 6 months in advance that that’s about where you’ll be wrapping things up, and then you move to get everything concluded by that time you gave. But with Gintama, I’ve been misreading that, and for the past three years now I’ve been saying, ‘I don’t think I can wrap up quite yet. There’s still one last story I need to put in.’ It was like getting your family together and saying, ‘Huh? Ya know, I may actually not die quite yet,’ over and over. And then of course the family starts getting restless, doing stuff like tapping their feet, or they start clicking their tongues at grandpa now and then, so grandpa says definitively ‘I can definitely make it by the end of August,’ and then takes out a big cigar and starts smoking it like Big Boss in Metal Gear Solid 4. But uh, it didn’t work out that way. Even if I try to pack everything really tightly into weekly chapters, this stubborn Small Boss just wasn’t gonna kick the bucket. So then we decided that with a bigger time frame and with a larger number of pages, we would finally bring an end to grandpa’s life. So for just a little bit, we’ll be doing it in a different place. I honestly would’ve preferred to bring you the story all the way to the end in Jump, so I really have to apologize for screwing that whole thing up. This is goodbye to all those that just skim through Gintama chapters in Jump, but even if I’m gone, I hope you continue to enjoy yourselves reading Jump. Just don’t expect to get any inheritance. For those that are sticking around with Grandpa for the long haul, even if you stubbornly keep hanging around me I’m still not giving you any inheritance, got that? Why? Because my inheritance is all of you. Let’s meet again beyond the final chapter.
