Chapter I
In which the author pretends the "Dedication to Part I" from D*n Q**xote doesn't exist and skips it entirely because poetry is hard
In a village in La Tama, the name of which I don't care enough to look up (but was probably Edo or Kabukicho or something similarly Gintama-esque), there was a Yorozuya, or odd-jobs worker, who was pretty much good for nothing and liked it that way. He kept a small estate (read: rental apartment), a wooden bokuto on his belt, and a weird giant dog in his stables which I'm pretty sure ate the gross domestic product of a small country in one day. He spent the rest of his meager salary on 27 copies of the same outfit, 3 pairs of the same shin-length black boots, one strawberry milkshake per day, some rice, a trip to the bar every other day and some headache medication for the other days, and whatever remained after that was swallowed by the pachinko machine. He had a housekeeper, Ezurako, who may or may not have been a cross-dresser, and a gorilla-esque lady who forced herself into his house after she lost track of her brother named Otaenia. It is said that his family name was Sakada or Quixata, (for I'm too lazy to actually look up his name), but let's just say it's Johnny for the sake of convenience. And, for a time, Johnny of La Tama was very content, or at least too lazy to do anything about it.
Anyway, whenever the aforementioned gentleman was not on a job, which was pretty much always because he sucked at his job, he would spend time reading the Weekly Shonen Jump, and would read with such excitement that sometimes he would even forego his usual bar run to buy a N*ruto volume instead, and would almost always use his housekeeper's salary money to pay for the Jump on Saturday. Basically, he was an insane bastard who knew all the Jump series, even ones like T*riko or One-P*nch M*n which hardly anyone references, or like K*rate In**chi or M*eru! O*ii-san or M*tal F*sh which hardly anyone remembers. No one was more frustrated at H*nter X H*nter's frequent hiatuses or more enthralled by Dr*gon B*ll's increasingly ridiculous Seiyan transformations. After reading this sort of manga day in and out, without sleeping and while consuming nothing but strawberry milkshakes and beer, and because he was kind of unstable to begin with, the poor Yorozuya finally went mad. He spent sleepless nights worrying about whether the "Great Naruto Bridge" was really a good name for a bridge at all, since it made the bridge sound more like a ramen topping than a symbol of peace and triumph, but was too satisfied with N*ruto's triumph and H*ku and Z*buza's final scene to demand a name change, and even at one point took to ending his sentences with "dattebayo" in recognition of the great hero.
He was completely insane, and, believing that all the manga in the Jump were true stories, he set about leaving his home in La Tama to find an adventure that would personify the ideals of "Friendship, Effort, Victory." Basically, he planned, despite being over 20 years old and having no clear goals, special abilities, or interesting quirks, to become a shounen protagonist. One day, after dusk, he began gathering his family's armor, his sturdy bokuto, which he believed to be a legendary sword made of steel, leather, and dreams, and the papers on which he had written all his special moves, attacks, and abilities, like some D&D character, and went out to the stable where his giant dog-thing. He inspected the giant dog all over, and concluded that it was, indeed, a sufficiently weird thing for a shounen protagonist to have, as all shounen protagonists must be, at first glance, very weird, but also have some cool secret ability or hidden past that makes them better than everyone else.
After a good while of thinking and the use of a few online naming dictionaries and translators, the Yorozuya decided on a name for his mighty dog.
"Oi, Pochi, let's go," the Yorozuya drawled lazily, which earned him a chomp on the head. "What, Pochi's no good? Pain in the ass," the Yorozuya continued from within the dog's mouth. "Look, I don't really care, and I think the readers are already clicking away from this story, so let's just go with something easy, alright?" The dog displayed its refusal to be named "Pochi" by swallowing the Yorozuya up to his waist. "Alright, I got it, I got it! Since this is a parody anyway, let's just take half your name from Gintama and half from D*n Q**xote, yeah? Ok, Sadinante?"
After being spit out by Sadinante, the Yorozuya realized that everything would be a lot faster and less confusing for the readers if he just continued naming things in this manner, and so he took on the name "Gin Quixote de La Tama," even though it didn't sound nearly as cool as his original choice, "Akatsuki no Karoluxus Rodbertus the Dragonslayer," or "Rod" for short. He decided to stick to his original back story, though, in which he was the descendent of a long-forgotten line of dragon-slaying ninjas/samurai who turned out to be friendly aliens who have superstrength and speed when angered, but was really just a regular guy trying to make it by in high school (modern Japanese high school, mind you, not 16th century Spanish high school, which pretty much consisted of a single room, one noble child, and sadness). Satisfied with the setting that he had created for himself, Gin mounted his dog and began to ride into a life of adventure...
...when a spectacled kunoichi popped out from a nearby hay bale.
"Aren't you forgetting something, Gin-sama?" she said in a voice that she must have intended to be sexy.
The alien dragon-slaying ninja/samurai high school student looked blankly at the purple-haired ninja, thinking over his actions for the past few minutes, before starting and exlclaiming, "Ah, of course!"
He quickly slide his forgotten cheat-sheet of secret moves into the sleeve of his white-and-blue kimono, which was just under the layer of armor he now wore, and once again mounted Sadinante and began riding off. "Thanks, cosplay lady," he said, slowly waving his hand without looking back.
"Hold it right there!" the ninja woman yelled with sudden desperation, jumping onto Sadinante's back in front of Gin. Looking pleadingly into his eyes, she said, (with a weird amount of excitement) "Oh, how mean! Is this some sort of play, huh? Abandonment play, huh?"
"Whaddya want? I have a lot of Friendship, Effort, and Victory to create, so I don't have time for games."
"We~ll," the kunoichi said, again failing in her imitation of a sexy woman, "I can't help but notice that you're setting off for your adventure without one crucial thing."
The ninja/samurai suddenly sat straight up, his eyes almost for a second looking like human eyes and not those of a dead fish. "Eh, really? I'm missing something? What is it?"
The kunoichi grinned at his sudden excitement(?), realizing that she had managed to get his attention, and held a finger out in front of his face. He stared at her expectantly while she paused for dramatic effect, with her head turned away from him, quietly laughing with confidence in her answer. Suddenly, she snapped her head towards him and said, in a low voice and with fire in her eyes, "A love interest."
Gin looked at her with a mixture of boredom, disappointment, and disgust as he slid her off of Sadinante's back and resumed his slow departure.
"Wait, wait, wait, I was being serious!" the woman shouted as she ran to catch up to him. "There's no such thing as a good shounen story without a love interest, and I'm willing to play that role! The Ch*-Ch* to your G*ku, the S*kura and H*nata to your N*ruto!"
"Shut up!" Gin yelled back. "What the hell is that, there's no good shounen without a love interest? Apologize to One P*ece, bastard! Have you even read H*nter x H*nter?!"
"Please!" she yelled, now gripping onto Sadinante's collar with the strength of a gorilla and being dragged along as he walked. "I'm not gonna let you leave until you make me your love interest!" Then, in a suddenly much deeper, more threatening voice, she pulled herself up to Gin's eye-level and said, "I'll never let you go."
Gin pushed her face away from his, screeching, "Someone get this crazy b*tch away from me! Who'd take you as a love interest, huh? All the readers would puke their guts up if someone like you was the love interest! Do you want to be the girl who's always last in the popularity polls, eh? Do you want to ruin my pure-hearted shounen adventure that badly, eh? No shounen story has a masochistic love interest! You'll pervert the readers' minds! No one wants that sort of youthful adventure! That sounds more like a youthful mistake that ends up with someone getting pregnant and your youth being drained away by the cold reality of parenthood!"
The kunoichi paused in her struggles to innocently ask, "How did you know I'm a masochist?"
Gin only looked down at her in disgust before, with one final push, he detached her from Sadinante's collar.
"I'm telling you, you'll regret it if you don't make me your love interest!" the kunoichi yelled at him from the spot she had fallen to the ground on.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Gin replied, with a wave of his hand. Without looking back, he asked, "What's your name?"
"Ayame Sarutobi!" she replied, in excitement. "But you can call me Sachan!"
"Damn, what a boring name. You sound like the Third H*kage," Gin said, glancing back and shaking his head. "No way someone named that can be a love interest." Then, with another wave of his hand, and once again facing forward, he said, "Goodbye, Molestinea."
As Sadinante, with Gin on board, slowly sauntered into the sunset (which should not have been occurring as it was already after dusk but who remembers what happened a couple paragraphs ago anyway?), Sachan watched her hero go, thinking over his words. "Molestinea..." she said, thinking aloud, "Is that, like, a pet name?" With hope and pride in her eyes, the newly-christened Molestinea waved to the disappearing silhouette, shouting, "Don't worry, Gin! I'm going to be the best love interest there ever was for any shounen series!"
"Cosplayers, man..." Gin muttered under his breath. Then, a new thought occurred to him. "Ah, I wonder if Analdonza Ketsuno could be my love interest?"
And so, as the sun set for the second time that day, two delusional idiots set out on their respective adventures, both of which would result in the idiots, in one way or another, being carried into the history books or at least the morning paper, for better or for worse (but probably for worse).
Notes for those who haven't read Don Quixote or don't understand the characters:
Ezurako - Katsura Kotarou (form of a maid, original housekeeper was not named)
Otaenia - Antonia (Don Quixote's niece) + Shimura Otae
Gin Quixote de la Tama - Don Quixote de la Mancha + Sakata Gintoki
Sadinante - Rocinante (Don Quixote's horse) + Sadaharu
Molestinea (The annoying one) - Dulcinea del Toboso (The sweet one of Toboso, Don Quixote's beloved) + Sarutobi Ayame (Sacchan)
Analdonza Ketsuno - Aldonza Lorenzo (Dulcinea's real name) + Ketsuno Ana
In Don Quixote, Miguel Cervantes mocks and references books of chivalry, which were commonly-read in Spain at the time. I am instead referencing shounen manga, which are manga like Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, or, yes, Gintama, which are made for teenage boys and often published in magazines such as Gin's favorite, Weekly Shonen Jump.