beta
I'm not logging this as read. I haven't read/watched all of Gintama, I've seen maybe 1 episode? But this is a Harada piece, so I guess I'm here to give a 'review' so to speak.
I think this used it's format as a doujinshi well, you can get into this without knowing a thing about Gintama. You can quite honestly pretend they're original characters made by Harada.
I'm not one for gratuitous s/a as well as kidnapping being not my thing, absolutely not. I think Harada understands it well. On how Gintoki manipulates the other man (Sorry, bad with names.) into wanting him so badly to the point of never escaping. I think the use of the days counter was also good.
Stockholm Syndrome has the chance to be used well; it's a psychological effect that happens too often within kidnapping casing lasting longer than about a month (just estimation-- no real statistics) but I think when it's used in BL it can be certainly a mixed bag. There can be things that use it well enough, ie this Doujin. And then there are times where theres no commentary to be made, not a single thing is shown how it's wrong, not even an implication.
Kidnapping in BL/Yaoi is also a mixed bag, for some reason. And I think in general dark themes are also a very huge mixed bag. In the current landscape of a post-Killing Stalking world, everyone WANTS to be the new KS without understanding what made it appealing but also interesting on a deeper level that isn't just sangbum shippers having no media comprehension skills. Harada is a master of dark themes, but when you compare their works to something like Obey Me, where the dark themes are not made to commentate or even be taken as anything except for fetishistic torture porn that go on for way too long without a single interesting thing to say, you can see why Harada is the borderline master of the dark BL niche.
I didn't love it. But it was pretty good.