Jikan Dorobou

Jikan Dorobou is cryptic and directive, providing Sakata Gintoki with only part of the information needed to understand his situation.

His camera-headed appearance and theatrical behavior deliberately parody cinema anti-piracy advertisements. Even while performing the serious narrative function of transporting Gintoki through time, he remains visually rooted in that joke.

He acts less like an independent companion than an intermediary between Gintoki and the temporal crisis unfolding around him.

Jikan Dorobou's principal ability is time travel. He transports Gintoki five years into the future, moving him from the Joui-era confrontation shown at the beginning of the film into a devastated future Edo.

He also alters how Gintoki appears to people in that future, preventing his identity from being immediately recognized.

As a time-travel mechanism, Jikan Dorobou can provide access to different points in the timeline and becomes essential to understanding how events in Gintoki's past produced the future he encounters.

Jikan Dorobou first appears through the film's parody of anti-piracy warnings. Gintoki attempts to deal with what appears to be someone illegally recording the movie, only to discover that the strange figure is something far more consequential.

He transports Gintoki five years into the future, where Edo has been devastated by a lethal plague and the Yorozuya no longer exist in their familiar form.

Jikan Dorobou's intervention is part of the temporal mechanism that allows Gintoki to discover the connection between the future White Plague and his battle with Enmi during the Joui War.

The time-travel device ultimately becomes essential to the Yorozuya's attempt to change the past and prevent that future from occurring.

Sakata Gintoki is the person Jikan Dorobou transports into the future and guides through the temporal crisis.

Enmi is connected to the historical event whose consequences Jikan Dorobou's time travel allows Gintoki to investigate.

Shimura Shinpachi and Kagura encounter the consequences of Jikan Dorobou's intervention through Gintoki's arrival in their future.