Beyond immersion: Gin Tama and palimpsestuous reception

This chapter looks at the Japanese media mix franchise of Gin Tama, typically considered an extremely disruptive set of metaleptic texts (manga, anime, film, games, etc.), as an exemplary case of transmedial reception. From a combined aesthetic and audience-centered perspective, I propose to substitute the common metaphor of interrupted immersion with that of palimsestuous reception. This concept refers to the activity of activating multiple textual reception processes at the same time, and introduces a new perspective to investigate the aesthetic potential of transmedial reception in general.