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Gintama's ending song from Ep.14 to Ep.24 is "Mr. Raindrop" by Amplified. It is the only theme which is in English.

Screenshot from the "Mr. Raindrop" ED, showing the English and hiragana subtitles

Screenshot from the "Mr. Raindrop" ED, showing the English and hiragana subtitles

As you can see, the transliteration above the English words is done in hiragana instead of katakana. Since I can't confidently translate hiragana, I wanted to confirm that was this done intentionally for a joke (if yes, can you please explain it) or it was a careless mistake.

pjmathematician
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    I have a suspicion that since at the time "MR.RAINDROP" was played in *Gintama* (July-September 2006), it was broadcasted on weekends' morning/weekdays' evening (i.e. children block), thus they were required to use hiragana instead of katakana for furigana. This is currently only a wild guess though. – Aki Tanaka Aug 01 '20 at 11:55
  • @AkiTanaka yes, that may be possible but I don't think Gintama is for so small children who don't even know the full furigana(w.r.t Japan) the appropriate age is ≥14 who are perhaps fluent in Japanese. – pjmathematician Aug 01 '20 at 12:16

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I wanted to confirm that was this done intentionally for a joke (if yes, can you please explain it) or it was a careless mistake.

It is perfectly normal to write furigana (in hiragana) on top of English words for the audience, who are practically all Japanese, to understand and learn how to pronounce.

In addition, furigana is always added on top of English words at any Japanese karaoke in Japan.

So no, it is not a joke nor a careless mistake, just a very common practice.

Yuu
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