Gintoki mouse pads for the desk

This page gathers Padrift's Gintoki Sakata mouse pads and desk mats, original artwork inspired by the silver-haired, sweet-toothed samurai at the center of Gintama. Each one is printed edge to edge on 3 mm neoprene with a smooth fabric top, a non-slip base and stitched edges that keep the border from fraying. The range runs from an 11.8″ × 15.7″ (30 × 40 cm) pad that holds a mouse and little else to a 23.6″ × 47.2″ (60 × 120 cm) mat that takes over most of the desk, eight sizes in all, and none of them is printed until someone orders it.

The shop has no separate Gintama page, so Gintoki's page carries the rest of the series too: Shinpachi, Kagura and Sadaharu from the Yorozuya, Otose and the bar downstairs, Hijikata and the Shinsengumi, and the comrades Gintoki fought beside in the war. Every other series sits one level up, on the Anime Mouse Pads page.

Gintama in a paragraph

Hideaki Sorachi's Gintama started in Weekly Shōnen Jump in 2003, and the anime followed in 2006. It takes place in an Edo that never existed: aliens called the Amanto landed near the end of the samurai era, the shogunate gave in to them, and a ban on carrying swords left the samurai with nothing to do. Spaceships hover over wooden rooftops and ramen stalls stand next to alien bars. Gintoki fought against the invaders as a young man. Now he runs an odd-jobs business in Kabukichō that takes almost any job going, from finding lost cats to guarding princesses, and it still never quite covers the rent.

Silver perm and dead-fish eyes

Gintoki is drawn in contrasts. His hair is an untidy silver-white perm that he insists is natural, and his eyes are a dull reddish brown, half-lidded in the bored look the series calls dead-fish eyes. Over a black shirt and black trousers he wears a white kimono printed with pale blue swirls along the hem and sleeves, slipped off one arm, with black boots underneath. When he finally gets serious, the eyes sharpen and the whole face changes, and the art makes the most of that switch.

For a setup, that adds up to a white-and-black palette with a single cool accent. White keycaps with a light blue Escape key or space bar echo the swirls on the kimono, and a black mouse and cable match the clothes underneath. Silver takes on the color of whatever light falls on it, so neutral white lighting keeps his hair silver, while strong purple light turns it lilac.

The wooden sword along the top edge

With real swords banned, Gintoki carries a bokutō, a wooden practice sword, tucked into his belt. The handle is carved with the words Lake Toya, the sort of lettering you see on souvenir swords at Japanese tourist spots, and the series treats it as a running joke: a cheap wooden sword that somehow breaks steel blades in the hands of the man who carries it.

A sword is long and thin, which is exactly the shape of the stretched sizes. On the M, 11.8″ × 27.6″ (30 × 70 cm), a bokutō drawn along the top edge runs above the number row from one end of the mat to the other. Put the carved handle at the end away from your mouse hand, where your arm never covers it, and leave the lower half of the mat plain so the keyboard and mouse sit on a quiet surface.

Strawberry milk and sweet red beans

Most of what Gintoki eats is sugar. He drinks strawberry milk straight from the carton, spends any spare money on parfaits, happily eats a bowl of rice buried under sweet red beans and keeps ignoring a doctor who has told him his blood sugar is far too high. The pink carton has become nearly as much his signature as the sword.

A strawberry milk design is the softest way to bring Gintama to a desk: pink, white and a carton or two on a pale ground. It sits well with pink switches, a white keyboard and pastel accessories, and on a small pad nobody outside the fandom will read it as anime at all. To them it's a cheerful drink on a mouse pad; to anyone who has seen the show, it's unmistakably Gintoki's desk.

The office above the bar

The Yorozuya Gin-chan office is upstairs from Snack Otose, a small bar run by Otose, the sharp-tongued landlady who spends half the series chasing Gintoki for rent. The office itself is one cramped room with a desk, a worn sofa and a television, and a sign above the door announces the business to the street.

Office designs suit a work or study desk better than a gaming station. An interior scene with warm wood, paper screens and the sign hanging outside reads like a cozy room, and putting a famously lazy hero's office under a hardworking keyboard is a joke anyone who knows Gintama will catch. On the 14″ × 24″ (35.5 × 61 cm) size, the shopfront fits as a single readable picture next to a laptop.

Shinpachi, Kagura and Sadaharu

Gintoki rarely works alone. Shinpachi Shimura, a serious teenager in glasses, joins him to learn what it means to be a samurai and ends up as the show's straight man and its loudest commentator. Kagura is a girl from the Yato, a warrior clan of Amanto, who shades herself from the sun under a parasol and eats more than the other two combined. Sadaharu is the giant white dog who moves in with them and greets Gintoki by biting his head.

A trio layout divides a wide mat neatly. On an XL, 15.7″ × 35.4″ (40 × 90 cm), Shinpachi and Kagura can stand toward one end with Gintoki toward the other, while Sadaharu's white bulk fills the space behind them. Keep the faces in the top third of the mat; the keyboard will then cover legs and sandals instead of expressions.

Shiroyasha and the war years

Before the odd jobs, Gintoki fought in the Joui War against the Amanto, and the stories told about him earned him the name Shiroyasha, the White Demon. He fought beside Kotarō Katsura and Shinsuke Takasugi, who had grown up studying with him under the same teacher, Shōyō Yoshida, and beside Tatsuma Sakamoto, who later took to space as a trader. Those friendships, and where each friend ended up, drive the series' longest and most serious arcs.

Shiroyasha designs show the side of Gintoki with no slapstick at all: a white coat, a drawn blade and a sky in grays and dusky reds. They belong on a dark gaming desk. A pale figure on a dark ground also stays readable under a black keyboard, because the eye goes straight to the white even when the keys cover half the mat.

The Shinsengumi across town

Edo's police in Gintama are the Shinsengumi, a comic take on the real nineteenth-century unit of the same name. Vice-commander Toshirō Hijikata smokes constantly and pours mayonnaise over every meal, and he and Gintoki snipe at each other like rivals who are more alike than either will admit. Sōgo Okita, the young captain of the first division, openly schemes to take Hijikata's job, and commander Isao Kondō spends his free time pursuing Shinpachi's older sister, Tae, who wants nothing to do with him.

The Shinsengumi wear black uniforms with gold trim, which places them at the opposite end of the palette from Gintoki's white. A layout with Gintoki on one side and Hijikata on the other suits a desk with a black keyboard and a white mouse, or two pads on neighboring desks for friends who never stop arguing about which of the two is cooler.

Katsura and Elizabeth

Katsura, Gintoki's old comrade, now leads a band of rebels against the government and keeps slipping away from the Shinsengumi in ridiculous disguises. Gintoki calls him Zura, and Katsura corrects him every single time. His companion Elizabeth is a large white creature with round eyes and a beak who never speaks, holding up hand-lettered signs instead.

Elizabeth is one of the most useful Gintama shapes for a small or busy desk: a plain white figure with a simple outline that stays readable at any size. A design with Elizabeth holding a sign at the edge of a pad makes a quiet joke, and it suits a setup where you want something recognizable without a full character portrait.

A Jump reader at heart

Gintoki is a grown man who still buys Weekly Shōnen Jump every week, and the series makes the most of it, with jokes about the magazine it runs in, the series it shares pages with and its own place in the reader rankings. He talks about the latest chapter with the seriousness other heroes save for sword training.

That makes a Gintoki pad a natural fit for a manga reader's corner or an artist's drawing desk. A design with him sprawled on the office sofa, a magazine over his face, suits a desk where you read, sketch or draw on a tablet, and the fabric top gives a mouse the same smooth glide whether you are editing pages or just scrolling through them.

Comedy arcs and serious arcs

Gintama changes tone without warning. Most episodes are absurd comedy, packed with parodies, gags about other anime and characters who talk straight to the audience; then a long story arc begins, and the series becomes a sword drama about loyalty, grief and promises made years earlier. Both halves run side by side from start to finish.

Choose the half that matches how you use the desk. Comedy designs, with chibi faces, food and exaggerated expressions, suit a desk where you relax, and their busy art hides everyday marks well. Arc designs, a lone figure in the rain or a drawn sword under a dark sky, suit a setup built to look deliberate, with matching lighting and cables kept out of sight.

Gintoki at the gaming desk

Gintoki isn't a model of discipline, but he suits a gaming desk that runs on late nights and snacks. A wide mat with him lounging along the top edge leaves the middle clear for the keyboard and the side open for the mouse. The fabric top gives an even glide for slow tracking or quick flicks, the non-slip base holds the mat still when you snap the mouse across it, and the stitched edges don't lift where your forearm rubs.

Lighting matters more than usual with a white-clad hero. Pale blue or cool white LEDs pick up the swirl pattern on his kimono and keep the white clean. Strong red or magenta light tints every white area pink, which flatters a strawberry milk design and very little else.

Gintama on the small pad

The 11.8″ × 15.7″ (30 × 40 cm) pad spends most of its day under a hand, so the art has to survive being half covered. Good candidates are a single strawberry milk carton, the bokutō laid diagonally, the pale blue swirl from Gintoki's kimono repeated as a pattern, or Elizabeth's outline in a corner. Whichever you choose, keep the main shape in the upper part of the pad, above where your palm usually rests, so it stays visible while you work.

Sizes for a Gintoki desk

Not every design comes in every size; the product page for each one shows what is available. These are the sizes that suit Gintama art.

Setup	Size	Good for
Mouse only	S, 11.8″ × 15.7″ (30 × 40 cm)	A strawberry milk carton or Elizabeth
Laptop desk	TCG Mat, 14″ × 24″ (35.5 × 61 cm)	The Yorozuya shopfront
Compact keyboard	M, 11.8″ × 27.6″ (30 × 70 cm)	The bokutō along the top edge
Keyboard and mouse	XL, 15.7″ × 35.4″ (40 × 90 cm)	Gintoki, Shinpachi and Kagura
Deep desk	XXL, 23.6″ × 35.4″ (60 × 90 cm)	Shiroyasha against a dark sky
The whole desk	4XL, 23.6″ × 47.2″ (60 × 120 cm)	Gintoki and Hijikata, white against black

If your desk is long but shallow, the L at 11.8″ × 31.5″ (30 × 80 cm) and the 3XL at 19.7″ × 39.4″ (50 × 100 cm) are worth a look as well.

Gifts for a Gintama fan

A Gintoki pad suits a friend who quotes the show's parodies, a sweet-toothed coworker who keeps strawberry milk in the office fridge or a manga reader who never misses a weekly chapter. Pick the side of Gintoki they talk about most: the lazy comic, the sugar addict or the White Demon. If you have no idea how big their desk is, the M size, 11.8″ × 27.6″ (30 × 70 cm), sits under a keyboard and mouse on most desks without hanging over the edge.

Printing and stitching take 1–3 business days; after that the pad leaves Turkey and normally reaches a US address within 2–5 business days. Ordering two weeks ahead of a birthday leaves a comfortable margin.

Cleaning up after snacks

A Gintoki desk will see its share of snacks, so wipe the pad with a damp cloth whenever you notice crumbs or a sticky spot. When it needs more than that, wash it by hand in a basin of lukewarm water with a little mild soap, rinse until the water runs clear, roll it in a towel and press to squeeze the water out, then leave it lying flat until it is completely dry. The washing machine, the dryer and the iron are all off limits. Rolled up for a trip, it flattens out again on the desk within a few hours.

A note on names

Gintoki Sakata, Gintama and the other character names on this page are used only to describe what inspired our designs. Padrift has no affiliation with Hideaki Sorachi, Shueisha, Sunrise or Bandai Namco Pictures, and none of them sponsors or endorses our products.