Completed Gate

The trope of a war between an advanced military and a hopelessly outdated one (is there a specific term for this?) isn’t exactly new, but I haven’t seen much of these shows. I guess it’s because the outcome is too obvious (spoiler for anyone without common sense: it is a one-sided massacre), which means writers have to put more effort into developing the story pre-war and post-war.

Isekai is extremely common in anime but the way Gate did it resulted in a unique take on the genre as well the trope IMO.

The depiction of how people react as way as character motivations was believable. Just like how soldiers of real-world military frequently lost common sense (is there a name for this phenomenon?), the isekai soldiers started rampaging / plundering instead of working towards a clear goal. The way people (including the MC) reacted was understandable too.

The timeframe between the initial attack and the deployment of troops beyond the gate was reasonable too. I’d expect that long given the bureaucracy and inefficiency of politicians and military.

Gate spoiler

IMO one issue with the trope is that there is basically no reason for the weak side to attack the other side (of if they did attack once, no reason to press the attack). Gate resolved it by having one side be an isekai army which doesn’t have any knowledge of our technology, and by having a king with his own political motivations.

All these led to a great set-up, which the show then squandered.

---

Honestly, the first season (or cour? I can’t tell the difference) wasn’t too bad.

There have been minor annoyances for me from the very start, such as

Gate spoiler

• helmets that do not cover the back of soldiers’ heads
• an act of bravery resulted in MC promoting from a non-commissioned officer position to a commissioned officer
• the lack of discipline of soldiers and their lackadaisy attitude towards their commanders (to be specific, MC’s men treatment of MC)
• the way JSDF soldiers fight
• the writer’s obvious biasness towards JSDF, and against anything (e.g. politicians, the media, and other countries’ armed forces) that are antagonistic towards JSDF

There are probably more, but these are the ones I can remember off the top of my head. Anyway, I was willing to overlook these issues because the world-building and characters were fun.

I am willing to give it a 7 / 10.

---

The second part got way too dumb for me.

For example,

Gate spoiler

During their first confrontation with the first prince, the way the female soldier made me facepalm. Like, you have ammo remaining in your mag, why the fuck would you charge at them with your bayonet??! That should be a last resort! Also, who uses bayonet in this day and age?!! I thought everyone know by now that will only mess up the aim of your rifle.

And that was only the second episode IIRC. It just became more and more braindead as the show goes on. I would have gave it a passing score, but by the last episode, the anime gave up all pretense of not being a trash isekai by shipping various characters together.

My guess is that the writer (and maybe the rest of the animation studio?) is a military nerd who worships his country’s armed forces, but never actually served. The anime would fixate weirdly on details such as the backblast checks - clearly the writer did a bit of research - and yet completely missed some obvious / common-sensical things that anyone who have been in a military would know.

Unfortunately, he ended up doing a disservice to the JSDF that he looked up, portraying them as unprofessional and incompetent in a weird way (even if they are not).

Final score of 4 / 10. I would have given a lower score if not for some entertaining moments that sustained my attention.