It's been one and a half years by now, and I still don't entirely know where the time went. I've been doing a whole lot of nothing as always, and I just completely forgot that I had a blog. Of course, that's probably for the better, seeing as it's probably a waste of time to keep pushing out overly "lolrandumb" anime reviews that no one ever reads, but then again everything I do is a waste of time.
GATE:
I liked the manga, and I still kinda like it. I get very involved when things turn to Japanese nationalism, and I admire any series that can actually make a political statement with any real heft to it. GATE does that - it's gleefully unafraid to make as many political statements as can reasonably be crammed into a TV-size episode. It's a series with guts and a lot of passion on the author's side, as well as quite a bit of research and a few interesting angles of approaching the "portal to another world" fantasy subgenre.
That's where the good things end, however.
While GATE's passion and guts might make for an enjoyable experience, the series can be a complete mess on some points. The anime's animation quality is dubious at best, with a bit of dodgy CG spicing up the generally bland and wonky animation. That's not good for a first episode, unless the studio is planning on saving the budget for later. It does happen, so I'm allowed to hope. The series' glorification of the JSDF, too, as heartening and refreshingly daring it might be to have the JSDF in a role where they aren't gun-crazed loonies ineffectually shooting at an obviously invulnerable monster before getting horribly slaughtered, doesn't make for good plot. The very first episode has a good bit of tracting, something that you don't usually see in Japanese media at all - the police are depicted as useless, untrained cowards who couldn't shoot something to save their own life, and who're too pants-wettingly helpless to even try to help any civilians. Meanwhile, series
This is not good storytelling.
This is letting one's own favoritism spill over into a work of fiction, one's personal opinions taking the place of logic and reality. The police are suddenly made utterly incompetent while the JSDF are suddenly superhumans, solely to affirm the author's love of the JSDF - and the sad thing about this is that it could have been done well. There's obviously attention to realism in other parts of the manga, so it wouldn't seem like too much to ask for the author to actually justify what happened, or at least play it down in such a way that it becomes less cringily tracty.
The setting is good. The storytelling is pretty good. The characters are solid. There's little to complain about - except for the JSDF recruitment-campaign shilling, and I actually support the JSDF (and Japan's remilitarization). It takes a lot for me to dismiss or insult something supporting Japanese nationalism, but GATE manages to do it in the obnoxiously worshipful way it portrays the JSDF. Now, I might be reviewing the manga rather than the anime, but it seems that the anime is pretty loyal to the manga - and as such, I'm expecting the same structure. An interesting slice-of-life series about cultural differences and mutual understanding, handled in a realistic way with solid characters and a good pace - and then it all gets broken up by the Divine Invulnerable JSDF and the Mary Sue protagonist (who only has informed flaws) bulldozing anything that was ever a threat, easily outsmarting everyone up to and including the greatest tacticians of whole empires, utterly destroying American and Russian special forces with their hands in their pockets, and in general completely shattering willing suspension of disbelief. Something like this is a massive, massive flaw in storytelling, as it removes any elements of tension or moral conflict - you already know that the JSDF is going to end up on the victorious side, both morally and martially, and this means that there's no actual conflict below the surface. There's nothing at stake, as the conflicts are all composed of a pompous buildup and then the JSDF completely wiping the floor with everyone else, obviously only prevented from saving both worlds and everyone in them by the Japanese politicians, who are all as one mind-controlled by the evil Americans and have no respect whatsoever for the well-being of their own country.
It could have been the greatest bloody series of the decade. It could have been a solid series backed up by political commentary and actual understanding of the factors that led to Japan being as screwed as it is now (hint: Korea) - but instead, it's a one-dimensional shootfest as long as the JSDF are faced with a political or military challenge, making a complete and utter mockery of the infinitely complex mechanisms behind international geopolitics by drawing it up as "US evil, JSDF good, good beats evil" like some demented game of moral rock-paper-scissors about as rigged as the SSK (and guess who's still bitter about #1). It's a crying fucking shame, because it could have been so much more - and whenever the JSDF isn't fighting against anyone else, it is. GATE can be thrilling, it can be moving, it can be interesting, it can be impressive research-wise - but it all goes to hell once the author needs to shoehorn in another outrageously unrealistic victory by the JSDF, completely disregarding how international politics work. It feels like the work of a self-proclaimed political pundit who considers pure gear and training the sole issue in international politics and warfare, and portrays an infuriatingly simplified parody of the international political arena where Japan's politicians play a zero-sum game because they're "evil", and where the author tries his hardest to preach that obviously, the only thing that ever matters in international politics is who has the best gear and the longest hours of the most grueling training. I've heard deeper insights into international political systems from a military-geek loony who earnestly thinks that the Russians are going to go straight for Denmark within the next decade, to secure the route to the Baltic Sea.
GATE is a good series for the most part - 80/100. Then, the political strawmanning and the infuriating simplification of international geopolitics into "They should just let us at those Americans and we'll kill them all, and nothing bad will ever happen from it and Japan will rule the world" comes in, and I don't even want to rate it at those points. That would mean implying that those passages are actual story instead of just animated JSDF recruitment propaganda, and I don't consider them that.
