I don't usually start these things off by giving the premise of a show away right at the start, but this is a WILA and frankly, this is too damned good to avoid mentioning.
Imagine the modern day JSDF fighting Fantasy Rome.
Fantasy Rome is f***ed.
Seriously, I just gave you the entire show in one sentence. But you want to know more I'm guessing. Or you want to know what I thought about it. So I'll just come out and say it: This is one of my favorite shows since Aldnoah Zero.
This is a very, very high bar. GATE came out around the same time as Gundam: Iron Blooded Orphans (which I also adore). Aldnoah was the show that got me back into watching current shows. I'll likely rant about that show some other time (read: later this week), but for now all you need to know is that GATE ranks up in the top three of my favorite shows to come out in the last five years.
That should tell you something.
The basic plot is pretty simple. One day, a magic gate just shows up in the middle of a busy street in Tokyo, and a legion of cavalry and infantry decked out in Roman-era armor come pouring out and commence slaughtering as many people as they can. They get put down pretty quickly, but needless to say Japan is none too pleased with this.
So they send in the JSDF to take a look, and f**k some shit up. Because those are innocent civilians you murdered and you'd better believe they will NOT stand for that kind of shit. Their job is to establish a base of operations on the other side, find out who is responsible for what happened, and to find out just what the hell is on the other side of this thing.
Our hero is probably one of the best protagonists I've seen in a long time. Itami is a reserve in the JSDF, and he lives for one thing, and one thing only: Anime girls. Dude is the biggest damn otaku you've ever seen, but when shit goes down, he's right there to deal with it. He stops being a weeb and gets right down to kicking ass and saving lives. Because while he may hate doing his job, and would much rather be doing way less dangerous stuff, he still can't stand idly by while people get hurt.
Itami is a f***ing badass. I cannot stress that enough. For all of his talk, at his core he's a decent goddamned human being, who always struggles to do the right thing, consequences be damned.
He isn't like your traditional weeb protagonist. Sometimes he can be silly, but for the most part he remains grounded in reality. Which is the thing I appreciate most about this show - despite its incredibly fantastic premise, it always, always remains grounded in reality. Which leads to a lot of frankly badass moments later on, regarding Leilei, who is by far my favorite waifu of the show.
If that took you aback, I'll be blatantly honest: This show has waifus. It has the harem element going for it, but strangely enough not in a bad way. In fact, it handles the anime harem thing in probably the best, most mature fashion I have ever seen. The women gravitate around Itami, but not every woman. In fact, a couple seem repulsed by his nature as an otaku (and the fact that he's lazy as hell...). But the ones who do have genuine reasons for forming bonds with him, mostly due to the fact that he's a decent goddamn human being who lays his life on the line for other people, without any thought of reward.
Among the cast are the token hot elf chick, the young wizard prodigy, and the 900-year-old avatar of the goddess of death. Her name is Rory, by the way, and everyone loves her. Even I do, to some extent.
It's full of all the great cliches, but it uses them to such amazing effect that it adds to the thing as a whole. Instead of relying on the hot girls kicking ass, the ass-kicking is pretty much everyone's job. From the SDF grunts to the main characters, everyone gets to shine equally, because they all work together as a military unit. A huge component of what makes this work is that the modern world meets fantasy cliche is portrayed through the lens of a military drama.
As if that weren't enough, they go to the lengths of keeping in mind the geopolitical ramifications of the Gate appearing. The US, Russia, and China are all very interested in it and what might be on the other side, and there are a couple of episodes where all of this affects people on both sides of the Gate. Not to mention the obvious Japanese bureaucratic BS, and the Fantasy Rome equivalent.
There's a LOT to this show. It's got well-thought-out political machinations, both modern and fantasy alike, it's got dragons, it's got people riding dragons, and it's even got lovely military porn and scenes of entire scores of dudes riding dragons getting f***ing massacred. One of my favorite moments is very early on in the show, where three small armies all converge on the Gate to attack the SDF, and before they're even ready for battle, the shells come raining down on them.
"What magic is this?!" the leader cries, realizing that this battle is lost before it even began. It sets the tone for pretty much everything else that comes to follow, and reinforces the theme I lovingly call "Fantasy Rome is f***ed". Because they are. Doesn't matter that they have ten times the manpower as the SDF, their technology and tactics are centuries old. What use are cavalry and dragons to helicopters and guided missiles? The answer is none.
It doesn't take very long for "the men in green" to become renown, largely due to Itami's actions.
A lot of the names are hilarious too. Lady Pina Colada, for example. Or my personal favorite, Lelei la Lalena. They just make you laugh. A lot of the people around Lady Pina are named after various foods or drinks, but that's just a normal thing to them, and to me is pretty freaking awesome that they manage to play it all straight.
If you haven't seen this show yet, for god's sake man, what are you waiting for?! Go watch it! People say Attack on Titan is good, and don't get me wrong, it is a good show. But GATE is on a whole different level of good. The animation is amazing, the characters are brilliant and well-written, and there is something that just tickles me about seeing modern technology starting to mix with magic that is immensely pleasing.
This entire show is genius, from top to bottom, and everything that happens is driven by the motivations of the characters involved, all of which are executed in the best way possible.
I cannot stress enough just how excited I am for the prospect of a Season 3.
So now that I've finished gushing, why do I love this show so much? What about it sets it apart from the myriad of other options that exist?
It's the writing, and the thought put behind everything. I've seen criticisms that people have of the show glorifying the Japanese military, and I can understand that. The SDF is pretty great, but comparitively speaking, they are weak compared to the other superpowers. Which is part of what makes this show so damned awesome, because they do kind of keep these things in mind. Early on they complain about having technology that is decades behind, and horribly outdated - a problem even the US military often faces in modern warfare. Budget cuts, inquiries, and all kinds of red tape prevent them from operating in the most efficient manner, and yet despite their extreme limitations, the SDF still manages to kick a lot of ass.
This isn't due to writer bias mind you - it is simply that the tech being that far advanced, and the tactics being so far removed from what Fantasy Rome is used to dealing with. They can't even begin to comprehend just how outclassed they are because they are literally still stuck in the Dark Ages. Even with gear that's decades old, the SDF are able to steamroll any opposition. Artillery shells and helicopters are impossible to overcome for these guys - and even with magic, they can't really hope to compete because of the technology gap.
That's why I love this show so much. It doesn't just give you a basic idea and run with it - it explores the various concepts and highlights how these things would likely play out in a realistic way.
Plus, it's got a healthy dose of f**k yeah! I love that.
So seriously. What are you doing still reading this? Go watch it! Go! It's amazing and definitely one of the best shows in recent memory, and deserves all the attention it can get.
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