AKA: Discretion Shots, the Series.

Okay, that’s not entirely fair.  There’s a good chance that’s only the case for this episode.

So uh… fair warning, I’m VERY familiar with Gate, in that I’ve read the manga up to its current chapter.  However, Gate is a novel series, and with that in mind, I’m looking forward to a lot of differences and interpretations that should make this a somewhat surprising experience even with advance knowledge from the manga.

For instance: spending the entire first episode on the initial invasion from beyond the Gate.  I wasn’t expecting that at all, but it was a great decision for character establishment.  Though I did find it amusing that we had establishing shots of the modern world.  Completely unnecessary, but more power to you.

We’re introduced to our hero, Itami Youji, an otaku who is in Ginza to attend a doujinshi festival.  For some reason, we’re told twice in the episode that he only does his job to support his hobby.  It’s overkill the FIRST time it’s said.

So yeah, nothing intriguing about him yet.  But then shit hits the fan.  A phantasmal gate appears out of nowhere in the middle of Ginza, and a middle age / fantasy army consisting of a coalition of humans and… beastmen? demons? floods out and starts wrecking shit.  It would be tragic if I weren’t distracted by all the obvious discretion shots.  What is a discretion shot?  It’s when some shit’s about to go down, and we cut to a different scene.  We assume that the action is completed, but we just don’t see it actually happen.  It’s basically self-imposed censorship.

Youji realizes that the chaos threatens to close the event, so he goes out into the field and shows off the fact that he’s a badass army lieutenant.

By the way, there was one anomaly among all of these discretion shots:

Anyway, thanks to Youji’s leadership skills in saving civilians and buying time for the army to come in and roflstomp the invaders, he is hailed as the “Hero of Ginza” and promoted.  But despite all his accomplishments and accolades, Youji is still haunted by his failure to prevent the biggest tragedy:

So, Japan decides to mobilize the JSDF to explore the lands beyond the Gate and make certain a repeat of the Ginza Incident never happens.  Youji is one of the soldiers to venture through, and… that’s the end.

I have to say, I was overall pleasantly surprised not only that we spent so much time on the setup, but that it felt right.  I also liked the interaction between Youji and Kurata.  For the first time in a long time I actually kinda gave a damn about Kurata.  I barely remember him from the manga (I pretty much just acknowledge that a character that seems similar to him probably existed).

Really looking forward to the introduction of the fantasy world cast, though mostly Pina.  I’m curious to see how they transliterate Rory’s name.  It’s obviously supposed to sound like Loli, but actually going with that would be absurd.  Personally, I would prefer Lori.

Everyone in the JSDF wears camo pattern fatigues, and they’re drawn using that cheap tactic of putting the pattern on its own layer, so it’s like it comes from a bizarre camo dimension.  If anything, THAT is going to bug me for the entirety of this run.

So yeah, looking forward to the next episode.  I now leave you with Mesmer Humvee.