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Tyuule is messing them up. She was smiling so much.

Gina Szanboti wrote:

I would also have preferred if Pina hadn't been made into such a damsel in distress for Itami to rescue. I don't mind him rescuing her, but I'd just like to see her show a little spine during her captivity. It sounded like she thought she'd been left alone in the building and forgotten in her cell, in which case, that's the time you start working on getting out of there instead of going to pieces. With all that lamp oil, she could set fire to the wooden door. She's got a window for air and the walls are stonework, so it would be safe to do it.

I guess that I agree in principle. The damsel in distress is not exactly a flattering trope, and in general Pina has set herself up as not quite such a princess of such a story. We know that she is a strong character, and that goes beyond any physical strength she may have and extends to her knights.

Finally! The capital is under attack.
If the US was involved, they would have rain FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY on Zorzal and his minions.
I think they overdone it with Pina screaming for help.
Next week is the finale!

Pina's awesome, standing up for herself.
Itami's awesome for going to the empire to save her.
Rory's awesome for being a badass this episode too.
Same with Lelei. Glad to see they were able to save Pina from that hellhole the Empire and Zorzal.

Watching Zorzal squirm in fear is quite amusing lol
I liked this season just as much as the first even though it had a darker tone to it. Lol Itami still loves his otaku goodies. Yes, they also used the first season's theme song in the finale! (one of my favorites from last year's Summer season). Anyways, I really enjoyed this show overall including the second season. Rating this as very good.

Well... it is a conclusion.

The season overall was decent but the finale simply felt "adequate".

Not a bad wrap up but there is something a bit unexamined here.

How did the Emperor go from the scheming despot that pit his allies to be slaughtered by the JSDF get converted into the peacenik ("I'm signing with Japan") we ended up with?

And Pina. Yes we understand why you would look on Japan favorably but when you take your oath to your nation you don't swear fealty to a foreign power -- even an ally! -- when you accept the mantle. Don't do that. You just declared your self a client state.

Season 2, Episode 12 (finale)

This episode had a bunch of things to like, but for whatever reason it just feels kind of disappointing. I have been wafting for ages for Pina to be made crown princess, but this was all so sudden, that it just does not feel right, like the partners being shown. Especially with Delilah because the show kind of made an act to show that Delilah was affected in hearing Tyuule's name, and I thought that she would really play a large part afterwards with connecting there is something up with the bunny girl slave. It did not have to come to a ahead in the rest of this season, but Delilah who thought that her queen betrayed her connecting the dots that the queen had been made into a slave could have built a better dialogue in the series beyond Tyuule doing an evil face and talking to (getting licked by) pig man. That Delilah has just forgotten it and is helping guy in wheelchair just does not feel right. Tyuule crying was a somewhat good moment, but I don't think the series deserved playing that card.

Some nice action, but there was almost no tension, even the build up felt bad for what this series could usually do. We have some cool stuff, but this just was not right. The rest of his old squad coming to help was great, but again this just did not feel right. I do like how we were ending with Itami trying to go to the event again but being prevented by the girls and their celebrity status, but maybe it was just too late at this point. Wasn't Rory wanting to tell Hardy off?

GATE is not a bad show, I do think it falls into some trappings that it tries to be aware of like all these fantasy girls, while making "good" male characters, and then disposable male fantasy characters. Would it be so hard to throw a bunny boy or gorgon guy? Again, I liked the show despite its failings, and there was good things this season. I give a rating of Very good (8/10), in general in line with the first season overall.

1) This anime devalued itself by the ecci/fanservice aspects.

2) Also, the fights are incredibly stupid. For example, the main hero who is "special forces professional" totally mangled the spoiler[dragon kill] operation, it resulted in many avoidable deaths and was eventually successful simply by a pure accident. I wish authors would respect the viewers more and really tried to come up with something clever instead of choosing easy ways such as making characters dumb and incompetent. The work they have done is insulting.

3) This anime, however, shows mostly realistic picture how the newly discovered territory would be treated by our "civilized world" -- with, of course, neo/colonial approach and utter cynicism or politics and PR/media relations.

4) It also covers the theme of people that are in positions where either of their actions or inactions are immoral to some people and lead to deaths, which is the reality of politics.

5) the show presents incorrect, naive picture of how the media work; in reality they are in bed with government and army, not sceptical/critical of them;

6) the army is presented also idealistically, it is not just a group of honest patriots that serve their country, it is as political as everything else, full of cynicism and opportunism.

MaxSouth wrote:

1) This anime devalued itself by the ecci/fanservice aspects.

To each his own on that. Those parts were relatively minor components, and I never saw them as a problem.

Quote:

2) Also, the fights are incredibly stupid. For example, the main hero who is "special forces professional" totally mangled the spoiler[dragon kill] operation, it resulted in many avoidable deaths and was eventually successful simply by a pure accident. I wish authors would respect the viewers more and really tried to come up with something clever instead of choosing easy ways such as making characters dumb and incompetent. The work they have done is insulting.

Then how, pray tell, would you have handled it, oh Master of Tactics? You forget that what Itami planned and what actually happened are two different things there. spoiler[People died in large part because of unanticipatable complications - i.e., the dragon came back early and Rory wasn't able to alert them due to unexpected headset reception issues. Some of the dark elves also lost their heads and ultimately didn't follow his instructions.]

Frankly, I thought the above was glaringly obvious and that sound military tactics were at least attempted there.

Key wrote:

MaxSouth wrote:

1) This anime devalued itself by the ecci/fanservice aspects.

You forget that what Itami planned and what actually happened are two different things there. spoiler[People died in large part because of unanticipatable complications - i.e., the dragon came back early and Rory wasn't able to alert them due to unexpected headset reception issues. Some of the dark elves also lost their heads and ultimately didn't follow his instructions.]

As I recall pretty much spoiler[all the Dark Elves bought the farm on that sortie] as a result. I alway thought it was bit much for them to switch from iron-age melee weapons to modern RPGs in one step.

As for the competence of the JSDF in that scene the other factor MaxSouth isn't considering is that the mission itself was restrained by political concerns to start with and then at the last minute decided to go all-in to support Itami. That's hardly a formula for a flawless operation but at least when the go order was given it went down fast.

All of this is consistent with the overall theme of the anime, where the core/regular JSDF is competent brave noble righteous clean respectful and their main enemies are politics and politicians. And reporters and spies. This totally unabashed promotion is so nakedly obvious that it actually became a big part of the charm of the series and a big part of the reason so many of us like it so much.

Key:

Authors have made the main lad to "forget" the fact that wireless communications do not work/work unreliably in spoiler[caves] -- this is common knowledge, and the military, let alone special forces, are guaranteed to have it. For such cases wired communications are used; they can be either simple reels to connect field phones (e.g. RL-31, which is used by the USA and Japan, among other countries) or modern versions that besides wired communication also provide wireless one as the cord in such cases is actually consists of few cables, and many tiny radio repeaters are attached to the couple of cables to carry on wireless signal from/into a necessary place e.g. spoiler[cave].

Authors present a character as rational (not a mentally challenged) person or, even worse, as a professional with experience in the military, and the more so in special forces, and yet they are lazy to come up with an action without destroying the picture they were previously trying to paint, without turning whole thing into a farce. By this authors suggest that the audience has no basic common knowledge (I am not talking about RL-31 and other details, just about the fact that wireless communication do not work/well in places like [spoiler]caves[/spoil]) and hence would buy the action they came up with, and it is insulting.
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Few more points, continued from my previous post (animenewsnetwork.com/bbs/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=4795597#4795597):

7) out of place use of historical terms such as "oprichnina" -- phenomenon that was about crushing the remnants of feudal fragmentation to centralize the power of a monarch. It is misused in this context since what is depicted in this anime is spoiler[cleansing of opponents/dissent after a coup] which is the most typical thing ever since the dawn of time and was in wide use in the Ancient Rome; it is especially weird and misplaced since authors even use the terms of the time such as "Emperor" and "Senate";

8) more of the same: "Potemkin's village" is a historical myth, never happened in reality. It was made up by those who never seen Potemkin's villages, by a bitter international legations that were not invited to join the tour from Saint-Petersburg to newly gained Crimea peninsula, held by Catherine the Great or Russia to celebrate the historical victory over Turks/Crimean Khanate;

9) got to episode 22, where the magician lass and, more importantly, everyone else was made by authors to forget that she can activate her spoiler[magical defence] at the moments when she was spoiler[supposed to be stabbed]; yet another stupid plot turn;

10) for brevity and because of lack of time I omit listing countless wrongs through the anime, e.g. the way preparations to spoiler[detonate explosives in the fire dragon elimination operation] were done.

Based on what I remembered, I found Gate to be an entertaining run, if I were to have taken the show with a more scrutinizing view I could easily have found more faults with the show to the point of tossing it out part way through S2.

Quote:

1) This anime devalued itself by the ecci/fanservice aspects.

I have seen a fair number of shows with such aspects, and certainly I have seen shows that were derailed by ill timed use of ecchi material, Gate simply was not one of the more blatant examples.
As Key has already responded, it is something of a viewers individual discretion on "what is the limit" for when fan service ruins a show and I will side with "it was done in moderation" for the Gate anime.

There are no doubt political tones being made throughout the run of Gate, and being what amounts to the JSDF version of "NIPON, F*CK YEAH!", the show overall has to be taken with a grain of salt than pointing out flaws such as "people/technology doesn't work that way" when you have an interdimensional portal being a plot point present in a land filled with magic and dragons.

FenixFiesta:

Yes, this show is by far not the worst example of an anime that was derailed by fanservice. However, the story in general here represents more complex, higher class picture than average where things are very basic and simplistic, and this makes fanservice elements look more jarring, distracting and off-topic than usually.

Observations in continuing to my previous post (animenewsnetwork.com/bbs/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=4795714#4795714):
11) I love when an anime character list includes charming puffy ladies, I wish authors have given such character bigger role in this anime, as well as that more of the kind would be introduced in other shows. Even to this day I remember the amazing teacher lady from Golden Bell Gash anime, it was lovely. Yes, I know, that philosophically anime is about abstract visual escapism that tends to avoid any and all real life imperfections, and excessive weight is considered among them, and I am firmly against colas/burgers/fast food, but still: if anime does not propagandise unhealthy foods/deadly diets (as many anime, unfortunately, do), having various body types is great;

12) another absurd aspect of the incident with the magical lass is that somehow people could not see if she was wearing spoiler[an armour] or not. Anyone who ever saw a piece of spoiler[armour] would know how ridiculous this notion is, considering her garment;

13) more laughable action in the end: Japan soldiers were made by authors to "forget" to spoiler[wear light armour vest against arrows], let alone the fact that ground troops would not be really engaged in the battles since most of the job would be done from helicopters, where soldiers are in complete safety in this context;

14) heroic music in the background during the massacre sounds gross and repulsive in moral aspect;

15) in the end "civilized world" upheld controllable spoiler[monarchy and stratification of society that robs people in favour of the class "nobles" in the Gate world], which is a sad thing, but realistic since neocolonial powers do not really care. Too bad that the show does not reflect on that;

16) Considering that the first half of the series also had issues (animenewsnetwork.com/bbs/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=4604780#4604780, animenewsnetwork.com/bbs/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=4604882#4604882, animenewsnetwork.com/bbs/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=4606766#4606766), this show overall, as most of others would be much better if it had proper scenario supervisor that would say to authors/scenarists "rewrite this part", "rewrite that part" to avoid all of the nonsense. In such case this anime could be at least "Excellent" or even "Masterpiece".

As it is now, it is two level below that, somewhere between "Good" and "Very good", and I gave it "Very good" rating (despite my criticism I usually look relatively kind in terms of ratings as they consider good parts of a project, too).

I'm skipping some points here that I just don't think are worth the effort to comment on or which are purely your personal opinion and you make it clear that they are.

MaxSouth wrote:

Authors have made the main lad to "forget" the fact that wireless communications do not work/work unreliably in spoiler[caves] -- this is common knowledge, and the military, let alone special forces, are guaranteed to have it.

They were in an open-mouthed caldera, not a totally enclosed cave. Hence I can buy a reasonable assumption that being able to maintain wireless contact was expected.

Quote:

7) out of place use of historical terms such as "oprichnina" -- phenomenon that was about crushing the remnants of feudal fragmentation to centralize the power of a monarch. It is misused in this context since what is depicted in this anime is spoiler[cleansing of opponents/dissent after a coup] which is the most typical thing ever since the dawn of time and was in wide use in the Ancient Rome; it is especially weird and misplaced since authors even use the terms of the time such as "Emperor" and "Senate";

So what? Anime mix naming/cultural elements from different eras all of the time. Besides, I think your interpretation of the historical oprichnina is more than a bit slanted. They were still, basically, a secret police force acting outside of normal channels.

Quote:

8) more of the same: "Potemkin's village" is a historical myth, never happened in reality.

While several historians do agree on this point, that doesn't in any way affect what the phrase means (i.e., something built to make observers think that a situation is better than it actually is). An allusion doesn't have to be based on something real for its meaning to be intact, and you not liking that it happens isn't going to change that.

Quote:

Yes, this show is by far not the worst example of an anime that was derailed by fanservice. However, the story in general here represents more complex, higher class picture than average where things are very basic and simplistic, and this makes fanservice elements look more jarring, distracting and off-topic than usually.

Clearly you have much stricter standards on what constitutes "jarring" fan service than I do. I will call out fan service as being distracting when I see it, and I don't recall ever thinking that once about this series. (Besides, it's not like the series is loaded with it.)

Quote:

15) in the end "civilized world" upheld controllable spoiler[monarchy and stratification of society that robs people in favour of the class "nobles" in the Gate world], which is a sad thing, but realistic since neocolonial powers do not really care. Too bad that the show does not reflect on that;

Why should the show reflect on that? This was never about inducing a political revolution in the Empire; in fact, that goes far beyond the purview of the JSDF's mission. This is just another case of wanting the series to be something other than what it is.

And besides, history has taught us that forcing societal and governmental changes on a nation that isn't ready for them is usually fraught with long-term problems and complications. (See Africa for glaring examples of this.) Heck, people forget that the U.S. - which was as philosophically, socially, and structurally primed for a major governmental change as just about any other nation in history - still had a rough several years getting themselves initially established.

I marathoned the series and rated it Excellent (10/11). A question: There is a scene wherein two characters both mention that that the Gate will disappear (I believe that that HaruhiToy also made a mention of it in this thread). Is there any further discussion of this fact in the light novels? (or web novel, for that matter?)

MaxSouth wrote:

14) heroic music in the background during the massacre sounds gross and repulsive in moral aspect;

Ride of the Valkyries, a song that brings to mind the idea of the Norse Valkyrie who would fly in and take the souls of warriors who fell in battle. Was there anything more fitting that could be used while helicopters are sent in to decimate the forces of ancient like warriors? It also worked as a reference, and as a tactical method of intimidation where the soldiers knew playing music could overwhelm them and cause many to give up, hopefully saving lives that could otherwise be lost while ensuring victory.

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