First Impressions – Divine Gate

Gaters gonna Gate

Divine Gate is about…a Divine Gate. Except all the characters are in denial that it actually exists. Takes away a bit of the mystery of its existence when the title kind of gives it away, huh?

Earth! Fire! Wind! Water! Heart! Go Captain…Terrestia? I just don’t know if that has the same ring to it. Plus I think we’re missing an element too, this series decided to have six. I bet it’s “light” or “shadow” or something like that. Well, whatever it is, I bet it will still be more useful than “Heart”. 😛

Cry Me A River

How may I compare thee to a frozen TV dinner?

Overcooled// I pegged Divine Gate as a spunky action series, backed up with interesting lore featuring the mingling of what is essentially Heaven, Earth and Hell. The sci-fi genre tag was also an instant point of interest for me. Unfortunately, the action is taking a while to get rolling. We only get a tiny bit in the opening episode, although I imagine that will increase exponentially once Aoto is inevitably recruited. The sooner this happens, the better, because this show drastically needs to minimize the amount of screentime dedicated to talking to be able to keep my attention.

Any lore about what the divine gate is, what the difference between the worlds are, or how the special abilities work is completely ignored. In its place, we get bogged down with the juvenile whining of Aoto. It’s so cringe-worthy that I can only imagine they came up with a script this bad from digging up the notebook of one of the writers from their teenage years and copying it word for word. Talking about “rain not filling up your empty heart” is bad enough, but saying he eats “food as cold as his heart” is quite possibly the worst line I ever heard in anime. There is no connection, but we’re made to feel as if it’s the saddest thing in the world that this emotionally-stunted little boy has to eat cold ramen. I cannot believe this actually made it past an editor!

Throughout the entire episode, the director is basically screaming at us, the audience, to pity Aoto. They show just about every depressing childhood trope all at once. “A dog stole his cold bread in the rain while his rich and happy family celebrated inside. Then he killed them!” There’s just so much of a forced effort to make us feel bad for Aoto in the most ludicrous ways. Even worse, the whole flashback goes by without Aoto voicing even once how he felt about the whole situation. It appears he’s only able to communicate through vague, emo metaphors as he looks back at the past.

The whole episode is obsessed with Aoto and recruiting him. So much so that they skip anything else of importance…like explaining what the fuck is going on in this world. There are a lot of interesting things going on, and yet they choose to focus on the hackjob poet who spouts what might as well be lyrics to an Avril Lavigne song. The other characters aren’t much better, but at least the things they say don’t make me want to drink a bottle of bleach. I’m focusing on the plague that is Aoto because he is all the show wants to focus on instead of bigger and better things, and that’s what makes me so frustrated.

Elementary

“Sorrow like a ceaseless rain

     Beats upon my heart.

People twist and scream in pain, —

Dawn will find them still again;

This has neither wax nor wane,

     Neither stop nor start.”

-Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sorrow

Irenesharda// See, Aoto? Next time leave it to the professionals.

But joking aside, despite our main character’s lack of poetry skills, I did find Aoto to be a rather interesting character as far as these game adaptations go. So far, this season, we have two video game to animation adaptations (I’m not including visual novels) and one series about kids being trapped inside a video game. Divine Gate seems to exist somewhere in the middle. Way above the product placement drivel that is Phantasy Star Online 2, and yet not quite reaching the heights of Grimgar, le Monde des cendres et de fantaisie.

Divine Gate is, well, it’s a gate. However, you might as well say “the Holy Grail”, for all the role it really plays. The gateway is really just the target, the end of the rainbow, the journey’s end. It is something to be searched for that when found, can grant you any wish that might be on your heart. For most of this world, it is basically a myth, a fairy tale to dream about. However, there are others who think that the macguffin known as the Divine Gate is quite real and there are some with the power to actually see it, even if they can’t touch it yet.

All dressed up and no one to punch

The world we encounter is one that’s pretty familiar, even if the names used are new. Sometime in the future, the Earth realm joins with two others to form a sort of tri-world partnership. We have the world of the fairies (Celestia), the world of humans (Terrestia) and the world of demons (Hellestia). The fairies and demons are already fantastical superpowered beings, using the power of the six elements. Yes, I joked in the beginning with the Captain Planet meme, however, instead of those five that we’re used to, Divine Gate will be switching out Earth and Heart for Light and Darkness and also be adding in some abstract thing called Nothingness. There are humans that also have power to control these elements, called Adapters and the majority of them are either in a special superpower school to hone these skills, or are on the council of said school (possible even the governing body of this world considering it’s known as the “World Council”) called “The Knights of the Round” that is of course headed by a very charismatic and majestic leader named Arthur.

The Divine Gate calls for 6 chosen ones, one of each element to go and seek out the Gate. If you didn’t pay attention, we’ve already met all 6 of these teen kids that will become our main characters of the series. In a bit of surprise upset, instead of the short-tempered but good hearted redhead Akane (Fire) being the actual MC, it’s actually the so-edgy-you’ll-get-cut Aoto (Water) who is taking the lead here. His narration (and pretty poor poetry) is pretty much what leads the story, and it’s his story that we get to know first. It’s a pretty sad one, and you can see why Aoto fell into his ultimate emo funk. It’s not unusual to see some parents play favorites with their children, however, it takes actual effort to be that cruel to your child. I mean, you’d have to make an entirely separate horrible quarters for them to live in, make another separate, horrible meal and leave it out in the rain. These parents go beyond neglect, this is just plain cruelty. You can’t blame the young Aoto for eventually getting fed up and killing them…that is, if he did kill them, which I doubt. My eyes are on his piece-of-crap younger brother.

But anyway, it’s because of his horrible upbringing that causes Aoto not to trust others, or to really think he’s deserving of any kind of breaks whatsoever. A very skilled Adapter to the point that he is pretty powerful even without a Driver (a device that can enhance your elemental powers) or any kind of training, King Arthur is determined to have him join his Academy, no matter how many times the boy tells him no. Even the promise of possible friendships and having meaning in his life, isn’t enough to pull Aoto from out of his depression, but I’m sure that the presence of two Adapters his own age will eventually pull him into the fold.

The other elemental Adapters that shall form our team are the genki, green-haired and aptly named Midori (Wind), the blonde optimistic innocent Hikari (Light), the quiet and subdued Yukari (Darkness), and the gruff tough guy Genji (Nothingness). Yes, everything is named and color coded for your convenience! Hey, who said subtlety was necessarily necessary?

Everything has been set up for our adventure, but you can bet that there will quite a few obstacles that will get in our heroes’ way. Others will want the Gate for themselves and some will want to stop any from finding it in the first place. But, I guess it’s the journey that’s the most important, and despite it’s cliche-ridden, generic beginning, something about the world of Divine Gate and the characters it presents, is still able to draw me in for another watch.

Final Thoughts

There was a lot that wasn’t done right here, at least not for my tastes. One was the bad writing that reached monumental levels of suckiness. Not just for Aoto, but for pretty much everyone else too. Another thing was the lack of time spent world-building. I imagine this will have to happen sooner or later, but for now, anything of vague interest is being held ransom. I don’t have much faith in how they work in the lore either, as the episode opened with a bad guy grabbing a girl and nearly expositioning her to death by telling her about the gate for no reason except for…oh right! The audience!

So what can save Divine Gate? No talking. The writing is so atrocious that it inflicts an almost palpable pain. I assume these same people are responsible for naming all the characters after whatever colour they’re wearing (AOto is blue, AKAne is red, MIDORI is green etc.). Sheesh. So really, the only remedy is to get on with the fighting. Or kill the current scriptwriter.

This series is off to a pretty good start, especially considering most game adaptations, start off just “okay” before falling into awfulness. The music, animation, and acting is well done, and it doesn’t look like they’ve really shortchanged on anything. The story is simple, but I don’t think it needs to be too complex. I like Aoto despite him being the ultimate Prozac commercial spokesman. Something about his mysterious nature, unapologetic moodiness, and his abject desire to be a loner, is an interesting change of pace from your usual MCs, which would basically be Akane. I have a feeling that  other than Aoto and Akane, I’m going to be more interested in the supporting cast than our main team. I love when they toss in Arthurian legend all willy-nilly into anime, and I’m interested in seeing more out of Lancelot, Gawain, Kay, Tristan, Percival, Ywain, Bedivere, Gareth, Mordred, etc. etc.

I’m also interested in seeing what enemies we’re going to end up having and how our heroes will go against them. I’m a sap for elemental powers, and so far, it’s been pretty cool to see them on screen. I am a little hesitant of the drivers that they use, since they seem kind of cheap and I usually find using the elements barehanded a la A:TLA, is cooler. But we’ll see what our heroes can do with them. Overall, a slightly above average effort. It can easily get better or a whole lot worse, so we’ll just have to take this one episode at a time.

About Tag Team

We live, laugh, enjoy and strictly believe on "more the merrier". When together, we usually come up with very chatty, conversation-based episodics and interesting posts.