Back in 2008 a friend invited me to see a movie called An American Carol in theaters, and I remember being struck by how terrible the whole experience was. There was something about the movie that desperately rubbed me the wrong way besides its poor structure and lack of content. That something turned out to have a name: propaganda. The whole movie was an exercise in patriotism and Islamophobia, which explains both the tastelessness of the jokes and more importantly the insufferable moral agenda being shoved down our throats. Since then my only other clear run-ins with propaganda have been my high school history classes, Battleship Potemkin, and now Gate: Thus the JSDF Fought There. The history lessons didn't quite help my image of it, but the two works have been a nice reminder that an invasive nationalistic agenda doesn't completely exclude a work from being fun to watch.
Just from the subtitle Thus the JSDF Fought There we know where the propaganda lies, but Gate lives up to its main title too. The gate in question opens one day in the middle of downtown Tokyo, and through it pour hundreds of humans in medieval attire as well as the regular slew of fantasy creatures, and they begin to wreak havoc on the unsuspecting population. Where they got the idea from to attack Japan is a complete mystery, and is soon shown to be a patently terrible idea. The JSDF comes on the scene to shoot through their flimsy metal armor and push them back through the gate, thanks to the otaku soldier Itami Youji who was on the scene trying to attend a doujin convention. He receives a promotion and is put in charge of a unit tasked with invading the gate and securing the area around it to prevent similar tragedies. Having achieved that with little to no effort, they begin to learn the culture of the other world to bring about peace between the two worlds, as they are forced to confront dragons, bandits, and worst of all, politicians.
There is little to say about the combat despite it being the center of the show besides “the JSDF has 21st century weaponry and the other world has dragons sometimes”, but the political maneuvering of inhabiting a new world makes a strong showing in Gate . On earth, every country starts to pull their political trump cards to get stakes in the limitless resources of the new world, while Japan itself struggles with internal politics over the JSDF’s autonomy away from the eyes of the media. Inside the gate the soldiers have to budget out their aid so as not to exacerbate the war going on between them and the Empire, who destroy towns and resources near the gate in hopes of starving the Japanese out. There are peace treaties, POW negotiations, cross-cultural blending, trade, language barriers, and all the other real issues that go on between newly warring states.
Or at least the show delivers all that in words. In reality Itami and his JSDF forces are untouchable in combat, and we see little to convince us they face any real political dangers either. They suffer no casualties over all twelve episodes, find a girl who can serve as a translator within weeks of peaceful contact, and even an demigod joins their side to quell all resistance within the gate in exchange for an inordinate amount of screentime to make innuendos. None of Itami’s group have flaws enough to cause problems for their operations, and so all blame and misconduct is externalized to rogue Diet members, greedy nations, the Empire—anyone but the nation of Japan is to blame. The Prime Minister, who we are never fully introduced to, ruins his own political career in order to repel the invading American forces, who are only gunning for resources inside the gate. How are we supposed to buy this selflessness with nothing to back it up, and how is it selfless for Japan to be hogging the other world’s potential? The show continues to laud Itami’s backstory with ranks and medals; in reality the show seems to enjoy watching itself laud Japan with status.
And still, Gate tipping the hat to entangled politics and a humanitarian approach to wartime invasion of foreign lands, while completely irreverent of Japan’s sticky past, certainly makes for a fresher experience than mindless action, and certainly much fresher than brain-sucking propaganda. The characters being wholly unbelievable does not make the world unbelievable in turn, and I would imagine a portal connecting Japan to a medieval fantasy world would cause a fairly similar chain of events to Gate’s. Of course I also think the timeline they give is unrealistic given the nature of world politics, particularly Japanese politics. The show may not admit it, but the JSDF’s physical capacity to blow through legions of foreign soldiers in medieval armor may not quite win against the might of politicians making decisions in the quagmire of government with public image under consideration.