“If you aren’t watching Gate,” Jonathan Jeckell (@jon_jeckell) said, “you are missing out.” So, I checked it out, on Hulu.
If you don’t recognize US Army officer Jon Jeckell’s name, he wrote The Jedi Way of War for Grand Blog Tarkin, which includes passages like this:
The Jedi Order seems to be an institution outside the government, yet with a role in keeping it accountable, limiting power, and fostering the rule of law, similar to the role the Catholic Church had in post-Roman Europe. Francis Fukuyama discusses this in detail in Part III of The Origins of Political Order.
Gate started out as a web-novel before getting published, then adapted as a manga and then an anime.
The premise is that a magical portal opens up between a “typical” fantasy world — as depicted in Japanese media — and modern Japan. Our hero is a Japanese army officer — pardon, Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force officer — who isn’t particularly devoted to his job, but who does love fantasy. Oddly, that doesn’t seem to be the secret to his success.
The story contrasts the modern, high-tech, bureaucratic Japanese against their feudal counterparts. I enjoyed that contrast.
I did not enjoy the endless genre tropes — cliches, really — which were more off-putting than funny, sexy, etc. It’s “mature” in the usual childish way.
Watching the show reminded me how little I knew about modern Japanese arms. For instance, the standard rifle is the Howa Type 64 battle rifle, which has never been exported due to Japan’s strict anti-hardware export laws. The rifle is chambered for 7.62×51mm NATO ammunition — sort of:
A notable feature of the cartridge used in this weapon is that the powder charge is reduced by about 20%, to reduce its inherently excessive recoil and muzzle climb. It was purposely produced with a reduced powder charge to be more suitable to the Japanese physique. Because it was designed around this specialized cartridge, the rifle incurs substantially accelerated wear and tear from using full-powered ammunition. Still, the gas regulator has a setting to accommodate normal 7.62×51mm NATO ammunition.
(Front-line troops get the newer Type 89 in 5.56×45mm NATO.)
The author behind all this is a former SDF officer who is apparently considered extremely right-wing for presenting war as conceivably good, or at least less wrong than not fighting.
A lot of interesting stories have been rendered basically inaccessible by anime tropes. Sad given the freedom inherent in the medium.