palmerpink

I recently finished watching the anime Gate . While an overall enjoyable show, it does have its flaws. I've been thinking about it now and then since finishing, and two problems in particular keep bugging me. The story begins when a gate from another world appears in Ginza , a shopping district in Tokyo. After repelling the incursion of ogres, dragons, and centurion-like soldiers who came through the gate, the JSDF  mounts a counter-invasion and sets up a base on the other side of the gate--in the "Special Region." From there, the JSDF encounter all manner of monsters and mischief, usually either slaughtering it with their military might or wowing them with the superiority of Japanese culture--but more on that when I get to the second problem. This constitutes the first problem, which is mostly amusing: Basically, the series is about as masturbatory an exercise in Japanese pride as any I can imagine. Well, actually, I can imagine more extreme cases, but the series get...