Enjoying GATE: Thus the Jieitai Fought There! as a gaijin

Alternative title: stop demeaning this series for the wrong reasons just because (you) didn’t like it.

GATE: Thus the JSDF Fought There! (ゲート 自衛隊 彼の地にて、斯く戦えり) is a multimedia Japanese fantasy franchise about the deployment of Japan’s Self Defense Forces (JSDF) on a fictional hostile land. As with every military-oriented franchise, it has its fair share of vocal critics.
The objective of this post is to introduce GATE to potential new viewers, exploring its strengths and weakness, and to clear some misconceptions commonly attributed to it online.

ENTER the GATE.

For those unfamiliar with this franchise, GATE is a military and fantasy themed isekai that begun as a novel and received light novel, manga and anime adaptations.
Despite sharing the same original author, each medium has slight differences and naturally the subtext and political ideology tend to change a bit. Considering these slight variations between all versions, for this post I’ll focus exclusively on the anime since it’s the one most people will have contact with and it’s the one I watched.

The anime is centered around a platoon of the JGSDF dispatched with an expeditionary force to an alternative medieval-themed world. It follow the antics of modern day military personnel interacting with this alternate reality, starting with a strong action-adventure vibe but slowly turning into a harem romcom of sorts.
The bulk of the plot focuses on political intrigue and a war of attrition between the invading Japanese forces and the ruling local kingdoms. Terminology here is very important as will be elaborated further bellow.
We share the POV of our protagonist, a lazy active duty JSDF officer who gets unwillingly involved in the operation but will, through the series, learn to love his job and care for the people of this other world.

GATE was well received in Japan, selling a good amount of copies and even achieved enough popularity that prompted the JSDF to tag along and start using this renewed interest to boost recruitment.

What GATE isn’t.

GATE gets a lot of heat for being, as people like to put it, “ultra nationalist” and “Japanese war propaganda”. The review page on Myanimelist is a good example of this, as amid the snarky remarks one common trend is to give it a numerical score lower than 3 and write down an ironic comment such as “Now let’s all take a moment and salute the Japanese flag flying in the distance” from this angry fellow on the front page.
It’s tempting to strawman these texts and jump to the ad hominem calling them bandwagon haters or dumb couch historians but we know better than that.
While there’s validity in some of this criticism – the anime does try hard to paint the JSDF in a good light, the criticism is often exaggerated and misguided by ignorance.

“State sponsored propaganda”
GATE’s author, Takumi Yanai, was indeed a member of the JSDF and perhaps this is where this claim often originates from. The fact is, however, that when he first begun publishing GATE as a web series, he was already out of the corporation.
Additionally, there’s another important point to be noted about the author’s career. As far as public records go, it doesn’t seem that he had actually seen combat during his active service so what most people call propaganda is nothing more than fiction writing. We’ve seen it plenty of times before, not only in anime but also in other mediums. Fantasy authors get carried away (often hurting their own script in the process) and forget all about realism when describing exciting campaigns.
Why do we make jokes about “Russian bias” in WarThunder, laugh with the historically inaccuracy of GuP and ignore the lazy nazi references in Izetta but get hurt when GATE also jumps the shark with nippon power?

“Xenophobic”
Quoting someone who commented on the topic, what makes GATE “unwatchable” for them is that “since I’m not Japanese and I can’t feel that whole ‘yay Japan’ emotion” that encompasses the series.
Hm that’s okay? Though if having to share of that emotion is someone’s reason to watch a series like this, they’re probably looking in the wrong genre.

For a quick example:
Independence Day (pictured bellow), Battle: Los Angeles and Godzilla (2014) are some American-made fiction productions that glorify the US military facing an alien threat. From the start you already know the good guys will win and all these movies pack some “for family and country!” scene. That doesn’t make it any less entertaining for me, a foreign, because the reason I’m here is to watch some cool shooting action and explosions.
China also has a very entertaining (albeit scientifically ridiculous) film about them saving the world in The Wandering Earth (2019) and South Korea has a very patriotic script in Flu (2013).
All these films carry a strong cultural identity and if you want to politically analyze them, they will obviously be patriotic. The thing is, none of them step into fanaticism and because of that, they manage to be highly entertaining despite the viewer’s background or nationality.



The mistake most people make is trying to compare GATE to non-fiction, which it isn’t. If we place GATE against historical biopics like Restrepo or Band of Brothers, of course it will look silly and exaggerated, you’re comparing fiction from the mind of a POG to real struggles and acts of bravery from real people in past wars.

“Far right undertones”
When you see an infantry unit raining lead on “inferior” troops armed with swords and axes, it’s easy to call it fascist and a move to incite expansionism. What most people forget is that something which really had those intentions would have a hard time getting approved for production. The Empire of Japan ended many years ago but the scars are still pretty fresh in some Asian regions. It doesn’t help that GATE came out during Abe’s mandate and when the right-wing prime minister had plans to review Japan’s post-war constitutional ban on forming an army. This is the same bill that forbids Japan from developing offensive military tech (i.e. bombers, ICBMs) which would be essential for the fictional army of GATE to have as an invasion force. Regardless, this is an entirely different political discussion altogether but it’s easy to notice why some make the connection.
This franchise, however is better interpreted if we think about Godzilla and mechas. Due to post-war legislation preventing Japan from producing military films, the war genre saw itself fused with mecha and monsterstuff and its legacy continues to this day. GATE is no different from Macross or Gundam, only the enemy is humanoid.

What GATE really is.

The anime is not a recruitment drive, but it tries to boost the JSDF image within the Japanese public.
Military service on Japan is nothing like in the US (for example) and there is a lot of prejudice towards people who are part of it.



Many factors contribute to this situation, beginning with the poor career and quality of life most units have which make young adults shy away from the inferior choice when job-hunting. Because of that, a career in the military is often seen as a last-ditch effort or almost volunteering work. This can be seen on the very first scenes in the anime where the protagonist, after saving a civilian, is ashamed of telling his profession.
Furthermore, the general public has little knowledge on the actual duties and activities of the JSDF, often correlating it with WWII armed forces, which also apparently is a poorly known topic for some millennials.
Mass media also played a role degrading the JSDF’s image when it was dispatched as a peace-keeping force to African countries and the anime makes nods to it.
Finally the anime brings an important topic to the table, the financial and logistic condition of the JSDF isn’t that great right now, public opinion should urge the government to address this issue before it’s too late.
In the end, its underlying intentions can be seen as hopeful and positive. Sad that most people interpret it as arrogant.



Good ideas lost in bad writing.
Ideological arguments aside, perhaps one of the strongest aspects of GATE – and the most compelling for the militaryfag were the pop culture references and weapons & tactics visual galore.
You have Apocalypse Now, Fullmetal Jacket, Black Hawk Down, Votoms, Ace Combat and probably many more references that I missed, all creatively placed during dialogue or combat scenes.
Coupled with that, GATE showcases accurate-ish representations of modern assault rifles, SMGs and handguns. If the series could be summarized in only that, it would’ve been perfect. The issue with this anime is that instead of capitalizing on this nerdy niche and writing autism warfare like GuP and Haifuri, it went the Maoyuu isekai route with cultural exchange… plus a harem.
It wasted its shot of being an anime spin-off of Generation Kill with a comfy friendly squad exploring new lands to, instead, introduce a bunch of girls with varying hair colors, magical powers and problems. Why didn’t it focus on what sold the franchise in the first place: machine guys in a magical land, is something I’ll never understand.

I had a lot of fun watching GATE but because of all these reasons mentioned, it’s not an anime I can easily recommend to everyone.
The target audience is clear, and it’s even clearer what happens when someone who’s not from this group watches it and the anime fails to entertain them.
In case you’re a fan and somehow found yourself here, some reading recommendations you might be interested in:
– Marine Corps Yumi is a semi biopic manga written by retd. US Marine Anastasia Moreno with art by Takeshi Nogami.
– Since I mentioned Nogami-sensei, Sailor Fuku to Juusensha is the spiritual prequel to GuP and it’s awesome.

Finally as closing words, in case you want to go even deeper on the GATE subject, I recommend reading this blog post: Translation: Two Japanese critics on the politics of GATE from karice.wordpress.com.
It’s incredibly in-depth and covers most, if not all, topics discussed here.