Gate | Episode 7
Buckeye: So pretty much, that cliffhanger at the end pretty much amounted to nothing. This episode is all setup for the arc to come next as everybody goes back to Japan, while the girls are tagging along with them to learn about their world. It should be some pretty interesting stuff seeing that the last time citizens from the other world came, they were out for blood. But these visitors are much different from them.
cxt217: Given Itami’s nature, nothing short of killing him (Which even the knights were not stupid or arrogant enough to do without permission.) was going to get him to report his…treatment as a violation of the agreement, given how the situation unfolded. And now he gets to make his report to the Diet with some locals of the fantasy world like Tuka and Lelei (Which was expected – and required for the report to the Diet.), Rory (Who was unexpected and forced herself into the mix.), and Pina and Bozes (Who were unexpected and forced themselves into the mix because they really wanted to sweep everything under the rug.). In the latter case, Pina does have very valid reasons for doing so (Unlike Rory.), since she wants to do everything possible to keep the JSDF from deciding to open a can of hurt on the Empire.
Episode 7 is one of the more interesting episodes so far, because while there is not a lot of action in it (Unless you count Bozes slapping the heck out of Itami – and both her and Pina are freaked out that apparently Lieutenant Yanagida realized exactly what happened.), it does a great job of doing the compare and contrast nature of the series. Gate is a discovery series, but much of the draw is not just how the moderns react to a fantasy world, but how the people of the fantasy world react to modern Earth.
Much to Kurata’s delight, we finally see our first cat girl…And a bunny girl trained as a warrior, and a medusa (Who appears to be an rarity even in the fantasy world, considering Lelei’s reaction.)…Who are also maids for the Countess Formar. Given his situation, Itami does not get much chance to appreciate the otaku fanservice he found himself in the middle of it. Here again, we see Itami not doing the otaku schtick – if a viewer came into the series about in the last couple episodes, he or she would be forgiven for thinking the only otaku in the recon group was Kurata.
davesimmons: The reaction to hearing that Itami has completed Ranger training was amusing.
He’s a laid-back guy who calls the JSDF just his job, but we saw in the first episode where he killed one of the attackers with their own sword that he’s far from a slacker.
GingaDaiuchuu: Felt a little more like Outbreak Company territory there for some of the downtime, but it didn’t go quite as far. Even though the “solving a problem with your body” thankfully didn’t even begin to play out, it still upsets me a bit that it was in there and treated as it was by the people who knew of it.
Jun Kuga: I didn’t actually have a problem with that. Had it happened in a modern real world setting, it would have felt cluncky and unwarranted, but given the world they live in, it’s not unthinkable that Pina would come up with that solution. It’s a culture clash. It was a bit poorly executed, but the idea itself is fine.
I’m just upset that Hamilton doesn’t get a holiday to Tokyo. Pina and Bozes are attractive and interesting, but Hamilton is where the real magic lies in the Rose Order.
GingaDaiuchuu: I wouldn’t have had an issue with the thought of solving the problem with one’s body if it was treated as an unfortunate reality this culture has been forced to live with. The issue is that it has to go into its otaku pandering and have Bozes be an offended anime girl for being ignored when she didn’t get to give her body to Itami. It’s all done very casually, but the concept being thrown around deserves a lot more weight if they’re going to mention it.
cxt217: It might be a difference in perspective, in how different cultures approach it.
In the late Bernard Fall’s Street Without Joy, there is a passage where he talks about young women from French North African colonies who had been recruited by the French Army from their poor rural village homes to work as prostitutes for French troops serving overseas. They were considered auxiliaries to the French Army and thus subjected to some army regulations, routinely received medical check-ups and care (If needed.) by army doctors, and when they were not engaging in their main vocation, often served as nurses and medical aides to wounded soldiers. The latter service was often performed under the fire, up to and including Dien Bien Phu. When their contracted time of service was up, the women would return with the money they earned to settle down, get married, and start their families. A point that Fall makes is that such things were not regarded as exceptional by either the French Army or the women.
Now, such things would be jarring and shocking to most people reading Street Without Joy even today, let alone when it was published in 1961. But a lenient attitude about such things did and does exist in the real world to the point that I was not surprised at all when it came up in Gate.
The troublesome part is how Gate runs with this line of thinking, since the anything that is non-military related in the story does not get anywhere near the level of attention as the military stuff.
GingaDaiuchuu: Again, if the show knew how to balance its disparate components, it wouldn’t be an issue. It’s because the potential prostitute turns into blushing moe girl who doesn’t get to be a sex object that I was bothered.
Sly05: Yeah, I’d like to see the cultures the JSDF is encountering fleshed out a bit more. So far its relying upon general fantasy tropes without spending much time on exploring how such a fantasy society would really work. Heck, we don’t even know if the magic that created the gate was something the Empire used regularly or if its something they can create again. Has the Empire built its wealth on raiding other worlds and this is just the first time they’ve encountered someone who could put up a fight? Could they open another gate to our world and this time try to make an alliance with another country to try to counter the Japanese dominance?
It’s nice that we’ve got Pina for a character to provide the perspective of someone from the Empire, but even she doesn’t seem to know much about the Emperor’s plans.
Mitch H.: Did I miss some exposition about how and why the gate came into existence? Right now, I feel like we know less about the central maguffin than anything else. It’s being treated as a act of God or natural event, for all the discussion of why it’s there, why it’s a masonry construct. Did imperial mages make it? Why didn’t they shut it down when the expedition got obliterated in the streets of Tokyo? Was it just that the mages were wiped out by the counterattack?
stfram: I’m wondering about this too.
I’d imagine that the first priority after securing the gate and surrounding area, would be to find out how the gate was created, how stable it is, etc. The last thing you would want is your expeditionary force to be trapped on a foreign world permanently, even if those soldiers happened to be volunteers who agreed to the risk.