Divine Gate (Review)
Divine Gate is Pure Chaos.
As someone with pretty severe ADD, I’d thought that I might enjoy the chaos that is Divine Gate. However, even for someone who is easily distracted by shiny objects, I found this anime from Pierrot (who also made Black Clover and Tokyo Ghoul) to be a little too unfocused. Of course, it doesn’t help that the series is based off a smartphone game, especially given that anime based on video games tend to not be very good. The thing is that Divine Gate has a lot of individually interesting concepts. However, the combination proves to be overwhelming and distracting, to say the least.
Typically in a review, I try to do a brief synopsis of a movie or anime to help people decide if it’s something they might be interested in. However, It’s hard to really know where to start with Divine Gate, because no matter how I try to describe it, it never makes sense. Basically, it takes place in a world where elemental magic exists and there is a legend of a divine gate exists that can grant whoever finds it one wish. See, that sounds pretty simple, right? Well, I haven’t also mentioned the Norse Gods, Arthurian knights, and a baseball bat-wielding Santa Clause. Now you’re starting to see why Divine Gate is such a mess of series, especially considering this anime tries to shoehorn all these concepts into 12 short episodes. By the end of Divine Gate, I had no idea what was going on or who I should be rooting for. Needless to say, it’s a bit of a mess.
What surprises me so much about Divine Gate is that it’s from director Noriyuki Abe, a man who has a reputation for creating some pretty impressive anime over the year, such as Yu Yu Hakusho: Ghost Files, Bleach, and, more recently, Boruto: Naruto Next Generations. So I struggle to understand exactly what went so wrong with Divine Gate. Thinking about it more, I feel as though it’s a series that makes the most with what it’s given to work with. In other words, the characters are all fine, the action sequences are fairly impressive, and the design elements are… memorable. However, it’s just a total hot mess of an anime. Even under the watchful eye of Abe, there’s no saving this series from buckling under its own weight.
Like I said earlier, Divine Gate has some pretty interesting concepts. For one thing, there is an element of God’s versus humans. The series implies that there are Norse God’s that are pulling strings from behind the scenes, most notably Loki. However, it never really goes very far with that concept besides the ever popular trickster God. For a short period, it tosses in modern knights based on the ones of Arthurian legend. Though they are merely mortal and don’t stand much of a chance against actual Gods. If it was just that, then Divine Gate could have been pretty interesting. However, the series doesn’t just stop there. At one point Santa Clause appears and he’s far from the jolly fat man you might expect him to be. Instead, he seems more like a baseball bat-wielding elder god. Oh, and I forgot to mention that Shakespeare, Schrödinger, and the characters from The Wizard of Oz also appear. These concepts prove to be so incohesive overall that they tear the series apart leaving. There’s no cohesion when it comes to the vision behind Divine Gate which makes it difficult to become invested in it.
Despite all my complaints about Divine Gate, I will say that the animation is very well done. The character designs are memorable, if not a bit confusing. However, I do like how crisp and clean it is. The series has an almost digital feel to it, but doesn’t fall into the cell shaded aesthetic that seems so popular in a lot of different series this day. The problem is that there are inconsistencies when it comes to the series overall aesthetic. It tries to blend new world ideas with old world ones and can’t seem to find a cohesive middle ground for it to stand on. The end result is that it just feels goofy more than anything else, even during the parts that are supposed to tug at the audiences heart strings.
Honestly, I’m pretty open-minded when it comes to the series I watch. I’m a firm believer in the three episode rule (where you have to watch three episodes of a series before abandoning it). However, due to my role as a critic, I will often watch terrible anime to completion. Even though Divine Gate is only 12-episodes I thought it would never end. It’s a drag of a series and there so many other anime truly worth your time. I can’t recommend Divine Gate, but if this cluster@#$& of a series sounds good to you, then you’ll have to let me know what you think. Maybe I just didn’t get it. But I’m pretty sure that it’s just a hot mess of a series in general.
