Divine Gate - Reviews

Great animation and character designs - the anime could have had a pretty good story if it had taken time to develop the characters and slow things down a bit. The Divine Gate seemed rather mysterious at first but lost its novelty after about halfway through, and some really good looking characters seemed to be there just to occupy empty space - I was really disappointed they did not have a story fleshed out. The whole academy, it's teachers and students, the Scandenavian gods, and countless others will remain blank slates I suppose.

Besides that, I was disappointed that the world was touched on very lightly - they explained a bit about the 3 worlds, but very sparsely. We only got to see a sliver of Celestia. I think they intended to leave this stuff for a second season, but it all felt to rushed

As I said before, animation and character designs were very good - one of the few things I was impressed by.

The music and sound were a bit lackluster, weak opening too in my opinion, but overall was not half bad.

Seeing the past reviews, I did not have high expectations for the anime and it ended up meeting those expectations - just something to watch, pass ~6 hours of time.

Note: I haven't played the app game that was mentioned, but I dont think it being in that format (however the game itself was) is a good excuse for being so lazy with the character development, or so rushed and incomplete in the storytelling.

This anime was not very good.  every aspect of it was very bland, and the ending was no exception.some of the fights looked kinda cool, but lacked any depth to them. Best part of this anime was the intro

It was great, however the ending fell short. The villian is not actually defeated, and is still holding their friend hostage. Also almost every side character dies.

Right, it's confession time for me. If you have been reading my reviews than you may have noticed that I tend to rip the anime a new one. There is a reason for this though and it has to do with the fact that I can't turn my brain off when watching anime. I can't ignore the stupid shown in the anime and this is a problem as most anime are very stupid indeed.

In this case I'm not talking about a 90 pound girl catching a multi-ton cruise missile and throwing it back. Yes, it is stupid but it is a stupid that I'll allow. It's anime. Things like this are normal here and I'm pretty much fine with it. It annoys me to be sure but I will not rant about it.

So, having explained this lets rip into this anime shall we? Just a heads up: There will most probably be spoilers. The more I hate an anime the more spoilers there will be.

ART: Overall the art is fine but there was one section where the CGI was just plain horrible. The odd part was that this was the only section where this happened and it was fairly early in the show.

SOUND: No complaints from me. The music did what it had to do but nothing stood out for me. Voice acting is good but I expect nothing less from anime.

CHARACTERS: Main character is Aoto. He is a water user who desperately tries a dark secret from his past. Besically he is this huge emo git that is extremely boring.

Akane is a fire user and his temperament is suitably volatile. His father was a great man who died in an accident. He searches for the details surrounding his fathers' death. Yeah, he's pretty boring too.

Midori is an air user. She is very happy go lucky and can be very fickly. Her mission in live is to find her chilhood friend who disappeared. Yep, she is boring too.

Arthur is the leader of the Knights of Round (Yes, really the name used in the anime). He searches for the Divine Gate for reasons too.

STORY: After the Divine Gate opened a number of worlds have become intertwined. Now people are crossing over from other worlds and the World Counsil is running things to keep the peace. While the Divine Gate is considered a myth people are still looking for it as the Gate will fullfill any wish to those who enter it.

RANT: I'm very conflicted about this anime. On the one hand it had my interest, on the other it utterly failed to keep it. I very quickly learned what the problem was for me: The main characters suck. Hard.

My character section gave it away I guess but the main characters are boring beyond words. You learn that Akane mopes after his father who was AWESOME!!!!! I mean he was the bestest dad in the wholest world. If God was a dad that he would be him. There is no way his AWESOME dad could have died in an accident! No! He will go to the Divine Gate and find out what happened!

Oh, and he uses fire so his personality can be a bit volatile.

Midori had one friend growing up and she was the bestest, greatest friend EVER! BFF FOR EVER BITCHES!!!11!! There is no way that she is this psycho nutcase who openly resents her getting new friends is bad in any way. Nope. No sir. So when she vanishes she decides to find the Divine Gate to get her friend back.

Aoto....Oh God, Aoto. Look up a picture of emo and you'll see him. He is part of a twin and his brother is a homocidal maniac who killed hundreds of people. But he is cute adorable brother so there is still good in him right? So to protect him he decides to take his brothers name and take the blame for the crimes.

Of course the police aren't stupid so they don't arrest him despite his confessions. They simply hide the fact behind massive encriptions and safety clearances so that we, the viewers, don't know for sure if he did it or not. Do I even need to explain how stupid this is?

The character I wanted more of was Arthur. There is so little known about him, yet he is the driving force behind everything that goes on. When the worlds collided he was found roaming the different worlds untill he wound up on Fairy.

Once back on Earth he set out to make the world a better place. For this he searched out powerful users and integrated them into the Knights of Round. This name is laughable as they keep forgetting the Table part at the end. The first time they were mentioned they were called: Knights of Round Members. I literally laughed my ass off at that as I was envisioning a bunch of fat knights sitting around a table.

Anyway, he is an enigma and his motives are known only to him. Considering the rest of the cast he is a breath of fresh air.

Then there is Oz. He is a wizard. Called Oz and his world is Oz. You get it? Wizard of Oz? I don't get why he is there. The Wizard of Oz is a very famous person from a very famous book and movie. My problem with him? He is powerless in both movie and book. A fraud, who used trickery to maintain his station.

I would have liked it more if they had used Ozma, who is the rightful ruler of Oz and actually very powerful. In the books that I know anyway but that isn't the biggest crime. You have Oz and his world so where are my flying monkeys?

Comon man! How awesome would it have been to add them? FLYING. MONKEYS! Do I have to spell it out?

So many people are negative nancies, and well... here I am, with a brighter outlook on things! 

Divine Gate is an anime based off of a mobile RPG game (Which, in the game has playable characters from other anime, which I thought was interesting.) 
In DG, there is a magical thing called the, Devine Gate. This gate, can grant the user any wish, and shape the world the way the person wants it to be like. Only specific kinds of people can actually seek this gate out, and certain requirements must be met in order to do so.

In the world, characters can use magic in the form of elemental affinities. Fire, Water, Wind, Light, Dark, and Void. (What annoys me, is that in any game, or anime.. they always come up with some weird element, and get rid of wind, or earth. Like in real life, the four elements are, wind, earth, fire, and water.. and games get weird with these sometimes.) 
The story involves three main characters, Aoto, a water user, Midori, a wind user, and Akane, a fire user. There's also three other secondary characters, Ginji, a Void user, Hikari, a light user, and Yukari, a dark user. Despite the last three being secondary characters, they don't get as much lime-light, as they probably should have.

The anime sheds light on Aoto, Midori, and Akane, and what has happened to them in the past, and how they grow as a person for the future. They join a group, that is trying to find the Divine Gate, which is led by a powerful man named King Arthur.
There is a colorful cast of characters, many have names of famous story characters, such as Oz, and Arthur. Unfortunately, most characters  don't get much of a spotlight. But I think that many of the characters are very interesting.
Around half way through, the story starts to get weird, as there's many different plot points, that they don't get to be filled properly, so it gets a bit hard to undertsand what is going on. The ending also makes it seem like the story was pointless, and it just gets kind of strange in a, "What was the point of all this?" kind of way. There are many characters, where you want to feel bad for them, but you can't because you just met them five minutes ago! Like, let's get to know each other first. 
Overall, I did enjoy the series. I feel if you look at it, as an anime with colorful characters, and action, it's easier to enjoy, than worrying too much about the story. Which by the way, there should have been more action scenes! 

They definitely should have made the series much longer, in order to fully captivate the entire story, and lore.  Especially since the ending made it seem like there would be another season.

I give the anime a 7 and a half, because it's really pretty, has fun characters.. it just needs to be tweaked a little to become better!