In the first thirty seconds of the show, it's established that our main character, Aoi-- if not the entire story-- is edgy. Like, walking-on-knives-and-the-rain-hides-the-tears-in-my-eyes-and-I-can't-stop-writing-poetry level edge. I'm not joking. Not even Edgar Allen Poe would be able to take this shit seriously.
But hey, who cares what the protagonist is like as long as the supporting cast and the plot's decent? It doesn't matter if every episode has a three minute narration overemphasizing how depressed these kids as long as they're well-developed chara--
Haha, nope.
Roll call, please.
We've got a depressed, melodramatic water-wielding MC, the girl on the track team who just found out she was running from, the typical hot-headed flame master, three useless friends, a mascot character that appears twice, King Arthur, Loki, Santa, visual kei/steampunk Wizard of Oz characters, and illiterate loli Shakespeare (I really wish I was joking). So, in short, a chaotic clusterfuck. Oh, and there're twenty other characters who are introduced and have noteworthy character designs only to later take a seat on the bleachers thanks to plot.
Wait, wait, plot? Which plot are we talking about? There are so many plotlines that are started and dropped that's it's almost impossible to make any sense of this story. I felt like I was watching an animated adoption of a school play where all of the actors want to add their own ideas to spice things up but none of them are on the same wavelength.
This anime is terrible. It's God-awful. It's the worst thing to have ever graced my computer screen, and, let me tell you, I've looked up some pretty weird stuff. It's so bad, yet.... yet I found myself enjoying Divine Gate in spite of--no, because of how terrible it is.
