Divine Gate

The legend of the Divine Gate is a story told to young children that depicts the merging of the living world, the heavens, and the underworld. "Adapters"—people born with unique elemental abilities gifted to them from the union of these worlds—formed the World Council, an organization which controls the chaos of the Gate by portraying its legend as nothing more than a myth. These Adapters train in a special academy owned by the World Council that allows the students to hone their skills.

Aoto, a teenage boy with exceptional water powers and a tragic past, rejects the offer to join the academy numerous times—until he is successfully pressured by the energetic wind user Midori and stubborn fire user Akane. Together, with the World Council and their mysterious leader Arthur, they seek out the Gate in the hopes of uncovering the truth. But in order to reach their goals, they must unite and overcome their own despair while dealing with behind the scene mischief.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Episode 1 was previewed at a screening at TOHO Cinemas Shinjuku on December 26, 2015. Regular broadcasting began on January 8, 2016.

Episode Videos

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Characters & Voice Actors

Aoto

Main

Saitou, Souma
Japanese

Akane

Main

Kakihara, Tetsuya
Japanese

Arthur

Main

Nakamura, Yuuichi
Japanese

Yukari

Main

Amamiya, Sora
Japanese

Hikari

Main

Taketatsu, Ayana
Japanese

Midori

Main

Itou, Kanae
Japanese

Ginji

Main

Yoshino, Hiroyuki
Japanese

Loki

Supporting

Yusa, Kouji
Japanese

Oz

Supporting

Ishida, Akira
Japanese

Breunor

Supporting

Murase, Ayumu
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Cook, Justin

Producer

Oda, Motohiro

Producer

Abe, Noriyuki

Director

Morita, Yousuke

Sound Director

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Opening Theme

"one-Me two-Hearts (ワンミーツハー)" by hitorie (ヒトリエ)

Edit

Ending Theme

"CONTRAST" by vistlip

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Reviews

Mar 26, 2016

CecaniahCorabele

Not Recommended

During this period, the anime industry suffers "Material lacks". Ideas are getting narrower but productions are getting wider. Many companies suffer to bankruptcy, and to anticipate this they must broaden the marketing ground. In order to broaden it, they throw many adaptations to stabilized the situation. Because of it, there is dozens adaptation appear in various sources. One of those sources is game. But the truth is until this period, not many game adaptation live up to its expectation.

Divine Gate, is a smartphone game developed by Acquire. While the animation is in the hand of Studio Pierrot. As the series went, there are some flaws ... that can be spotted.

As the story goes, they do throw out dozens of information to construct the world building. Unfortunately, it failed. There are too many things unexplained things and the story doesn't start explaining things but keep throwing information dump, hoping the viewer felt a mystery thingy. And if it's too late to explain those things, this can cause a backfire to the plot and can wreck any of the plot elements, make the story felt pointless. All of the elements could be floating in the water without any clear directions. The anime have a hard time to compel dark themes to the story, the truth is the story was failed to bring that feeling. It has terrible exposition and dull storytelling.

Next one is flashbacks. The anime didn't use the flashbacks effectively and producing a slow pacing to the storyline.

Animation quite decent, characters have different colorful designs. While there are some scenes using CG, but the fighting scenes still tolerable. The World seems to be set with advanced technology, with robots, gadgets and other futuristic elements occur.

Background music seems to be mediocre. Seiyuu do their job fairly. There aren't anything that can outshine this anime except the OP theme. It's quite catchy itself.

Divine Gate wanted to be more focused in characterizations than story, they trying to develop the main characters at the early episodes, but it's failed in the execution, the anime more like want to explain how it's their past, not more or less. It tries to blend dark past to the character but failed to relate those past with the story.

After episode 7, I'm totally disappointed by this anime. Divine Gate has a huge number of supporting casts. The bad thing is those characters are not getting any single development. They're purely just a plot device to help the fight more dramatical, which make it more pointless.

Divine Gate is a great example of a pathetic attempt to draws many viewers as quickly as possible. It has been coated into 12 episodes of disaster with forced conclusion in the end. This anime really makes you don't want to watch anime again, so it is obviously not recommended.

So what is Divine Gate? Even Einstein can't answer this.....

Overall 2/10

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Apr 28, 2016

Rahzek

Not Recommended

Divine Gate is the absolute worst show I've ever had the displeasure of watching to completion, let's go over a rundown of our characters and what they're trying to do.

Before you go any deeper let me explain that this isn't a review, this is a complete summary of this series and why you should never, NEVER watch it.
I'm not going to bullshit you with any of the plot or on their names either, it's really going to be as bad as it sounds.

The Divine Gate is basically an all powerful wish granting device and it was used previously to inadvertently tear apart the borders between ... the realm of the gods, spirits, and Earth.

We have our protagonist Blue, his "friends" Green and Red (yup, those are their names) Blue is the suspect to a very serious massacre that happened years ago but there's an adapter academy that doesn't actually have any classes that wants to recruit him to join their school (adapters are people capable of using supernatural elements). A boy named Arthur is something like the student council president and has The Knights of the Round Table featuring a bunch of ripped off names left and right such as Lancelot.

When Arthur was a boy he was sent to some other world to escape something, while here he met a young boy who called himself Santa Clause. Ever since Arthur met Santa he's been bent on restoring order to the world by using the Divine Gate to segregate the realms to their original planes. Arthur seems to be friends with 2 gods that find him interesting for whatever reason and so they say they're "observers" of how he plans to go about reaching the Divine Gate; Loki and The Wizard of Oz... The world is run by a "council" which doesn't necessarily explain how order is kept. The council isn't against the idea of Arthur seeking out the Divine Gate but pulls more of a "We don't care if you try to get there, but if you get there we'll have to kick your ass" kind of approach towards him.

And so begins Arthur's adventure to the Divine Gate, naturally he brings all the members of the Knights of the Round Table but also invites our 3 little classmates Blue, Red, and Green. Arthur opens a portal which everyone goes through to start their journey to the Divine Gate which basically is a seemingly endless amount of hallways with additional doors to open until you finally reach the gate. Halfway or so through these endless corridors our heroes are met by the Scandinavian gods, who were sent by the Wizard of Oz with super powered weapons to "stop" them from continuing their journey, and so the Wizard of Oz knows just how powerful these gods with these weapons are and knows there's absolutely no chance for them to be defeated. Oz assumed Arthur and friends will turn tail and give up on the Divine Gate, but that doesn't quite happen. they fight their hardest, until just about everyone that's a part of the Round Table becomes a sacrifice to allow Arthur, Blue, Red, Green to continue going through the corridors. The Wizard of Oz finds out the Scandinavian gods killed everyone and starts to act like he's all butt hurt over sending his pals to kill everyone, so then he tries to make things right, by crying about it. After narrowly escaping the Scandinavian gods Arthur and the color brigade have to face the next trial before they can reach the Divine Gate, which is that everyone attempting to reach the gate has to have experienced a massive amount of despair. Arthur is excluded from needing to go through despair, Blue has been through despair his whole life being abused by his family because he wasn't supernaturally gifted "yet" while his brother was loved by them, Red thought his father had died in a lab accident, and Green had a childhood friend that wanted to be her "one and only best friend forever" and Green was like "that's too heavy, why can't we just Netflix and chill?" and her best friend was like "I don't understand!" and runs off never to be seen again. so now Loki joins the fray with his pal Shakespeare who has the ability to write a story that traps whoever she wants within an illusion to act out a play. Amidst the entrapment set by Shakespeare, Red meets his deceased father and believes it to actually be him, but then realizes that he was too nice to be his father and dissipates the illusion, as for Green she meets her long lost best friend within the illusion and then realizes it's not her because she said it was fine that they didn't need to be the best of friends. Immediately after breaking free of the illusion, Red is faced with his real father who actually isn't dead and said the council used that as a cover up, but just as they rejoice to find each other again, one of the Scandinavian gods shows up and his dad tells him to escape while he fights off the god, naturally his dad really dies this time right in front of him and he experiences enough despair to reach the gate, then we move on to Green, after her illusion she's confronted by her long lost best friend; who had actually been with the Wizard of Oz this whole time for some reason and changed her name to Dorothy. You know what happens next; that's right, a Scandinavian god shows up and kills her right in front of Green. Blue has to fight to the death against his brother who was the actual culprit of the massacre years ago, but Blue loves his brother he can't just kill him. so then Blue defends himself until he has to retaliate and his brother's all like "I knew you didn't love me, because you wouldn't let me kill you!" and then he walks off, so now that everyone has the appropriate amount of despair to get them to look at the Divine Gate they go through the final corridor and reach the gate, the color brigade then uses their powers of despair to open the door to the Divine Gate to let Arthur inside, but soon as he gets in there Loki shows up and now it's time for Arthur to pull out Excalibur and fight Loki off, Arthur loses of course but he's not really hurt, Loki throws down a demonic mind control sword and says "just grab that sword and everything will be okay" and of course he picks the sword up after saying "you won't take control of me!" and then he gets mind controlled. Soon as he gets mind controlled Lancelot who miraculously survived the onslaught of the Scandinavian gods shows up and runs to Arthur asking how things are going, and mind-control Arthur stabs him through the chest just to make sure none of the Knights of the Round Table survive. The color brigade knows better than to fight against mind control Arthur and Loki so they get outta there real quick and plan to come back for Arthur later.

So they're back in town and the council knows they got to the Divine Gate and even though they didn't get to use it they're so mad that they're gonna pull the color brigade in for questioning and send them to prison. They had a guy who was like their friend at school who says he's gonna help them explain themselves and so he runs off to see the council, when this fucker comes back he literally brings the swat team to their hiding spot and is like "JUST TURN YOURSELVES IN YOU CRIMINALS!" and then Santa Clause shows up through some magic portal for the first time in front of the color brigade to help them gtfo of this mess, the color brigade is like "how we gonna trust someone named Santa that carries around a bat with nails in it like some delinquent" and eventually they're like "alright let's see how this goes" and then Santa goes berserk mode on the swat team and they get the hell outta dodge.

Santa's got a plan, they're gonna go back to the Divine Gate and rescue Arthur so they go back through the endless corridors and get to the Divine Gate a second time, so they get there and the color brigade is totally talked out of using the Divine Gate because they're told "is your wish worth changing the entire world?" because any wish made would have the fabric of the universe change for some reason but then the corridors start to collapse and shit's falling everywhere and so they just up and get the fuck out of there, didn't even save Arthur yet or anything. They're outta there and are greeted by Lancelot and everyone now is just like "I THOUGHT ARTHUR KILLED THIS GUY?!" and then he's just like "Nah, all the Knights of the Round Table are safe too" after we saw them all die, and then Lancelot's like "We're gonna get Arthur back though" then you hear the council say "The location of the Divine Gate cannot be confirmed."

BAM series ended.

There are slight minor details I skipped over obviously being that I don't want to recall this pile of shit, but I think most of it is right there for you to understand.

I hope you never watch this series because oh my god it was horrible.

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Mar 25, 2016

Dangst4r

Mixed Feelings

*spoiler-free*
What happens when you bundle up all your favorite anime ideas and tropes and dump them into one anime? While I would say this anime, it is really hard to discern what even happened in this anime to find out, but dissecting it anyways!

Story: All in all, the story is well a mess. Constantly shifting focus from episodes to episode, there really is no clear main character nor main goal in the anime except for the idolized Divine Gate. But a lot of the time, the Divine Gate really just feels like its there and then everyone else is just sobbing about how they want ... it. There were a lot of cool concepts from technological sci-fi world with robots and elemental drivers that gave you cool weapons but besides that, the story is too confusing and underdeveloped

Art: The art for this anime is gorgeous! While it isn't mystifying or particularly memorable or even matching really a certain mood of the anime, the art is clear and polished, and a lot of the character designs and environments appear dazzling. Honestly, the designs of the main characters are great, but they lacked something about them that just would have made it all clicked. Oh right, their actual personalities.

Character: No character was thoroughly fleshed out. The anime starts off focusing on the woeful life of depressed water boy. Seems ok, but then the anime switches to the two government worker kids, earth girl and fire boy, without much transition and tries to detail us on all the reasons why we should empathize with their sorrow and need of the Divine Gate. Except its all terribly done for such a convincing synopsis idea, there lies little emotion nor compulsion for character actions in both their pasts or the present, so even when we get explanations, they don't make sense or fail to evoke any feelings of compassion.
Furthermore, practically every other character isn't explained at all but the anime tries to make you pity them or understand their warped ideas. The other 3 kids that the anime tries to show off as a contrasting trio? They add NOTHING. They randomly appear, and while they look cool and their contrast is cool, they literally follow the group around, disappear, come back but with opposing mentalities, only to be dragged off the show for an arbitrary reason (like really dumb and random reason). The anime will add a ton of government workers as characters and all of them will have backstories, and unfortunately, none of them are detailed and they all are basically minions until their deaths(?). (so imagine the Angel Beats cast except the useless half is twice as useless). Overall, poor character development.

Sound: You won't notice the sounds of the anime sadly, because there will be an obnoxious omniscient kid narrator constantly reading you ALL THE CHARACTER AND PLOT DEVELOPMENT, leaving nothing to be characterized by characters' actions, emotions, or backstory. Nope, a dude walking down the street? Suddenly, "the man felt regret as he walked down the street, alone as he had always been." Indirect characterization exists for a reason folks. It makes characters more human and creates an empathy link, but when I'm told that someone hates themselves, it's like k. cool.
But the opening song is rather catchy and probably the most promising thing of the show. if you only watched the opening music video then you would probably think this anime is really good.

Etc: So a lot of what I just complained about revolves around the fact that the anime tries to be something it is not. It acts like a vague mystery anime, reaching for some salvation and human futility undermined by the Gods (imagine the obscurity of Mekaku City Actors, the confusion of Steins; Gate, and some cool elemental concept of powers. Mush them together with Gorilla Glue and that's what you get), and this causes a lot of characters to be left out because the anime is indecisive. It wants to tug at your heart strings but it also wants you to try to warp your mind around it. It has a cool plot concept which would earn it a solid 7 if it went the typical shounen route or something, but it reached too far and ended up being incomplete. Lots of potential, but it's just a Jack of all trades and a master of none.

Enjoyment: You'll find yourself liking the first 3 or so episodes. They're not too bad. But then after that you'll start not comprehending things and things become loose and silly. Character behavior becomes inexplicable and trifle. But you really liked the idea of teens with element-charged weapons fighting similar counterpart adults for a all saving deus ex machina goal, so you keep going. But you won't find anything, just like this anime did, and that is why I give it a 6/10. Most people will find this anime, overall, unenjoyable, regardless of tastes.

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End of Franchise klakson188 - Nov 24, 2021	5 replies	by Br3dWinn3rs »» Jul 1, 2022 10:15 PM
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Divine Gate

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Characters & Voice Actors

Aoto

Akane

Arthur

Yukari

Hikari

Midori

Ginji

Loki

Oz

Breunor

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Divine Gate

Alternative Titles

Information

Statistics

Available At

Resources

Streaming Platforms

Synopsis

Background

Episode Videos

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Characters & Voice Actors

Staff

Opening Theme

Ending Theme

Reviews

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