The New Gate

[MFauli]

"The New Gate" is an online life-or-death game with tens of thousands of players. Thanks to Shin, the most skilled veteran player, the other players will finally be released from the game. Shin has killed the last boss and believes he is finally able to escape when he is blinded by a flash of mysterious light. He awakes to find himself in the game's world 500 years later! So begins a new chapter in the life of an unsurpassed legendary player!

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Episode 1:

Ofc, this is super generic and you know it is when I'm already positively surprised that the Kirito-stand in has brown instead of black hair.

But that aside, it was surprisingly fun. I wasn't bored and the situation were just interesting enough to keep me wanting to see where it goes.

My biggest gripes right now:
- the hero hasn't done anything of effort so far. He's op and anyone of us could do the same things in his situation. I find that disappointing, like, do people no longer want to see heroes that have to give it their all to succeed? BERSERK's Guts would cry if he saw what's popular nowadays.

- I really hope it is explained what's going on. Even if it's just one random side note. Is he still in a virtual world? Did the virtual world turn into something real? Is he still dependend on his real world-body's well-being? Stuff like that.

[Kraco]

- the hero hasn't done anything of effort so far. He's op and anyone of us could do the same things in his situation. I find that disappointing, like, do people no longer want to see heroes that have to give it their all to succeed? BERSERK's Guts would cry if he saw what's popular nowadays.

Berserk wasn't an isekai manga. It was a genuine, tradional sword & sorcery fantasy one. The isekai genre is basically escapism literature. It makes sense it presents a very pleasant but interesting world of easy rewards with little effort. After all, it's written for the Japanese who must already attend a prep school to clear the entrance exam to a reputable kindergarten. It only gets worse after that. When they are finished with the education system, they enter the workforce forcing them to do 14 hours days and attend obligatory drinking parties, where the main point is to lick their seniors boots. If a Japanese dude gets married and gets a family, he will hardly ever get a chance to spend time with the children, and the wife is in total control of all family finances. And pretty much everything else at home. With life like that, they certainly dream of getting hit by Truck-kun and getting isekaied into a paradise that's exactly as challenging as they ever would want it to be and not a millimeter more.

Edgelord revenge stories are a different thing. They are written for bullied people, which Japan is full of. The point is to share the experience of common suffering, so the MC may undergo brutal torture and worse, and then finally kill all the villains.

Of course there are a few expections also in isekai. This series ain't one of them.

[MFauli]

Berserk wasn't an isekai manga. It was a genuine, tradional sword & sorcery fantasy one. The isekai genre is basically escapism literature. It makes sense it presents a very pleasant but interesting world of easy rewards with little effort. After all, it's written for the Japanese who must already attend a prep school to clear the entrance exam to a reputable kindergarten. It only gets worse after that. When they are finished with the education system, they enter the workforce forcing them to do 14 hours days and attend obligatory drinking parties, where the main point is to lick their seniors boots. If a Japanese dude gets married and gets a family, he will hardly ever get a chance to spend time with the children, and the wife is in total control of all family finances. And pretty much everything else at home. With life like that, they certainly dream of getting hit by Truck-kun and getting isekaied into a paradise that's exactly as challenging as they ever would want it to be and not a millimeter more.

Edgelord revenge stories are a different thing. They are written for bullied people, which Japan is full of. The point is to share the experience of common suffering, so the MC may undergo brutal torture and worse, and then finally kill all the villains.

Of course there are a few expections also in isekai. This series ain't one of them.

Honest question:

When you explain what isekai is to me, do you feel aroused or something? Lol, I'm sorry, but you know that I've watched countless isekai anime myself, so explaining in longwinded detail what isekai is to me kind of comes of as ... I dunno. Clearly I'm criticizing the anime knowing what isekai is.

And that's not an excuse. Isekai only means one thing: some goes from one world to another. That's it. Anything else is at most a "rule by quantity", but just because so many isekai anime do the same shit doesn't mean it's necessary part of the genre. So in this case, I have NO idea why you're excusing that the hero has to undergo no effort to accomplish things. It's bad writing, it'd be bad in any genre. It's why Solo Leveling is bad, except even Solo Leveling showed us some struggling for its hero. The New Gate just has the hero do basic stuff that any player of the game would have been able to do, but presents it as some awesome deed. I find that terrible, it doesn't make me feel excited.

[Kraco]

Honest question:

When you explain what isekai is to me, do you feel aroused or something? Lol, I'm sorry, but you know that I've watched countless isekai anime myself, so explaining in longwinded detail what isekai is to me kind of comes of as ... I dunno. Clearly I'm criticizing the anime knowing what isekai is.

And that's not an excuse. Isekai only means one thing: some goes from one world to another. That's it. Anything else is at most a "rule by quantity", but just because so many isekai anime do the same shit doesn't mean it's necessary part of the genre. So in this case, I have NO idea why you're excusing that the hero has to undergo no effort to accomplish things. It's bad writing, it'd be bad in any genre. It's why Solo Leveling is bad, except even Solo Leveling showed us some struggling for its hero. The New Gate just has the hero do basic stuff that any player of the game would have been able to do, but presents it as some awesome deed. I find that terrible, it doesn't make me feel excited.

If you ask a question, why are you baffled when it's answered? You also seem to be confused about the exact same thing the woke masses can never understand: entertainment industry is a business. The isekai authors aren't writing this shit to win the Nobel literature prize. They are writing this with the only goal being to get readers, aside from their personal satisfaction (which is only relevant to themselves). So what if it's bad writing? It a massive business these days in Japan. Just look at how many isekai novels get anime adaptations. I imagine for many an isekai author J. K. Rowling is a kind of goddess. She managed to write a mega popular work, adapted into AAA movies, with mathematically calculated attraction for the target audience, making herself an ultra famous millionaire in the process.

If the vast majority of isekai is pure escapism literature, then it's quite valid to classify it as such. I have long ago lost count of how many isekai manga I've read (and dropped), and 95% of them is this same instantly or nearly instantly OP MC shit. The greatest challenge the MC will ever face is how to deal with all the harem members. The percentage would be 99% if I didn't also read some villainess isekai, where the FMC can be pitifully weak on purpose, but it doesn't really matter because typically the FMC is adored by every other character before long.

[MFauli]

Kraco, or whoever knows: What are the websites that lead to light novels being adapted into anime? Because I'm at the point where I want to write a story, that does all the things correctly that I keep being upset about. Is there any big English website where you can publish uncensored stories that have a chance of being adapted? thx

[MFauli]

Episode 2:

Well, this wouldn't be so bad if the hero didn't get everything handed to him on a silver plattern without any real effort.

Still, it's somewhat more interesting than your usual isekai bs, trying to figure out what's happened and all.

But ofc he's already about to receive the next free-of-charge reward: a beautiful, busty, silver-haired elf girl of the motherly type.

[Kraco]

But ofc he's already about to receive the next free-of-charge reward: a beautiful, busty, silver-haired elf girl of the motherly type.

I wouldn't call it a reward because she was already with him in the game. You see her in the first episode, along with a couple of others. But yes, the other stuff was certainly served to him with no effort. I suppose the story needs to launch one way or another. At least he can't contact folks he knew from the game without meeting them first face to face. So, that's one limitation to the extreme convenience.

[MFauli]

Oh, and I forgot: First he doesn't want anyone to find out about killing the Skullknight, then he loudly tells the guild maid that he killed one. That was super dumb.

[Kraco]

Episode 4


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Shin really shouldn't leave behind weapons that might allow some random scumbag to perform a massacre. It must be his game mentality still affecting him. After all, in this fight his greatest worry was outsiders learning his real power. The enemy was meaningless in front of him. So, he could have easily retrieved the sword.

[Kraco]

Episode 5


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"Women take so long to choose their clothes when going downtown that it's plenty of time for making a dozen swords."

I don't quite understand how it was any business of Wilhelm's who and what Shin is. Of course revealing it was the only way to make a friend out of Wilhelm, but if you look at it from the other way around, Wilhelm had exactly zero interest in befriending Shin. He was extremely aggressive with his interrogation and didn't give a shit about any reasons Shin might have had to hide his identity. Shin's indentity indeed was a huge deal. I have to somewhat question the wisdom in being so adamant about trying to be friends with a person who cares nothing for your circumstances and is only interested in his own, despite the huge favour you just performed for the people under that person's protection. It would be better to leave it at acquaintances level.

The funniest detail in the episode was Schnee calling it exactly Shin's character to unselfishly help those in need, while not being boastful of his strength. That's just an average player playing a game. To clear all the myriad quests, you basically are helping folks left, right, and center, very unselfishly and without any arrogance, helping the poor as well as the rich, always accepting whatever they offer as a reward, usually without an argument, although sometimes you can even reject the reward.

[MFauli]

I don't get why people aren't just all grinding to level 999. The soldiers praising Schnee are only weaker than her because the RPG-system dictates so. Just level up lol.

[shinta|hikari]

Time, energy, ability, and risk constraints.

[Kraco]

It's easy to grind in a game where death only brings some minor penalty, like lowering skills a little bit. In life, death brings the end. I quite like fantasy stories where this plays a role. Of course it needs to go hand in hand with some other details as well, such as there not being any exploit type ways to level up. This series actually does sport one of the worst exploit flaws: the one to deal the last blow gets all the exp. Outside of single player games, where it naturally doesn't really matter, it's so idiotic that no languages of men, elves, or ents have words to describe just how stupid it is. Though I don't particularly like it in SP either. Elder Scrolls' skill-based level up system is vastly superior.

[MFauli]

Episode 6:

Robbers threatening murder: ok
Robbers threatening rape: SHIN GOES BERSERK

And, of course, the moral hero is rewarded boobs.

God, I hate these shitty, 1-dimensional situations so much.

[MFauli]

Episode 12:

Well, mostly another bland episode. But two interesting things acutally happened:

- Schnee kisses Shin. And we learn Shin loves another girl, a player I assume.
- other players exist, but Schnee was "lulz, not telling you for 11 episodes"

I'd be more interested in what comes now.

[David75]

Quality control team has been killed? Consistency and overall drawing quality was low already, but in that ep that was really abysmal.

[Kraco]

Quality control team has been killed? Consistency and overall drawing quality was low already, but in that ep that was really abysmal.

It was bizarre. It's like this suddenly became a totally different show. I reckon using generative AI, drawing from the old episodes, would have produced better results than whatever this was. I can't really remember feeling like this for years, when watching anime. Maybe the last time was ages ago with those particular Naturo fight sequences, where drawing accuracy was dropped to 10%, with 90% dedicated to fast and fluid movement. It served its purpose in those few episodes, though.

This was just another one of the anime series that work as nothing but advertisement for the original light novels. The manga is quite a lot ahead of where this anime stopped. I don't know if the light novel is already finished, but just looking back at these 12 eps and then considering how demons were just introduced and got something very minor done, and then even former PKs were thrown around, it's safe to assume this is nothing but the very beginning of the whole story. A slow series, in other words.