The New Gate (Season One)

Shinya Kiritani was trapped with thousands of other players in The New Gate, a VRMMORPG. Their only hope of escaping was to defeat the game. Eventually, Shinya defeats the boss and sees his friends logging out. However, there’s something else waiting for Shinyua!

The New Gate (Season One)

What did you watch?

I took one look at the poster for The New Gate and instantly thought of Kirito from Sword Art Online. Then, I read the synopsis and had a little chuckle to myself. This series wasn’t even trying to pretend it’s not Sword Art Online. However, the idea that the hero had been Isekaied to a world similar to the game (just like Momonga in Overlord) was more than enough for me to dive in a check this series out. Given the obvious references, I went in with almost no expectations. Let’s see if that helped or not!

---

What happened?

Shinya Kiritani defeated the final boss in The New Gate and breathed a sigh of relief as his friends logged out. They had been trapped in a game where death in the game meant death in real life. He was about to log out himself when a new gate appeared and opened, pulling him into a new world. However, this new world was just like the one in the game. He even had all his skills and equipment. Shin had to check to see that it wasn’t the game, but everything felt too real. After wandering the world, he comes across his old home, the Blue Moon, however, instead of finding anyone familiar, he encounters an elf girl being attacked by a group of bandits.

Shin chased off the bandits and then defeated the monster that seemed to be drawn to the elf girl. She took him inside the Blue Moon and introduced herself as Tiera Lucent. When he introduced himself and revealed that he was a High Human, she almost laughed him out of the building. There hadn’t been a High Human in over five hundred years. Regardless, she offered him some advice about how to get to the nearby town and register as an adventurer. He needed to find out more about the world, especially as it was almost identical to the world in The New Gate. Was there anyone else like him and what happened to the world in the last five hundred years?

---

What did you think?

As cliched and ham-fisted as this series was, I actually kind of enjoyed it. There were plenty of moments where I found myself laughing when I probably shouldn’t have been, but that’s fine. The fact that the protagonist is called Shinya Kiritani tells me that there’s no way this wasn’t in some way inspired by Sword Art Online. The names and places and even the events that happen all feel like Sword Art Online fan fiction. I don’t have a problem with that, I just feel like it’s something that should be mentioned. There was a lot of potential for this to be really interesting, but it rushed a lot of things and as a result, I couldn’t get invested in the characters. Still, it was fun and that’s all that matters…

---

What was your favourite moment?

Ironically, the most interesting thing to happen in this series happened right at the end of the season. Shin had bumped into numerous in-game assist characters like Schnee Raizar. However, for the longest time, it was just his assist characters. Then, he met one of his old friend’s characters. They revealed to him that there were a number of other players in this world. There were even several player killers. That’s when the show hinted that Shin may have had a love interest in the game who died. Was she in this new world? Maybe, everyone who died in The New Gate was actually transported to this world instead of simply dying. This opened up so many fascinating ideas to explore and then the season was done. The thing that Momonga had been searching for in Overlord was here in The New Gate! I joke, but it’s a great hook and makes me want to know more.

---

What was your least favourite moment?

Comparisons aside, this series had a lot of interesting ideas that could have made for a great series. However, the dialogue and the actions ended up being kind of goofy which made everything less serious. That contributed to the overall fun nature of the show, but by doing it this way it took what could have been a good dark fantasy Isekai story and turned it into an easy-going adventure. Now, there’s nothing wrong with either of those types of stories, however, it is getting harder and harder to find a good dark fantasy that fully commits to the genre. This series started with a game where if you died in the game you died in real life. That set a fairly dark and sinister tone, which the series failed to live up to. I think this is one where they should have played it seriously.

---

Who was your favourite character?

I’m going to surprise everyone here by selecting Rionne Strail Bayreuth, the second princess of the Bayreuth Kingdom because she was a strong woman with a sword. It had nothing to do with her standard uniform or that she was voiced by Lynn. All right, maybe those two things were a factor, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that she was a lot of fun. It helped that the other characters were all fairly wooden. Schnee managed to perfectly capture the personality of an AI-powered NPC while Tiera seemed to swing back and forth between being cute and snarky. And Shin was basically Kirito. There really wasn’t much more to him than that.

---

Who was your least favourite character?

This may be unfair as he wasn’t a bad character, but his character design was beyond hilarious. I’m talking about Wilhelm Avis, the adventurer who scared everyone but the orphanage full of children with his gruff demeanour and edge-lord costume that covered everything except his throat to his navel. He just looked ridiculous and that’s why I have to name him here.

---

Would you like some more?

If you had asked me at episode ten, I would have been happy to walk away from this series, however, the reveal near the end about the other players and the possibility of his love from the game being in this world after she died in the game is too enticing. I have my doubts that this series will get another season, but it’s always a possibility. Interestingly enough, the light novel has been going since 2013 and now has twenty-three volumes. The author, Shinogi Kazanami is obviously doing something right.

---

What have you learned?

There are some staggeringly ridiculous comparisons for this series. It started like Sword Art Online, then turned into Overlord, before becoming In the Land of Leadale with the in-world time skip. However, it’s not those stories in the same way that Deep Blue Sea is not the same as Jaws. Sure, they both have sharks in them. If we turned our noses up at anything that bore any resemblance to anything else, we would have nothing to enjoy. Truly original stories are almost impossible to come by, but that’s fine. So, go out there and grab all your favourite things from all your favourite stories and create something new and wonderful from the broken pieces. Only time will tell if you’ve created Frankenstein’s monster or not!

Series Information

English Title	The New Gate
Japanese Title	The New Gate
Genres	Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Isekai

Anime

Season	Season One
Released	Spring 2024
Animation Studios	Yokohama Animation Laboratory, Cloud Hearts
Episodes	12

---