Literature / Gate

So a soldier, an elf, a mage, and a demi-goddess walk into a bar...

In August 20XX, a portal to a parallel world known as the "Gate", suddenly appeared in Ginza, Tokyo where monsters and human warriors wearing ancient armor poured out of the portal, killing everyone in their way and trying to claim the area as their own. This would later be known as "The Ginza Incident". Immediately after the attack, the Japanese Ground-Self Defense Forces launches a counter-attack, repelling and pushing the invaders back to the Gate and reclaiming Ginza.

Hoping to establish diplomatic relations with the people beyond the Gate and capture the ones responsible for the massacre of Ginza, the JSDF, under orders by the Prime Minister, takes over and enters the Gate where they dispatch the Third Reconnaissance Team to scout the "Special Region" led by 33-year-old First Lieutenant Youji Itami. Itami was there when the Ginza incident happened and, luckily for him, exploring the Special Region is a dream come true since the Lieutenant is an Otaku. While the 3rd Recon Team explores the Special Region, back on Earth, the major powers take a special interest in the Gate...

Gate - Thus the JSDF Fought There (Gate - Jieitai Kare no Chi nite Kaku Tatakaeri), is a Japanese fantasy novel series by Takumi Yanai. Originally serialized online from 2006 to 2009 on a novel website called Arcadia, it was published in book form by Alphapolis from 2010 to 2015. There are 5 novels, followed by five Gaiden books each focusing on what the important female characters were doing during an important event. A "sequel" (or "season 2") for the books was recently launched, with the first new book published in 2014.

A manga serialization started in July 2011, while a more Light Novel-style rewrite/reprinting (complete with revamped and polished character designs) was started in 2012.

An anime adaptation was announced in mid-December 2014 and was released in July 2015. After the first twelve episodes aired, the series took a hiatus and resumed in January 2016. Sentai Filmworks has the series licensed for North American release and it is available for streaming on Crunchyroll.

Gate! Yonkoma is a 4-Koma comedic spoof of the series.

A prequel manga called Gate — 14-year-old Piña Co Lada and The Rose-Order of Knights of the Empire (Gate — Teikoku no Bara Kishidan - Piña Co Lada 14-Sai) focuses on Princess Piña Co Lada's past and how she founded the Rose-Order of Knights. It is complete at 14 chapters.

Gate: Featuring the Starry Heavens is a spinoff manga that depicts an alternate universe with no war where Tuka, Lelei, and Rory become singers with Itami as their manager. It is complete at 15 chapters.

A sequel novel, Gate: Weigh Anchor, centers on the action of a Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force submarine crew manning an Oyashio-type class known as JS Kitasashi.

An iOS/Google phone game called Gate: Brave Scramble was released by Bandai Namco Entertainment in 2016 for the Japanese market. It is currently discontinued from service.

A prequel novel, Gate: Zero, covers the Ginza incident in more detail.

Mei Company (Mei Kon) is a Magical Girl manga that Itami enjoys reading. It was eventually given its own manga by Takumi Yanai.

Compare Outbreak Company, where the more civilized means of commercialism are employed.

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This series contains examples of:

Tropes #-D

• 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: The military vehicles look noticeably computer-generated from time to time, particularly when the camera is focused on driving. The fire dragon is also subjected to this. Some of the animated crowds are done via CGI too.
• Above Good and Evil: Upon Rory's introduction, the light novel highlights that Emroy does not care about good or evil, at least not by any human standards. Despite being the god of judgment, Emroy decides your fate based upon only one standard. "Are you willing to live, or more importantly, die by your own core principles?" Consistently, Itami has shown that he will, and as such he, and the JSDF under him, can count on Rory's support. People who have not, like the bandit recruit who pleaded for mercy "because his hands were still clean" and the leftist politician who tried to exploit Rory and the Coda village situation to discredit the JSDF for her own political ambitions were met with Rory's disgust and rage respectively.
• Accidental Marriage: In episode nineteen, Lelei announces that she's married to Youji. She then explains that if they spend three nights together in the same room, it's considered a marriage. Tuka, Arpeggio, and especially Rory don't take this announcement very well, with the latter reaching Yandere-like levels when questioning Youji on why he "married" Lelei and even slept with Tuka (when she thought he was her father briefly), but has yet to do anything naughty with her. Arpeggio meanwhile suffers a Heroic BSoD and slams a bowl of soup down on her sister's head in jealousy.
• Action Girl: The female members of Youji's squad, of course. Especially Shino. From beyond the Gate, we have Piña, a princess of the Empire and leader of a knight order, and Rory, demigoddess and a veritable One-Man Army.
• Adaptational Attractiveness:
  • The anime has done a touch-up on almost everyone's physical appearance. Some examples, as seen from the character sheet, are Grey, Risa, Senator Kouhara, and Advisor Shirayuri.
  • Some characters who look good already in the manga receive a further attractiveness boost. Compare Shino and Hamilton between the manga and anime.
• Adaptational Modesty: As the animators had to fit the TV rating requirements, they understandably toned down the (quite significant) amount of skin seen in the manga and light novels.
  • The citizens of the Empire generally wear Medieval-style clothing instead of togas in the anime. Togas do make appearances in the court scenes, such as the Senate discussion in Episode 2, Sugawara's visit to the court in Episode 11, and the garden banquet in Episode 13, so they appear to be more of the formal court dress rather than casual clothing — exactly like they actually were in Rome itself, to think of.^note In fact, despite its enormous prestige, on a practical level the Romans hated toga: it was expensive, cumbersome, hot, heavy, prickly, a chore to wear and an even greater chore to maintain, especially the gleaming white "toga candida" and purple-striped "toga praetexta". Both the Republic and the Empire had to maintain legislation that required wearing the toga to the Forum and other official functions under the pain of a stiff fine, otherwise the people preferred to wear a much lighter and more comfortable tunic+cloak combo, making it impossible to distinguish the slaves and the foreigners from the Quirites.
  • Bozes's nightgown is not see-through in the anime.
  • During the bathhouse shootout, many of the girls' robes were open exposing their underwear. Their robes were closed in the anime.
  • After Rory massacres the men who tried to kidnap the Special Region guests and is covered with blood, Itami makes her strip out of her kimono and then hoses her down to get rid of the blood. In the anime, it cuts directly to Rory back in her street clothes and clean.
  • Princess Piña's formal dress is not as revealing and Delilah's waitress uniform does not expose her cleavage as much in the anime.
  • In one scene where Delilah took a nap naked, she just took her shoes off in the anime.
  • Tyuule's rape scene is shown only in silhouette through the gauze of Zorzal's bed canopy, and the camera, in general, avoids showing her body, being covered by a Modesty Bedsheet or seen via Toplessness from the Back.
  • The prostitutes in Akusho are more covered up in the anime, and their clothes again aren't see-through like in the manga.
  • Noriko is not nude in the negotiation scene in the anime adaptation; instead, she wears a still-revealing simple rag.
  • In the manga, during the earthquake, several of Zorzal's men were in states of undress, presumably because they just woke up. In the anime, they were in full armor.
  • The dark elves' outfit in the anime is less... Stripperific.
• Adaptation Distillation: Despite the Adaptation Expansion, the anime did take out some scenes, like the part where the girls are drinking at the hot springs inn - In the anime, only the drunken faces of Shino and Rory are seen. Also, Risa fails to make any mention of Itami's mother during his Japan trip in the anime.
  • In the Anime, the Ginza Incident seemed to last little more than an afternoon before the Tokyo police and the JSDF stopped the rampaging Imperials. However, in the Light Novels and manga, it took almost a week for the last remnants of the invasion force to be captured or killed.
  • The anime removed some scenes with the Akusho district, such as how the JSDF manage to infiltrate the capital, the big four criminal bosses meeting about the JSDF before Bessara attacks the JSDF base at Akusho, then also the aftermath. Misery simply wraps the whole thing with her meeting with Kurokawa.
  • The distillation is most evident with Episode 14, which is the entirety of Volume 5 from the manga compressed into a 20-minute episode.
  • Gets worse in episode 18, wherein the anime skips the entire "plague zombie" saga and Itami's reunion with his mother, as well as Risa's introduction to Yao. With the anime ending with Piña's coronation as Crown Princess, those parts won't be seen.
• Adaptation Expansion: The anime fills in extra scenes between events in the manga.
  • The time after the Ginza Incident is more fleshed out with Itami, including the introduction of Kurata.
  • The Battle of Alnus Hill is shown with all three charges done by the Imperial army rather than just the last night's battle.
  • The anime expands on precisely why Zorzal, the second prince, is actually the crown prince as opposed to the first prince. In a rare moment of humility, Zorzal admits that Diabo is actually smarter than himself, and mentions that Molto beat and tortured their older brother to death because he was "too smart" and wasn't suave enough to hide it. Oh, and that Zorzal was forced to see it.
  • A literal example of this trope is the Gate itself. In the novels, the Gate is large enough for one tank to get through. In the anime, the Gate is much larger where two tanks side by side can enter it at the same time.
• Adaptation Explanation Extrication: The anime's introduction of the Oprichnina have raised some eyebrows, is based on a 16th-century Russian organization in a country based on 9th-century Franco-roman civilization. Whether or not those viewers read the manga was irrelevant, as it was way behind the anime during Oprichnina's introduction, and it did not even catch up and overtake the anime until August 2019, more than 3 years after the second cour of the anime ended. furthermore, no explanation as to the origins of the organization was given in either medium^note The manga, during its version of the Emperor's audience with the JSDF after the earthquake, drops a hint, as he mentions things that he could not possibly know, such as certain aspects of Japan's history, unless you consider the following........ The origins are only given in the novels (the applicable ones were not translated at the time of the Oprichnina's introduction in the anime), where it is explicitly stated that one or more of the books Piña brought back from Ginza and had translated covers this aspect of Russian history, and Zorzal not only thought it sounded like a good idea, he decided to implement it as the very first act of his regency to "root out cowardly traitors" to cement his Pro-war position.^note And serves as an explanation as to how Molto even knew the stuff about Japan's history that he was talking about.
• An Aesop:
  • The series puts a lot of emphasis on modern military ethics in the form of humane treatment of captured soldiers and civilians and targeted strikes, the proportional use of force, and labelled defense zones when military force is authorized.
  • A message straight to the audience is that otaku don't just have to be fat lazy slobs, given the chance they can be extremely productive members of society even if their paychecks are simply used to support their hobby. They however have to put the work in.
• The Ageless: Tuka is a high elf, and may not have the ability to die of old age. Rory is more explicit; she stopped aging when she became a demigoddess nearly a thousand years ago. Semi-averted with the Dark Elves.
• Aggressive Negotiations: There are notable examples in the story. The Empire has a 600-year-long history of this. Piña notes that "debates" pretty much ended with the Imperials going "do as I say, or else." Yanagida does the same when he learns that the King of Elbe is in the Arnus treatment center.
• All Women Are Lustful: Subverted with the warrior rabbits, who have this reputation due to sleeping with males of any species to reproduce (due to having few males).
• Always a Bigger Fish: A dragon shows up in the sky near the JSDF convoy in episode 3. However, it's quickly eaten by the much larger fire dragon, who then attacks them.
• Amazon Brigade:
  • Piña's Rose Knights. When they were kids, she just gathered a bunch of the other noble girls and started playing soldier, but eventually, she managed to wrangle Grey, an imperial knight, to train them, and by the events of the series she's leading them into battle. There are men in the order, but they play lesser roles, and the highest-ranked guy, Norma, gets killed early on.
  • Warrior rabbits are nearly all-female and quite deadly when needed.
• Amicable Exes: Itami gets along quite well with his ex-wife Risa, despite her occasionally begging him for money.
• Amusing Injuries: Youji pulls Rory out of the JSDF's kill zone by doing a Bridal Carry on her. He then accidentally touches her breast, prompting her to punch him in the eye. Said blackeye remains on his face for the rest of the arc.
• Anachronism Stew: The other world's kingdoms range from Roman to medieval in appearance, with Princess Piña's servants in vaguely Victorian dress.
• Aristocrat Team: Princess Piña's Rose Knights are an Amazon Brigade of the daughters of noble houses.
• An Arm and a Leg:
  • King Duran lost his left arm and left leg from an explosive at the Battle of Alnus Hill.
  • The fire dragon loses its arm from the Panzerfaust when it attacks the JSDF convoy.
  • A US agent gets this treatment when his arm is cut off by Rory's giant halberd.
• Armor Is Useless:
  • It is justified that the Medieval/Roman-style armor and shields of the Empire are useless against bullets from modern assault rifles and machine guns, not to mention artillery and heavy explosives.
  • Rory's ability to cut armored men apart with her ax is also justified: she's a demigod who's capable of swinging around a weapon that's bigger than she is, and weighs roughly the same as a car. And even with all of this, she's the apostle of the god of death, so there's probably an aspect of that helping her in some way.
  • On the other hand, it's played straight with no excuse when Kuribayashi manages during the Battle of Italica to bayonet a huge soldier straight through his breastplate so deeply that there's blood up to the hilt;an actual ancient or medieval breastplate would hardly be dented even if the blade were modern steel. The anime aptly lampshades this, as her bayonet breaks from the stress of having done that the next time she hits something with it.
  • Armor did prove useful when it saved Leiei from being stabbed.
• Artistic License – Economics: As mentioned below, Sugawara discovered that if all that amount of gold suddenly entered Earth, it would wreak havoc on their world's economy. Of course, in Real Life it probably won't, 500 millions suwani being about 30 thousand tons of gold^note A suwani is a large gold coin weighing about 60 grams and used mostly for savings or one trillion dollars, which is a large sum, but not nearly large enough do have a really detrimental effect.^note It's basically just about the size of the suspected China's gold reserve, and injecting this much of hard liquidity into the market will probably have good effect on it It would be certain to really drive down the gold prices, though.
• Artistic License – Gun Safety:
  • When several Dark Elf warriors volunteer to help Itami and the others hunt the Flame Dragon, he gives them a brief walkthrough in the function and procedures to use the Panzerfaust 3. However, they have nearly no practice time to use the weapon, and when they finally meet the flame dragon, they ignore every applicable safety that would otherwise be known to a well-trained user, such as backblast safety, arming the warhead, etc. This is somewhat justified since they literally only learned of the existence of the weapons the same day they got them, and their "Training" such as it was, could not possibly have sunk in.
  • It might be a general Dark Elves thing, as Yao is consistently shown to be The Ditz when operating modern machinery. In addition to the aforementioned Panzerfaust trouble, in Chapter 52 she makes so much fuss trying to disengage the safety on the Itami's rifle that she drops it directly on her intended target — the Minotaur they've been fighting.
    • Somewhat justified - and lampshaded - in that in the LN Itami had previously intentionally put the fire selector between the safe and semi-auto to bypass a design flaw on the Howa Type 64 which made the selector hard to operate.
• Artistic License – Military:
  • In Real Life, should a foreign power attack Japan, the US Military is obligated to help and defend Japan due to a Mutual Defense Treaty between the nations, thus a military operation to the world beyond the Gate would realistically have been a joint Japan-US military force, not JSDF-only like in the story proper. The novels note that the battle in Ginza took a week to conclude, more than enough time for the US to send troops trained to help clear buildings in the nightmare of urban combat. Even the most conservative Japanese politician would invoke the treaty to eliminate invaders and rescue trapped civilians, then send in a joint task force that could make use of the far superior logistical support and surveillance of the US armed forces (to maintain their status as a defensive force, the JSDF does not maintain the resources necessary for operating away from the home islands). However, the author is well known for his right-wing and revanchist views, and belongs to a political faction that wants to both renegotiate the MDT and remove American forces from Japanese soil. Thus, he invokes Artistic License and handwaves the MDT noncompliance with the Prime Minister declaring the Special Area to be a part of Japan because it connected right into Japan. Since it's "part of Japan", the invading army and its leaders are "terrorists" and can be dealt with using domestic forces only, without violating Article Nine of the Japanese Constitution which prohibits offensive military action. This leads to the odd situation where the occupying forces are sent in with obsolete Cold War equipment in case the expedition goes wrong, and keep their inferior firearms and such even after it becomes clear that there is no military match on the other side of the Gate.
  • Later volumes reveal that even if the Prime Minister had not used the legal fiction of the land across the Gate being Japanese territory, the US Military was getting held up in Iraq to the point that they were in no position to help as they simply can't spare enough troops for a joint Japan-US military force to travel through the gate.
    • While several tens of thousands of American military personnel (plus American equipment) are available in bases on Japanese and South Korean soil, one must remember that America's primary local military priorities do not include crossing a magical gate into a fantasy realm. Even if the gate were two battle tanks wide, having the Americans go through alongside the Japanese would create a logistical nightmare because of non-interchangeable equipment (the two forces generally do not have anything in common except small arms ammunition and vehicle fuel). Note that American military advantages would be severely reduced once across the gate (American strategic advantages such as satellites, cruise missiles, and heavy bombers would not be able to pass through the gate).
    • This is subverted in a later chapter when it is explained that the JDSF brought giant cargo planes through the Gate by disassembling and re-assembling them at Alnus Base.
  • Another example, this time caused not by the author's politics, but rather by the questionable translation choice, is in Episode 4. In the English translation, Kurokawa and Kuribayashi try to get Itami's attention by calling "Captain!" However, Itami is a lieutenant so he pays no attention. So after they screamed their lungs out for his attention, Itami simply calls for the unit's actual Captain that the two were seeking him. In Japanese, however, both shouted "Taicho!", which doesn't denote rank and can refer to any unit leader — meaning that Itami was simply so absorbed in his web novel, that he didn't get that they were calling specifically him, as a yet another illustration to his dorky nature.
  • Even worse, in the same scene Kuribayashi ends up kicking Itami (her CO and a decorated, commissioned officer) in the butt to get his attention, in front of other officers no less. Striking a superior officer is a severe breach of discipline and is grounds for a court-martial in almost every modern military in the world^note  The other officers don't like Itami very much and probably feel that he deserved to get kicked for ignoring proper protocol, which can be deadly if the base were suddenly attacked.
  • During the fight at Hakone Mountain, the Japanese SFG identity one of the three Black Ops Team sneaking into the mountain as Americans when they find a dead black operative. Comments, varying with the source material, are made to the effect that only the US has black soldiers. While considering the circumstances this is a reasonable assumption, other nations with overseas Black Ops capability also have black soldiers — some are US allies, like the UK and Canada, but even Russia has some black soldiers in its armed forces.
  • It is prominently and explicitly shown that the Japanese have set up their beachhead on Alnus hill as a star fort. While an effective fortification in its heyday of the 1400s-1600s (the design blunted the impact of cannon and the points allowed defenders to hit any attackers in their flanks) and impressive looking, today it is simultaneously obsolete, pointlessly overcomplicated overkill considering the demonstrated capabilities and technologies beyond the Gate, and inherently prohibits any expansion of the base. There's a reason why modern military bases, even in hostile territory, boil down to layered squares; modern military capabilities can prevent small covert attacks with trenches, fencing, surveillance, and internal security, while large attacks can be detected and interdicted before they get within 100 kilometers of a base (especially in the grassland and rolling hills with scattered forests shown to surround Alnus). The expedition already demonstrated that when they annihilated a force several times larger without ever coming under direct attack when they first came through the Gate.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: The eventual fate of every Apostle. It is hinted that Rory is trying to delay her ascension for as long as possible, since when she does she loses any vestige of human emotion she has left. Her attraction to Itami — aside from finding him "interesting" — is also due in part because she sees him as a sort of emotional anchor to the world of mortals.
• Assassin Outclassin': While Lelei is being hunted by the Empire's assassins, Itami and co. manages to do this many times to save her life.
  • The first instance was when Gray runs a sword through an assassin pointing a crossbow at her.
  • The next was when the group anticipated the assassins to kill them in their sleep, so they set up dummies and blinded them with a flash grenade.
  • When Lelei is about to present her scientific findings to the academic community in Rondel, one of the Pied Piper's assassins tries to attack her and is quickly put down. However, this served as the perfect distraction to allow Shandy to stab Lelei. She survives it due to the armor she's wearing under her robes.
• Asshole Victim:
  • The bandits who take advantage of the power vacuum caused by the slaughter of the Imperial Army by robbing, killing, and raping bystanders wantonly. They got brutally slaughtered overnight by Rory.
  • Nobody, including his own father, steps in to protect Zorzal from the beating he's taking. Though they're likely just as much hesitant from the fact the person administering the beat down; Kuribayashi had just cut down everyone that tried to aid him after he was struck by Itami than they are from him being an asshole. The rest of the 3rd Recon Group also have their guns at the ready and have already demonstrated what they can do.
  • If Zorzal's testimony to Diabo in episode 14 of the anime is true (and Diabo seems to believe that it is), then Molto's fate in chapter 48 of the manga is well deserved.
• An Ass-Kicking Christmas: The trip to Japan takes place around Christmas time. While trying to catch a break at hot springs owned by the government, Itami and co. are attacked by American, Russian, and Chinese special forces.
• Assumed Win:
  • The first battle at Alnus Hill is the biggest instigator. The armies of the Unified Kingdoms assumed they would curb-stomp the JSDF occupying the hill because they outnumber them 100,000 to their 10,000. Boy were they wrong...
  • The crime boss Bessara thought he and his gang could take down a small building occupied by some JSDF soldiers. They all get riddled with bullets for their trouble.
• Attack Its Weak Point: A fire dragon attacks the JSDF convoy escorting the refugees who left Coda. Despite their firepower, including a .50 caliber machine gun, it doesn't seem to hurt at all. Tuka awakens around that point, refers to and repeatedly points at her eye, prompting Youji to signal to his men to aim at it. Once they focus on the dragon's eye, they force it on the defensive long enough to fire a rocket at it.
• Author Tract: And then some. Any group that runs counter to the author's political stance, whether they be foreign governments or even people in Japan who lean towards the left, are portrayed as selfish, malicious, scheming, or all of the above.
• Awakening the Sleeping Giant:
  • The Empire thought they could easily conquer Earth without a problem, causing the Ginza Incident. Instead, they just pissed off a technologically advanced modern country with an army that destroyed their forces effortlessly. Even a vassal lord of the Empire lampshades it, saying the Empire deserves to fall for attacking an unknown and dangerous force. Lelei describes it as "The Empire stepped on a griffon's tail."
  • A literal example, the evil demigoddess Giselle woke up the Flame Dragon 50 years early and sent it on a rampage, on the orders of her boss Hardy.
• Back for the Finale:
  • Almost every named character in the series shows up for Piña's coronation ceremony.
  • In the final scene of the anime, Risa shows up at Comiket just as Itami and the girls are being taken away by the police.
• Back-to-Back Badasses: Kuribiyashi and Rory fight together in melee during the Battle of Italica while engaging the bandit army. There's the classic pose, one with a huge ax and the other a bayonet/handgun, and also the kill-the-enemy-attacking-the-other exchange as well.
• Badass Army:
  • The JSDF quickly proves that crazy unknown forces from another world are no match for their training, equipment, and all-around guts.
  • The Special Forces Group fends off agents from three Earth superpowers - not even a USMC Force Recon can get close.
  • The Empire Army who invaded Ginza also has some credit to fighting in the Japanese homeland for seven days while being technologically inferior. Though, outnumbering JSDF and attacking in surprise, as well as Refuge in Audacity because nobody in authority could believe a medieval army with fantastic beasts was attacking, certainly help.
• Badass Bystander: Youji was shopping during the Ginza incident, where he immediately took command of the police and help the evacuation of civilians to the safety of the Tokyo Imperial Palace and hold off the invaders until the JSDF arrive. Too bad his plans get canceled.
• Balanced Harem: Rory, Lelei, and Tuka are all interested in Itami and the three get an equal amount of focus and interaction with Itami. None of them being "in the lead" has a lot to do with the fact that Itami treats them all as kids and he thinks they are too young for him. ^note Although technically, only Lelei is younger than him; Rory and Tuka still look and even act like teenage girls.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy: Averted in the manga. Two words: Beaver shots or in the case of the Warrior Rabbits, Bunnytail shots.
• Batman Gambit: A number, as using manipulation is a popular political tool in the Empire.
  • Tyuule of all people plays Zorzal like a fiddle, engineering his taking the throne and antagonizing Japan into a restart of the war — which is deeply disadvantageous for the Empire… Just as Planned.
  • Sherry Thierri, a frigging 12-years old loli plays it on the Japanese ambassadors in the recent arc, manipulating them into allowing her to take a shelter with them during the Zorzal's purge, which they generally are reluctant to do because of Realpolitik.
• Battle Harem: Itami's harem is made of an elf with magic and archery ability, a genius mage, and an apostle for the god of death.
• Beleaguered Boss: Piña is overjoyed at having managed to negotiate a peace settlement with the JSDF that's unbelievably generous to the Empire, mostly wanting information and the return of prisoners instead of ruinous reparations. Then she learns that her Amazon Brigade ran into Itami, captured him, and beat the crap out of him on the way back (as there is no radio in the special area, Bozes and the knights thought they were still at war). As this incident could reignite a war the Empire cannot possibly win, Piña orders Bozes to sleep with Itami by way of apology (something aristocratic daughters are used to doing). Bozes enters Itami's room... but on finding him having a tea party with the demihuman maids, opts to slap him instead. On seeing Itami even more roughed up than before, Piña understandably decides to join the delegation herself to prevent any more incidents.
• Benevolent Alien Invasion: Japan to the fantasy world. The most R-rated elements to the story, are the fantasy characters imagining what Japan's army will do to them once they 'invade.' When Japan does send soldiers in, they inflict such horrors such as modern medical assistance, food for the hungry, unparalleled defensive support, and trade. They follow these up with outrageous demands such as treating POWs with respect, banning slavery, and encouraging various Geneva Convention mandates.
• Berserk Button: While Itami's team talking peacefully with the Emperor to advise them about an Earthquake, the Elder prince shows up dragging a bunch of naked slave girls chained behind him... one of them is a girl who was taken during the Ginza attack. Itami promptly knocks him to the floor, then takes the girl back. The JSDF demands the immediate release of all Ginza prisoners and obliterates the Senate building with an airstrike that night just to make their point. And they haven't even found out that at least one of the other prisoners has died as a slave in one of the Empire's mines. Cue "shock and awe" all over the palace.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Combat Team 4 is this to the town of Italica, as their helicopters wipe out most of the bandits occupying the eastern gate.
  • The JSDF expeditionary force in Chapter 46.
  • The JSDF again when rescuing Piña's troops and the Japanese ambassador at the Jade Palace. The Imperial troops there quickly get gunned down by a platoon of JSDF soldiers, and their leader is killed by Bozes while attempting to flee.
• Bittersweet Ending: The light novel ends with the JSDF-Legitimate Imperial alliance won the civil war, both worlds have been saved, and Zorzal is finally assassinated by Tyuule. However, Lelei is forced to close the gate to prevent more Arachnids from entering the real world due to the foreign black ops' meddling earlier (stranding 4600 JSDF personnel stationed in the Special Region as a result), the Empire is on its last legs thanks to Zorzal's warmongering actions (which forced Piña to clean up the mess Zorzal and his cronies made as well as relying on the JSDF and its allies for security and protection) and Tyuule lost her life during her successful assassination attempt on Zorzal. That said, everything worked out in the end, as Piña and the Legitimate Imperials used Zorzal's war crimes as a cautionary tale for future nobles, the people and kingdoms previously invaded by the Empire (especially the Warrior Bunnies) got their independence and lands back, Tyuule is posthumously redeemed and branded a hero for killing Zorzal, and the gate reopened four years later, with Itami telling Kanou that his desire to visit Akihabara and the comiket again might be the cause of that.
• Black Dude Dies First: How the Japanese figure out the at least one of the black ops teams attacking them are Americans: the first enemy casualty they find is a black male.
• Blood Knight: Rory is a priestess of Emroy, the god of battle, and for her, there is no greater pleasure than participating in combat. She loves it so much that battle sexually arouses her, and she can't stand it if there's one going on nearby without her. Shino might start counting as well. Tyuule falls between here and Omnicidal Maniac.
• Book Ends: For Itami. In the first and last episodes of the anime, he tries and fails to attend the summer Comiket.
• Boom, Headshot!: A lot of imperial soldiers meet their end this way due to the JSDF's guns. During the Jade Palace rescue, JSDF soldiers snipe headshots on the Oprichnina, knowing that taking them out would cause the rest to scatter. The commander of the force even orders to "shoot at any kobold heads" due to their helmets. During the rescue of the last Japanese citizen held prisoner, a JSDF soldier kills the Oprichnina commander with a headshot from an anti-material rifle. His head was instantaneously blown off without a trace.
• Bottomless Magazines: In keeping with the realistic firearms and weapons handling, this is averted in many cases, most notably when Yanagida fires his Minebea P9 on Deliliah exactly nine times, the Real Life pistol's magazine capacity, before it runs empty.
• Brainwashed: The assassin Pied Piper uses this as his main method of assassination, tricking other people into murdering the target.
• Bread of Survival: When the refugees of the dragon attack are brought to Alnus Hill, they are given provision, including bread, which Master Wizard Cato goes into a very Large Ham praise of for being so fluffy and warm and soft.
• Break the Haughty: Every Imperial character who runs into the JSDF assumes that their Empire is the superior force, as they have ruled their world unopposed for over 600 years. When they witness what modern Earth weapons and combat vehicles can do firsthand...their reactions are usually Oh, Crap! or a Villainous BSoD.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: When Japan sends their army to another world, they equip their troops mostly with Cold War-era stockpiles and US Army surplus. This is explained and justified by Itami; the JSDF is the victim of budget cutbacks, and had to assemble their task force very quickly using whatever material they had available. Since they were fighting an enemy of unknown strength, they considered the possibility that they might have to retreat through the Gate, and brought gear they could leave behind with minimal economic impact. Additionally, the lack of GPS and telecommunication satellites in the Special Region makes the older weapons more useful than the newer digital-based systems.
• Breather Episode:
  • Episode 4, where refugees first arrive at the JSDF base on Alnus Hill following a brief run-in with a fire dragon. Rory, Tuka, and Lelei don't get to enjoy it very long, however, as they head into Italica, which is under siege by some remnants of the allied armies slaughtered in the earlier battle against the JSDF.
  • Episode 8, where several of the special area locals visit Japan for the first time.
  • Episode 15, Itami and his friends try to help Tuka deal with her worsening PTSD.
• Broke Episode: While he's usually paid well enough to even support a family (which is what actually drove Risa to marry him), all those shenanigans around him sometimes result in Itami being docked or put on a half-pay as punishment, like after the whole Fire Dragon story. In Chapter 53 he's seen scratching up his Comiket purchases plan with tears in his eyes because he cannot afford half of it this month.
• Bulletproof Vest: A slight variation of this trope is used in episode twenty-two when Lelei is advised to wear armor underneath her mage robe while giving her thesis due to threats on her life. The first assassin is stopped before she can even get close enough to strike Lelei, but a second assassin manages to connect a hit before anyone can stop her. Shandy, the second assassin, then finds out that Lelei being warned to wear armor is what saved her from the knife attack. Hilariously even though she heard the first assassin mention this, she totally forgot about it.
• Bullying a Dragon:
  • The Emperor could have phrased his disdain of the JSDF's No One Gets Left Behind policies a lot better. His throne room at the Senate, along with most of the building, is bombed into oblivion, partly to shut him up and partly to get him to reconsider.
  • Zorzal shares this habit as well. Just after watching his nation's soldiers get cut down, largely by Kuribayashi, Zorzal still insists that if Itami wants answers about remaining slaves, he'd best get on his knees and beg forgiveness. Itami's response is to tell Kuribayashi to go all Jack Bauer on the prince, and "just don't kill him." If the prince only knew what warfare was really like on the other side of the gate...
• The Butler Did It: Clan Formal's butler was revealed to have been the leak of the seal and papers required for the ruined assassination attempt.
• Bystander Syndrome: After witnessing some of the JSDF's modern warfare, Piña rightfully panics at what they'd do if they decide to march in on the Empire. Lelei simply points out that the Empire started the whole mess by attacking the other world completely unprovoked, thus they "stepped on a griffon's tail". Bozes gets angry at Lelei's lack of concern at the strong possibility that the Empire could be in danger. Lelei counters that since she's a nomad, she has no connection or obligation to the Empire, therefore its fate is not her problem. Tuka also points out as an elf, she's got no obligation to the Empire, either. Rory just smirks, since as a demigoddess, she couldn't care less what happens to the Empire.
• Camp Follower: Discussed by Tuka as the only means of repayment by the Koda Village refugees for the living space given to them, later becomes subverted when the JSDF allows them to sell the scales of the dead dragons from the Battle of Alnus Hill as they have no value as resources despite being as strong as tungsten.
• Cartoon Meat: Some bonus pages in the manga version have a few JDSF soldiers get excited over seeing manga meat being sold in town, eager to find out what "that meat" is in reality. They get disappointed when it turns out to be rather mundane: instead of being from a unique animal or a unique cut, it's just a long strip of meat topped with seasonings and wrapped around a bone to use as a handle for cooking and eating.
• Cast Full of Pretty Boys: Say what you want, the males in the show, particularly the Japanese, are rather attractive.
• Casting Gag:
  • Youji Itami is voiced by Jun'ichi Suwabe, who voiced Archer in Fate/Stay Night. As if the references to Fate/Stay Night in the series aren't numerous enough.
  • In addition, Hiroki Yasumoto and Koji Yusa voice Tomita and Yanagida respectively. Suwabe, Yasumoto and Yusa voiced Grimmjow, Chad and Gin in Bleach.
  • Shino Kuribayashi is voiced by Maaya Uchida, who voiced Minori Koganuma from Outbreak Company, which follows a setting almost identical to Gate's, plus is still a tomboy JSDF girl that can kick some ass.
  • Piña Co Lada is voiced by Haruka Tomatsu. One of her previous roles, Asuna, is the lieutenant of the Knights of Blood, a guild in the game she is trapped in, as well as being daughter of a rich family. Piña leads the Rose-Order of Knights, and is a princess.
  • Not only is Rina Hidaka voicing Sherry in the second season, Sherry is also redesigned to resemble a character Hidaka voiced before.
  • Meanwhile, Rory's age and incessant clingy behavior towards Itami come off as this, considering that Risa Taneda voiced Ashigara, who in the animated adaptation is notorious for being an Old Maid. Extra points to both roles for sounding nearly the same.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: During the earthquake, all the natives react in a terrified panic as if it were the end of the world. Piña is shocked and confused when she sees Itami and Sugawara calmly walkabout discussing the tremor's strength as if they were chatting about the weather.
• Cat Smile: Both the Cat Girls and Kurata when talking to Cat Girls.
• Censor Steam:
  • In the Hot Springs Chapter in the manga, but surprisingly little to the point of non-existence in the anime, because most of the time the girls are either in Modesty Towels or in the water.
  • It's also used in the manga when any of the females are taking a bath - surprising, considering most of the nudity in the manga is not censored.
• A Child Shall Lead Them: Myui Formal is the head of Italica at only 11 years old. Justified, as she inherited her position from her late father and mainly relies on Piña to run things.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: A mild case, but Rory is very attached to Youji, and gets annoyed whenever the lieutenant interacts meaningfully with any other girl, like when he was talking casually to his ex-wife Risa.
• Clingy Sleepers: Tuuka will deliberately climb into Itami's bed in the buff and cling to him. This is during a time when she's under the delusion that he's her father. Itami is generally asleep when she does this, so during that time he wakes to find her clinging to him.
• Clothing Damage: Rory gets her outfit terribly damaged during her fight with Giselle.
• Colonel Badass: Colonel Kengun, commander of the JSDF's Air Cavalry Division. He personally leads the rescue missions to Italica and the Jade Palace, even staying behind with the final chopper to evac the last of Piña's Rose Knights.
• Combat Pragmatist: The JSDF is seen as this by the Empire. Why clash with swords when you can lay waste to your enemies with bullets?
• Combination Attack: How Itami's party kills the Flame dragon. First, Itami and the Dark Elves hit it with RPG s, knocking it off balance. Lelei levitates hundreds of discarded swords, turning them into flaming projectiles that pincushion the dragon. Next Tuka uses a lightning spell against it, with the swords acting as lightning rods delivering the charge directly into the creature's hide and electrocuting it. And finally, Itami finishes the grounded beast off with a massive C4 charge.
• Competence Porn: Gate's soldiers are depicted as an extremely competent, organized, and rational fighting force, with half the fun being the sheer catharsis of skewering the cliche of Rock Beats Laser with a hefty helping of combined arms.
• Cool vs. Awesome:
  • Modern soldiers versus fantasy creatures!
  • Dragons dogfighting fighter jets!
  • A demigoddess against spec ops soldiers!
  • Kaiju Defense Force against Roman Legions!
  • Dark Elves with rocket launchers versus dragons! It doesn't end well for them.
• The Coup: Emperor Molto Sol Augustus is poisoned at the gala mixer in Chapter 48 by a servant under Tyuule. Zorzal wastes no time claiming the throne and cementing his rule.
• *Crack!* "Oh, My Back!": Komakado, the slightly creepy PSIA^*Japanese CIA equivalent agent suffers a back injury trying to lift Rory's halberd. Given that the weapon weighs roughly the same as a small car and needs the strength of a demigoddess to wield effectively, it's not that surprising.
• Crapsack World: The world beyond the gate is something out of a prime Low Fantasy. Let's start with The Empire who bullies other kingdoms around it, Let No Crisis Go to Waste, Salt the Earth, and all. And then there's a Red Light District smack dab in said empire's capital city run by crime lords and rampant with assassinations. The queen of a race of rabbits plots a massive war that will destroy the empire and what's left of her own subjects, who hate her because they thought she betrayed them all. To top things off, there's a giant dragon who burns down villages and towns.
• Crisis Catch And Carry: At the climax of the Italica battle, one of the JSDF copters warns any friendlies in the area to clear out as it was about to gun down all the bandits within the city gate. Itami quickly picks up Rory in his arms while Tomita hauls an indignant Kuribayashi on his shoulder before running out of the danger zone.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Youji may be a huge Otaku but there is a good reason he's in command of the squad other than his knowledge of all things fantasy seeing as he's a qualified JSDF Ranger and was once part of the Special Operations Group where he received the codename "Avenger". However, the Minister of Defense notes that Itami only did the bare minimum amount of work required not to be kicked out of the Ranger training course, and in the end squeaked by to finish the program because the guy ranked above him got injured. Still, the bare minimum to not get kicked out of special forces groups is typically a pretty high threshold regardless...
• Cruel to Be Kind: A Koda Village refugee's wagon breaks down during an evacuation. Their chief tells him to pack up what he can carry, and then their wagon is set on fire. Kurokawa wonders if Youji was being a bit too harsh on them. But he says that waiting for it to get fixed would take too long considering they're fleeing from a fire dragon, and the refugees wouldn't leave the cart otherwise. And if they waited for some backup vehicles to arrive to haul their stuff, it may attract unwanted enemy attention, causing battles to break out, and the refugees would then be caught in the middle of it.
• Cultural Posturing: Japanese culture and society is generally portrayed as all-around superior to those that exist on both sides of the Gate, with many characters beyond expressing their desire to have a society like Japan. A particularly pretentious example occurs in an omake, where the Japanese characters introduce baseball to the Gate-world as if it were a Japanese sport, instead of an import from the United States.
• Culture Chop Suey: Zorzal's State Sec is basically a wholesale imported political police of Ivan the Terrible, The Oprichnina, down to its name (which is Hand Waved as an acronym of its official Special Region name) and heavy use of the dog head^note Symbolizing the dog-like devotion to the monarch and broom^note As in sweeping the rebels and traitors clean motifs. While it seems inexplicable at first that a 16th-century Russian organization cropped up in the nation populated by the descendants of the 5th century Franks, we find out that Zorzal got the idea from reading about the actual Oprichnina in one of the books Piña brought back and had translated.
• Culture Clash: It's a world that resembles a cross between the Roman Empire and Medieval Europe meeting modern Japan. Some specific examples:
  • Most warriors in the Special Region believe War Is Glorious and sometimes choose Honor Before Reason. The JSDF believes War Is Hell and thus go about it as efficiently and pragmatically as possible.
  • The Special Region practices slavery, which is outlawed in the modern world.
  • Special Region women often use sex as currency and as a negotiation tactic, and prostitution is legal and widespread in the capital city.
  • The Special Region gets confused by the JSDF's stance on prisoners of war. The JSDF believes prisoners should be treated humanely, while the Special Region would typically torture and enslave them.
  • Lampshaded by the Princess on her visit to Japan:
  Piña: I didn't know such things exist in this world!
  Bozes: This is the other world.
  Piña: Right!
  • And again by Kuribayashi and Tomita when they arrive at Piña's palace:
  Tomita: It feels like we're in a different world.
  Kuribayashi: Of course, This is the other world, after all.
  Tomita: Oh, right.
  • Everyone in the Empire, even Princess Piña, is baffled by Japan absolutely refusing to sacrifice or abandon a single citizen, to the point where peace talks are ruined when it is discovered some Japanese citizens were taken as slaves during the Ginza Incident. In the Empire, the life of a peasant is insignificant compared to nobility, royalty, or the nation's future.
  • The Special Region doesn't seem to have any equivalent to sports games like baseball. When introduced to these games, the Princess and her fellow knights are completely baffled and keep thinking about them in terms of a battle.
• Cunning Linguist: Lelei is the first person from the other side of the Gate to learn the Japanese language. By the time the area around Alnus Hill becomes a thriving trade hub, she's the most fluent speaker of the language among the native people there.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • That is what usually happens when you send soldiers with modern warfare experience and weapons against pre-medieval armies. If the Empire knew what was waiting for them on the other side of the gate, they would have stayed away and walled it off.
  • After the JSDF are finally called in to stop the invaders, they proceed to beat the crap out of the invaders with guns, tanks, and helicopters. When the invaders try to attack again after the JSDF comes to their world and takes over the Gate, located on Alnus Hill, the JSDF defenders mercilessly shoot them down. The battle of Alnus Hill wasn't even a battle, it was a massacre. As one of their Imperial commanders said, "Like the grains in this porridge, the corpses of our soldiers were smashed into the ground", "Iron thorns blocked our way, and lightning rained down, blowing us away", and last, but not least, "The enemies on Alnus are an army comparable to God, they're a greater threat than the empire!" It turns out that over one hundred and twenty thousand casualties were taken by the Empire in the attempts to take Alnus, while the JSDF casualties were negligible by comparison if there were any.
  • An army of deserters-turned-bandits besieging Italica are annihilated by the 4th Combat Team's helicopter gunships.
  • Because all the most experienced troops in the Empire were killed at the beginning of the conflict, the replacements are nowhere near as good. This is further compounded with the fact that their morale is practically nonexistent due to being forced to fight their own countrymen or else they or their families will be killed. They are unable to defeat a force they outnumber over 3 to 1 that is mostly well-trained rookies and their past their prime veteran instructors.
  • Kuribayashi vs Zorzal and his entourage. Guess who starts looking like Pruneface at the end?
• Cute Monster Girl: Quite a few of them inhabit the Special Region: the Warrior Rabbits, Medusas (who suck energy through their snake-hair), four-armed girls, sirens (similar to harpies), girls with feathered wings, girls with leathery wings and horns, deer girls, catgirls, etc. They also serve the purpose of reminding us that the world beyond the Gate is a different one, even after the orcs, dragons, and pigs are mostly wiped out.
• Cypher Language: Lots of mysterious-looking lettering◊ in the anime. It's a substitution code for either English or romanized Japanese. Here's a chart◊.
• A Day in the Limelight:
  • Episode sixteen focuses more on Yanagida and Delilah's stories than Itami and his group.
  • Episode twenty focuses heavily on Sherry and her attempts to escape Zorzal's Oprichnina, or Secret Police, who are arresting every pro-peace noble and senator under the pretense of treason. Itami and his group are only seen in one short scene as they attempt to take random routes to throw off Lelei's assassins.
• Death by Irony: This is implied to be the fate of Parne, a Bunny Warrior, in the manga. She chose life as a slave instead of running away and was forced to cut off half of her left ear. Later, we see a Bunny Warrior with a cut left ear trying to escape with the Bessara Family and getting killed. Delilah and her friend continued their vagabond life and were found by the late Lord Formal and get to live.
• Decade Dissonance: One of the few likelier explanations of the variable levels of arms technology that exist among the countries beyond the Gate — see how the very Roman-themed Empire exists side-by-side with the Kingdom of the Elbe, which has mounted knights in plate armor. This is lessened in the Manga, as the Empire takes on a slightly more medieval feel.
• Deep-Immersion Gaming: Youji is seen playing a fantasy game on his smartphone during his introduction. He imagines himself as a knight jumping down to fight a large group of monsters. Unfortunately, he runs out of energy right after he lands, and is told by the game to buy more. He is then beaten up by the monsters.
• Defensive Feint Trap: The armies of the United Kingdoms figured they would annihilate the strange foreigner army occupying Alnus Hill with their sheer numbers and didn't think much of the foreigners "just digging up holes" with their meager numbers. Once they got into range, however, the JSDF made short work of them with their superior firepower. The armies never even made it halfway up the hill.
• Defiant to the End: Sherry's parents throw wine at the Oprichnina, or Imperial secret police after they're accused of treason. After Sherry escapes through a tunnel underneath their mansion, she watches in horror with Senator Casel as her family's mansion burns to the ground.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance:
  • Piña and Bozes are very confused when they hear that the forces captured when the Empire invaded Japan have been provided with "Humane" accommodations (according to the modern Geneva Conventions) as opposed to treated like dirt or even spoils of war.
  • Slavery. The Royal Family couldn't wrap their heads around the fact that the existence a Japanese woman captured at Ginza and Made A Sex Slave would make the Itami's unit flip their shit and throw the peace treaty down the drain. Much like the Roman Empire, it's based off, capturing people for sale during military campaigns beyond their borders is standard practice.
  • Imperials are prone to using sex as part of negotiations and get confused when the JSDF doesn't take them up on it. For example, in the anime, Piña orders Bozes to sleep with Itami so he won't report to his superiors that he was captured and beaten up by the Rose Knights under Bozes' orders after they had agreed to a cease of hostilities. For extra Dissonance, while Bozes obviously didn't want to go with it, she gets very offended when she arrives in Itami's room and he completely ignores her, the second daughter of a Noble House, in favor of the small party going on in there despite her Ready for Lovemaking getup. She ends up slapping him hard across the face for the slight.
  • On the meta scale, the story itself, with its nationalistic air and unquestionably good and noble, while clearly expansionist and Good Is Not Soft JSDF, doesn't sit well with a large part of Japanese society itself as well as the many foreigners who follow it.
• Did I Mention It's Christmas?: Episode 8 of the anime has Itami being called in to speak at a Diet, and Lelei, Tuka, Rory, Bozes, and Piña are brought in attendance as well. Driving through the winter streets of Ginza, the Gateworlder girls notice that there are people out shopping along with a decorated Christmas tree in a shopping center which Rory assumes to be some sort of charm.
• Diplomatic Impunity: Inverted example in episode twenty. The Japanese government tries not to interfere with the Empire's internal affairs after Zorzal orders his Oprichnina, or Secret Police, to arrest anyone suspected of treason. This includes pro-peace nobles and senators, and even Sherry, the twelve-year-old daughter of one of the most prominent pro-peace faction in the Empire. As she's being forcefully taken away from the steps of the Japanese embassy, Sugawara attempts a simultaneous Loophole Abuse and Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right! by allowing Sherry into the embassy under the pretense that he's going to marry her when she turns sixteen. Piña's knights then prevent the Oprichnina from storming the embassy lest they violate some treaties signed between Japan and the Empire.
• Dirty Coward: The marauder army at the battle of Italica attack the town that had few actual fighters and was composed mostly of untrained civilians. They take sadistic delight in killing the townspeople, also engaging in Rape, Pillage, and Burn on the parts of the town they overran, even going as far as to throw the corpses of their victims at the survivors to twist the knife further. However, once the JSDF and Rory enter the fray, the tables turn and the marauders try to flee in terror but ultimately fail as they simply were no match for their heavy firepower.
• Dirty Kid: In chapter 38 of the manga, a young boy from the refugees asks Itami who he wants to sleep with, Rory or Lelei. The kid imagines them naked with a perverted look on his face. Disgusted, Itami tells him to beat it. Then the kid assumed it was with Tuka by process of elimination. Itami wasn't amused.
• Dirty Old Man: Lelei's master spends his first scene wishing Lelei's curvaceous sister were around instead. Later volumes show him hitting on the students at the Japanese language school.
• Disciplines of Magic: Several different types of magic are displayed with conversations implicating that they are of differing disciples.
  • Elves such as Tuka seem to rely on Elemental magic, With Tuka's father Hodr using wind magic to accelerate his arrow used to blind the Flame Dragon, and Tuka herself is able to call lightning against the same dragon, later.
  • Rory seems to be rely on soul magic, channeling the spirits of the dead through her body, which causes virtually orgasmic pleasure. She can heal from any injury perfectly, and can, by taking in someone's blood, bear the burden of their injuries herself, sparing them the pain and damage of otherwise fatal wounds.
  • Mimosa states that Lelei's sister, Arpeggio, specializes in gemstone magic, allowing her to "bypass the laws of physics" at will by using gems as catalysts for her spells.
  • Lelei herself seems to be a Jack-of-all-trades, able to replicate spells by studying them, and able to enhance the effectiveness of her own magic by applying things she's learned about physics, chemistry, and other sciences from Japan, working within the natural order for maximum effect.
• Disproportionate Retribution: The Empire's standard operating procedure. If you insult or disrespect them in the slightest, they'll Rape, Pillage, and Burn your entire kingdom and enslave the survivors. When Piña's subordinates repeatedly abuse Itami, she's terrified that Japan will act the same way.
• Dissonant Serenity: The Emperor is very blase when he witnesses Kuribiyashi take out the troops in the throne room and beat the crap out of Zorzal.
• A Dog Named "Dog": One of Piña's cousins is a female noblewoman (i.e. a lady). Her name is Lady.
• "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: The ending themes are sung by Hisako Kanemoto (Tuka), Nao Tōyama (Lelei), and Risa Taneda (Rory).
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: After Piña sees the terrifying might of the 21st century JSDF, she trips over herself to avoid offending them, as they are as destructive as the adult fire dragon (see Humans Are Cthulhu).
• Doomed Hometown: Tuka's village in the Koan Forest, Lelei's home in Koda Village, and Yao's home in the Schwartz Forest are all destroyed by the rampaging (and hungry) Fire Dragon.
• The Door Slams You: In the manga and episode 5 of the anime, Princess Piña hits Itami in the face with one of Italica's gates when she comes out to greet Rory, Lelei, and Tuka. This is just the start of a long list of screw-ups she makes while dealing with the JSDF.
• Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: A staple of the genre, but still... Despite the rape and attempted rape of women being portrayed as horrifying throughout the series, when a super-strong invulnerable demigoddess driven supernaturally mad with lust pins Itami down against his protests, it's played for laughs/titillation ^note  Granted, he protests that she looks like a minor and Japan has laws against that sort of thing.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • The House Formal servant chosen to kill the released Ginza slave desperately tries to see Itami before being forced into the assassination, unaware the orders are forged by the person she hates most in the world... only to see Itami's jeep leaving the garrison at that exact moment.
  • And as she's about to assassinate the Ginza slave, she learns her ultimate target isn't so different, which could clear up the entire situation... which of course is the moment Yanagida chooses to go outside and see someone holding a knife to a Japanese citizen's throat.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: In the first episode of the anime, Itami accidentally walks into a column and has a vision of Tuka, Lelei, and Rory while he's lying on the ground.
• Dressing as the Enemy
  • The newest tactic by Zorzal and his goons to smear the JSDF's name as they plan to attack Alnus. Pina knows full well that trick won't work. For starters, where are these idiots gonna find firearms and modern military vehicles?
  • In the last episode of the anime, Itami and Recon Team 3 infiltrate the capital by disguising their Humvee as a covered wagon, with Itami 'pulling' it dressed as a servant.
• The Driver: For the 3rd Recon Team, Kurata fills this role in Itami's Humvee. Later, when he forms Resource Investigation Team 101, Lelei and Yao take over.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him: Bessara in the anime via a grenade, whereas he gets a more dramatic and bloody send-off in the manga.

Tropes E-L

• Eagleland: President Dirrell is of the "America, the Boorish" variety. The US initially takes the position that Japan is welcome to go through the Gate first, because they expect the expedition to run into difficulty (being aware that it's on a shoestring budget)and US assistance to be called in. In the meantime, they provide supplies and benefit from being Japan's ally. Later, when Princess Piña and several others come back through the Gate, this seems to be forgotten and the US attempts the same covert grab tactic that China and Russia employ to get the visitors from the Special Area into US custody, with blackmail used when the Japanese defense is unexpectedly deadly. The two other black ops teams Rory puts a bloody stop to that effort, though the US still maintains covert watch at the Gate in another attempt to grab them. The president throws a fit when that fails too and Shino blabs about the covert attacks on live TV, but considering the team lost, the valuable blackmail lost and how close they came to succeeding compare to China and Russia's efforts it's perhaps understandable that he's less sanguine than they are. It's never explained why the US didn't simply request an interview of its own with the visitors and lean on its provision of supplies instead of blackmail.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In the Manga, the Orcs only appear in the first chapter. The Wyverns-riders also disappear early on, but that could be due to massive losses from the JSDF anti-aircraft guns annihilating them. For the rest of the series, the Empire seems almost entirely Roman/medieval humans, with some of the Cute Monster Girl species appearing just to remind the viewer that there are more than just humans in the other world. There are wyvern-riders seen in shots of the capital in the anime, and in at least one flashback scene to the battle in Ginza, orcs are seen in a prison bus.
• Elegant Gothic Lolita: The aptly named Rory Mercury.
• The Empire:
  • The aptly-named Empire that tried to invade Japan. Think Rome, except with uneven technological levels, with some parts of the empire having access to late Middle-ages tech (plate mail for example is very much in evidence).
  • The art of the Light Novel rewrites turn the empire instead into the Holy Roman Empire, complete with period wear◊.
• The End of the World as We Know It: It's revealed in volume 7, that keeping the gate open too long causes massive spatial distortions in the region which will ultimately destroy all life there. Hardy implies that this will eventually happen on Earth as well. In fact, The Great Capital Earthquake was just a prelude.
• Enemy Civil War:
  • Remnants of the Imperial's allied nations attack Italica, partly out of frustration with getting slaughtered by the JSDF at Alnus hill, and possibly because no Imperial troops were at said battle either.
  • In season 2, Piña's Rose Knights rebel against Zorzal's forces, resulting in a siege at the Princess's palace.
• Enemy Mine:
  • Princess Piña and Youji's team end up working together to defend a city from a besieging army of deserters.
  • Some of Yao's people are unaware that Itami, Rory, and Lelei were there to help them, as she had left to inform her elders that she came back. As a result, both groups are initially hostile towards each other as they're unaware of the other's intentions. However, this quickly disappears when the fire dragon shows up again, prompting both groups to focus their attention on it instead.
• Epic Fail: The game Youji plays in the first episode, where he leaps down to fight a large group of monsters. Unfortunately, he has no energy to move and is told by the game to buy more. Said monsters then proceed to pummel his character to death.
• Epic Flail: Used by one of the bigger bandits in episode 6. He manages to kill quite a few people with it as well, until Rory shows up.
• Establishing Character Moment:
  • Rory's first appearance in the manga is her gleefully slaughtering bandits with her giant halberd, forcing one who claimed he didn't rape or kill to bury with his bare hands a man, and 2 women raped to death, while she kneels in prayer before finishing the final bandit.
  • Prince Zorzal is introduced raping a rabbit-woman, who was the queen of her people and gave herself up to him in exchange for saving her people... who, unbeknownst to her, was destroyed years before and think she surrendered just to save her own skin.
• Everybody Hates Hades: Played With. Rory serves Emroy/Emloy, the god of death. Yet as she makes clear in episode 11 and its equivalent chapter in the manga, having a meaningful death means living a full and rich life, and so Emroy (and by extension Rory) is also a god of life (or at least living, which is not the same thing) by proxy. The god of the Underworld Hardy, on the other, plays this straight, by having her disciples wake up the flame dragon, essentially for shits and giggles, and allowing it to massacre her own followers with no warning or explanation.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: When Lelei gives out an explanation of the flame dragon's active and hibernation life cycle, she reaches this point.
  Lelei: All hibernating animals use their active period to eat, fight over territories, make nests and- ah.
  Itami and co.: and...?
  Lelei: and breed and raise offsprings.
  Everyone sports Oh, Crap! faces.
• Expy: Shigenori Houjou, the outgoing prime minister in the first episode, resembles former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, while Shinzou Motoi, the new prime minister in the same episode, resembles then-prime minister Shinzo Abe, in the manga even more than in the anime. One of the staff members in the White House resembles former US President Barack Obama, he appears in several chapters in the manga, in the anime he can be seen seated in episode 10. The Russian President in the manga looks like Vladimir Putin, while his anime counterpart is more similar to Boris Yeltsin. Defence Minister (and the probable future PM) Tarou Kanou shares a resemblance, name, and hobby with Taro Aso (also a hardliner like Abe). In episode 16, the two F-4 fighter pilots we see were based on the main characters of a 1970s manga named Phantom Burai. Even First Lieutenant Akira Yanagida is essentially based off of Frank Grimes from The Simpsons.
• False Flag Operation:
  • Tyuule tries to restart the war between the Empire and Japan by tricking a House Formal maid into killing a rescued Japanese citizen with falsified orders, while planting evidence implicating Princess Piña and Zorzal in the assassination. Her plan fails due to Yanagida's interference, and because the Japanese have fingerprint checks and truth serum at their disposal.
  • Zorzal, thinking only about his own swelled ego and need for glory, actually restarts the war by making the very same soldiers who were imprisoned by Japan in the Ginza Incident, generals, and attacking the empire's own citizens in the JSDF's name. He also orders the arrest of anyone who was too vocal in seeking peace with the Japanese under the pretense of treason.
• Famed In-Story: Itami was dubbed "The Hero of Ginza" for his actions during the Ginza Incident. Later, he achieves even greater fame in the Special Region for fighting and defeating a giant dragon.
  • Cato the Sage is a world-famous sorcerer.
  • Rory Mercury AKA Rory the Reaper is so well known (and feared) in the Special Region that most of its citizens recognize her on sight.
  • Tuka, Rory, and Lelei become famous in Japan from their appearance at the Diet. This comes back to bite Itami hard in episode 24 when the crowd at Comiket goes wild over them, and the police take them all away before he can buy his beloved mangas.
• Faster Than They Look: A pair of JASDF F-4EJ Kai Phantom IIs going up against the fire dragon in the air found that the dragon can "turn better than a World War I biplane, has great propulsion from its wings, and has the mobility of a Harrier jump jet or combat helicopter". Pretty good for a creature about two times bigger than the planes.
• Fate Worse than Death: The Formal butler asks Piña if there's anything they can do the stop the fighting in episode 5. She says there is, and recommends opening the gate. She also states that the men would likely be slaughtered, and the women raped. She doesn't sugarcoat that last one either, saying that while she might still be okay getting raped once or twice, she'd probably break mentally if she was raped by fifty or a hundred men.
• Fictional Flag: The Empire from has a red flag with a stylized golden sun spread across most of its field. The same motif also appears on its footsoldiers' shields, and on banners that hang in Emperor Molt Sol Augustus's throne room.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Works both ways; modern Japanese citizens visiting a medieval world with fantasy elements, where they struggle to understand the ancient customs and social attitudes (see Culture Clash above). Likewise, when citizens of the other world visit Tokyo on a diplomatic mission they are amazed and frightened by things like skyscrapers, subway trains, and print media.
• Flash Back: Used regularly to help give more details about various characters and how they ended up where they were.
• Follow the Leader: In terms of animation techniques, it's clear from the first episode that A-1 Pictures was really paying close attention to how ufotable animated Fate/stay night [Unlimited Blade Works] since they use the same methods from FSN such as blurring, shading, flares, etc. The first episode of Gate even had the camera rotate 360 degrees as it followed an Arrow Cam which ufotable did in Episode 24 of Fate/Zero and Episodes 20 & 24 of Unlimited Blade Works.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: In the anime, when visitors from another world (cute, female ones at that) appear on television, they quickly get their own hashtag on Twitter.
• Gambit Pileup: The Japanese have their own plans for coexistence with Piña. Prince Zorzal has his own plans to succeed his father. Some Earth countries (the US, China and Russia) each have their own plans for the Gate and the lands beyond. The dark elf ambassador is plotting to use Tuka to convince the JSDF to attack the dragon in her lands. A third prince, Diabo, has plans to eliminate Zorzal and Piña as competitors by allying himself with someone else beyond the Gate. Tyuule, Prince Zorzal's freaking Sex Slave, has plans to tear apart everything into bloody war as revenge for being considered a traitor for giving herself to Zorzal, by framing Piña for the murder of the released Ginza slave. And then the chosen murderer for the task is revealed to have plans of revenge against Tyuule for selling out their race. Hardy, the god of the underworld (who is female) plans to have Rory marry her. Oh, and Hardy also decided that things were boring so not only did he/she decide to awaken a Flame Dragon early, they also decided to open the portal to Japan, unleashing the JSDF on the Special Region. Sheesh. It's not so much of a pileup as it is a clusterfuck......
• Gatling Good: The attack choppers utilize these during the Battle of Italica to gun down the bandit army outside Italica's walls. Then they initiate a "cleaning procedure" inside the walls.
• Gendercide:
  • In chapter 49, the heroes stumble upon a village that is ravaged by a deadly disease that only affects women. Lelei gets infected, but fortunately, it can be cured by a special kind of peach. Unfortunately, it is a little hard to come by.
  • Zorzal, leading the imperial army, nearly succeeded in this with his hunt of the Warrior Bunnies, who are very near a One-Gender Race.
• Gender Flip: In-Universe example. Stories of the party the defeated the Fire Dragon had Tuka as a boy elf. She wasn't amused when she found out.
• Genre Savvy: Itami's otaku bent gave him near-encyclopedic knowledge of the "mythical" creatures he encountered in chapters 50-52, including a cockatrice and the Plague Zombies. Rory is duly impressed.
• Gilligan Cut: Rory with shopping in Tokyo in the anime.
  Rory: [referring to her clothes] This is my formal wear as a priestess. I'm not interested in other clothes.
  [Smash Cut to Rory swooning over a white dress in Takeshita Street]
  Rory: What a wonderful dress!
• Godiva Hair: The girls typically sport this when bathing in the anime, but not in the manga.
• Go for the Eye: Even though an ancient dragon is bulletproof, its eyes are not.
• Gondor Calls for Aid: Though she considered them potential enemies, Piña still relies on the JSDF to protect Italica. Fortunately, Youji realizes that they would need reinforcements, and calls for some air support.
• Good Is Not Soft: JSDF soldiers in general.
  • They know that they can't save everyone but do what they can anyway, and have no qualms slaughtering 100,000+ invading soldiers.
  • Itami is this too. He calls an airstrike on the Imperial Senate after discovering that Zorzal has a Japanese girl as a Sex Slave during peace negotiations with Molto.
• Gorn:
  • The series in the manga is not holding back on showing people's guts and limbs falling out of their usual places. Every battle has seen its fair share of gore.
  • The anime usually reduces the amount of gore, but the shootout scene in episode 10 has no such restrictions - there's blood everywhere, people's heads get blown off and one agent even got his arm cut off.
• Gory Discretion Shot: The anime gets this treatment due to the Lighter and Softer theme of it. Rory's introduction scene is the best example, every time she slams her halberd down on some poor individual, a huge cloud of dust pops up, covering the result. While there's a small scene in episode 1 where Itami stabs an Imperial soldier resulting in blood both on his face and the soldier's armor, blood doesn't make a significant appearance until the Italica arc.
• Greater-Scope Villain: According to Rory Hardy and her Disciples are responsible for many of the recent hardships in the Special Area; unleashing the dragons, the Zombie plague, and most importantly opening the portal between Alnus and Tokyo in the first place.
• Greeting Gesture Confusion: When the princess meets the (female) Japanese delegate, the meeting ends with the delegate reaching her hand out... which, in the princess' culture, is apparently only done for wedding ceremonies. Fortunately, one of the aides tells her what to do.
• Gun Porn: The firearms depicted in the manga are well detailed, probably due to the author's history in the JSDF.
  • Most notable is the aftermath of the scene in the Hot Bath (Chapter 23), where Itami's team acquire Uzis, MP7s, MP9s, and a Magpul PDR.
  • The standard equipment for the JSDF too. From the sights of the Howa Type 64, to the fins of a Panzerfaust rocket, the artists and animators sure have done a fine job.
• Gunship Rescue: The battle of Italica ends in one glorious mess to the tune of Wagner. Another one in Chapter 46/episode seventeen to fight against two fledgling-yet-dangerous flame dragons.
• He Didn't Make It: Casel infers this regarding Sherry's parents after running into Cicero and asking what happened to the other pro-peace nobles arrested by the Oprichnina. Cicero tells him those who surrendered peacefully were okay, but anyone who put up any resistance were killed.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Yao has a major one after the JSDF command refuses to send troops to save her clan from the Fire Dragon, for political and logistical reasons.
  • Played for laughs with Kuribayashi, who freaks out after learning that her slacker CO is a JSDF Ranger. Later on she totally loses it when she finds out he's in Special Forces.
• Highly-Visible Ninja: During the Hakone arc The Russian Special Forces use the UAZ-452 "Breadloaf" van, which, iconic as it is, is a Sixties design, and, while still in production, is hopelessly archaic even in its country of origin, so on the Japanese roads it would realistically stand out as a sore thumb (especially given that it's a left-hand drive vehicle, which are very rare in Japan). Definitely not the best choice for the SpecOps team trying to remain inconspicuous. The anime replaces the van by the more modern and less conspicuous (but still LHD, not to mention American) GMC Safari.
• Hopeless with Tech: When several Dark Elf warriors volunteer to help Itami and the others hunt the Flame Dragon, he gives them a crash course in using the Panzerfaust. When they actually confront it, they panic and completely forget what he taught them. Carnage ensues. Not helped is the other dose of reality, which is that Dark Elves trained their whole lives to use medieval weapons, and only learned of the existence of modern weapons that same day. Them not remembering how a weapon they didn't know existed works in the heat of battle is another sad bit of reality.
• Hot Springs Episode: Episode 4 and a good chunk of Episode 9 of the anime.
• A House Divided:
  • It seems that the Empire isn't in complete control of their lands, as seen in episode 2 when the Emperor orders his allied nations to get slaughtered by the new enemy forces occupying their gate. He later orders the surrounding regions to undergo a Salt the Earth policy, officially to deny the JSDF from obtaining local resources, but secretly quell any rebellious mood against the Empire.
  • Though the Empire has its pro-war and pro-peace factions, it starts to really go downhill after Emperor Molto is poisoned, and Zorzal takes over. Piña is still hoping for a peaceful coexistence with the JSDF, while Zorzal pursues a militaristic retrenchment, though with a somewhat shady and underhanded approach since he's well aware the Empire will never defeat the JSDF in a conventional fight. Meanwhile their brother Diabo leaves with the hope of getting military and political support from other nations in an attempt to overthrow Zorzal at the cost of weakening the Empire's rule.
  • Leilei, upon being asked how she can support the JSDF instead of the Empire (where she lives), responds that she and her people are nomadic. This reminds Piña that just because you can conquer someone, doesn't necessarily mean that they want to follow you afterward.
  • Earth is this as well- aside from other nations wanting to get into the action of the Special Region and all its resources, the Japan arc shows that not all Japanese agree with the handling of the Region, as shown when they try to rake Itami over the coals for the losses sustained in actions against the Empire and the Flame Dragon.
• Humans Are Cthulhu:
  • A pre-gunpowder society encounters a 21st Century military. To the peasants who were provided a new home after their villages were razed by the Flame Dragon, The JSDF are the Great Race of Yith. To Princess Piña who sees her brother Zorzal receiving a red-ass beatdown after his mistreatment and possible rape of an enslaved Japanese girl, they are The Cats of Ulthar and gods help the Empire if the JSDF learned that a Japanese prisoner died in the Imperial mines.
  • Interestingly, this particular example is not so much of humans encountering another species and them deciding humans to be frightening (though the other sentient races on the non-Earth side of the gate agree that the JSDF is strange and frightening themselves), but rather, both factions that conflict are human in nature. It's less that Humans Are Cthulu, and more that the JSDF is Cthulu.
• Humans Are Insects: Rory explains in chapter 54 of the manga that the gods of the Special Region view their domain like a garden, and that they sometimes "prune branches that get too big" to explain sending the sage who would become the dean of Rondel to learn about the gate. She is then visibly enraged because Hardy keeps upending that garden by throwing in new and "interesting" things, with wild abandon, through abusing the Gate.
• I Choose to Stay: In Volume 7 of the Light Novel, when Third Recon discusses the possibility of the closing the Gate, Sgt. Kurata declares his intention to stay in the Special Region with his girlfriend Persia. Both Sergeant Major Kuwabara and Lt. Itami have a frank discussion with him about the difficulties he would experience as a modern man living in a Roman/Medieval world, cut off from the technology and medicine in Japan. Itami admits he's thought about the subject a lot since he arrived in the Special Region.
• Idiosyncratic Cultural Gesture: When Princess Pina is negotiating with the Japanese delegates in Tokyo, the Japanese ambassador concludes the meeting by offering her hand. The JSDF member accompanying the Princess explains that it's a greeting, and tells the Princess to take the ambassador's hand.
• Immortality:
  • Rory, of the regenerative type. She just heals any type of damage (as Itami finds out to his shock), and apparently can even survive decapitation if her head is stuck back on her body quickly enough.
  • High elves like Tuka apparently have "endless life". As seen when the Flame Dragon attacked her village, though, this merely means that they have the potential to live forever. It does not translate to invulnerability.
• Immune to Bullets:
  • Mostly averted; bullets work pretty well on medieval armor, and no one has used any sort of defensive magic that might even the playing field. The ancient dragon, however, considers .50 caliber rounds little more than an annoyance, unless they get in its eyes. The Panzerfaust, on the other hand...
  • Dragons die in droves when going up against the Type-87 SPAAG, which has twin rapid-fire 35mm Oerlikon cannons. There's a reason troopers nicknamed it the "Guntank" after all.
  • Rory is somewhat immune to bullets, but it's less of "Bullets bounce off," as much as "Wolverine-style" where they remain in her body until the healing pushes them out or they are removed. It still doesn't affect her much. Granted, though, the fire directed against her was largely of the small arms type; thus far we haven't seen what happens if she was to be struck by larger caliber rounds or high explosives. Due to being 'claimed' by Rory, Itami has become this as well. All his injuries manifest on Rory instead, which her Healing Factor can take care of.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
  • Norma, one of Piña's knights, gets this treatment attempting to defend Italica's wall in episode 6. After being stabbed by multiple bandits, his body is then tossed down to cause further drop in the defender's morale.
  • The bandit army leader suffers this when he falls from the ramparts during the JSDF's counterattack, and gets impaled onto Rory's halberd.
  • An assassin targeting Lelei is dispatched this way by Grey.
• I'm Taking Her Home with Me!: Risa's reaction to Rory and Lelei (terrifying Rory to the point she thinks Risa is an Apostle of their god of the Underworld). Exacerbated when she is given money to get them clothes.
• Infraction Distraction: In Episode 12, Piña meets with Itami before they head to the capital to pick up a "package" from Bozes. Itami recalled and gives a Boys' Love book that Piña has apparently been waiting for. But as Itami and his group leaves for the capital, Hamilton asks what was so important about the "package", to which Piña replies was not actually the book itself, but intel hidden inside about Itami's military career from the Ginza Incident to the Battle of Italica.
• Insistent Terminology:
  • Piña and Bozes are dealing with "fine arts", not smut literature.
  • In the anime, the JSDF warn the Special Region locals that an "earth-shake" is about to occur, one even corrects himself from "earthquake".
• Interspecies Romance:
  • Delilah notes in her monologue that male Rabbit Warriors are rare (they are pretty close to One-Gender Race), so they have to mate with their chosen male to keep populating. Basically, this trope is their race's policy.
  • Also Kurata and Persia and later Yanagida and Delilah.
• Intimate Healing: When Lelei is struck by a plague and cannot swallow because she is unconscious, Itami puts some medication in his mouth and locks lips with her to get her to swallow it. Despite the situation, Tuka and Rory get jealous.
• Irony:
  • In the first episode of the anime, Itami hit a pillar with a sign "watch where you walk."
  • When the bandits finally breached Italica's walls in the anime, their leader declares that they have found the excitement of killing they couldn't find when assaulting the JSDF-occupied Alnus. Until he gets impaled by falling onto Rory's halberd.
  Bandit leader: (after breaching the wall) Now this is war! The killing and death our brethren cannot find at Alnus! We have found war here!
  *Some time later*
  Bandit leader: (after getting impaled) I refuse to accept this! This cannot be called war! Don't you agree, priestess of Emloy! ANSWER ME, PRIESTESS OF EMLOY!
  Rory swings down the halberd, killing the bandit leader.
  • When Piña is going to explain the gaffe with Itami to the Diet, she's consumed by worry about how everything she does will affect the Empire. When Itami himself grouses to Yanagida about what Bozes did to him, the officer just tells him to let it slide.
• I Take Offense to That Last One: Itami's has taken a lot of flak throughout the whole series, being called an otaku, slacker, and on one occasion, a pervert. But it takes Giselle saying he's an old man that finally shocks him.
• It's All About Me: Zorzal is offended everyone at the mixer praises Lelei, as "the only thing she did was kill a flame dragon", and thinks the only one who should get attention and praise is him.
• It's Raining Men: JSDF paratroopers are dropped into the Imperial capital to rescue the Japanese ambassador along with all of the other pro-peace delegates and Piña's troops.
• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique:
  • Itami opted to used this when the prince was being uncooperative with revealing info about the Japanese slaves.
    Itami: "Kuribayashi, get him to reconsider. Just don't kill him."
    Light novel; Itami: "Kuribayashi. MAKE him talk."
    Light novel; Kuribayashi: "Roger, EL TEE!"
  • Likewise, the butler involved in the House Formal frameup is viciously beaten up by the house's girls in an attempt to force a confession to clear them and the would-be assassin. He resists. The JSDF thank the girls for the hard work and break out the amobarbital.
• Jerkass Gods: Hardy, not from being openly antagonistic, but from sheer apathy on numerous occasions. The opening of the gate without warning or explanation. Ordering Giselle (presuming she's not lying) to awaken the Flame Dragon, and then ignores the cries of her followers when the Flame Dragon decides to make snacks out of them, and the whole Female Plague Zombies arc in chapters 49-52 because Hardy couldn't be bothered to do her job properly and deal with the forbidden lab where some fool was experimenting with immortality and got it wrong, not to mention properly guiding the souls of the dead in that area to their final destination(s) so they wouldn't become shambling husks. Gets worse in the later novels when it is revealed that the reason there's Medieval Stasis in the first place is that all the gods, Hardy included, absolutely forbid rapid or sudden technological progress, upon pain of death, even when the gods' actions themselves are directly responsible, like opening a gate to a world with a vastly superior technological base.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Subverted. The reporter who interrogates Itami, Tuka, Rory, and Leilei is obviously digging to try to find evidence that Japanese military intervention in the Special Region is doing more harm than good, but she's also shown asking why a quarter of the refugees died under Japanese protection... and Itami and the others rudely dismiss her. On one hand, asking the question "Why were these people allowed to die on your watch" is the absolute least that should be done. But as revealed by her internal monologue, she's twisting the facts — these civilians had been killed before the JSDF had even arrived, and she's only trying to discredit them.
• Keystone Army:
  • The bandit army starts panicking after their leader is brutally killed by Rory in episode 6. They also get slaughtered before they can run or attempt to regroup.
  • In episode 23, the JSDF paratroopers target the Commissars leading the attack on the Jade Palace first, knowing that the regular army soldiers will surrender or flee once they're gone.
• Knight Templar: Yao the Dark Elf deliberately traumatizes Tuka, who is suffering from severe PTSD after her father's death, to pressure Itami into saving her clan by killing the Fire Dragon.
• Lampshade Hanging: As JSDF helicopters mow down the bandits attacking Italica, they're playing Wagner's "Ride of The Valkyries" and laughing. Princess Piña calls JSDF's battle (more accurately slaughter) "Sneer of the Valkyries". Their commanding officer can only sigh when he realizes it's a reference to Apocalypse Now and the fact he has to deal with subordinates like that.
• Language Fluency Denial: After an incident with a flame dragon caused a number of civilian casualties, Itami is called to testify before the Diet, along with Tuka, Lelei, and Rory Mercury. Lelei is well-versed in Japanese at this point, and actually functions as an interpreter. However, when a politician, looking to score political points and make the JSDF look bad, tries to make a case that the JSDF abandoned the civilians to save their own skin, Rory Mercury surprises everyone by revealing in the hearing that she actually speaks fluent Japanese by attacking the politician directly ("Anta baka?!" ^note  "Are you stupid?! in the original Japanese, "Are you a goddamned idiot!?" in the English dub). She then proceeds to demolish the politician's argument by accusing her of manipulating numbers. "A quarter of the people died? Three quarters were saved. Itami and his team did something that had never been done before. They neither hid nor ran away." The intensity of her testimony, plus the shock that she had learned Japanese in secret, had the needed impact and ended the hearing.
• Laser-Guided Karma: The Imperial Army would sadistically and brutally kill innocent defenseless people in the most gruesome manner (sometimes add in Rape, Pillage, and Burn) to declare their superior might. Unfortunately for them, they pissed off the wrong people by attacking an unaware Japan, who retaliate in the form of sending in the JSDF with their superior technology/knowledge of war. The Imperial Army soon gets a rude awakening when they realize too late just how far outclassed they are. The cruel arrogant sadists who laughed at the carnage they caused now screamed and begged for mercy as they get even more brutalized and mutilated via shredded apart by gunfire or blown to bloody chunks by tank shells/grenades/mortars/bombs.
  • In the battle at Italica, the bandit army, which consisted of army remnants, cruelly kill the inexperienced citizens who were left to defend the city, with the leader laughing about how this is a true war. Once Rory and the JDSF come in, the tables turn immediately. The bandit army soon began to regret their attack as they get systematically slaughtered by a rain of gunfire as well as a helicopter's minigun barrage, shredding them to bits. The once arrogant leader began ranting about how this wasn't a true war as the JDSF wasn't "fighting fair" before getting killed by Rory.
• Last Stand:
  • Attempted by some of the defenders of Italica after the bandit army breaches one of the walls. Unfortunately they're no match for the hardened veterans, and most of them die rather quickly.
  • Piña's Rose Knights attempt this defending the Jade Palace housing the Japanese ambassador along with some pro-peace Imperials.
• Leeroy Jenkins:
  • The Empire sent an army through the Gate to conquer whatever world was on the other side, without any kind of reconnaissance or scouting ahead. They pay very dearly for the heinous act they committed.
  • Some of the citizens of Italica rush the bandit army after they taunt them by throwing the bodies of some of their fellow citizens. It's presumably to lure them out of their barricade so they can get cut down more easily by the bandits.
  • Kuribayashi does this during the Battle of Italica. While the others were prepared to stay in the back and fire shots at the bandit army, she rushes headlong to engage in melee combat. True to the Trope Namer, her squad desperately runs in after her to provide support, to everyone's chagrin.
• Let No Crisis Go to Waste:
  • In episode 2, the Empire attacks the JSDF forces with an army of over three hundred thousand troops. Unfortunately they suffer heavy losses in Curb-Stomp Battle after battle, within a matter of days. The Emperor however, sent none of their troops into battle; instead they had tributary nations send their troops to their deaths. Turns out the Emperor purposely did this to whittle his allied nation's military strength, lest they decide to turn on the Empire itself. He later orders a Salt the Earth policy in the surrounding regions to further quell any attempts at rebellion under the guise of denying the enemy JSDF forces resources.
  • Zorzal puts this to full use as well in episode nineteen after Emperor Molto is poisoned. His advisors immediately suggest that they weaken popular support within the Empire for the JSDF by attacking towns surrounding Alnus Hill, and make it seem like the JSDF is at fault. Piña is disgusted by this approach, but Zorzal gives them immediate approval to do whatever they want. In the anime, this evolves into forming the Oprichnina, a Secret Police force who then arrests any senators suspected of being too pro-peace.
• Lighter and Softer:
  • The novels had to tone down its political views before being published due to the original web novel containing Japanese Right Wing politics and Jingoism, controversial topics that are unpopular in mainstream Japan.
  • The anime has gotten a HUGE dose of this, especially if one compares it to the manga. Gore and on-screen death are reduced to a certain amount, while rape and nudity are almost omitted.
    • During the Battle of Alnus Hill and the flame dragon's attack on the refugees, the anime simply shows captions on black screens stating the body count. This doesn't mean that there is none, it's just toned down... it's still fairly bloody, and Piña openly states the horrors of what will happen if they open the gates and let the bandits in with no punches pulled.
    • Nudity is almost omitted, but sometimes the characters do show some skin (without the naughty bits). See episode 11 - Piña's bathrobe does show some part of her leg, while covering her crotch. Also, episode 13: The viewing angle near misses Zorzal's, ahem, special regions.
    • Episode 10's hot springs shootout make an exception of this by showing gore, headshots and severed limbs.
    • When a JSDF unit provides covering fire for Beefeater and Bozes' run to their transport chopper, none of their pursuers in the anime get close enough to even harm a single one of them. In the manga, however, some of them do get close during the unit's fighting retreat, with one of the Imperials managing to make it up to the ramp of the Chinook and inflict a critical wound on one of the JSDF, cutting open the trooper's left-side carotid artery.
• Lodged Blade Removal: A Defied Trope in the Animated Adaptation. While defending the Jade Palace from an assault by renegade soldiers, one Japanese private takes an arrow to the shoulder. His squad commander immediately orders that no one try to remove it. "If you pull it out, there'll be blood everywhere," he advises. The wound is bandaged as is instead, left for professional medics to remove.
• Lolita Fashion: Turns out that this may actually be the preferred style of choice for the deities of the Special Region. Rory and Giselle, demi-goddess apostles and priestesses of Hardy's temple are seen wearing this fashion. Rory and Giselle seem to wear Elegant Gothic Lolita, while the priestesses wear a combination of Sweet and Ero Lolita. Interestingly, the Ero part actually has a purpose as the opening in front of the dress allows for flexibility and doesn't restrict movement range letting them kneel when needed.
• Loophole Abuse: Used numerous times in the story by both sides:
  • Youji often uses Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right! to help out people in the special area or the Empire without being given specific orders to do so, such as heading off to an area where the Fire Dragon is terrorizing people under the pretense that he's looking for minerals and other resources the Japanese government can exploit in said areas. For the most part his leadership overlooks these infractions, or don't heavily punish him for it, such as restricting him to the base for a few weeks.
  • Zorzal tries to make use of this to quell any sentiments of a peaceful resolution with the Japanese. He uses his Secret Police, the Oprichnina, to arrest pro-peace nobles and senators under the pretense of treason. The Japanese Prime Minister's hands are tied, as Zorzal's men, however horrendous their actions may be, are technically doing internal affairs within the Empire. He orders the JSDF and his ambassadors from interfering or allowing refuge to anyone attempting to flee Zorzal's men, lest Zorzal then uses the Japanese housing "criminals" as an excuse to try and restart the war.
  • Sherry attempts to enter the Japanese embassy after the Oprichnina kills her parents, the most vocal pro-peace proponents, and sets fire to their mansion. She repeatedly begs him to save her even after one of Zorzal's men attempts to drag her away to arrest her. He then pulls a Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right! moment and orders her to be freed, and allows her to seek sanctuary in the Japanese embassy. When Zorzal's men attempt to make their way into the embassy, Piña's guards then attack them to prevent them from violating a treaty they have with Japan.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Averted. The Imperial Army soldiers' shields may protect against normal melee weapons and arrows, but they're completely worthless against bullets and grenades, which they find out the hard way. Their shields may as well be cardboard.

Tropes M-R

• Made a Slave: The fate of many of those captured at Ginza. The JSDF has made it very clear they want them all back. Alive. They are looking forward to what Piña can find about them... And when the Prince shows up with one of these in tow, things don't end well for him. Expect things to get worse when they find out that at least one of the other prisoners died while being forced to work in the Empire's mines.
• Malaproper: The Special Region's phonetic pronunciation of modern words like "Jayessdeeeff" and "Err o Plains".
• Manipulative Bitch:
  • Again, Tyuule, Prince Zorzal's bunnygirl slave. She's been feeding him lines and fostering his ambition, knowing full well he's an idiot incapable of ruling competently or leading an army. As revenge for being considered a traitor due to giving herself over to Zorzal to protect her people, she's planning to stage the death of a liberated Ginza slave at Piña's hands to, as she sees it, enrage Japan into a Roaring Rampage of Revenge that will create a long, bloody war in which she hopes her family and Zorzal will all die.
  • Yao. To spur Itami into action against the dragon, she proceeds to traumatize Tuka by hammering it into her that her father's dead, greatly worsening her PTSD and leading her to cling to her fantasy Itami is her father.
  • Yanagida was the one to goad Yao the dark elf to ask help from Itami.
• Man on Fire: Several random elves, Dark elves, and human villagers are subjected to this when the Fire Dragon attacks them.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": Used a few times:
  • The Imperial Army when they fought the JSDF for the first time and realizing how outclassed they really are.
  • The citizens of Italica and Piña when the bandit army successfully breaches one of their gates. The sinister smiles on many of the bandit's faces only leads to further loss of morale.
  • The bandit army gets their turn on this trope once the JSDF gunships show up.
  • The senators after witnessing Earth weapons in action. One even slips into an Imagine Spot of the Imperial Capital in flames.
  • The Dark Elves, Yao, and Lelei all stare up at something in fear during episode seventeen. Youji turns around to find that the Fire Dragon returned to its nest a little earlier than they expected.
• Meaningful Name:
  • The middle name of special area locals indicate their patron deity. Luna stands for Lunaryur, Haa stands for Hardy and Ro stands for Rory.
  • Rory is Japanese word for loli, Lelei or (in Japan) Rerei sounds like Rei.
• Meaningful Rename: Yao renounce her faith from Hardy to Rory.
• Medieval Stasis: The stagnation of the Special Region is actually enforced by their gods. This goes so far as Hardy threatening Lei Lei with death should she spread her revolutionary insights about magic and the accompanying understanding of modern scientific theory.
• Meido: The estate of Italica's ruling family has a whole gaggle of these maintaining it, and of various demihuman races (including a catgirl, a bunny girl, and a medusa) too.
• Mêlée à Trois: US SF vs. Russian SF vs. Chinese SF vs Japanese SF. Then in the manga/anime, Rory jumps in. However the Japanese Special Forces Group have backed down when she joins the fight, meaning it's the United States vs Russia vs China vs Rory.
• Merchant City: One springs up totally unplanned around the Alnus Hill garrison, a result of the small PX shop run by the refugees living there growing out of control (it was initially set up to help them support themselves). Popularity of off-world goods leads to labor shortages, which leads to hiring workers (some of House Formal's lady servants), news of cute employees of PX shop gets out and attracts even bigger success, which leads to hiring even more helpers (again from House Formal, this time its demihuman contingent, like the catgirls), which leads to even MORE success as this time it attracts the more otaku bent... It kind of follows from there.
• Mildly Military: As much as this series is about the JSDF, there are scenes where the main characters are doing actions that would NOT be acceptable in the military. They do stay away from getting services from the ladies at the red light district, though.
  • Kuribayashi ends up kicking Itami (her CO and a decorated, commissioned officer) in the butt to get his attention around Episode 4/Chapter 8, in front of other officers. Striking a superior officer is a severe breach of discipline and is grounds for a court-martial in almost every modern military in the world.
  • In Chapter 39, Itami essentially goes AWOL in the middle of a mission no less. This would cause serious consequences to his career, but when he makes it back, he's simply given a two-week suspension. Not only that, he's decorated right after the punishment is given as if all that was nothing but a small inconvenience to his career.
    Of course, then there's whole matter of Screw the Rules, I Have Connections! with Minister Kanou (even if both men would've been reluctant to invoke this, in the personal-connection-based Japanese society, it's fairly certain that the other people would not), and the common attitude towards the Special Forces officers, for whom even the much more serious offenses often slipped off as if non-existent.
• Minion Shipping: Itami's subordinate Tomita and Piña Co Lada's lieutenant Bozes. In the later books, this eventually leads to a Relationship Upgrade and Babies Ever After, when Tomita gets her pregnant.
  • Kurata and Persia, and later Yanagida and Delilah.
  • And in the anime: Colonel Kengun and Beefeater after he rescues her from the Jade Palace.
• Missing Back Blast: Averted to an extent. While the Panzerfaust 3, the German-designed rocket launcher used by the JGSDF, doesn't use a de Laval nozzle for venting the powder gases and therefore doesn't have much of a backblast, many soldiers still check their back before firing their rocket launchers. This is because the weapon instead compensates for recoil by throwing back a special "countermass", in this case a bunch of plastic shavings. Still, getting a face full of piping hot plastic dust is, if not immediately deadly, at least extremely confusing. This was noted in training a group of Dark Elves on using rocket launchers, which was promptly forgotten. During the fight against the Flame Dragon, at least one of the Dark Elves was eaten while dazedly stumbling around after getting hit by a Panzerfaust countermass.
• Mistaken for Servant: When the group checks into a hotel in Rondel, the staff treats Rory, Lelei, and to a lesser extent Tuka and Yao like royalty. They think Itami is Rory's servant and snub him, even booking him a closet as his room. When they figure out their mistake, they are embarrassed.
• Moment Killer:
  • Itami's cellphone ringing. And just in time too, as he was this close to caving in to a very aroused Rory.
  • Happens to Rory again later on, this time due to the mistimed arrival of the dark elf emissary Yao Haa Dushi.
• Mood Whiplash:
  • The first episode of the second cour, starts with Third Recon laughing at Itami's "dork" outfit, then transitions to Zorzal raping his Sex Slave Tyuule.
  • The fourth episode of the second cour, starts with Delilah singing an uplifting song about how wonderful life in Alnus is and getting cheered by the others, then she receives a letter telling her to kill Noriko.
• Mook Horror Show:
  • The Imperial Army when their troops are slaughtered in episode 2 while attempting to attack the JSDF position, losing at least a third of their three hundred thousand men in the process. Duran describes the armies' defeat in more graphic detail in the manga.
  • The bandit army also suffers this when the JSDF gunships mow them down with relative impunity. Even the citizens of Italica and Piña's troops stand in shock as they witness the full power of advanced weaponry in action.
  • The American, Russian, and Chinese agents sent to capture the Special Region girls experience this at the hands of first the Japanese Special Forces and then Rory.
  • The standard response from Imperial soldiers who are on the receiving end of the JSDF's weapons. Some try to fight back, but once enough of them have been killed, the survivors attempt to flee, though most don't make it very far.
• More Dakka: Imperial Soldiers and bandits never stood a chance.
• Mugging the Monster: While in Ginza, a petty thief attempted to rob Rory of her wrapped-up ax. He steals it and makes a break for it, only to not get very far as he moments later gets nearly crushed and pinned down by the ax's weight.
• Mundane Made Awesome:
  • That delicious meat that even Prince Zorzal adored in Chapter 30? Just a roll of beef on a bone set on a rotisserie.
  • Simple items from Earth are highly sought after in the Special Area, and the Alnus PX makes tons of money selling them to traders. Things like printed magazines, toilet paper, and synthetic fabrics.
• Mutual Kill: Subverted with Yanagida and the assassin who turns out to be Delilah he was attempting to save Noriko from. Though he gets stabbed, he manages to fire a few rounds at point-blank range into the assassin. However, both of them are saved due to the attack happening on Alnus Hill, and thus getting medical attention right away.
• Mythology Gag: In the anime, Itami is surfing online on his phone to read his favorite web novel and laments that the novel might get removed if he doesn't save it first. This is a joke how Gate originally began as a web novel before the author removed it after getting a publishing deal with Alphapolis for Gate to become a print novel series with some web users managing to save it before the removal happened.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Rory the Reaper.
• Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight: Big time. The Empire's medieval weapons and warfare were simply no match for the JSDF's superior weaponry of guns, bombs, helicopters, tanks, etc. Most famous example was when Zorzal orders his men to kill Itami and his crew in the throne room, to which Kuribayashi responds by gunning them all down with her machine gun.
• New Life in Another World Bonus: While the Earth protagonists aren't overpowered in and of themselves, the entire point of the series is to show the Japanese Self-Defense Forces curbstomping a civilization with Roman Empire-levels of warfare.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • JSDF curbstomping the Imperial Forces causes a lot of stuff to happen, one of them being the Empire's allied soldiers turning into bandits. Considering the situation and lack of information though...
  • What Lady Piña was worried would happen when, due to slow speed of information, Lady Bozes and her knights captured and beat up Itami. She was worried that this would restart the war, which would end with her side utterly obliterated... but is ultimately averted, as the JSDF recognize it as a legitimate misunderstanding.
  • The ancient dragon that Itami's squad fended off during the evacuation of Coda village would later go on a rampage in Elven lands.
  • Itami punching out Prince Zorzal to save an enslaved Japanese citizen - There goes the peace negotiations...
  • The cocky Japanese pilot who flies his fighter extremely close to the fire dragon, only to return to base with it heavily burned and getting chewed out by his commanding officer due to a shortage of repair parts, and that said dragon wouldn't know about "being a man". Or that it could have been a female dragon.
• No One Gets Left Behind: Youji's response to the girls when they complain about how fast he's driving back to the Imperial capital. A small detachment of JSDF troops also delays their departure to see if Bozes and Beefeater managed to escape or died trying to rescue Piña.
• Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond:
  • The JSDF, as has been noted, is largely using outdated cold-war era military hardware for their expeditionary force. While it does work, and would undoubtedly be effective against even modern opponents, more advanced weapons technologies exist now and are available to them. It's still enough to completely curbstomp an empire whose tech level is between that of Rome and Medieval levels — which was the whole reason for decision to employ them.
  • And this normal fish comes from another pool with several larger fishes. Hardy knows what would happen if the Gate leads to New York, Moscow or Beijing instead. One can only note that The Empire is getting off easy with the JSDF as they are being portrayed. There are few nations on the other side of the gate that would hesitate to give The Empire a hot steaming plate of its own medicine when their citizens are threatened, especially with kidnapping, enslavement, and rape, and The Empire's government absolutely refuses to listen to negotiations, especially if they time attacks when the press is not watching. Russia, in particular, has a history of absolutely steamrolling entire offending countries even when the press is watching, with little regard for collateral damage, while China are arguably even worse in the same regard even before the Communist Party takeover as evidenced by the Qing dynasty violent conquest of Dzungar people and the United States isn't that much better either — see the Barbary wars for some early example.
• No Smoking: In the manga, Yanagida is an avid smoker and does so in his scene with Itami. He doesn't in the anime.
• Not Distracted by the Sexy: When Tuka wakes up in a vehicle during a battle with a dragon, she runs up to the front to tell them pertinent information. Not one person reacts to her nakedness, as they're all focused on the battle they're right in the middle of.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Senator Mizuki Kouhara grilling Itami and the special area girls about the civilian casualties suffered during the fire dragon attack. She seems intent on trying to use Itami's actions as an excuse to paint the JSDF in a bad light. Unfortunately for her, the girls only speak highly of what Itami and the JSDF did in attempting to minimize the losses. Rory in particular ends up shaming the politician once she figures out what the latter was attempting to do.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Played for Laughs in episode 6, after Kuribayashi's bayonet snaps off during an attack on a bandit soldier. She kills him with her pistol, then has this look after noticing her bayonet and bipod broke. In the manga, she merely sees it as a minor inconvenience.
  • Youji after he realizes he accidentally stranded himself when he orders his convoy to make an escape instead of gunning down Piña's reinforcements, who were unaware of what the JSDF had did for Italica just hours earlier.
  • Giselle has this look after her minions are taken down, and Rory starts walking towards her with some JSDF helicopters flying in the background. She wisely hightails it out of there.
  • The assassin has this look right before they're hit with a lot of spells during Lelei's master thesis presentation.
  • Zorzal has this look when he sees paratroopers falling from the sky once the JSDF launches a rescue operation to save the Japanese ambassador, the refugees seeking sanctuary, and the Pro-peace allies.
• Older Than They Look: Tuka and Rory, as mentioned earlier. Interestingly, even Lelei is noted to look younger than her fifteen years of age.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted, there are at least two major characters named Akira^note A really popular name for the men born in the early Eighties: Yanagida and Tomita.
• One-Word Title: Also The Place, as the Gate is where most of the action happens.
• Orgasmic Combat: Rory's reaction to not being in a fight is... telling.
  Soldier 1: [upon seeing Rory in this state] Shit, I'm hard.
  Soldier 2: Me too.
• Otaku:
  • Youji and Takeo are otaku and Risa is a doujin artist. Defence Minister Kanou is this as well, being an Expy of Taro Aso.
  • The 4th combat unit could also count as they take their assault on the bandits at Italica as an excuse to gleefully reference the Signature Scene from Apocalypse Now with the helicopters.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The fantasy army uses wyverns as basic air support (and the JSDF compares them in strength to their own APCs), but there are also "ancient dragons" that are most of the ways invincible, such as the one that kills off most of Tuka's village, preyed on the refugees as they were being evacuated by the JSDF, and ran amok in Dark Elven lands. It even managed to win a dogfight with a modern jet (while the Phantom and its crew survive the encounter and make a safe landing back at base, the fighter's charred to the point that its crew gets grilled by the crew chief for nearly losing their aircraft).
• Our Gods Are Different:
  • Rory is a demigoddess, a chosen Disciple of her god. She is a One Woman Army ageless immortal who swings around an ax bigger than she is. Thankfully, when she appears at a Diet hearing, she does not mention that she's the Disciple of a death god.
  • In the later books, the fact that demigods like Rory (or even the Apostles' divine patrons like Hardy, god of the underworld) regularly interact with their religions' mortal followers becomes the subject of a political kerfuffle, as Earth-side religious leaders soon lobby to use another term to refer to these beings, given how their patrons of worship seem to be comparatively quiet...
• Outdoor Bath Peeping: You'd expect something like this to happen during the Hot Springs Episode, and some JSDF guys monitoring the group via satellite even consider it, but ultimately decide they don't want to get in trouble for sexual harassment. Hilariously, it is mentioned that something like this was common practice among Piña's Rose Knights... Except it was the women trying to peek in on the male soldiers, with the latter trying to drive them off.
• Outside-Context Problem: The Empire popping out of the Gate took Japan by surprise—but the Empire certainly didn't expect modern weaponry, either.
• Overly Long Gag: In Episode 12, Yao asks if anyone knows about the "Green People" and the first one who says so thinks she's a prostitute, so she kicks him in the nuts and takes his wallet. Then another shows up and the same thing happens, then another, then another... Eventually, the people in Green do find her... but the reason they were looking for her was because she was, well, beating people up and stealing their money.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Piña and her subordinates repel several incursions from the bandit army before the Battle of Italica proper. Some of them die heroically in the process. Yet "the Green Men" wipe out the main bandit force effortlessly and thus receive the lion's share of adulation from the populace. This frustrates her, both personally (it was her first battle) and also politically (the JSDF could occupy the Empire's breadbasket without any local opposition).
• Overzealous Underling: After Piña has negotiated an incredibly generous (compared to her society's usual reparation demands) settlement with the JSDF (they mostly want hostages back instead of punitive damages from the attack on Tokyo), her knights (unaware of the treaty, since messages can't go faster than horses) run into Itami, who they think is still an enemy and violently torment all the way back to the castle. Piña lashes out at Bozes and orders her to sleep with Itami to salvage the situation. Unfortunately, Bozes finds Itami in the middle of a tea party with his squad and some maids and slaps him. Piña then decides to go along with the JSDF to Japan to prevent any more screwups from her troops.
• Pair the Spares:
  • Colonel Kengun of the 4th Combat Unit and Beefeater get paired up with only about a couple of minutes worth of screen-time at the very end of the anime.
• Parental Incest: It stands to question what Tuka's relationship with her father really was, since her clinging to Itami during her bout of PTSD (when she confused him with her father) far exceeded even the most devoted Daddy's Girl level, up to climbing into his bed, naked.
• Perpetual Poverty:
  • Itami's ex-wife Risa has a perpetual problem with money, exacerbated by the fact that she's also a massive otaku. Since she's a doujin artist, she only needs electricity and Internet to get paid, but goes hungry as a result. She also relies on alimony from Itami (not that he objects much, and they're still friends).
  • Lelei's older sister Arpeggio has this problem as well. The field she decided to focus her magical research on — pretty much magical mineralogy — is well known to be a massive money pit, which is precisely why there are so few of them.
• Person as Verb: When Prime Minister Motoi steps down after the outdoor bath fiasco, people start using his name as an insult.
• Phallic Weapon: The Panzerfaust 3 used to wound the fire dragon is dubbed the "Rod of Steel" by Special Region natives. In the manga, one refugee describes it as, "Just like a man's thing, large and black," with an image of the weapon appearing in the background with a suggestive outline around it. Princess Piña asks Hamilton what that means since she happens to be engaged.
• Physical God: A literal description of the Apostles. They are immortal, superstrong demigods with a comprehensive Healing Factor that remain in the physical world for about a thousand years before they Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence.
• The Place: Also a One-Word Title, as the Gate is where the action happens.
• Plague Zombie: Any woman that succumbs to the mysterious disease becomes this. Don't let the "normal" look fool you. Shoot on sight!
• Poor Communication Kills:
  • Tyuule apparently never told her people her plan to offer herself to Zorzal in exchange for peace, making it easy to frame her as a traitor.
  • Due to the limits of medieval communications, Princess Piña's reinforcements weren't aware a deal had been struck with the JSDF. A deal the Empire considered ridiculously generous. So when the Rose Knights met the convoy returning to base, they treated them the same as they would any other enemy.
  • The plan to trigger a bloody war between all factions by ordering the death of Noriko, the released slave, has already collapsed, the long distance between the capital and Alnus being the only reason for nobody in the former knowing yet.
  • When they enter the Flame Dragon's nest inside a volcano, Itmai's team leaves Rory above ground with a radio to warn them if the dragon returns. Unfortunately, the rock blocks their signals, so the dragon can show up unannounced and attack them.
• Pragmatic Adaptation:
  • In the web novels, Rory ends up just missing a three-way shootout between rival special forces teams (much to her frustration). In the manga, she makes in time to participate. Things get bloody real fast. The light novels have her arrive right as the three opposing special forces teams meet, landing on a rock between all three, greeting them, and then all chaos breaks loose.
  • In the anime, the JGSDF personnel deployed in the Special region are given new (and fictional) Type 4 combat uniforms◊ (largely modeled after the US Army's ECWCS III). The change from the standard dotted JSDF uniforms◊ can be presumed to make an animator's life a little bit easier, because of its very subtle patterning of the predominantly green color. This causes the Special Area inhabitants to dub the JSDF personnel "The Green Men".
    Incidentally, this made the Type 4 uniform virtually indistinguishable from the pretty real Russian VKPO uniform, also inspired by the ECWCS and first observed on a large scale during the 2014 Crimean crisis, which again featured the very subtle patterning of the largely green background. The irony of the situation is that this also led to the Russian soldiers in the Crimea being dubbed "The Green Men" in the Real Life.
  • The togas worn by the Imperials are radically simplified in the anime, both in form and in use. First, they aren't a casual wear, but a formal court dress, greatly minimizing their use, and then they are not woolen blankets to drape around oneself, like in the Real Life, but more of a small shawls worn over simple tunics, which is much easier to animate.
  • Season 2 of the anime has Kurokawa transfer in as a new trainee, as opposed to being there for several months so that she can serve as an audience surrogate and the sex-workers can fill her in on background information such as Bessa's doomed attack on the JSDF operations.
  • The scene where Piña is called to testify before the Senate not only has Zorzal fervently lie about the nature of his injuries, but has Piña go into exquisite detail regarding her experiences in Italica and Japan. Both of these are cut from the anime, making Zorzal wonder why Piña is so "friendly" with Japan as a result. In exchange, we get to see a bit more into the conversation between Zorzal and Diabo, and we learn that Zorzal has absolutely no compunction against "playing with his toys" in public, as he proceeds to sexually assault Tyuule, despite his injuries, right in front of Diabo.
• Precision F-Strike: Lelei, the show's Emotionless Girl, shouts "Die, you reptilian piece of shit!" at the Fire Dragon.
• Product Placement: In episode 9, a bookstore is shown selling light novels and manga by Alphapolis, Gate's publisher, which includes Re:Monster.
• Professional Slacker: Itami, and even admits as much when questioned by a PSIA agent. While a capable officer, he'd rather coast by on the barest minimum of effort until he retired. The Ginza incident put a monkeywrench in those plans however.
• Promotion, Not Punishment: Itami after he goes after the Flame Dragon by himself. A strange example as both punishment and promotion occurs. When he returns to base, he gets a 2 week suspension, a month salary cut, and his leadership in Third Recon Team is revoked. Then General Hazama enters bearing awards from the many groups for his actions. In the end, Itami then becomes reassigned to be in charge of investigating resources in the special area, basically re-attaching him back into recon duty.
• Punched Across the Room: A slight variation of this trope is used by Rory in episode 6. She uses her giant halberd to smack the flail-wielding bandit really far away. Later, Delilah smacks away a bar patron who tried to grope her. It gets taken to ridiculous lengths in the anime when Rory smacks a Flame dragon through a mountain!
• Put on a Bus:
  • Almost everyone aside from Youji and his harem barely have any screentime in the second half of the anime. For example, Kuribayashi was seen quite a bit while traveling around the Empire with Youji, and played a role in the defense of Italica, along with protecting the Special Area Locals while they were visiting Japan. In the second half, while she gets to deliver a much deserved No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on Zorzal, she doesn't spend as much time with Youji, mostly because he decides to wander off somewhere on his own to help Tuka, Yao, and later Lelei.
  • Third Recon returns for the final episodes of the anime as part of the rescue mission to the capital in episode 23. In the finale, they help Itami rescue the Emperor, Piña, and Hamilton from Zorzal's palace.
• Quality over Quantity: The Empire's favorite tactic to overrun other nations was to utilize Zerg Rush. This meant absolutely nothing to the JSDF who had the advantage of superior modern warfare to the Empire's medieval gear, proving hot weapons are superior to cold weapons. Notable examples:
  • The first battles at Alnus Hill between the JSDF and the Unified Kingdoms Army. Though the Unified Kingdom was 100,000 strong, they lost badly to the JSDF's 10,000 due to heavy artillery rounds, stopping them from even getting halfway up the hill.
  • In the Italica battle, Itami, Rory, Kuribayashi, and Tomita were able to beat back a large group of marauders flooding the east gate before one of their copters wipe out the rest.
  • Zorzal orders his large group of soldiers to kill Itami's small party. Kuribayashi mows a majority of them down with her machinegun, forcing the rest to surrender in absolute terror.
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: What the bandit army sieging Italica wanted to do had they won. Piña also feared that the JSDF would demand her surrender as well, and has a brief Imagine Spot of her and her soldiers as prisoners. Fortunately for her, the JSDF immediately withdraws its forces with no intention of occupying the city, and gives them rather generous demands, such as cost of living reimbursement for anyone they send to the city, tax exemption on sales and trade for Lelei, and to treat the prisoners humanely.
• Rasputinian Death:
  • It takes a lot of effort to bring down the Fire Dragon. It manages to survive several direct hits from rocket launchers, a Storm of Blades attack by Lelei, and even lightning strikes from Tuka. It's finally killed when the C4 explosives go off around it.
  • The other fire dragons that show up also take some effort to bring down, but fortunately they're not as big as the first one, so they're slightly easier to kill. But even then, they survive a missile strike from a fighter jet, being strafed by their guns, and finally good ol' Boring, but Practical artillery.
• Reality Warper: Lelei reveals in the light novel that magic, at least the kind practiced by mages from her school, works in this manner. They create an artificial reality and let it react with the "true" reality to get the desired effect. By reading up on chemistry and physics, her knowledge of "true" reality vastly improves, making her magic much more efficient, and deadly.
• Really 700 Years Old: At the Diet hearing, after being lectured about respecting her elders, Rory reveals she is 961 years old, having stopped aging once she became a demigoddess. Tuka, at the time of the meeting, is 165, and as a rare fairy-type elf, may never experience old age. Averted with Lelei, who, despite acting the most mature of the three, insists she's simply fifteen.
• Realpolitik: General Hazama reveals to Yao that the JSDF cannot help the Dark Elves against the Fire Dragon due to their current political situation. Due to the Empire having lost thousands of soldiers fighting against the Japanese, Princess Piña is trying to convince most of the Senate to seek peace with Japan by giving them goods from Earth or returning relatives captured by JSDF. Since the Dark Elves home is located in another nation outside the Empire's borders, the JSDF cannot cross into Empire's territory as doing so would give the Hawk faction in the Senate an excuse to reignite conflict with the Japanese, leading to more deaths, not to mention entering a yet another nation, if a vassal to the Empire, as Elbe kingdom actually is, would complicate the Government task even further. Of course, when king Duran, who happens to stay in the Alnus hospital incognito, as much as requests the JSDF help, explicitly allying Elbe with Japan, they were only happy to oblige.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech:
  • Komakado delivers one to Itami about how he had been expected to end his career as a 2nd Lt. in the JSDF until the attack on Ginza made him a national hero, and that he was viewed by his peers as an "Otaku", "A true salary thief", and "at least he understands the JSDF's anti-war values", and that he was an overall slacker who somehow made it good. The speech actually has a bigger effect on poor Shino who has just learned that her otaku CO is a Ranger and a member of Special Forces.
  • Episode 24 after defeating the giant ogre, Zorzal's ace in the hole, the spoiled prince refused to accept defeat and tries to challenge Itami to a fight but gets stopped by a sniper shot. Itami coldly tells Zorzal that he's way in over his head and delusional to think he has any hope of winning despite all the setbacks dealt to him. Frankly, it's getting tiresome and annoying, so Itami warns Zorzal if he ever entertains any thought of trying something against them again, they WILL kill him where he stands. In the manga, Lelei is the one that warns him of such a fate should he continue to send assassins after her.
• Red Light District: A large section of the Empire capital where prostitutes and crime reigns. Crime lords are in total control, courtesans walk around in see-through dresses, and assassination is so rampant, the victims, be it men, women and children, are left naked on the streets.
• Red Shirt Army:
  • The citizens of Italica that Piña manages to gather in an emergency conscription. However, they suffer heavy losses due to their lack of training against a hardened army of ex-soldiers.
  • The Dark Elves who escort Youji and his squad to fight the Fire Dragon. Though they put up a decent fight, all of them get killed during the battle.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: When Yao (the Dark Elf emissary) arrives to ask the JSDF to help her people against an ancient dragon (the same one that had been driven off before by modern weapons), there's a brief altercation between her, Itami, and Rory. Several bystanders think that due to the fight, the JSDF will be vengeful and not get involved. Sadly for her, the JSDF decide not to get involved, as the onlookers predicted... but it is for political reasons, both back home and because the JSDF doesn't want to cross borders with the tanks, planes, and weapons needed to kill the dragon and start a war on multiple fronts with the Kingdom of Elba.
• Rock Beats Laser:
  • Averted, medieval armor and weaponry does nothing against a barrage of bullets and explosives.
  • Played a bit straighter after Volume 7, wherein Zorzal's forces began to issue countermeasures against the high-tech JSDF, including demi-humans with stealth capability, war beasts with natural armor that's highly resistant to bullets (though still vastly inferior technologically to the JSDF's heavier guns), employed guerrilla and sabotage tactics by hiding in waves of refugees to attack the JSDF's rear areas and conducted massive ambushes with large numbers of soldiers, siege engines and war beasts. Eventually, Zorzal's forces manage to take down 2 helicopter by throwing chains that gets tangled in the propeller and Wyvern suicidal attack, along with dozens of damaged military vehicles and dozens, if not hundreds, of JSDF personnel casualties.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Deconstructed. Most of the vassal armies that fight in the Battle of Alnus are lead by their country's rulers. Very few of them survive, and one of the survivors (Duran) suspects that the vassal armies and their leaders were thrown as cannon fodder to consolidate the Empire's power regardless of the results, and he decides to support the JSDF instead.
• Running Gag:
  • Whether Itami is actually learning from the Special Area's language classes.
  • When Piña and Bozes are in Japan, every discovery she makes she says, "I never knew such ____ exists in this world!" With Bozes replying, "Milady, this is the other world."
  • Rory's attempts at seducing Itami keeps getting disrupted - mobile phones, dark elves, you name it.

Tropes S-Z

• Safety in Muggles: The agents chasing the heroes are forced to stand down after Risa contacts several civilians on message boards and convinces them to meet them. By "several", we actually mean "so many, they clogged the streets, and are animated via CGI" several.
• Salt the Earth: After the Empire's disastrous and humiliating defeat against the JSDF in episode 2, where they lost over a hundred and twenty thousand men in a matter of days, the Emperor orders the regions surrounding their capital burned down to deny the JSDF of supplies; this only harms the peasantry as modern military forces have their own supply lines, and the JSDF only seek to secure the gate and find the perpetrator for the Ginza incident.
• Schizo Tech:
  • Thanks to the gate, you now have a medieval world now filled with firearms, tanks, and attack helicopters. Even lampshaded by Itami when Lelei, from the Special Area, brings back a tablet and a laptop from the other side of the gate, wondering where she'll find a place to power the devices. (She somehow finds a way, as she shows off the laptop in Episode 19.)
  • Justified later on. It turns out that whenever the balance of the world becomes stable, Hardy will open up a Gate at random to make things more interesting. The one to Japan is not the first, and likely will not be the last. Bits and pieces of cultures, sophont races, technology, and animals have been filtering in for thousands of years.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!:
  • In Chapter 38 (Episode 15), Itami bails out of his mission in the Capital to help Tuka recover from her PTSD with the flame dragon.
  • In Episode 20, Sugawara rejects orders from the Minister of Defense and accepts Sherry into the Diplomatic Immunity zone, saving her life from Zorzal's Secret Police (though that's actually exactly what Kanou wanted).
  • In Episode 21, Minister of Defense Kanou continually pushes for the JSDF interference in the Imperial Capital to save their ambassadors after Zorzal takes control. Prime Minster Morita finally relents after Kanou insists that time was running out for their lives if they do not act immediately.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • One of the Minister of Defence's aide says this is one of Itami's main attribute.
    Colonel Ryuuzaki: Indeed, Itami is proficient at detecting danger before anyone else. In other words, he is good at running away.
  • After his brother Zorzal takes the throne, Diabo hops in a chariot and leaves the capital to raise an army to fight him.
  • In Episode 19, after learning that assassins are after Leilei due to her fame in killing the flame dragon, Itami proposes not to fight the assassins as Grey intended, but run away instead.
• Secret Police: The Empire's "Oprichnina", formed by Zorzal with the authority to arrest anyone they suspect of treason. He puts them to good use, having them arrest many nobles and senators who are trying to seek a peaceful resolution to their war with Japan.
• Sequel Hook: The final scene of the light novel has Itami and his party (Tuka, Lelei, Rory, Yao, and Piña) showing up again in front of Kanou after the Gate unexpectedly reopened, setting up the events of sequel.
• Sex Is Violence: Rory Mercury is an apostle of Emroy, the god of darkness, war, violence, death, and insanity. It is shown that the souls of those who die near Rory are sent to Emroy through her, which has an effect on her similar to an aprodisiac.
• Sex Slave:
  • The elder Prince keeps a bunny girl for the role; unusual in that she used to be a princess of her people. The Prince promised her that in exchange for her services, her kingdom will be spared. Turns out, he was lying. Not that he intends to allow her to know that. He doesn't know she already knows, and that she's planning to trigger a bloody war between all powers by arranging the murder of a Ginza slave.
  • Speaking of which, he also had a girl who was taken in the Ginza attack. The JSDF, who until then had not known any prisoners were taken, was not happy to have found that out.
  • The light novel, and manga, has him bringing an entire slave harem, naked, dragging them along by slave collars. All showing clear signs of abuse.
• Sexy Silhouette: Played for Fan Disservice in the anime. When we're introduced to Tyuule being raped by prince Zorzal, we only see the act through the gauze of the bed canopy.
• Shields Are Useless:
  • Played straight for the most part, though it shouldn't be surprising considering Roman to medieval era shields won't really do much against modern firearms, or Rory the Cute Bruiser.
  • Just look at Episode 13. The Type 64 rifles tear apart the tower shields as if they were biscuits.
  • Zigzagged with Kuribayashi. Her bayonet snaps off after one of the bandit soldiers successfully blocks her attack. She responds by shooting him with her backup pistol, with her shots penetrating the shield.
• Shout-Out:
  • Kuwahara describes the Flame Dragon as looking like a one-headed King Ghidorah early in the series.
  • When Recon Team 3 prepares to fight the Flame Dragon the first time, one of them comments that fighting Kaiju is a JSDF tradition, referencing the JSDF's role in the Godzilla films.
  • In the anime, Squad Leader Itami and his driver Kurata sing pop songs in a Humvee while driving through a strange land.
  • The 4th Combat team chooses to ride to the rescue to the tune of Ride of the Valkryies. It's going to be a real Apocalypse, now! The base commander even references the movie twice (title and all the second time) as they're preparing to take off. Certain points of the manga draw this battle shot for shot from the movie. And the shit-eating grins worn by the 4th Combat Team and their quotes taken straight from the movie show they know exactly what they're doing. The anime version just makes it better: The episode's name is "Ride Of The Valkyries", complete with the score being played during the battle.
  • In the same episode, Colonel Kengun is drinking coffee the same way as Colonel Miles Quaritch in Avatar as seen here◊.
  • The late ruler of Italica resembles Dozle Zabi from Mobile Suit Gundam. Likewise the current head of House Formal, Myuui, looks like the version of Mineva Zabi shown in Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam.
  • The codenames given to the Japanese special forces that were guarding Itami and his charges at the hot spring and later pulled out, are codenamed Archer, Saber, and Lancer. Later on Caster and Berserker show up, too; they are even called Servants in the anime. Itami's codename, Avenger, is another one; the operation then starts with the code phrase "The grail has been filled" and later use the phrase "The grail has been shattered". Then in the battle to kill the fire dragon, Lelei pulls off a Storm of Blades, just like something you could expect from two certain Archer servants.
  • In the aftermath of Rory's hot spring rampage, the Minister of Defense wonders if she put on the stone mask and feeds on blood.
  • After her rescue, Noriko has a chocolate bar called Full Metal Choco.
  • Possibly accidental, but Zorzal's middle name is "El," meaning that you could conceivably call him "Zor El." This is the name of Superman's uncle and Supergirl's father.
  • Spock and Kirk are among the bystanders during Lelei and Arpeggio's duel.
  • Continuing on the Star Trek shout-outs, When Itami's group finally reaches the Capital and enters through Akusho, Itami greets Misery with the Vulcan Salute.
• Shown Their Work: Takumi Yanai is a former JSDF reservist so he knows his weapons very well.
• The Siege:
  • One occurs in the Battle of Italica. The remnants of the army affiliated with the Empire's allied countries decide to attack the Empire in their state of weakness. Though Piña manages to hold off their first few assaults, the bandits eventually manage to take one of the walls, and open the gate for the rest of their army. The bandits then taunt the citizens of the city by throwing bodies of their brethren, causing some of them to rush, and presumably get cut down easily.
  • A second one is shown when Zorzal's troops attack the Jade Palace where Piña's elite troops are guarding the Japanese ambassador there. Though they're vastly outnumbered, Piña's troops manage to hold off Zorzal's men for a few days due to their more rigorous training, better equipment, and easily defensible position since the palace can only be approached from one route.
• Single-Issue Psychology: Tuka's increasingly-serious case of PTSD obviously stems from the dragon attack on her village, as well as the death of her father during said attack.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • When the gate first shows up, Japanese citizens are attacked by an unknown hostile enemy force. Though he does his part, Youji was much more worried about the fact that he wouldn't be able to buy any Doujinshi due to the attack, rather than the fact that a hostile army came out of nowhere and was killing people.
  • As part of a Book Ends, Itami misses Piña's coronation to go visit the Summer Comiket.
• Skinship Grope: Princess Piña gropes Bozes in the hot spring. Risa gets excited and considers using it as material for her next Doujin.
• Slasher Smile:
  • When Piña finds out her troops have beaten the crap out of Itami, which puts all the negotiations at risk, she sports one when looking at her commanders.
  • Shino ordered to go to town on the prince.
  • Lelei turning a dragon into a pincushion.
• Slave to PR: The reason why Morita forbids any JSDF activity in the capital during Zorzal's uprising to the throne is because the press and foreign countries' representatives will be present and any activity can (and probably will) be taken the wrong way by the press and other countries, especially as the Japanese's own press has an unabashed anti-JSDF bias.
• Sleep Cute: Youji wakes up in the middle of the night to find Lelei snoozing next to him, clinging to his arm.
• Soldier vs. Warrior: A literal example is constantly in play for the first few arcs of the series, explicitly showing the contrast between War Is Glorious and War Is Hell.
• Space Whale Aesop: Support the JSDF and don't cut their budget... because if a gateway to another world opens up in the middle of Tokyo we'll need them to handle it.
• Spared by the Adaptation:
  • In the manga, Bessa the crimelord, his wife, daughter and their demi-human maid are killed by thugs of the other crimelords with the women being stripped naked and raped before being killed. In the anime, the women are spared as only Bessa is killed but by the JSDF instead. In the Light novel, Bessa is not even married, but neither the JSDF nor the other crime lords go after him, his victims and their families, no longer having to fear him once his gang is utterly obliterated by the JSDF, turn him into a Human Pincushion and leave his corpse in an alley to rot.
• Spell My Name With An S: Names of places and people suffer this in the manga and anime. Some examples are Alnus/Arnus hill, Italica/Itarica, Tuka/Chuka, Koda/Coda village.
• Spotting the Thread: Clan Formal gets out of the sloppy frameup when a simple fingerprint match reveals their butler stole the seal and paper used in the false death orders.
• Stab the Scorpion: Happens during The Battle of Italica: where Rory and Kuribayashi are fighting against the Bandit Army. In a lull in the fighting, Kuribayashi aims her pistol at Rory: to shoot a spearman about to toss a spear at Rory, while Rory charges at Kuribayashi: to impale a swordsman that was about to strike her from behind. The pair just grin as they stand back-to-back.
• STD Immunity: Averted as Kurokawa checks every girl in the red light district for STDs. Noriko is also checked for STDs after she is released from captivity. In the light novel, all JSDF personnel in the Special Region have standing orders to avoid sex with the locals.
• Stealthy Colossus: The dragon can sneak up on the team in its lair (somewhat justified in that Rory wasn't able to warn them by radio, and the natives were too terrified to say anything), so only Itami had his back turned.
• The Stoic: Sorceress Lelei la Lalena.
• Storming the Castle: What everyone in Itami's team at Rondel agrees is the only viable option after Piña gets arrested and Zorzal's Tyuule-inspired adventures start to threaten Empire as a whole.
• Storm of Blades: Lelei uses this against the Fire Dragon, gathering all the swords around its nest from fallen adventurers who fought it before and magically hurling all of them towards the dragon.
• Stunned Silence: The reaction of EVERYONE at the dining hall when the dark elf visitor unwittingly calls Rory a kid, and in the process throws a monkey wrench in her plans to seduce Itami.
• Sufficiently Analyzed Magic: Magic on the other side of the Gate involves direct manipulation of natural forces, but their understanding of those forces is still very much based on Aristotle, involving assuming the presence of phlogiston and other alchemical elements. Lelei gets a large boost in her power simply by reading a book on the basics of combustion physics.
• Super-Senses: The various animal demi-humans in the special region have the innate ability to sense an earthquake before it happens, similar to how real-life animals can sometimes do this.
• Swallowed Whole:
  • At least one Dark Elf is killed in this manner when fighting the Fire Dragon. Considering several others burned to death, being Eaten Alive is probably less painful if you're killed after being snapped up in its mouth.
  • Rory gets swallowed by the Minotaur, though she's immortal and had to be rescued by Itami and Yao, or else she would probably have to live through the very disturbing process of being, ahem, passed out naturally.
• Tap on the Head: Kuribayashi mentions this when the team captures a Russian commando. Eventually, she defies this trope, pointing out that unlike on TV if you actually hit someone in the head hard enough to knock them out, they might die as a result (though she's also in favor of just shooting him outright).
• Technologically Advanced Foe: The Roman/Medieval mash-up Empire is ill-prepared for a counterattack from the JSDF. Legions of pre-industrial soldiers and fantasy-genre monsters were simply no match for heavy artillery. And to rub salt in the wound, said heavy artillery is technically outdated by the JSDF's standards.
• Technology Porn: In the first episode of the anime we are treated to several beauty shots of the JSDF's armored vehicles as they enter the Gate and cross the void between the two worlds.
• Tempting Fate:
  • The Imperial and Allied generals in Episode 2 brag about the crushing defeat their 120,000 strong medieval army is about to inflict on the 10,000 JSDF soldiers guarding the Gate, even joking that the Japanese have wasted their time 'digging holes' (AKA concealment and cover) on Alnus Hill. Curb-Stomp Battle barely describes what happens to them and their troops.
  • In Episode 3, Kurata hopes that Third Recon won't run into the dragon or some other problem before he finds a cat girl. Three guesses on what happens in the same episode. Funnily enough, at Italica he runs into a cat girl.
  • After finding out that both General Hazama and King Duran are essentially okay with Itami heading off to kill the Fire Dragon, and that he would also be indirectly helping him, Yanagida then hopes that it at least rains on him. As the scene cuts to Itami, he notices rain falling from the sky.
  • Episode 16 begins with Delilah dancing through the streets, singing about her wonderful life in Alnus. Then she returns home and reads her new orders from Italica (see False Flag Operation above).
  • In Episode 18, Piña and the Japanese diplomats are relaxed and happy because peace negotiations between the Empire and Japan are finally about to start. Then the Emperor is poisoned and her warmongering brother takes over.
• Thanks for the Mammary: After Itami pulls Rory from a helicopter's firing line, she notes that his hand is in a place it shouldn't be at the end of the chapter 12 and episode 6. Itami sports a black eye all next chapter, and the rest of the episode in the anime.
• Theme Naming:
  • Many of the Imperial nobility are named after drinks: Piña co Lada, Sherry, Shandy, Beefeater, etc. Piña, her brothers, and their father also have an alcohol theme naming.
  • Most Special Region citizens take the initials of their patron deity as their middle name.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill:
  • A medieval army meets the JSDF and their gunpowder weaponry. During the Battle of Alnus Hill, the JSDF delivers tank rounds, howitzers, bullets, anti-aircraft guns without hesitation to annihilate the medieval army.
  • The Fire Dragon is subjected to this once Youji's C4 explosives are set off around it. Likewise the two smaller fire dragons disappear after a few barrages from several howitzers raining artillery on them, with strafing runs by attack jets and helicopter gunships for good measure.
  • Chapter 53 in the manga has Rory, Lelei, and Tuka cast protective magics on the enclosure where their Mega Cruiser is parked, simultaneously. The innkeeper informs Itami that such a combination will easily kill anyone who even touches the door.
  • A non-fatal version is shown in episode 22, which is mostly Played for Laughs. An assassin who attempts to lunge at Lelei while she's presenting her thesis is engulfed by a barrage of explosive spells. Tuka mentions that because they were well aware of the attempts on Lelei's life, they were just waiting for an excuse to unleash their magic on the assassin. They then take the assassin away to interrogate her.
• The Magic Versus Technology War: Downplayed.While the Imperial Army possessed some mages in their ranks, their numbers were too few to play a significant role, with most of the more powerful mages being pro-JSDF or neutral. In some of their rare displays on the battlefield, their power is mostly unmatched by the JSDF's superior firepower.
• This Is My Boomstick: Many of the Special Region natives see the JSDF's guns, vehicles, and technology as sorcery.
• Those Two Guys: Itami and Kurata, being the only otakus the Third Recon Team helps.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: With a gun! In the Hakone shootout in the anime, when Rory intervenes, she catches a MP7 and chucks it at a Chinese operator, sending him flying. Then again, she does have Super-Strength to make it more like throwing a brick than anything else.
• Too Awesome to Use: During the Hakone shootout, Piña and Bozes manage to pick up a couple of the guns that are dropped in the ensuing chaos as they escaped, and the story seems to be set up for a technological breakthrough for the empire with reverse engineering. Then they pass the obligatory security checkpoint at the Japanese side of the gate, and their weapons are promptly found and confiscated. In a bit of a subversion, Itami and third recon claim that the guns were given to the guests for self-defense, but are still confiscated so the Empire doesn't get their hands on them.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • The Empire should’ve known better than to launch an invasion to another world without even bothering to know anything about it first as they arrogantly believed they are the superior force and nothing could stand up to them. All they did was incite the wrath of a world that is far more technologically advanced that has proven they are more than capable of wiping out the Empire at anytime they so wish to choose.
  • Pretty much anyone on the receiving end of the JSDF's weapons whenever the Japanese are forced to fight.
  • Though ultimately subverted, Bozes decides to rush off to rescue Piña by herself after the JSDF rescues the political prisoners as well as the Japanese ambassador. Were Beefeater not following her, and a small group of JSDF troops waiting until the last second, she would have died.
  • Once Itami and his crew rescue Piña, they make their escape in a military vehicle. Empire soldiers attempt to stop them, only to be either gunned down or run over. Despite that, they still try to pursue their vehicle, only to get blown up by backup forces who had set up manually-triggered mines to cover their escape after they exit the capital.
• Torture Always Works: Zigzagged. Itami's "method" on Prince Zorzal to make him talk about any other Japanese slaves worked after a long beating, but it fails on Butler on House Formal when using a similar method to force out a confession. That's when the JSDF bring out the truth-serum and it works flawlessly.
• Translation Convention:
  • Applied inconsistently, especially in the manga adaptation. In the beginning, it's quickly established that Lelei is the only person from the other side of the gate that bothers learning Japanese, which is why whenever there is a dialogue between natives and Itami's squad, she's always around. However by the time the group returns to Japan, it seems that not only could Itami and his team speak with the natives casually, but both Rory and Tuka could also speak and understand Japanese without Lelei to help them. This all happens in the span of little over a week.
  • Even lampshaded by Itami during the Battle of Italica who notes that his fluency with the other language has improved a lot after being hit in the chin.
  • Becomes less of an issue later on, after there's a widespread exchange of information and language training between the JSSDF, its assigned diplomats, and the representatives of the Empire, but still happens whenever an outsider visits the Alnus garrison.
  • At some points, schools are seen set up in Alnus to teach the language to both sides, with Lady Bozes' knights and Japanese diplomats both seen in classrooms learning to read and write.
  • In the anime, when the Special Area locals and the Empire are alone, they speak Japanese instead of their local language. When the JSDF and the locals converse, Japanese becomes the main language, the JSDF speak in broken Japanese trying to speak the local language. It also has to be assumed by watching that a Special Area local do not understand what JSDF personnels are saying even though they speak the same language in the scene. Lelei's translation duty is often represented by her saying "... to" (roughly equivalent to "He said (X)" in Japanese) after other characters finish speaking.
• A Truce While We Gawk: Rory appearance during the Battle of Italica shocks both sides into a standstill while she flings the giant soldier with the ball and chain weapon a long distance.
• Ungrateful Bastard:
  • Several men close to Zorzal who were captured by the JSDF early on, and later released exhibit this in episode nineteen. They're still very hostile towards the latter, and once Zorzal takes charge of the Empire, they immediately suggest to him that they use underhanded tactics such as attacking towns close to Alnus Hill while dressed up in enemy uniforms to weaken public support of the JSDF, since they're all too aware that they'd lose in a conventional battle. Piña immediately regrets her role in negotiating their release from Japan, while one of them "thanks" her for it.
  • The reason for their hostility also shows their ungratefulness to the mercy shown to them. They're angered by the fact they were seated next to orcs in the prisoner transport buses and fed prison food. It's hilarious to note that the orcs were better behaved than the noble officers.
• The Unreveal: In Chapter 46, Itami goes to visit his mother, as a punishment for making Tuka think he is her father. The chapter ends before we get a look of her and the next chapter skips to two weeks later.
• Uriah Gambit:
  • The Imperial Emperor does this, ordering his allies to round up an army to attack the JSDF with in episode 2. Said allies are very suspicious when no Imperial troops are sent in any of the engagements as they're brutally slaughtered by their much better-equipped foes. He then does a Let No Crisis Go to Waste to further quell any more uppity peasants who might try to overthrow him.
  • Apparently, it runs in the blood. Princess Piña attempts to do this with Third Recon Team by stationing them alone on the south gate of Italica to take the brunt of the bandit's attacks. It doesn't work since they attack the east gate. Itami, for his part, believes this is due to a lack of options on Piña's part as opposed to actual malice.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind: Averted, and subverted. Prince Zorzal realizes on seizing the throne that he needs to use new means to strike back at the JSDF, even using means like dressing his troops as the enemy and utilizing subdued armored ogres. Both look like dangerous threats until the obvious holes in such plans (The Empire's troops lacking firearms; the ogres still being vulnerable to anti-tank weapons) are pointed out in the most humiliating ways possible.
• Villainous Rescue: A minor example when Yao goes to notify her people that she brought help, unbeknownst to her, some of the other people held up Itami and the others. However, both groups quickly turn their attention to the Fire Dragon which shows up again.
• Virtue Is Weakness: The Empire believes that Japan valuing all of its citizens, even the "peasants", and refusing to sacrifice or abandon any of them is a sentimental weakness they can exploit. They don't expect Japan to call in an airstrike as a warning though.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: The Fire Dragon. In his first encounter with it, Itami and his troops are mostly powerless against it, until Tuka tells them to go for its eyes, which also gave them time to launch a rocket at it. However, it only runs away due to losing an arm in the said explosion. And in his second encounter, he has even less firepower initially, though fortunately Lelei and Rory manage to hold its attention for a while.
• War Is Hell: Soldiers from a society that hasn't even discovered gunpowder yet end up fighting a 21st Century army with heavy machine guns and artillery. They're completely wiped out before they even get close enough to see their enemy. The JSDF exploits this onto the Empire to convince them to seek a peace treaty rather than keep fighting.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: In the anime, Heidegger, Roger and Chuck, the American CIA agents sent to Hakone, are introduced with name tags in their appearances. They are killed off the next episode by Rory.
• Wham Episode: A few notable instances:
  • In episode five, Itami and the others arrive at Italica expecting a mundane negotiation process, only to find out it's under attack by the remnants of the Allied nations who survived the slaughter at Alnus Hill.
  • In episode seven, Itami is captured by Piña's soldiers who were coming to Italica as reinforcements, unaware that the JSDF had already finished off the enemy forces and a treaty had been concluded between Italica and JSDF. Piña feared her troops brutal treatment of Itami would give the JSDF a handy excuse to attack the Empire again, something they would not survive if the JSDF was allowed to go all out.
  • When Tuka, Lelei, and Rory visit Japan, several other nations send their special operations soldiers in an attempt to kidnap the special area locals for their countries. They all seem surprised to see each other at the hot springs inn, prompting a firefight to break out between all of them. Unfortunately, Rory ends up killing them all, partly because she knew their intentions weren't exactly noble, and perhaps partly because they interrupted her attempts to seduce Itami. Piña and Bozes also secretly discuss talks with the Japanese government in an attempt to negotiate a peace deal between the Empire and Japan.
  • In episode 14, an earthquake hits the lands of the Empire, something that the capitol is completely unprepared for and inexperienced with. Itami also finds out that Zorzal, the crown prince and Smug Snake, kidnapped some Japanese citizens before their first attack. One of the captives, a woman named Noriko, had been used as a Sex Slave the entire time. Itami and his soldiers kill several of Zorzal's men, and then allows Kuribayashi to deliver a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on Zorzal in retaliation for said kidnappings and treatment of the captives.
  • In episode sixteen, a hit is ordered on Noriko in an attempt at at False Flag Operation. Fortunately, it's thwarted, and the JSDF starts attempting to find out who was really behind it. Itami and his group also runs into the Fire Dragon again, and attempts to help Tuka overcome the Five Stages of Grief she was suffering from when she refused to believe her father was killed by said dragon.
  • During episode eighteen, Emperor Molto seems to be slowly and reluctantly warming up to the idea of seeking a peace treaty with the JSDF. He also proposes a toast to Lelei, who he gives almost all of the credit to for slaying the fire dragon since she was technically an Imperial citizen. As everyone takes a drink, Molto then suddenly collapses, while the camera pans to various characters and their reaction to someone poisoning the emperor's drink. Zorzal, at first, has a shocked look on his face, but it quickly turns into a smirk when he realizes that he won't have to deal with his father anymore once he takes over.
• Wham Line: "Why did Hardy open that hole in Alnus?"
  • Explanation: She opened it to let interesting elements from the other side come in long enough to change up the world. It's implied that she opens gates at a regular basis, each time choosing a different world that catches her fancy. After enough time has passed, she'll shut the gate. Of course, this means the JSDF must retreat before "enough time" comes, otherwise, they'll never return to Earth.
• What a Drag: After Itami was captured by Bozes and her knights, they tied his neck to a horse and forced him to run after it. This didn't make it into the anime.
• When All You Have Is a Hammer…: After Grey joins Itami's party in Rondel, he's notably given to simple forceful solutions to evey problem they've met. Itami usually overrides him, but when Piña gets arrested, and enslaved and Grey suggests Storming the Castle as the only viable way of rescue, he wholeheartedly agrees.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Every other-worlder is freaked out when they have to take the subway. Most of them think it will take them to Hell. Rory has a slightly more justified reason to be afraid; for the past few hundred years, the God of the underworld has been trying to get her to marry her, and she still thinks she'll show up even though they're on another planet. Given that later on, said stalker shows up the instant she sets foot inside a cave, she had reason to be paranoid.
• With This Herring: Played with a bit. JSDF troops (JSDF itself is a defensive-only organization, what with Japan renouncing war and all) stationed beyond the Gate use relatively outdated Cold War equipment, but the distinct advantage of modern warfare and weaponry over the highly fantastic enemy troops is still clear as water. The second episode of the anime explains that the Defense Ministry is having budget cuts, and is planning to decommission the obsolete weapons, to save costs. And in some Fridge Brilliance, in the event the enemy captured them, or the soldiers had to quickly dump their gear to escape, the loss wouldn't be as bad as if they captured more expensive state-of-the-art equipment and weaponry.
  • The manga throws this right out the window, as it shows modern Type 10 and Type 90 tanks leading the charge through the gate, while the force with the older Cold War equipment is sent in later to relieve them.
• Wizard Duel: Lelei has a formal one with her sister Arpeggio in episode 19. Rory serves as referee, and both combatants are surrounded by a protective force field. The object is to destroy your opponent's force field.
• Wizarding School: The Lindon Academy in the city of Rondel.
• Worthless Yellow Rocks:
  • Inverted. Dragon scales are extremely valuable to the other-worlders, to the point that one good scale is worth enough to keep a man fed for almost a month. The JSDF, with the corpses of several dragons lying around their base from the last three times the Empire tried to re-take the Gate, is happy to let the refugees harvest as many as they want, since the soldiers have no use for them. The refugees end up with sacks full.
    Rory: So I guess...we're filthy rich?
  • Also averted when Sugawara gives one of the terms for the peace talks, namely, an absurdly huge amount of money more or less equivalent to Japan's annual GDP. He later backs down from the figure he gives, realizing that if that much gold was suddenly dumped into the Earth economy, it would potentially destabilize the market. Or not, as the amount, while large, isn't really large enough to cause the ill effects, but it's certainly large enough to be worth more consideration.
  • Yanagida also put terms in Japan-Elbe Peace Treaty that gives Japan rights to any mining resources besides gold, silver, and gems... giving Japan over any oil, rare earths or other minerals invaluable to modern technology.
• Would Hurt a Child: The Oprichnina have no problem arresting a 12 year old girl with the intent to execute her for 'treason'.
• Written by the Winners:
  • After the Empire conquered the Warrior Bunnies, they claimed that Queen Tyuule cowardly sold out her people and offered herself to Prince Zorzal as a Sex Slave just to save her own life. In reality, Tyuule offered herself in exchange for her people being spared, but Zorzal ordered her kingdom razed anyway.
  • Molto describes the death of the Flame Dragon as if Lelei was the one who did all the work, as the primary combatants were the JSDF (who they're at war with), Rory the Reaper (a Demigoddess, and thus not good for morale), Tuka (an elf, and not an Imperial Citizen), and Yao (a Dark Elf, again, not an Imperial Citizen). Since Leilei is human (even if she doesn't like the Empire much), she's the one he chooses to honor.
• Wrong Genre Savvy:
  • When the Allied Kingdoms try and retake the portal, they expect their immense numerical superiority to carry the day, given they're 10-1. After their second attempt, they've lost more than half their men without even seeing the Self-Defense Force.
    • After realizing what they're dealing with, Lord Duran decides for a night raid, expecting the new moon to hide them. JSDF scouts with night equipment spot them with ease, and he realizes they've been spotted when the flares start raining. He is shot several times and barely escapes with his life, Laughing Mad at the horror of war.
    • During the night raid Duran and some of his soldiers do manage to get on the other side of the hill, and the soldiers put their shields in front for defense in a tactic similar to the Roman testudo. While such a formation would have been extremely effective against arrows, it's quickly wiped out by light machine guns and what appears to be mortar fire.
  • When the Emperor starts taking the JSDF seriously, he orders his army to use Scorched Earth tactics to deny the enemy supplies to make their journey harder. However, that old kind of tactic won't work with a modern force that uses helicopters, tanks, Humvees, jets and a well established supply line... or rather, it won't work because of the speed and range that the JSDF forces can bring to the table. Without matching abilities, the JSDF can leapfrog over those positions rather quickly. He also has no real concept of the kind of demented warfare Japan can unleash upon his country, and still thinks war with them is winnable.
  • The Emperor, again, seriously misjudges Japan's mindset after seeing Zorzal's entourage get butchered and Zorzal himself get brutalized over Noriko and some other Ginza captives being sold into slavery. He figures that threatening Japan's citizens directly, as opposed to fighting the JSDF, and informing Japan's government, will cause Japan to knuckle under, just like Zorzal very effectively used a similar tactic to literally hunt the Warrior Bunnies to the brink of extinction. What Molto failed to realize, even after Sugawara's statement of fact, is that Japan (and most of the world on the other side of the gate) has thousands of years of experience dealing with, and retaliating against this particular ploy. Molto would be rudely awakened by a pair of F-4EJ Kai Phantoms IIs playing the role of the swords of the gods, and blowing up the Senate building.
  • In the National Diet, Senator Kouhara sees Rory's young looks and dark clothes with veil and assumes she's a child in mourning and picks her as easy prey for her criticism of the JSDF. Turns out she picked on a very old demigod who proceeds to shut her down hard.
  • Zorzal shares his dad's ideas despite getting a red ass beatdown.
  • Itami manages to avoid this in the arc that occurs from chapter 49 to chapter 52 of the manga by carefully double-checking his otaku knowledge against Rory's knowledge of the "mythical" creatures his group encounters. Rory is duly impressed.
• Yaoi Fangirl: Risa has quite a collection of gay-themed manga, explicit enough to shock Tomita when he absentmindedly picks up a random book. Princess Piña Co Lada and Bozes are also quite enthusiastic about acquiring some of these Japanese "art books," much to several diplomat's dismay.
  Piña: (enthusiastically while her brother Diabo looks in disbelief) Fine art!
• You Don't Look Like You: Each version (novel, light novel, manga, and anime) uses slightly different designs for the characters.
  • In general, female characters look younger and more petite in the anime compared to the manga.
    • Kuribayashi for example went from a short but muscular Hard-Drinking Party Girl with a large bust and black hair to a much slimmer build with reddish brown hair.
    • Hamilton has shorter hair and a hair band in the anime, giving her a younger and more adorable look than her manga counterpart. She also has a notably bigger bust, when in the manga, she was flat enough that Piña joked that she wasn't sure if Hamilton was a boy or girl. It's not extreme, but it is increased in size.
    • Sherry is redesigned for the anime, and ends up looking almost like Silica instead. And they got Rina Hidaka to voice Sherry.
  • In the anime, the Imperial characters don't wear togas like they do in the novels and manga, instead wearing medieval clothing. There, they are more of the formal court dress, rather than the casual wear, so they do appear in the court scenes in Episodes 2 and 11.
  • House Formal's demihuman maids also change greatly, especially Persia.
  • Grey is bald and notably rotund in the manga, but has a blonde buzzcut and is more muscular in the anime. Then the spinoff prequel manga turns him into a black-haired hunk.
  • The Russian president looks like Vladimir Putin in the manga. His anime counterpart looks like Boris Yeltsin instead.
  • Zorzal has long hair in the novels. He has short hair in the manga. He's blond with a rat tail in the anime which is fitting for a rat bastard.
• You Owe Me: Rory tells this to Yao in Chapter 50 after she saves her from falling down a pit with her halberd as she goes down as well.
  Rory: You better remember this!
• Zero-Approval Gambit: Motoi quits office after Dirrell leaks to him the news about Japanese cabinet members engaging in bribery - partly because of that, but really it's to prevent the US from getting their hands on our otherworldly guests, as he only promised to ask the JSDF SFG to stand down from protecting the guests, but not hand over them. His name eventually becomes an insult, however.
• Zerg Rush: The Empire sees numbers as one of the ways to counter the JSDF's technological superiority. It worked more or less, especially in the later stages of the war.
• Zillion-Dollar Bill: Yao's diamond (which is the size of an adult's head) proves to be nearly impossible for Itami to sell back on Earth. The jeweler Itami commissioned to do so says that not one of his contacts has clients interested in something that huge and inherently expensive, and he broke into a cold sweat the moment Itami tried to suggest cutting it into smaller, easier to sell pieces^note it is presented as a cut diamond, so they can't exactly make other diamonds from around the edges as is commonly done with large uncut diamonds found in real life. Unfortunately, combined with him being docked his pay going AWOL to deal with the fire dragon, this makes it his Broke Episode.

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