Anime First Look - Divine Gate

[yasr_multiset setid=3] By: MithrandielDivine Gate, adapted from a popular mobile strategy game, takes place in a universe where three worlds, Celestia, Hellistia and Terrastia, have collided. In the aftermath of this collision, individuals known as Adapters found themselves able to control one of six elemental powers. The World Council provides these adapters with technology known as "Drivers" to help channel these abilities and uses them to maintain order and peace in their world. The story of Divine Gate revolves around 16-year old Aoto, a mysterious boy plagued with a tragic past who is recruited to the World Council academy to develop his abilities.Holy cow this show is bad. It seriously almost set the record for how quickly I lost interest in a series with its opening dialogue:Pitter patter, pitter patter, the rain starts to drop. While the water may fill up the holes on the road, it will never fill up the hole of one's heart.This is how the series starts. I swear to God. I thought to myself "Okay, so it's a bit melodramatic. Maybe it's a translation issue...maybe it's a lot more meaningful in Japanese and that doesn't get carried over in the translation." I did my best to assume the best for this show, and within a few minutes it absolutely trampled over all of my hopes. The dialogue doesn't get better. Unbelievably it manages to devolve and get even worse as the show goes on. Aoto, the protagonist, makes Eeyore look like a ray of sunshine. He has so much self-hate it effectively drowns the rest of the show, not that the other characters are much better. There's Arthur, the mysterious head of the World Council who is no doubt exceedingly powerful, but doesn't do much to get the audience interested in his goals or motivation. There's the duo of Adapters that come across Aoto in the opening scene; the cheery and optimistic girl Midori operating alongside her boisterous and loud Akane...and both of them are about as deep as the puddles they're running through in the opening scene.The music is uninspiring, the animation is average, the characters forgettable, the story achingly familiar and above all the writing is abysmal. I had some hopes for the series, and for the sake of an accurate review I'll be keeping tabs on it, but given your other options this season, I think it's safe to say that this is one you can skip, and nothing of value would be lost.If you are interested in watching this train-wreck, you can find it on Funimation's streaming service.