Summary
The New Gate is getting an anime adaptation a decade after its initial publication, and it could face stiff competition in the saturated isekai genre. The anime announcement included big-name voice actors and revealed some of the production staff. The premise of The New Gate, while similar to Sword Art Online, may not feel fresh in today’s anime scene, which is filled with fantasy and isekai works. Still, anime based on RPG video games are still successful, as Shangri La Frontier has proven, which bodes well for The New Gate’s reception.
A decade after its first publication, New gate The isekai film will be adapted in 2024, perhaps to its detriment. While eager fans of the novel series look forward to better implementing the premise started by Sword Art Online, The New Gate is currently facing some stiff competition. It may have been one of the first to adopt current isekai conventions, but now it is merely the first of many.
The announcement of the anime adaptation was made along with the launch of an official website. Kensho Ono, Asami Seto and Kaede Hondo are the big-name voice actors that have been revealed for this upcoming work. However, there is only so much interest in the show that such star power can generate given that the premise arrived so late after the original novel was released.
The new gate comes late to MMO-Isekai Mania
The New Gate’s synopsis is written by licensing publisher One Peace Book, who is responsible for adapting the manga:
THE NEW GATE―an online game that has turned into a life-and-death struggle for players. Thanks to the brave efforts of Shin, the strongest of them all, the game ends and freedom for everyone seems within reach. But moments after Shin defeats the game’s final boss, he finds himself bathed in an unknown light and transported about 500 years into the future of the game’s world. Thrown from a simple glitched game into a strange new land, a young swordsman with unparalleled strength prepares to embark on a legendary journey!
Details are scarce at the moment, but some production staff have been revealed. Most importantly, Tamaki Nakatsu takes on directorial duties, while production will be handled by both Yokohama Animation Labs and Cloud Hearts. Nakatsu is an experienced industry veteran, while both studios are relatively new when it comes to independent projects. However, Yokohama Animation Labs has years of experience supporting other studios, while Cloud Hearts was only founded in 2021. Yokohama Animation Labs is also notable because they are handling another highly anticipated anime, Whisper Me a Love Song.
Reading the synopsis, most anime audiences will immediately recognize the similarities to Sword Art Online, starting with the similar premise of a “killer VR game.” It’s not surprising, since the original novel was first published in 2013, when SAO became widely popular with its 2012 anime. But if The New Gate is an alternative, it’s been a long time coming. An anime series of this genre feels fresh. The anime scene in the decade since has been filled with fantasy, isekai, or stories set in virtual reality, to the point where they blend it all together, meaning there may actually be no room left. for The New Gate.
The decade-long pause may be due to The New Gate’s publisher, Alphapolis, being described as reluctant to allow further access to its properties. Another of the studio’s works, A Playthrough of a Some Dude’s VRMMO Life, also had to wait a decade before having an anime released this October. As things stand, these shows have now been overrun by countless swordsmen, goblins, and otherworldly RPG jargon when they could have appeared in the early 2010s when the conventions weren’t yet run out of. However, the recent success of Shangri La Frontier proves that anime with an RPG video game premise can still work, which hopefully bodes well for The New Gate.
Source: The New Gate website