Divine Gate

I am not going to be too original; I would rather simply elaborate on what SonGokussj and DaweForman said in their reviews on FilmBooster because I am pretty much in agreement with them. In the beginning, this show did not look completely pointless. The setting looked interesting, the idea of a divine gate that grants you all your wishes was not too bad, and the main protagonists looked OK at first glance. However, over time it all just becomes a huge bore and complete mess in terms of culture, plot, and visuals. The characters are either terribly formulaic and cookie-cutters, or they are ripped off and weirdly adapted from just about every source one can think of. So in this show, we have the Norse gods, of which Loki plays the biggest role, and he is the only one who seems to know his way around this total mess and enjoys all the tangles and weirdness, and is not surprised by any twist. Apart from him, there is King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and when he gets naughty, his friend Santa Claus comes for him with a studded baseball bat. The Wizard (of Oz) oversees everything, William Shakespeare himself gets in on the action, and many others pop in and out during it. The combination of it all could have ended up as either hilarious madness or incomprehensible stupidity. Sadly, the latter wins out for me, and like the proverbial The Old Lady that Swallowed the Fly, this one was just almost impossible to stomach by the end. The sad thing is that the narrative is also a strange hodgepodge that focuses on the main three protagonists at times. It occasionally introduces us to "Arthur and friends" and combines it all in a weird way where you do not know who or what to focus on. It is all too often quite boring. I focused on the final message and watched this weird quest to reach the divine gate because I was curious to see who of the three would get there and what they would wish for. Well, I was expecting a lot. However, the final episode was like someone was enticing me into an amazing sexual experience for some hours before kicking me in the balls with all their might. The last episode was full of determination and trying for greatness, SPOILER ALERT only for the main protagonists to change their minds within minutes. END OF SPOILERS I do not think anyone was expecting this, and I can understand everyone banging their head against the wall in disbelief at that moment. If only it had at least made some sense. The sudden change and general twists throughout the narrative had as many holes in their logic as a colander. I just found this show incredibly weak, overwrought, stupid, and weird. However, I finished it anyway. One thing I know for sure, though, is that if there is a second season and the ending of the first one even hints at that. I am probably going to avoid it because this first one was just a big bubble that burst under the weight of all the nonsense it piled on. 2/10. (08/01/2016)