1

Yeah, the depiction of Real World politics in general, and the US in particularly, is not something that is giving me comfortable feelings about.  The telegraphing of those plot points so early in the series is not encouraging.

So far, the series is two episodes in and it continues to surprise at what is, and is not, included.  The scene where the leaders of the subject armies are meeting reminds me of a similar scene from Kenneth Branagh's Henry V, where the French king is meeting with his marshals on the eve of getting slaughtered at Agincourt.  I do not think that any of the daylight attacks even got within direct fire range of the SDF's positions around the gate - proximity fused artillery rounds tend to do that.  The wisest leader concluding the night attack with a single arrow, before he was cut to pieces, was a notable touch.

And this episode even introduced two of the girls from the opening...Though I do where the bucket that Itami tossed ended up landing on.  Shall we also speculate on what the 'order' that Imperial Princess commands, consist of?

2 If you're following the manga (and I recommend it), there's one major "Gasaraki" coming up--it's meaningless to the plot, though, and hopefully will get cut.  It was the one moment that I completely lost suspension of disbelief.  Fortunately, the story immediately got back to the good parts.

cxt, your answer is Yes.

3 "Why do we have second-line equipment?"

Because you don't send your first-line stuff through into a magic world where people might have a "brainwash army" spell, obviously. (Short of that, if there's some kind of semi-advanced or advanced civilization on the other side, you don't want them capturing and studying your best weapons...)

The question nobody's asked is this. If they can open a portal, can they open portal_s_? Talk about your frontier...

4

If they can open a portal, can they open portal_s_?

It has already been addressed, at least implicitly.  The reason why they did not destroy the gate was because they were afraid it might open somewhere else.  Having the possibility of multiple gates existing at the same time is the next logical step.

Regarding the equipment, I made the observation at Fandom Post that, if the natives thought the SDF was amazing now, wait until the engineers started building airfields and LORAN towers.

5

Maybe not. They describe that hill as a holy place, so there may be some supernatural element in the process of creating the gate, in addition to relatively ordinary magic.

Even if they can, it must not be an easy thing, or the place would be dotted with gates. And even if they could, who says they'd open to our earth?

6 My point exactly. Forget the Empire for a second. You've also got to worry about any -other- place they might end up opening a gate to. Which means even if you get a handle on what's possible and not possible with respect to the other world, you still don't have a full spectrum of the risks involved...

7

Actually, they don't need to worry. Let's doing some supposing:

Suppose there's another gate, and it opens onto a world whose warmaking technology is equal to or worse than the Empire. In that case it isn't a threat to the JSDF; they'll die like flies in combat just like the Empire did.

Suppose there's another gate and it opens to a world whose warmaking technology is 30 Years War (i.e. 1615-1645 in Europe) or better, including tech in advance of the JSDF. In that case they would already have conquered the whole planet and it would have been them who came through the gate to Tokyo. They didn't, so they aren't.

Suppose there's another gate and it opens to a world which isn't aggressive, no matter what its technology level. In that case, they aren't a threat to Japan.

The only way there's a problem is if both gates were opened at almost exactly the same time and the other gate opens to a world that's aggressive and has technology in advance of the JSDF. In that case the only reason the JSDF hasn't seen them yet is that the opfor hasn't had time to reach the Japanese gate. And that seems rather improbable.

8

Because you don't send your first-line stuff through into a magic world where people might have a "brainwash army" spell, obviously. (Short of that, if there's some kind of semi-advanced or advanced civilization on the other side, you don't want them capturing and studying your best weapons...)

I tossed this idea into the mix over at the Gate thread on Fandom Post, and one of the members there pointed out that it would be pretty much useless for the 'fantasies' because they will not be able to reproduce it.  I guess if they are going to try using the equipment, there might be some advantage, but while I believe medieval ironsmiths and craftsmen would be able to produce some impressive pieces of work (Similar to what the Khyber Pass copies.), there is a limit to what they can copy in terms of both weapons and technology (The cases for ammunition, let alone the powder element, would be impossible to reproduce.).  Essentially, our fantasy world counterpart would have learn to make gunpowder and then muzzle-loading cannons first, before spending the time to develop personal firearms. 

9

Gunpowder doesn't do them any good. Modern firearms are designed for cordite and won't work with anything less powerful.

Also, medieval smiths couldn't create the kinds of alloys that modern weapons require to work.

10 And even if they could figure out cordite, they're not going to figure out fulminate.

11

The one wild card is if technological uplift is provided to the fantasies (With obvious restrictions - my example is that you might be able to teach the blacksmiths and craftsmen how to fabricate breechloading rifles, but the 'moderns' are the ones providing the ammunition.) at some point.  This is like a Traveller RPG campaign, or what happens if your DM decides to change the adventure du jour and have you the players, rather than your PCs, in the adventurers...

And for BigD: Thanks to TV Tropes, I know that the Imperials who survived and retreated from the invasion of Ginza came back with some 'guests.'

12 cxt: My response is that the manga is worth reading, unless you really want to see the eps cold, first.

The manga gave a brief mention to the fact that they were given all the old, storehoused gear that had been replaced in the line units (the wikipedia entry on JSDF gear confirms this). ISTR that the reason was somewhat glossed over, and I was hoping the anime would add some detail on that front.  I recall having somewhat of an impression that there were maybe multiple reasons for doing so, including using only expendable gear in case the good stuff was needed to stop an invasion aimed at taking the gate, plus using old stuff helped with the international image of conducting an "investigation" rather than a de facto counter-invasion.  That may be largely speculation on my part, though.

I wonder if the real reason has to do with the author's service dates and the gear that he got to see when he was in, or something.

13 Big D, I think your last point is the crux of the matter but the other issues raised are all good ones too. 

Things get really "interesting" if the empire can shut the gate. 

14 The idea of multiple gates or other places, and suddenly the back of my head starts yelling "Dreen!"

15 In a superhero game I GM'ed many years ago, the players were disdainful of the invaders from a fantasy-world.  That disdain ended when a sorcerer-alchemist figured out how to cause all primers and detonators in a 1 mile radius to go off....

16 In my opinion, for these fantasy world vs modern world gate scenarios, the key issue is not so much the technological advancement of the fantasy world as the societal advancement.  If they still run societies on the level of a medieval society, than short of really extreme magical OCPs, nothing else will matter, because logistics and communication will win out.  OTOH, if your dealing with a society that's used to operating on the scale of a good chunk of a continent, in terms of governance and transit and administration?  They probably can manage a sophistication of combat that would let them actually leverage those unknown magical OCP capacities.

Admittedly, the worst case scenario would probably be "High Fantasy Magic, Disunified Nations, Constant Warfare, High Ambient Monster Count".  In that case, you might as well just bury the gate in concrete. . .

17 Presumably if they could shut the gate, they'd have done so as soon as they lost the territory it was on. (or possibly they CAN shut the gate, if they can get hold of it, but fat chance of that now.)

As for the rest, you're thinking of these things in terms of our own solution sets. Could a medieval society get a working gun and build an industry for producing such guns from scratch? No way. But in a world with giant flying lizards and literal magic, there are other ways around problems. Could you cast "Duplicate Item" without knowing what the item was? Or stamp out a quick magic talisman that made someone immune to fast-moving bits of metal? Or throw a spell that prevents sparks from forming over a few kilometers? (man, that'd be nasty... no primers, no internal combustion engines, god only knows what it'd do to the electronics...) Or one that makes people hallucinate that the guy standing next to them is a demon?

There's also something to be said for not assuming the entire world is like the bit right around the gate. If you opened a gate to our world and popped out in Somalia, you might make assumptions about the politics and economics that would give you a bad picture of what was going on elsewhere. Is this empire the full flower of civilization, or a jumped-up border tribe with delusions of grandeur? Are there old elven civilizations chock full of crystal cities on some other continent?

No way to know, without sending out some recon to snoop around. Which is what the story is doing, and in that sense, it's very reasonable.

18 If I were outfitting them that for the unknown, I'd avoid weapons ... exquisitely tuned for current threats. The 5.56x45mm NATO (.223) used by the Howa Type 89is marginal at best on humans, so it's good that they're using the older Howa Type 64, which uses 7.62x51mm NATO with a -20% reduced powder charge. The wooden furniture might not be as strong as the plastic in the Type 89, but its use of steel will come in handy in future days.

19

Well, we know that the fantasy world is apparently close enough to Earth that moderns have no problems living in it so far.  So it has to be close enough to earth in its physical laws as well - meaning there is a limit to what magic can do as an overall effect.

One of the posters at the Traveller Mailing List actually did play a session where the DM declared "You, the player, are now in your character's world.'  When the DM tried to change the rules to prevent certain things from happening (Like if your players knew how to experiment for the manufacture of phosgene - or at least their precursor agents - or basics of building breeder reactors.), one of the points the poster got the DM on was that if you changed the laws of chemistry to the point where you changed the laws of physics, you would not have a world where humans can live in.