Gate Keepers features an adolescent team with psychic powers. © AEGIS • GONZO • KADOKAWA SHOTEN/GK21PROJECT.

Gate Keepers. V.1, Open the Gate! V.2, New Fighters! V.3, Infiltration! V.4, The New Threat! V.5, To the Rescue! V.6, Discovery! V.7, The Shadow! V.8, For Tomorrow!
TV series (24 episodes), 2000. Director: Koichi Chigira. V.1-8, three episodes/80 minutes. Price & format: DVD bilingual $29.98. Distributor: Pioneer Entertainment.

Gate Keepers 21. V.1, Invader Hunters. V.2, The Final Gate.
OAV series (six episodes), 2002. Writer/Director: Hiroshi Yamaguchi. V.1-2, three episodes/85 minutes. Price & format: DVD bilingual $29.98. Distributor: Pioneer Entertainment.

After the new Studio Gonzo stunned anime fans with the spectacular CGI in its first production, the 1998 four-episode OVA serial Blue Submarine No. 6, fans wondered whether Gonzo could keep up the quality for a longer TV production? Yes. Gate Keepers was a 24-episode serial co-production by Gonzo and Digimation for the WOWOW satellite TV channel, broadcast weekly April 3 to September 18, 2000. It blended attractive 2D character designs by popular artist Keiji Goto (who was the TV series' animation director, as well as drawing the manga adaptation) and "super scientific" art (mechanical designs and CGI direction) by Masahiro Maeda (who was soon tapped by the Wachowski Brothers as a sequence director for The Animatrix-based on his CGI work for Gonzo). Gate Keepers did not have as much computer graphics as Blue Submarine No. 6 had, but its CGI was more smoothly integrated with the 2D animation.

Gate Keepers is another Japanese variant of the teen mutant superhero team formula. The setting is 1969 in a parallel Earth being secretly invaded by aliens. The Invaders are taking control of Japan's booming economy by replacing industry leaders with ruthless mechanical doubles. Shun Ukiya is the leader of a team of adolescent "Gate Keepers" with psychic powers recruited by AEGIS (Alien Extermination Global Intercept System) to fight the Invaders.

The series starts off light with much humor and camaraderie (Shun is constantly embarrassing female teammate Ruriko by calling her by her childhood nickname of "Runny Nose;" as any viewer could predict, a romance gradually develops), and grows more dramatic as the Invaders become more deadly, striking at the Gate Keepers' own families and friends as well as the general public. The Invaders are able to tap into human emotions and use the economic ambition pervading Japan to turn real people into selfish, greedy sadists (a late 1990s commentary on the high-flying economy which crashed so disastrously in the 1980s?); eventually subverting a member of the Gate Keepers themselves.

Gate Keepers was so popular that the TV series was followed up quickly with a video game, Gate Keepers 1985, and by a six-episode direct-to-video sequel, Gate Keepers 21, released between April and December 2002; each featuring a new wave of Invaders being met by a new generation of Gate Keepers. Gate Keepers 21 (for the 21st century) has more CGI and higher production values than the TV series, but a darker story. Miu Manazuru is a timid innocent high school student recruited for the Gate Keepers by her classmate, Ayane Isuzu, who is much more cynical and emotionally burnt-out than the average adolescent. The new leader of AEGIS opposing the Invaders appears to be the top villain that the original Gate Keepers fought in 1969. Miu serves as the point-of-view character for new viewers unfamiliar with the TV series as she learns the history of what has gone before, and discovers the reasons for the changes between 1969, 1985 and 2001.