We’ve seen the Japanese Self-Defense Forces get quite creative with trying to entice new recruits, but never before have we seen them do an all-out official collaboration with an anime.

And Gate is the perfect anime for them to team up with. It’s about the JSDF traveling through a portal to another world, taking down monsters, teaming up with cute girls, and just generally making it look like joining them would be the most amazing thing ever.

You can bet the JSDF is milking it for every last drop they can, starting with posters that are giving us a strange urge to visit our local recruitment center.

If you’ve never heard of Gate before, it’s not surprising. Though it’s been incredibly popular in Japan, selling over 2.4 million volumes of books, light novels, and manga all together since 2006, it’s not that well-known overseas. However, with Gate becoming an anime this month, it may be only a matter of time before the series is known the world over.

Gate’s author, Takumi Yanai, himself is a former member of the JSDF, so his series shows the organization in a very positive light, always making sure that they’re the good guys. Other current JSDF members have praised the novel’s accuracy in representing JSDF weaponry and operations, as well as showing the relatable human side to the characters too.

With all of this high praise and the anime coming out, it didn’t take long for the real JSDF to hear about this, resulting in one of the most perfect collaborations imaginable.

Here’re the posters that have been created to advertise both the Gate anime and JSDF recruitment at the same time:

▼ Translation (Side): “Become someone who can protect someone.”

(Bottom): Japan Self-Defense Forces Recruitment

▼ Here’s another version with the same text:

▼ And here’s a snapshot of one of the posters caught out in the wild:

Unfortunately, it remains unconfirmed whether or not joining the JSDF will result in you getting a giant purple axe, magic wand, and/or bow and arrow, but we can only assume that everything on the posters is completely true to life.

Will Gate encourage more Japanese people to join the JSDF? Or will it just end up being another anime that people watch, forget about, and move on from? Either way, if the JSDF gets a bunch of new recruits who sign up because they want to “meet cute elves and battle dragons,” they’ll have no one to blame but themselves.

Source: JSDF Tokyo Provincial Cooperation Office via Toychan

Images: JSDF Tokyo Provincial Cooperation Office