When Karasuma takes out several different bad-guys, Justin fights the community's arch-nemesis, Sam gets fed up and takes a confused man's gun away from him, and Lieutenant Tao barks at an obnoxious guy to cut it out, they go from buttoned-up or mellow to action-man! It is as fun as the come-from-behind win in a dozen sports movies.
Better in many way because the characters often revert to their original personas immediately afterwards and don't see what the big deal is.
Itami in Gate is a mellow, friendly fan-boy (American for otaku) reinstated soldier (due to events in the first episode) who comes across as a total slacker yet has the equivalent of Navy SEAL expertise.
What makes him so entirely cool are two aspects:
1. In a crisis, he acts quickly and decisively. He is an outside-the-box thinker and inspires others to do the same.
2. He doesn't mistake action for...anything really. Itami wouldn't be saying, "I'll be back!" He'd been saying, "No, I won't, but since I am here..." That is, Itami doesn't do extreme, bigger-than-life things for the sake of doing them. He does such things because they have to be done. (He wouldn't climb Mallory's mountain just because it was there!)
Consequently, though he does incredibly brave things--and incredibly brave things on the fly--he rarely does incredibly dumb brave things. If he IS going to do them...might as well go in with a plan.
