Review of Steins;Gate 0

Steins;Gate 0 was fumbled. Spoilers ahead. I didn't mind the art, that's not the focus of either the original or this series. Nothing took me out of the story artistically, the writing did that without any help. Sound design seemed on par with the original series. The fan-service portions were sloppy, but if the story was going to be "living with depression from time-travel-trauma" it needed some levity. If the scope of the series had remained the same as the first few episodes I wouldn't have had much issue with the fan-service, but it seems like pointless bloat when looking at the product that was delivered. Alt-timeline Okabewhere he's super depressed about having to choose one love interest to die? Sounds good, and it was executed decently for the first half of the series. But then the ass-pullery starts, focusing on some climactic fight scene where Prof. AmericaMan turns out to be evil and not-Kurisu can chop off a guys head with her hand. While I don't remember her name, green-loli's character is also well done. Her inferiority complex and turn-around to relinquishing her pride is a nice arc. But she's saddled with having to play second fiddle to a trash fire of a drama/mystery plot, and by all the short/loli jokes.

In the first ~13 eps there's a slow burn slice-of-life that tells a potentially compelling story of how Okabe has to come to terms with being in a "bad-end" timeline that he chose. He's scarred by the past, and terrified to mess with timelines again. Having green-loli show up and crash his pity-party with Amadeus is a stretch, but something is needed to knock him out of the rut. Seeing him struggle and then come to terms with Kurisu's death would have been nice, and it almost happened. He started to feel love towards green-loli, felt some inspiration to buckle down for his classes, and was still making some time for his friends.

Then they jumped the shark-shaped train off the rails and over a conveniently placed time machine that was also shark-shaped.

1: Not-Kurisu's inclusion was heavy handed at best, scaling towards awful. At first it seemed like it was simply there to be a shock factor for Okabe, she was temporarily forgotten, but then someone thought making her plot relevant would be a good idea. Also her visual design of "Kurisu but bigger tits" is bland fanservice. So she's actually from the future, but has amnesia, and now she's secretly a brainwashed sleeper agent for none other than DERP-A, but don't worry she can break her conditioning and save the day, but conveniently dies so they don't actually have to write her an ending. Don't worry, in the alternate timelines she's still brainwashed though.

Why? She could have been cut, or reduced to a one/two episode appearance to maintain the impact upon other characters. If her amnesia and the resulting investigation had been the primary plot it might have been decent, but being relegated to a side-story only for her personality to be butchered (mommy mommy) then assassinated (literally) was just a waste of time.

2: Mayuri feeling bad about Okabe moving on is a good hook. Having her clue into the time-travel bullshit and decide to hop into the pod herself is not how to resolve it. Either dedicate some serious time to showing her development, or focus the story on Okabe. The half-measure comes out worse than either option. She was Okabe's reason for choosing this timeline, he could have a revelation that he's been neglecting her and finally solidify his acceptance of the timeline! Nope, better revert back to the middle of the original series character-wise. So much potential for a compelling character story that was snipped into pieces so there could be shadow-agency conspiracy plots.

3: Prof. AmericaMan. This character really needed a curly moustache, glasses for the light to shine on, and potentially a disfiguring scar. It was SO OUT OF LEFT FIELD when he turned out to be evil. Shall I stop being sarcastic? This character might have been subtle for a children's show, but early on I was asking "does he have one secret lab full of child corpses, or two?" Could just be storytelling saturation, but having his inevitable betrayal be foreshadowed as hard as it was made me laugh during scenes that looked like they were supposed to be serious. Make him a conflicted father figure for Okabe, make Okabe his new favourite so green-loli renews her inferiority complex and there's relationship drama, have him be demanding and make Okabe pine over his former carefree lifestyle in the face of "normal" responsibility. Nah, he's behind the future brainwashing and also some current brainwashing and really wants a time machine I guess.

4: Those roof scenes. Not only do a dozen shadow-agency-soldiers fail to kill one woman, they fail twice. DERP-A is really fulfilling their namesake by hiring from out front of the supermarket. Then Steins;Gate 0 temporarily becomes a shounen, dodging bullets, cleanly cutting off a human's head with a gloved hand. WHY?! Episodes 16-18 felt like they were fan-fiction. Suzuha kills 2 guys in the tight-quarters time machine, good now she can time-travel... oh no why is she... oh no. Suzuha then fires out of those cramped quarters, and the soldiers don't shoot a single bullet into them. She's a fish in a barrel, but somehow survives. I guess these supermarket soldiers just lock up when a woman holds a gun in their vicinity. Not-Kurisu no sells plenty of bullets, dies a couple of times only to get back up when the script tells her to. I got such whiplash from these episodes it tainted my enjoyment of what came before.

5: The future is bleak and dark. Here's aged-up versions of the cast, now they're dead. Ruko spent decades fighting a war, yet still thinks that Okabe was teaching him an actual sword technique. Did those vertical slices actually help against gatling-gun-drones and soldiers with rifles? Also the villains know your every move, keep that action going, come on, chop chop we've got a plot to finish here. I don't know if they were too ambitious to adapt the story at this pace, or just messed up their pacing with the slower start, but I felt like Okabe looked during this lead-up to the finale.

The worst part of it all is that Okabe finally realizes he needs to push towards attaining Steins;Gate, reverting to where he was before 0 started. They use some overly poetic vocabulary to inspire him to... go back to how he was? Again, maybe that works for a shounen where Protagonist needs to be inspired to fight the BigBad, but why tell a character drama story only to erase it all?

Steins;Gate 0 is one of the few anime I wish I could un-watch. The original series was ended well, 0 feels like it was either a cash-grab or fan-fiction that got pushed through by nepotism.