Review of Steins;Gate 0

[STRONG SPOILERS] "Hiyajo Safina" - Okabe Rintaro When Steins;Gate 0 was announced to start in April 2018 I was extremely excited, mainly because I absolutely loved the original Steins;Gate and would give it a 10/10 rating any day of the week. Simply put, I was extremely disappointed mainly because of the slow story progression and obsolete character design. Since this anime aimed to be a successor to the original Steins;Gate and to expand in the same universe, it's only fitting that we rate this anime based on WHAT IT TRIED TO BE, and how much it failed. Story - 5/10 First of all, the concept of having a storythat leads to the ending of the original anime is pretty interesting, and comes with its own expectations. Starting off with Steins;Gate 0, I was mainly curious on 3 pivotal things that we saw in the original's ending: 1. How did Okabe manage to send that video message to himself, and how did he figure out that makise kurisu was saveable? 2. Why did mayurii change her mind and slap okabe the second time he came out? and 3. When will Hououin Kyouma come back? All of these questions were answered, in very underwhelming ways. For question 1, we actually see absolutely no explanation as to how Okabe even managed to figure out that Kurisu was saveable. All throughout the anime and even with the original failure of saving kurisu, it was clear to him in his mind that she was absolutely unsaveable and that it was a convergence. After seeing Dr Nakabachi with his paper on television, and on the absolute final moments of the anime, for SOME REASON Okabe sends this video back to himself without even knowing whether or not kurisu is even saveable. He didn't do any work, he didn't do any investigating, and we as the audience were left to just take it for what it is. For question 2, the answer to that was simply mayurii going back in time for a moment to call herself and tell her past self to save her hikoboshi. Simple. The manner in which they handle time travel in this anime isn't nearly on the same level of impact and intrigue as it was in the original anime. Question 3 leads us to the best (and only good) scene in the entire anime, where we finally see Okabe return to his roots. However, this scene was bittersweet as the entire buildup of the whole anime just didn't make any sense. This guy just time leapt over a thousand times, and we have seen how time travel can affect this guy. NOW he becomes hououin kyouma? Not after Suzuha blatantly warned him about WW3 multiple, multiple times???

Looking back at the anime's plot and overall progression, we can see that it DESPERATELY tried to be on the same level of suspense and interest as the original anime, but completely felt like more of a parody than actual steins;gate. Not only is 'time travel' replaced with 'petty drama', but the moment the plot starts progressing anywhere, we are given a cliché fanservice scene, since Steins;Gate 0 has a whole lot of new waifus to choose from. Multiple cliffhanger scenes in the anime were sad attempts at creating a "goosebumps-inducing" moment, where they specifically use the same suspenseful music/sound effects from the original steins;gate. A strong example of this is the scene where Kagari sees Mayurii and collapses, notifying the audience that Kagari is Mayurii's adopted daughter, finally found. Although... we've literally seen flashbacks of kagari millions of times before that scene, so we LITERALLY knew who she was no matter what. This anime seems to take itself a bit too seriously.

In addition, too many plot holes exist in this anime, and i'll just list out a bunch of my own here;
- When the timeline shifted on the rooftop with Maho, what changed in the worldline? We know that events changed because kurisu said he called her, but THEY DID NOTHING WITH THE TIMELINE CHANGE?
- When okabe swapped into the Alpha worldline with Kurisu for a brief moment, what caused that? What was the plot change?
- Why did the timeline not change when Okabe sent the video to himself in the past? Is that not what d-mails or emails do?
- What was the significance of the video that Daru sent to Suzuha on the rooftop? Why did we NEVER see the full video?!?!?!??!?!?! OR WHERE IT CAME FROM???
- There is another cast member with reading steiner, if all of you remember from the hospital. Why did we never see any more of her, or any significance? Reading steiner is no joke in the universe of steins;gate.
- We saw glimpses of Okabe in the future, even when he was in the past. What was the reason of this? Why do we never get insight on what actually happened to him when he was captured in the future?
- After time leaping over a thousand times to get back to the present day, WHY is he not affected by this? No nausea? No depression? No anxiety? He just BECOMES hououin kyouma?????????
- So... does okabe love mayurii after this ending? Or kurisu? Lmao.

Too many flaws can be seen if you nitpick too much, but you all get the idea. To me, this anime was too flimsy to even take seriously. Still giving it a 5/10 because it does work out and makes sense from beginning to end, but I seriously don't understand their choice of progression.

Art - 8/10

The artstyle does not stray too far from the original Steins;Gate, and has a few extra special effects and blooming here and there. They capture the world of Steins;Gate properly and effectively without making any drastic changes, and I see no problem with giving them a perfect score for art. However... I'm going to take 2 points off for the absolutely horrendous action scenes that we saw with Kagari and Suzuha near the end of the anime. Not only does Kagari live with dozens of bullets inside of her, but she chops off two guys' heads with her wrists? Are you literally kidding me, steins;gate? Is this some kind of sick joke?

Sound - 10/10

Kanako Itou, an absolutely great artist, singing a lovely OP and really capturing the essence of the anime, and gives nostalgia from the original anime. Nothing bad to say about her. In addition, Steins;Gate 0 offers a totally new soundtrack that sounds amazing and fits the theme of the anime perfectly well. I'm glad I was able to listen to some nice tunes while crying on the inside of how disappointed I was with this anime.

Character - 3/10

Allow me to introduce you all to what I believe is the worst flaw of this anime. The plot itself actually works out fine, don't get me wrong. However, every single character in this anime is portrayed as a weaker shadow of how they were portrayed in the original anime, and the new characters feel meaningless in certain ways. I'm not stopping here. I'm going to explain what I think of every single character.

Okabe - We were introduced to a heartbroken Okabe from the start and it made sense for his character. His sulking about kurisu made sense and his mental destruction was apparent in his hallucinations and hysteria and fear of time travel. All of this made sense from a personal perspective, but this charade went on for a bit too long. There already were rounders striking at their party before Mr Braun ex machina showed up, and even when he found evidence of Kagari being brainwashed, he still stood adamant on not time travelling. Only after he witnesed mayurii dying, would he change his mind. But this honestly feels like a forced way to change okabe's mind, and makes me dislike the show more than i already did.

Mayurii - Mayurii is the best character in this show no matter what, and just plays her role extremely well. Nothing bad with her, its just that all of the other characters revolving around her were pretty weak. Mayurii number 1.

Suzuha - Same old Suzuha, but she should have done a better job at convincing Okabe to time travel IMO. This is the only character that actually stayed exactly the same between Steins;Gate and Steins;Gate 0.

Kurisu/Amadeus - Not sure if this counts as an actual character, but the fact that we don't see kurisu revived at the very least in some worldline at the end, seems a bit weird. Regardless, they managed to keep Kurisu's character intact, so I'm very grateful for that. Since she was reduced to a side character, hopefully the new main characters that replaced her are better... right?

Daru - We can keep daru's cliche otaku rants and jokes, but the inclusion of Maho made this cliche skyrocket out of EXISTENCE. Not only that, but all of a sudden he became a super hacker with a secret base and everything, that we've never seen in the original? You don't just change a character like this. Romantic daru and future daru, on the other hand, were both cool additions.

Faris/Rukako - Useless in comparison to their original portrayal in Steins;Gate. These two accomplished absolutely nothing in this anime, and Rukako just died in the future for a goosebumps scene, only to be brought back ANYWAYS because okabe time leapt. What?!

Moeka - So she isn't pseudo-evil anymore, and just becomes a well-endowed girl who follows orders and gets groped by faris in one scene. They completely ruined moeka, and just made her find a brainwashing place out of nowhere.

Mayurii's Friends - I don't remember all of their names, but more waifus are more waifus. Although, one of them had READING STEINER... Did they actually just leave this out of the plot entirely? You've got to be kidding me.

Amane Yuki - Even though she's my personal waifu choice of this anime, we have to be objective here. It was a running gag that she was the woman behind the mask, up until it was revealed to be Kagari. Then she fell in love with daru and appeared in a Suzuha flashback where she just died. Anything more than that? Nope.

Maho - The strongest new character, she makes sense as a partner to Kurisu that feels inferior. I accept maho as a character, although the design of a woman being literally half the size of okabe to appeal to lolis and create millions of cliche fanservice scenes? That, i don't accept. Regardless, maho is one of the only good characters in this anime.

Leskinen - Not sure if everybody was like me, but I knew this guy was evil from the beginning. However, the only exposure we have of Leskinen being evil is just in one recurring scene on the rooftop when mayurii and suzuha try to enter the time machine. He runs the cliche where he explains his ENTIRE plan. Then, okabe just decides to time travel back and eventually taze him. Seriously disappointed with this character TREMENDOUSLY. He was pretty funny regardless with his accent, so that gave some enjoyment in the anime.

Kagari - So she was a vessel across time travel to transfer information, and had a strong attachment to Mayurii. All of this makes sense, but the order in which they introduced Kagari and multiple parts of her past just seemed really scattered and nonsensical. I believe this character could have been utilized in a better way, since she has a lot of potential.

Overall, you all need to see where I'm coming from. The original Steins;Gate had a purpose for every single one of its characters, and all of them tied into the plot tremendously, creating new levels of emotion and experiences. However, Steins;Gate 0 attempts to keep the old characters while introducing new main characters into the fray. This entire jumble of characters in Steins;Gate 0 leads to the original characters being overall weaker (which is a very bad idea, considering the original characters of Steins;Gate are the ones we care about the most), ontop of the newer characters just having questionable designs. I just didn't feel nearly as attached to any of these characters as I did for any character in the original Steins;Gate.

Enjoyment - 4/10

Near the start of the anime, I started with 100% juice. I was extremely excited and wanted to witness the brilliance and magnificence of Steins;Gate once again. However, a slight leakage of my juice started after the first few episodes because nothing interesting was happening. About 80% of juice was there up until the first worldline change, but every single fanservice scene that the anime threw at me made me lose approximately 20% juice. At the halfway point of the anime, I actually was at 0% juice and had absolutely no hope for this show to actually entice me anymore. I watched this show to laugh at the plot, actually. Leskinen's lackluster villain design ontop of his accent that made the show even less serious in the critical plot points made me just laugh. The entire fight scene between kagari and leskinen's goons just made me stare in disbelief. I was actually scratching my head in confusion when mayurii and suzuha got hit with the missile, instead of actually having an emotional affect. I instead watched this show as a joke near the end, so I'll give it some enjoyment points.

Overall - 4/10

In conclusion, this anime felt more like a fan parody of Steins;Gate than an actual successor or sequel-esque show. This anime was literally a depressing rom-com with a steins;gate expansion pack that included all of the characters. The director of the anime then thought to themself "Hmm, I know how to make money off of 2018's anime community" and decided to include various fanservice scenes in an anime that solely relied on emotion and drama and personal conflict to survive. This anime did not reflect on anything that made the original Steins;Gate amazing, and took steps back in the lessons of character development and steady plot progression that it taught. I feel more content with the overall Steins;Gate storyline if I pretend that Steins;Gate 0 actually never happened.