Review of Steins;Gate 0

This piece of work should not have ever existed. The reason for that is simple: this is simply fanfiction, masquerading as a "sequel"/"midquel" for one of the greatest animated shows in TV history. This show ruins the nearly-perfect characters of Steins;Gate by turning them into generic, bland, and arc-less carton cutouts of their original selves. The new characters, with the exception of one, are useless, inconsequential, and add nothing aside from filler content. The show is full of plot-holes that are glaringly obvious to anyone who has the shred of critical thinking that is required to ask the question "How come?" and "How did itwork this time when it didn't work last time even though the conditions haven't changed?" The ending is nonsensical, and the pacing is atrocious.

This anime for the first 17 episodes, is nothing more than a knock-off "slice of life" anime from AliExpress. It is the fanfiction version of Steins;Gate that you would get if you ordered it from Alibaba. The blatant amount of milking that this show displays is breathtaking. There is literally no reason for any of the events that happen in the show prior the emergence of the plot in episode 18, aside from "fanservice" via call-backs to the original Steins;Gate and through *literal* fanservice that is completely forced and unnatural.

The show takes a giant dump on the tone of the original, which was serious, albeit funny. While Steins;Gate was an emotionally gripping tale about time travel and its consequences, friendship and siblinghood, loss, and trauma, Steins;Gate 0 is about crazy action scenes wherein characters can behead armed soldiers via karate-chop, and jump off of buildings and do crazy moves with katanas. People eat a million tons of lead, and do not die until the plot deems it convenient, such as in an instance where a character literally stands still (while dying) until another character arrives and allows that character to finally die.

In seminal scenes involving action during the climax, when a character begins to cry or gets hurt, everyone stops shooting so the audience can have "an emotional moment." Once the moment is over, the shooting and the cartoonish gory violence resumes. Nothing that happens in the show has any consequences on the narrative. The entire anime does not forward the plot of Steins;Gate in any way. There was literally no reason for this anime to be made, aside from the publisher's(?) desire to make more money off of an extremely effective and masterful one-off anime show.

Last but not least, all the female characters have over-exagerated boobs now, for obvious cash-cow reasons. This includes characters who did not have such exaggerated features in the original, even though the events of this show take place only a year or less after the events of the original. And somehow, the animators manage to draw attention to said boobies whenever they can, making it very obvious that they're doing it for "commercial" reasons.

This show was a gigantic waste of time, and I am incredibly glad that I watched it during COVID Summer, because had I seen this at any other time, I would be furious because of all the time I wasted on this garbage.

Just enjoy the original Steins;Gate and treat this show like what it truly is: fanfiction. El Psy Congroo.

Tl;dr: Steins;Gate 0 is what you get if you order Steins;Gate from AliExpress. 2/10