Review of Steins;Gate 0

Why?! Why make an additional season to one of the most beloved anime if you don't have something special to offer? I know this season adapts a visual novel and most people say it does a good job putting it in anime format. I haven't read the visual novel but if this is true then I guess my criticism can also be applied to the vn. Compared to the original, Steins;Gate 0 is boring, uninteresting, lacks a strong direction and ultimately feels soulless. It's so overstretched in its runtime that you spend 16 god damned episodes watching a borderline slice of life with eventual tidbits of plotpoints sprinkled in just to keep you awake that eventually feel like they come out of nowhere just to keep the overall plot on life support and artificially push it forward.

Now I want to make it clear that this season has some good things about it. It really picks up the pace in the last episodes and the reveal (even if it's extremely goofy and not particularly well done) does try to bring the plot points together. The conclusion is nice. The characters from the previous season aren't ruined. In fact, Zero adds a little bit more nuance to them even if it's done at a surface level. I liked what they did with Okabe, with him deciding to give up while being haunted by the ghosts of his past mistakes and the world around him constantly trying to reopen his wounds. I liked that Hashida is more assertive and gets in fights with Okabe more. I liked that Mayuri takes matter in her own hands.

But when it comes with the events that are regarded as well-done, when you really think about them, most of them are already done (often better) in the original show. Okabe going back in time over and over, him falling in despair only to find support in the friends surrounding him, him having to make tough choices, all of them are already done in Steins;Gate. There's an episode where Okabe randomly gets transported to a previous worldline only to have to make the exact same tough choice he had to make in the original show. So really, what does Steins;Gate 0 has to offer that's new?

Well, Kurisu isn't here because she's dead. But we can't have Steins;Gate without the best girl, so what are we going to do? Well, it turns out Kurisu had her mind scanned before Steins;Gate so her memories could be given to an AI. So now Okabe has a little Kurisu AI gf (yes, I'm not joking).

There are 3-4 important characters that are introduced. All of them as bland and uninteresting as they could get without being straight-up horrible. These characters alongside the original ones very often get into emotional scenes. Seriously, there's so much crying, screaming and fainting which is often done in the most dull and uninteresting anime-esque way possible that it becomes annoying. Oh, and these characters love to party, they throw a party every couple of episodes. No alcohol of course.

The animation is bad. Frankly, the animation wasn't good even in the original show, but Steins;Gate didn't have big action sequences, it was mostly talking so there really wasn't a need for big budget animation. Steins;Gate 0 HAS action sequences and they are some of the worst scenes this medium can ever produce. They're laughably bad.

Seeing the high score Steins;Gate 0 has on MAL really shows that anime viewers will simply eat up whatever boring cash-grab there's being produced as long as it has their beloved characters in it.