Steins;Gate

“No one knows what the future holds. That’s why its potential is infinite.”
Okabe Rintarou (Steins;Gate)


Such a powerful quote, from an anime at least just as powerful. It’s one of the many wise quotes featured in the excellent time travelling tale called Steins;Gate. It is a story praised by many, and I think the show is definitely worthy of all its praise: it’s an excellent piece of work. Steins;Gate is, in essence, a unique anime. There’s not a single show that I found to be comparable to Steins;Gate.
But why does everyone think of Steins;Gate as such a masterpiece?



Story: 10/10
Steins;Gate is about Okabe Rintarou, a “mad scientist” ... who spends his time hanging out in his laboratory with his friends Mayuri and Daru. Ocassionally, they manage to invent futuristic gadgets, though these are never worth mentioning. The first few episodes may turn you down, as it seems like your general slice of life/comedy anime. However, when their most interesting invention, the Phone Microwave, turns out to be able to send text messages through time, everything changes: the text messages sent to the past have a huge impact on the present. When Okabe, in a horrifying way, finds out about an evil organization called SERN, and their ways, he is forced to use time travelling methods to prevent from getting captured – and stop their plans. This (around episode 9) is where the amazing Sci-Fi thriller fires up its engines, and puts the viewer on the edge of their seat. What follows is a fascinating (somewhat complex) plot, which manages to blow your mind each episode. Steins;Gate is not just your generic time traveling show; the plot is executed perfectly. Hardly ever before have I encountered such a well thought through plot as featured in Steins;Gate. The show features several jumps in time, but still manages to keep the viewers’ attention without confusing them. The pace present in Steins;Gate is not lacking either – in fact, from episode 9 onwards the show holds a perfect pace. Piece by piece, the mystery of the events that happen is unveiled, working towards a fantastic, satisfying ending. (Which is very rare, especially for a show with such a complex plot) Story - and plot wise, Steins;Gate is pretty much an unprecedented piece of art, and I think it might stay so for a while.


Art: 8/10
This is the field in which Steins;Gate lacks the most. Steins;Gate isn’t a show with a huge budget, and therefore it is to be expected that the art isn’t jaw-dropping. However, this doesn’t mean that the art is bad, or that the drawing style is unbearable. In fact, the goal of the art is to portray the atmosphere as well as possible – and it does: the art style simply has a way more realistic feel to it than your generic anime.


Sound: 8/10
Amazing voice acting, nice opening, and decent BGM. There were quite some moments where I think there could have been made better use of background music, which is why it misses out on a perfect score here. Nonetheless, very solid sound overall.


Characters: 10/10
What can I say, the characterization in this one is just fantastic. The characters are written in such a way that you are bound to like them. They all have their own likeable and recognizable traits, which are perfectly described from the start: Makise Kurisu the tsundere, Daru the nerd, Mayuri the childish girl, and so on. I found myself having a weak spot for Kurisu in no time. There’s hardly any character development, but I think this is not necessarily a bad thing; it would only distract from the fantastic plot that is ahead of the viewer. The only character which, logically so, develops, is Okabe: you’ll find him changing in character over the course of episodes, due to the events that unfold. But this is all for the better: this development is, again, done exceptionally well. The development has a very realistic feeling to it (And so do all the characters in general), which makes the story as a whole even more compelling.


Enjoyment: 10/10
Steins;Gate is one of the few shows that manages to score a 10 on enjoyment for me. Like most people, I found Steins;Gate hard to get into, as the first few episodes don’t really cover much ground. However, once the engine got running, I was hooked. I couldn’t refrain myself from watching episode after episode, slowly crawling to the awesome ending ahead. And I think most people would; as the plot is set up in such a way to keep you hooked each episode. If you are a fan of Sci-Fi, then you will surely enjoy this anime – but that’s not a necessity. Steins;Gate is an anime that is very likely to keep you hooked. So go ahead, you won't waste your precious time. In fact, you might want to go back in time to watch it again!

One word: Hype.

Before watching this show, i was amazed by it's high scores, big fanbase and critics puting it to a pedestal. I had high expectations and was going into it thinking it would be the second time Jesus would step on earth. But as always, there's nothing worse, than diving into the hype.

What else should i say? Steins;Gate has everything a mass consumer needs:a concept about time travel, sci-fi theme coupled with unique characters and....a poorly written story. How did something like this went wrong? I can't imagine, since the production values were high enough to hire a good writer. Not only ... the first half of the show, specifically the first 12 episodes do absolutely nothing, and i mean NOTHING. They are painfully boring, painfully slow, painfully killing every good aspect the show initially put into it. After that it gets better, but i didn't have the desire to watch it, because if half of the show is shitty, there's just no helping it. But i still forced myself through the agony. And.... it still didn't pay off in the end.

Now about the characters, they all seem out of this world. I mean an 18 year old guy invents a time machine? Or an 18 year old girl writtes scientific articles, is a research member and somehow she surpasses her own father? and a few other characters also seem unrealistic. The only real character is maybe the owner of the office where the cast was spending most of their time.

Only the art is good, but even then, the setting is very strange, the sun is somehow to yellowish, i don't know, some colors where too bright.


Overall, i didn't enjoy Steins;Gate as i would have expected. It represents very well the hype that never justifies itself and that Steins;Gate is a second class, no, a third-class show. It is slow, dull and weak.

Just a horrible anime. This is the anime equivalent of Inception. It tries to disguise itself as being complex and cool when it's really simple and stupid. How it managed to fool so many people into believing it is the former is beyond me.

The story is just a complete mess. Even the very premise of the anime would not have ever happened had the so called time travel expert followed the very basic concepts you learn from any time travel story. Not to tell everyone about your time machine let alone let people screw around with it. The show basically makes you watch as ... the main character repeatedly make this same out of character mistake you've seen 100 times before over and over again until he finds out that doing so screwed up everything up. GASP! What a shocker! He then spends the rest of the series struggling to try and undo everything.

All the characters are walking over the top anime stereotypes. They can all but summed up in their entirety in about a half dozen words if even. The silent girl that always texts. The he that looks like a she. The moe girl. The computer nerd otaku. The tsundere. That's not oversimplification, there's really not much else to get into about these characters. They are really that shallow.

I'd give it a pass if it was some harem joke anime, but for a story driven anime, this is just unacceptable. The only one that seems to get significant character development is the main character. A mad scientist, which the writer seems to think is a valid excuse to have him do the most out of character ridiculous nonsense all the time. This makes him completely unrelatable which leads you to remotely stop caring about any of what he goes through.

While you're struggling to try to piece together all the plot holes, to understand why the time travel expert keeps blabbing about his time machine to every person he meets on the street and to make sense of dumb concepts like how a banana that is somehow reduced to jello but still retains it's shape so you can identify it after traveling through time, don't be fooled. It's not because it's a really deep well thought out story that you're having trouble understanding everything. It's because it's

TUTURU~

Shallow and poorly written. 3/10