Anime: Steins;Gate 0

Steins;Gate 0 is a spin-off/alternate ending/"midequel" to the masterpiece that is Steins;Gate. It is meant to be sort of "what must have happened to reach this point" rather than a story that happened chronologically from the perspective of Steins;Gate, if that makes sense. When it was first announced I was ecstatic. A spiritual sequel to my favourite anime was on the way and it was an adaptation of an already preexisting VN, which itself was based off of some light novel material relating to the original Steins;Gate. While it is generally not as strong as the original in terms of plot and character development, it is still a very good anime. It shows that Chiyomaru and White Fox can still put something on the table for Steins;Gate as a series, not to mention that it easily surpassed most of the seasonal offerings that were on at the time. Probably its main weakness and at the same time strength is that it is related to Steins;Gate. The strength is that Steins;Gate 0 by default gets its work cut out for it.

Like with Steins;Gate, Steins;Gate 0 uses some aspects of things that can be equated to "believable" conspiracy theories to supplement the premise. For instance, involvement of DARPA, SVR, and Stratfor in the plot is crucial.

The plot is fairly solid, though not as good as Steins;Gate. The "Full Metal Jacket" reference in episode 10 was pretty funny, especially if you contrast that scene with the scene in the actual Kubrick film. Some of the lines are literally the same, just changed for cuteness. It is also quite cool how they made several parallels to the Steins;Gate movie that chronologically follows Steins;Gate 0. There is also a fair amount of reference to other Sci;Adv series, Chaos;Head in particular. While I highly doubt that this is a reference of any sort and the two characters are quite different, it seems fair to mention that Shiina Mayuri's rebellion of sorts at the end kinda corresponds to Sengoku Nadeko's similar action in Onimonogatari. Both actions had motives in part related to unanswered love and both characters were voiced by the same CV. I nevertheless feel that the future full of warfare shown in the anime is a bit underdeveloped. It could do with a lot more explanation and it would have been better if that was done before the very end. The first scene in episode 20 is one of the cooler scenes in this anime. All of these characters that we have followed for all this time, all together, seemingly forever. Not sure what the scene was meant to represent or show, but it was oddly serene and quite cool. It made for a very cool jump to the future, especially for contrast.

The main problem with S;G 0 is nevertheless the plot, and it is problematic because of two inherent reasons that were unavoidable. The first problem is that the original plot of S;G did not really allow for a sequel or any kind of extension to the story. It is a completely whole and self sufficient story in which all the moving parts work perfectly and they all come back to one place. Before the release of the S;G 0 VN, the only major attempts to expand the story were through making a movie, which was mostly unrelated to the original's plot, and the Linear Bounded Phenogram VN, but that was not a sequel. It was more like a series of stories, most of them telling of alternate "world lines". Some of those stories on alternate world lines are completely independent of the main plot of the original, save for the characters. Others were almost like alternate endings or routes through the original VN. One story, I think, was a direct extension to one of the VN endings.
The movie worked because it's plot was relatively unambitious and did not do much rather than extend the existing ending. Phenogram worked because it integrated a bunch of smaller stories which are vaguely connected to the main plot, and thus do not extend it. Some of these stories are not even related to the main plot of Steins;Gate.
S;G 0 is also like Phenogram, in that it is almost an alternate ending, but it is much more ambitious and is somewhat hard to reconcile with the plot of the original generally because it adds another large story inside of the original, essentially. It is quite hard to watch S;G, then S;G 0 and only then watch S;G episode 24 as you would to watch in chronological order.

The upside to this problem is that Steins;Gate 0 does have strong ties within it to tether it to the plot of Steins;Gate. Most important of those are the elements in plot that appear towards the end of the anime, about how Okabe gets the idea of how to get to Steins;Gate world line and how Mayuri led her little rebellion that leads to the good ending. Steins;Gate 0 also works very hard to preserve a sort of symmetry with Steins;Gate. For instance, the seemingly pointless monologue spoken by Okabe at the start of Episode 1 of Steins;Gate is echoed and continued by Maho in Episode 23 of Steins;Gate 0. This does have important symbolism in that that monologue is now reinterpreted as more of a warning or possibly even just to mean an outdated belief held by Okabe himself during most of this anime as opposed to some abstract gibberish that Okabe said at the start. When Suzuha and Mayuri end up on Earth 18k BC that is an obvious reference to Okabe's dream in Episode 12 of Steins;Gate, just before the turning point. This symmetry adds significantly to Steins;Gate 0's advantage and surely adds emotional weight to it as well. Such moments that link up Steins;Gate 0 to the movie and to the original work very well, even if they are concentrated either at the middle or the very end.

The second problem is that the plot of the VN was structured very non-linearly. There is a walkthrough mapping the different endings of the S;G 0 VN and it looks like the number zero, with two paths converging at the bottom of that zero-shaped map and all the endings branching out from those paths. Because they had to omit a large section of the plot that did not actually lead to the end as well as all the different VN endings, the final plot of S;G 0 came out quite different to the VN plot, unlike S;G which more or less matched the plot of the VN. Because of this and general plot holes, there are some very weird scenes.

I feel that some of the plot problems are not a coincidence, in that Chaos;Child, which came out a year before Steins;Gate 0, was even more of a flop plot wise than Steins;Gate 0, though it did not have such a strong prequel as Steins;Gate 0 has. Both of these animes are of the Sci;Adv series and both are even set in the same setting. Chaos;Child had excellent source material in the shape of yet another VN, but for reasons completely unclear to me, they squashed a story that lasts for a good 40 hours of gameplay into a mere 14 episodes officially. Because of that, important turning points and character development was thrown out of the window altogether, replaced instead by simply weird scenes that were not even in the VN and serve no purpose than to disgust the viewer I guess. My point is that Sci;Adv series have not had the best of luck in adapting their VNs plot to anime essentially ever since the original Steins;Gate. Thankfully Steins;Gate 0 did not fully crash and burn, but this is a worrying trend.

They also cut out the verbal yuri scene between Fubuki and Mayuri, for which every horny guy is mourning. While this is not particularly important, the "time screen" as was in Steins;Gate was almost non-existent. It was a decent idea as it gave a good periodical indication of how much time has passed between scenes and give indication of the chronology. I recon they thought that that was redundant for Steins;Gate 0, but it could have been really useful, as the chronology in Steins;Gate 0 is quite a mess sometimes or hard to tell. I will also say that in the last 6 or so episodes, the plot is very much condensed to the point that the viewer may be overwhelmed with both content and emotion, the latter being a good thing, but it may be a bit too much to take in and the pace in Steins;Gate was also much different towards the end. The problem with that being the viewer will miss out on a lot of content that is overshadowed by other parts. The anime was also repeating itself quite a bit in the finale when Okabe repeated the event multiple times and bounced back each time. Though that finale was obviously not without merit, the problem becomes this aforementioned redundancy and the plot also becomes rather confusing. The viewer may lose track of the plot. Episode 24 or Special 1 is also a bit weird. It is placed chronologically before Episode 12 and seems to be a Valentine's day special. It was released in December of 2018, well after the series finished airing and nowhere near Valentine's day. This episode was not too bad in and of itself but it should have been shortened and put into one of the episodes. In the way it is right now it looks way out of place and was made so for reasons unknown. I will also say that while the humour in this anime is generally on point and original, it does seem forced at times, though it normally leads to further dialogue. So it is fluid. That said, some of these more comic scenes also make the characters fit a role that they never had in the original anime. In the original anime, most comic moments were well integrated and the characters acted by the circumstances and in general even with such comic moments, the anime had a rather somber and calm feel. In Steins;Gate 0 that changed and many characters now act in a more comic light, which is not consistent with the prequel, though not too often thankfully. Such scenes include Okabe receiving Moeka's night clothes. No similar scenes exist in the prequel. It is not necessarily a bad thing but it is worth mentioning. On the other hand, there are moments when the anime builds up to a comic anticlimax. Such moments include Suzuha's battle with the curry. These scenes are a tad underwhelming and forgettable but at the time they are quite funny.

Another thing I disliked about this anime is the presence of these still frame scenes over obviously active scenes. I am talking for instance of the party scenes, where all the characters get together and have fun. Quite often in similar scenes there is just one still scene with music over it, as if we are reading a VN. This is an economic way to do things in terms of animation, but it is bad for just about everything else, including exposition and pacing. These scenes should have been animated more or skipped altogether in my opinion. They do a weak job of giving the viewer the same feeling of seeing their characters from Steins;Gate together and the prequel itself did not allow for similar mistakes.

That said, there are certain plot aspects that were seriously improved as compared to the VN plot (spoilers ahead). For instance, in the VN Kurisu Amadeus is important to the plot, yes, but in a flick of a switch she goes from a character to just an event. In the anime adaptation, Kurisu Amadeus was used to the fullest extent, encompassing both additional character development for Kurisu that was needed in this series, as well as show more themes related to AI ethics. Kurisu as character in general was also developed quite a bit in the anime, much more than in the VN, where she was more like a ghost than anything. Even Amadeus Kurisu disappeared spontaneously. The ending is also much better than in the VN as it actually exists. In the VN, the ending only leads back to Steins;Gate.

The themes for this anime are very much varied just as they were for Steins;Gate. Many of the recurring themes can be said to be AI-related, such as can an AI experience love. Towards the end, the answer to that is shown to be yes if the AI is a proper simulation of a humans' memories and thought processes. The moral dilemmas of using time machines follow Okabe literally wherever he goes and he even reminds everyone who knows the truth about them of how horrible they are, let alone scenes where that demonstrate exactly the cost of their use, though Okabe's semi-religious way of phrasing those dilemmas is a bit weird. The conclusion to this theme is generally that Okabe needs to wake up and face the fact; this world is going downhill soon unless he abandons his animosity towards manipulating time and accept that there is a way to use that to achieve his goal.

While I feel that the animation was downgraded in quality, it is still on par with most anime of the season. It should be noted that like Steins;Gate, Steins;Gate 0 derived its animation style from its VN counterpart. It does seem that in the case of Steins;Gate 0 the animation became somewhat more generic and has lost a lot of the tricks with lighting and detail that were present in the original, which is a shame. Perhaps the lighting is just softer. In Steins;Gate it was apparent that lighting contrast was important for visuals and it helped create a very sharp picture. I also feel it was a weird decision to animate Amadeus Kurisu at times using CGI and sometimes normally. CGI stands out a fair bit especially in contrast to when she is drawn conventionally. Perhaps this was an experiment of sorts. I cannot exactly think of another reason to do it like this. The animation does become fluid but worse in quality towards the end of the series when all the major action scenes start. Not quite sure why this is the case.

The OP for this anime is very nice, from animation to the music. Like with Steins;Gate, Steins;Gate 0 uses two OPs and EDs, but the switch occurs about halfway through the anime. The two openings seem to have some scenes the same and some scenes that are similar. If you play the first and the second opening back to back it seems that some kind of symmetry emerges. One thing that is generally uncharacteristic of any anime I have seen, but is present here is a very well made ED song and sequence. The second ED is good, but the first one is probably the best ED I can come up with for any anime, including even the original S;G, though I am sad that FES did not participate in this anime. "The Last Game" is very nice music, though you have to get used to the weird english pronunciation. I also find it weird that this is the second Steins;Gate ED where they just must have a half-naked Kurisu appear somewhere. I get the imagery, but doing it twice is either a bit too naturalistic or just odd.

Steins;Gate 0 generally is on par with Steins;Gate in terms of the soundtrack, meaning it is fitting and is sometimes very good. It also uses some soundtrack from its original VN but there is some very good original music in it too. Some of the soundtrack is oddly enough from the Steins;Gate movie, which is a good thing since it was a bit underrated. One negative thing about the soundtrack is that towards the end of the anime the viewer gets a massive influx of older openings from the Steins;Gate VN as well as the anime. I feel as if it is a bit redundant. That is because these soundtracks are supposed to "pump the viewer up" so to speak for the grand finale, only they do that a couple of times towards the end and that gets old fast, but thankfully they did not overdo it too much.

The character development in S;G 0 is a tricky subject. In the VN, the characters were extremely developed, on the level of the original anime and VN. However, a lot of that development was at the character endings and other parts that would have been really hard to incorporate in a linear story of an anime. Nevertheless, the characters are well developed. Steins;Gate 0 is a story that allows many of the characters to almost completely change from what they were in Steins;Gate. For instance, Amane Suzuha was a skilled rebel fighter, but she had her own ambition as well as duty so to speak as well as regrets and was generally full of life. In the Alpha world line, Suzuha is a quiet and calculating soldier for whom shows of emotion are few and far between. Okabe himself has changed drastically. He is now for all intents and purposes a normal uni student, doomed to face reality as the last vestiges of what he thought he was protecting come undone and a horrible future awaits. Daru was also developed further as a character for the better, as was Mayuri, who came to the forefront of the plot in the very end. Both of these latter character developments in particular were certainly welcome. Urushibara was also developed somewhat more, from a very effeminate teenager he was shown to be quite the soldier, if only briefly. Sure speaks to things that he mentioned like "worth". That said, the new characters, perhaps save for Hiyajo Maho, are rather underdeveloped. I feel that the characters of Fubuki (in the VN aka Katsumi Nakase) and Kaede fit that category. It is not necessary for them to take on large roles, but their presence seems a bit redundant nevertheless. Perhaps if they were integrated more, then that would stop being an issue. Amadeus Kurisu is a good character, but her attitude, or lack thereof, to her state as an AI is a bit weird for me. She is completely fine with her existence as an AI beyond melancholy. Overnight she technically went from a living breathing person to a computer program and she seemed to have no conflicts about that beyond pessimism. I would imagine if I suddenly turned into an AI I would have quite a bit of trouble. Judy Reyes as a character is essentially inconsequential because of the way the VN was adapted. Shiina Kagari is unfortunately also very under developed, despite all the effort. She is simply missing from too much screen time and reappears only at the very end, and even then her plot line is rather confusing and conditional because of her sudden reappearance. I also cannot believe that they had to bring in Nurse Espinosa from Scrubs as a DARPA agent.

The lines spoken in English for the Japanese version are probably slightly better than most other anime, in that at least the people that did them know how to pronounce stuff. Leskinen has weird pronunciation both English and Japanese in particular, but that seems on purpose. Coincidentally, he pronounces "Kurisu" like Chris which is rather funny even if it was unintentional. The very name "Alexis Leskinen" is quite odd. Certainly does not sound American and the other American character in this anime, Judy Reyes, has a believable name, which is a bit odd.

As for direction, unfortunately there are no longer obvious and powerful things like foreshadowing in play. There is still plenty of symbolism though, and the general angles are still good. But the direction of this anime is far less ambitious than that of Steins;Gate. A major difference from Steins;Gate is that there are quite a few more action scenes in this anime, which is a nice change and those are executed well, if the animation was on par.

For reasons I will get to below, one should be careful with watching S;G 0 after S;G. Chronologically it takes place between episodes 23 and 24 of Steins;Gate, ergo, the very end of the anime. Because if this it is somewhat difficult to watch S;G 0 after episode 23 of S;G as everything up until that point was building up for a nice well rounded and unitary conclusion. It also ruins the symmetry of Steins;Gate, whereby Okabe did what he did and then retraced his steps and came right back where he started. I think a good alternative is to watch this is after episode 24 of Steins;Gate and therefore completing it before going for Steins;Gate 0. This is also not an anime that should be watched without watching Steins;Gate first either as it is not meant to be standalone. It expects that all of the characters are already developed in most senses. This is merely a "missing link" type of thing expanded to a full anime, not that that is a bad thing. It would help the viewer very much if they played through the Steins;Gate 0 VN first, but that is an unrealistic request, especially if you would want to binge watch Steins;Gate whole. Generally I would recommend watching Steins;Gate 0 having watched Steins;Gate, but probably lower your expectations. The shortcomings in the execution and the structure of Steins;Gate 0 make it hard to incorporate with Steins;Gate.

While Steins;Gate 0 is a great anime, well worth the watch, it does unfortunately show that it is more or less the end of the line for most future attempts at making a new Steins;Gate anime. The "missing link", the most obvious place for new content, at the end of Steins;Gate has been filled, but it has already demonstrated that the overall plot of Steins;Gate is creaking under its weight, because of how monolithic the original Steins;Gate plot was. As far as I can see, doing this any further would incur serious danger that the series becomes sour, and I am a proponent of going off on a high note if it is obvious that a series cannot go any further. I doubt that Chiyomaru's team will continue milking Steins;Gate (or at least I hope so) because 1. They do not seem to have funds, like A-1, to spend on pointless projects 2. They have writing sense (though Chaos;Child anime was a debacle) 3. They are supposed to have other more promising projects that they can animate. In terms of quality overall, Steins;Gate 0 is a serious downgrade from Steins;Gate, though it is still more than capable as an anime. The issues with quality are either attributable to different staff working on this anime or low funds. It could also just be that Chioyomaru's people vision changed dramatically. Certainly the director could have done a better job for one. White Fox's animation also did not hold up at certain points, like the later action scenes unfortunately.

That said, I think that Chiyomaru's team can get away with making an excellent anthology series by, for instance, animating Linear Bounded Phenogram and/or making additional stories of similar structure because the Steins;Gate universe more than allows for it. Moreover, they have now developed decent additional characters, like Hiyajo Maho, that can be used in such spin offs. Alternatively, and also rather unlikely, they could animate the other parts of Steins;Gate 0 that were in the VN so to speak, as they cut a lot. It might be rather confusing, however, in an anime version. I would kill for a couple of short ovas that included all of the new characters as well, something like Koyomimonogatari, where they were short stories that did not give much more than exposition to the characters. So while I think this is sadly the end for major Steins;Gate projects, unless Chiyomaru pulls something off, it does not necessarily mean that the series is over and relegated to just being at the top of anidb, to be watched as a reminder of better times and peak performance with a pot of tea and a can of Dr.Pepper to wash it down. Personally, I am just glad that I got to see some of my favourite characters once again in a decent anime.

This series is essentially the hidden story contained within (what appears to be) only a few moments of the end of the original Steins;Gate series. Even with its flaws, it's a very clever idea that gives the audience more Steins;Gate without really spoiling the original story at all.

WARNING: Do not watch Steins;Gate 0 or read this review without first watching the original Steins;Gate. Also, read my review of the original series, as this is basically a continuation of the review and a comparison.

Visuals - 6
This series is noticeably worse in the visuals department compared to the first. At best, it feels as though the visual standard hasn't moved on past what the first series did 7 years ago. But even then, it somehow manages to be visually less ambitious and never pulls off much within the series that makes you think highly of it. As it stands, everything is adequate, but that's about it.

Sound - 6
Again nothing decent from the opening and closing themes, and the musical score seems extremely lacking compared to the atmospheric nature of the first series. The voice acting however is still spot on and reflects the characters well.

Story - 7
This is the story behind the slap. By which I mean in Episode 23 of the original series, when Okabe comes back to the present from his failed attempt to save Kurisu in the past, his friend Mayushii gives him a slap to motivate him into trying again. Steins;Gate 0 however, is a divergent precursor story where Mayushii does NOT slap Okabe, and instead comforts him in his grief as he decides to abandon all attempts to save Kurisu and stop trying to alter time.

At first I thought this was a "what if" alternate story line, so I was never as excited about the idea as I was the original series. HOWEVER... by the end you realise that what you're watching is actually canon to the original. I won't go into more detail in case of spoiling it.

The main part of the series was incredibly somber. You feel this immediately by seeing how "normal" the character of Okabe is. He has given up his charismatic alter ego and just gone back to what you presume is his previous boring self. The contrast from the original series to this was extremely jarring for me. I felt pretty much how the character of Okabe did - sad that I had all these memories of this grand adventure but that it had a painful conclusion. And the bulk of the series focuses on him dwelling on his pain, whilst giving hints that perhaps the World's Super Powers are making progress on time travel. You can feel throughout the episodes that some event or events are to come which will cause the world to plunge into chaos, but they are suitably unclear and unfold slowly as the series progresses.

I was engrossed in the series despite the dramatic shift in atmosphere. Mainly because I loved the original so much that any excuse to see these characters again is welcome. All throughout though, I kept wishing for it to more like the original and give me some intrigue. But for at least the first half, it explored slow themes of grief and hopelessness. I didn't think these were bad, but it really made me quite melancholy. But then, much like the darkness before the dawn, the second half of the series started giving you some jolts of hope, and luckily, this momentum built up and up.

The series features a complex back-and-forth of rewriting time, and to some degree it's even more complicated in theory to the original series, because it all ties in to it eventually. There are certainly some plot holes - the character Kagari is shoe-horned into the series horrendously, and there's a notable time paradox featuring the origin of a song, but even this is so cleverly presented that I actually loved it.

Character - 6
Rintarō Okabe is again the beating heart of the show, and when he's feeling low, you feel low. If he somehow manages to feel high though... you feel through the roof. Some of the series was a little hard to watch with him dwelling in sadness, but thankfully it picked up.

The supporting cast this time around are very mediocre or even sub par. You have the same collection of characters from the original, but this time around they get little to no development. Instead you have a small selection of new characters that make up the fundamentals of the new plot. A couple of them bring with them a connection to Kurisu, which I always felt was very contrived. In the end you realise they were essentially a plot piece to expand the involvement of Kurisu into this series with the development of time travel, and the characters themselves don't really leave lasting impressions.

A couple of character issues though were just not resolved at all. Like the original series failing to give any closure to Moeka, this series gave a confusing outlook to the Yuki character, where I still don't quite understand her involvement in events to the degree it hints at. As mentioned earlier however, the character Kagari ends up being the biggest disappointment - being a rather major character who's obviously just a plot point shoved into this series to give a pitiful reason to some of the causality. And yet she has a (sorely needed) lack of backstory to justify her actions.

There are also some very subtle but clear signs of romantic affection from one of the new characters to Okabe, but this never gets fully explored or receives closure. In fact, the series could easily be classified into the "harem" genre of anime with the amount of girls in it that have feelings for the main protagonist.

Value - 2
Realistically I wouldn't watch this series again really, because it's essentially an unnecessary in-depth explanation of Episode 23 of the original series. And the original is all I need. But it was definitely nice to see it once, and maybe in the distant future... who knows.

Enjoyment - 7
There are numerous flaws with the characters, and some plot holes and plot gimmicks that will make you roll your eyes, but in the end I found myself very engrossed and enjoying my time with this series. In a way, this is the perfect companion piece to the original series, because it takes you on a journey that's both completely original and yet still a continuation, and also simultaneously doesn't change the story of the original whilst giving you additional insight on the events that end up being quite satisfying and remarkably clever.

I don't like to write long reviews, so... I've seen the 1st season in one breath (and re-watch Blu-Ray two times). Incomparable! There is no incredible sadness atmosphere or drama in the 2nd season, you know. I personally don't like new story too, it feels not bad at the beginning but failed all my expectations in the end. There is no expansion of characters, all authors did was spin on old success. Animation worse than the 1st season, action scenes especially bad in choreography, common sense and visual. I can't understand how THIS season got 8/10 points. My value is 4/10.