Steins;Gate is a classic anime series, and one of the best anime from 2011, a year filled to the brim with great titles. I’d even argue that Steins;Gate is simply one of the best stories about time travel in fiction in general, presenting a vision of time travel that’s simultaneously unpredictable whilst also feeling like a metaphysical cage, trapping its characters in a world where something as arbitrary as the butterfly effect won’t save them without a great deal of effort and research. It's a story where changing the past changes the future which then itself enables other people in that future to manipulate the past in ways that go beyond the scope of your own initial meddling, eventually culminating in deadly politics that reach an international scale. Steins;Gate is about conspiracies based in plausible science, urban legend, and pseudo non-fiction. It’s also a story that features characters who, for the most part, feel like they’re real Otaku, rather than fake anime characters. The distinction between those two types of characters is important, since it was what lent the original characters the charm they needed to have in order to make the story’s dramatic hooks effective and the let the fiction of their world bleed in near seamlessly with the non-fiction.
So I have been waiting for this sequel (although it’s technically more of a midquel for many complicated reasons) with great anticipation. So much anticipation, in fact, that I actually went ahead and purchased the Visual Novel for Steins;Gate 0, which I then proceeded to fully complete a few months ago.
Unsurprisingly 0 is sticking pretty closely to the source material here, with some of the dialogue feeling almost unchanged from the game, minus the internal monologues of Okabe and Suzuha who were the primary focal characters in the visual novel alongside a few others. I don’t want to compare 0 to the visual novel too heavily in place of an actual review of the anime on its own merits. However, since I already know the story and I've long since formed my opinions on the VN, comparisons are unfortunately what interest me the most right now. And right now the anime isn’t doing much besides animating scenes from the game with a strict faithfulness.
That’s not entirely true, to be fair. The anime reorders some scenes and some events in order to make sure the show remains appropriately paced for an anime, and makes great use of character expressions and animation to convey the emotions of the characters without us necessarily having to hear their internal monologues. Animation such as Okabe acting out a tennis swing make him seem much more lively than he did in the visual novel where it’s very easy to imagine him never expressing much energy whatsoever, so he comes off as appropriately normal in the anime. Although of course the anime does also do a good job at conveying just how pathetic Okabe has become in the intervening months between his failure to save Kurisu and the start of the series. There are some other cool details too, such as Suzuha hiding from Okabe on the ceiling before dropping down on him when he notices her, which is a much more comedic visual than her hiding under a table, as I recall her doing in the VN. Maho’s head just barely poking above the desk is both funny and it also makes her also makes her height much more apparent here, as it was difficult to get a sense of her height relative to the other characters in the VN outside of a few CG images. Probably my favourite improvement on the visual novel was Okabe’s intense vision where he relives Kurisu’s death, which is far more demented here with its animation and use of the soundtrack. The visual novel often reused the same CG image with a red tint when Okabe relived this important event, meaning his monologue had to convey the stress he was undergoing to the user by itself. But here, the brief scene is so well done that it conveys Okabe’s guilt and nausea without him having to say a word at all.
There is one moment where I wished some dialogue had been used where there was none. The scene where Suzuha presses a pen into Daru’s back doesn’t make a whole lot of sense without context from the VN, where it’s explained that Suzuha often tricks Daru into thinking the pen is a gun and that she’s legitimately threatening him. Here, there’s no reason for Daru to act comedically afraid outside of the intensity in Suzuha’s voice and the pressure of something on his back. An extra line here could have made the joke complete.
I also think it was a mistake to not introduce Amadeus Maho in this episode, since I imagine most people who haven't read the VN but are aware of Amadeus Kurisu are going to assume that she will be the one to show up on screen at the university lecture. The reveal of Amadeus Kurisu is the moment in the visual novel just before its opening plays- the moment where the reader understands what the visual novel will be about, with Okabe trying to cope with his guilt whilst finding himself entangled in a conspiracy surrounding an AI Kurisu who is a perfect replica of the original living woman he dearly loved. I think there are going to be a good number of people who will be disappointed when the Amadeus revealed in the lecture turns out to be Maho rather than Kurisu. They could also replace Amadeus Maho with Kurisu for the anime, but in that case, they should have really showed us Kurisu’s face to make the cliffhanger work. As is, it feels like a pretty manipulative ploy on the part of the studio.
I also fairly liked the cold open, as it felt like a much more exciting way of foreshadowing events to come whilst also hinting at the overall themes of the story as well as the character work Mayuri and Okabe will be experiencing much later on- at the same time, however, Okabe’s initial return from failing to save Kurisu being glossed over is going to be somewhat confusing for some returning viewers, even if Mayuri's dialogue does provide some slight context. It’s been 7 years since the first anime, after all, so people are likely to have forgotten some important details in that time span, especially for a story as convoluted as Steins;Gate.
I feel like it’s also important to address Okabe’s character here before I wrap things up. First impressions of him are that he’s pretty pathetic, of course, and I can imagine that there’s going to be a lot of fans complaining about him here, especially considering the fact that he was such a fun character in the original series. It seems inconceivable for him to give up on saving Kurisu when he’s very much aware of the fact that saving Kurisu is also key to preventing World War 3, and we also know that Suzuha serves as a reminder to him of what’s to come, meaning he can't conveniently forget what's going on. He even knows the exact year he's fated to die in this world line thanks to Suzuha. He dies as soon as 2025, giving him a mere 15 years to live thanks to Steins;Gate's 2010 setting, although that isn't mentioned in this episode. Suzuha may seem like she’s going too soft on Okabe right now, but it’s also important to remember that just her very presence at the lab is socially isolating him from most of his old friends with the exception of Mayuri, and the poor girl knows something is wrong with Okabe but has been left mostly in the dark regarding the trauma Okabe has experienced in these other timelines. As such, she can't really help him despite wanting to. If Okabe seems like he’s disconnected from reality by using his social obligations and club activities as an excuse to avoid both his friends and his responsibilities, it’s because he is. Despite what he’s experienced in the past, something as severe as World War 3 is still something of a fairy tale to his subconscious, a tale that can only be recounted to him by Suzuha, and it’s a future he’d rather try to ignore as much as possible. It’s easy to see why, after everything he’s experienced, he's afraid of something like destiny or a God is forcing him to choose between Mayuri and Kurisu, with potential further punishment awaiting him if he continues to defy the universe. In short, I think there’s more nuances to his character here that you have to think about before getting too frustrated at him. A character wouldn't be interesting if they always made the correct decisions all the time.
Of course, this makes the overall plot progression and character development of Okabe rather predictable, especially since we’ve essentially already seen him go into and come out of this slump thanks to the original series, so we know exactly what the revival of Hououin Kyouma will look like. But will the series have any more curve balls despite the fact that we know this? (I already know the answer to this question, but I’m saying no more for now.)
All I can say is, fans of Steins;Gate definitely shouldn't miss this one.
