Anime 9253 Steins Gate Reviews Filter Check 3

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

An anime as dull and flat as its colour palette.

Well.. This was the most overhyped piece of trash anime I've seen in my life. Calling it a disappointment would be an understatement. I regret spending all those hours drudging through this dreary, pretentious show. Maybe I'm being overly critical and it's just a matter of it not aging well. After all, a lot of amazing sci-fi has been released since this anime first aired. Movies like Interstellar, Inception, and Edge of Tomorrow, hell even Looper (a movie nobody probably even remembers) all come to mind as having similar elements but being superior in ... every way - from plot to character development to the underlying mechanics of time travel they choose to adopt.

Steins gate is a badly disguised harem anime that tries to be whimsical and 'deep', but just comes across as cringey and shallow. The delusional grandiose ramblings of the MC somehow attracts a one dimensional tsundere with daddy issues, an intellectually disabled trumpet, a scantily clothed NEET, a trap shrine maiden, and a neko maid that ends every sentence with "nyan". Does anything else even need to be said?

May as well right? It still can't be as exhausting as watching literally three quarters of this show where..nothing happens. The pacing is horrendous. I wanted to drop it so many times but the cult status and high ratings convinced me that it would be worth it if I stuck it out. No.. No it wasn't. The animation is boring and lacklustre, the sound is.. Wait there was sound? The overarching plot has potential but it's bogged down by its slow pace and unlikeable characters.

The main character is truly an apt description for this show - an eighteen year old boy masquerading as a mad scientist trying to be more than what he is. As someone who loves the sci-fi genre, I strongly advise you to stay away from this show if you're looking for a cohesive plot, believable time travel mechanics, or characters that don't pander to a virgin weeb's wet dream.

The story is basic, the art style is the same as most anime but less saturated, the male characters are gross and annoying, nobody has goals that I can relate to, and it takes way too long for any simple story beat to happen

Apparently this review need more words, but I'm not a professional reviewer so I think that's stupid, and don't want to waste your time with a whole essay essentially saying "I didn't like it" so instead I'll recommend some time travel stories that are better. Futurama. It's funny. I don't know why they're rebooting it though, it's such an early 2000s show. ... I don't actually like Back to the Future or any other time travel stuff so idk why I thought this was a good idea. Anyways ignore this part, my review is the concise part at the top.

This anime is too damn overhyped. It was complete garbage. The first 12 episodes are disgustingly slow, bad, and unappealing. And the characters just suck, they are so boring and one dimensional. They didn't feel real, they just felt like convenient plot devices. I couldn't care less who died, they were just so BORING and useless and the main character was just a waste of time. You're telling me this buffoon who is constantly talking to himself and isn't funny whatsoever built a time machine. Every time he pretended to be a mad scientist i just wanted him to shut the fuck up.

The only ... redeeming quality is the suspense, a suspense you only really get to experience after the worst 12 episodes you will ever watch in your life. I'm not gonna lie, I was interested in finding out how the MC was going to solve his problem and I was hoping the anime would get as good as everyone said it would. But every episode was damn near unbearable, I couldnt understand the hype, I was trying so desperately to find out what was actually good about this anime. I hated almost every single cast member in this show, absolutely despised their uni-dimensionality. "TUTURU" more like just fucking die please.

After completing this anime I felt disgusted, in much the same way you would feel disgusted after masturbating to some questionable porn.

Never again... I am never again watching this horrible anime

Honestly blows my mind that this is one of the highest rated anime on the website. Steinsgate has possibly the worst cast of characters I have seen in an anime, one dimensional forgettable characters that are insanely unlikeable especially the protagonists who is insufferable. The concept seems kinda interesting but the plot moves at such a snails pace with such boring characters that I'm not willing to spend hours of my time waiting for the payoff (assuming there is any)

When it comes to the visuals and music the show is pretty average and the voice acting for the dub is serviceable but nothing ... memorable. If you are looking for a good sci-fi anime there are much better offerings that have better characters and less filler.

Steins ; Gate is the anime equivalent of most mainstream action movies, watered-down content-less drivel completely devoid of artistic value aimed at mass consumption. It checks every box that people use in order judge anime in order to avoid criticism, which in turn makes its massive fanbase gang up on anyone with a dissenting opinion feeling as if they defend the theory of relativity when someone complains about Einstein based on his hairstyle. That being said, I don't restrain myself by only giving low scores to teenage power fantasies where the screentime is equally divided between pantyshots, infodumping and incohohrent yelling, instead I will judge ... an anime equally harsh for being devoid of what makes one want to watch anime, namely artistic value or even some good old plain fun.

With that metric, Steins ; Gate is complete garbage. It's as bad as commonly ranted upon works like "There's no way my little sister can be this cute" or studio Deen's seemingly inexistant Fate/Stay Night adaption. It's arguably even worse than the latter, because in the midst of Shirou's cringeworthy attempts at philosophy and out-of-place romance development it at least presents a concept that has the potential of being fun as well as moving with a pace where I still feel like things are happening, even if it's nowhere near a Ron Paul level. And hey, I like the soundtrack and the magic school setting still evokes chuunibyou feelings in me even if I should be way too old for that.

Steins ; Gate on the flipside moves at the pace of a sludge metal album, except the heavy atmosphere ir replaced by the soullessness of prog. This would be fine if it at least were an atmospheric experience akin to something like Texhnolyze or had the character development of .hack//Sign resulting in great payoffs near the end but instead we have a plot that challenges Wonderwall for the prize of the most mundane piece of media ever created, only coated with sci-fi elements as a lazy way of attempting to emulate flavor. It suffers the same flaw as almost all visual media (thank Yuasa for Tatami Galaxy) where you can't go in your own pace, thus having to wait from the time your brain registers what's happening onscreen and something new happens, except in Steins ; Gate the process lasts several episodes rather than just a few seconds.

This is of course, after the well-defended first half of the show which supposedly exists so the audience can get attached to the characters. The fatal problem with the first half is that Steins ; Gate never manages to make the characters shine more brightly than the cast of Die Hard & co, (at least here the main character isn't Mamoru Miyamo portrayed by Mamoru Miyamo) with the only bright spot being everyone's favorite mad scientist who breathes a much needed bit of life into what otherwise would be as monotone as waiting for the dentist (instead becomes as monotone as waiting for the doctor, but hey, you take what you get). The rest of the characters are the anime are the personifications of white bread and fail to make an impression further than the stereotype they are presented as. It's fine to have stereotypical characters, but in order for me to feel empathy towards them they need to feel like characters and Steins ; Gate never manages this. Sure, Okabe is Okabe but Daru for example is the fat nerd, and the nerd isn't a character until he is further developed or presented in an original way, of which neither is true here.

After you've forced yourself through the first half, the plot finally thickens and for a while Steins ; Gate suddenly seems promising again. The progression is very natural and for once I could feel excited about what I was watching. I felt like the show was going somewhere, that I would finally see the light every Steins ; Gate enthusiast had seen, but alas, I would soon be very disappointed as the show soon would readjust itself into its old pacing the way an alcohol junkie somehow finds his way to another bottle after a few white days, and shrinks back into the darkness with even lesser hope of a bright future.

So Steins ; Gate ends, in the same darkness it belonged to during the first half, after spending its second half dragging out a plot that should've been the length of a feature film. Heck, if it was only that long maybe I would've liked it the same way I like something like Back to the Future, while the knowledge in the back of my head that it's not really that good, but the charm of it makes me look past that as I shut down my brain for an hour and half and just enjoy the ride.

Let me just clarify one last thing, Steins ; Gate is very polished. While it's profoundly uninteresting due to being thinned out like homeopathic medicine, there's not that many glaring issues with it unlike something like Sword Art Online where there are countless of hour-long videos dedicated to point out issues in it (that somehow ends up being more boring than the show itself, damn you Digibro for green lightning this as the gold standard of anime reviewing). This extends to the audiovisuals as well. They're not particularly artistic, but they certainly both look and sound good throughout Steins ; Gate with nothing to take issue to, like any decent feature film.

If you're new to storytelling regardless of medium, you might find Steins ; Gate fascinating the same way the indigenous people of the Amazon would find vanilla ice cream fascinating, but I fail to see why the rest of this site hold Steins ; Gate in such high regard. It's a monotone and predictable experience with a dull character cast and the pacing of a sloth trying to cross the highway. Maybe if I enjoyed mainstream movies more I could see the appeal, but to be honest, the only value something like 2012 has over this is that it's shorter in duration, and while it doesn't make it any better, it certainly makes it more tolerable.

Now if you excuse me I'm going to go watch some Nascar for a while. I need some excitement in my life after this snorefest. Or darts. Darts works too.

I had a lot of expectation for this since it has such a high rating and is a top 3 anime in myanimelist. I was completely disappointed after watching the show. Many who have watched this said they do not understand the show, but I find it to be easy to understand. For me, the anime itself is not complex but tries to be.

The concept is good, time-traveling, butterfly effect and it shows that every little things in our life is important. If one were to change something, no matter how small you think it is, it could still affect the future. However, the ... execution itself is horrible. Uninteresting characters with typical dating sim personalities, art that is not pleasant to the eyes, boring sounds. I seriously do not understand the high ratings that the watcher gave to this anime. I think the novel or manga version of this would be better than the anime.

-Episodes 1-3 = boring -1 point
-Episodes 4-6 = boring -1 point
-Episodes 7-9 = boring -1 point
-Episodes 10-12 = boring -1 point
-color palette is boring which fits the show perfectly = -0.5
-never mentioned the “desert scene” felt brushed off and forgotten = -0.5
-The fact the first half was that boring to get to second half of the season = -1
Personal enjoyment = -1 point

All and all, I failed to see the beauty of this anime. I really wanted to like it but can’t that’s why I continued to watch even after episode 3. Half the show is very boring the second half is good, not worth ... it though. If I was able to time travel I would tell past me not to waste my time with this anime.

In a nutshell, the least successful amalgam of comedy and drama that I have ever seen.

As a comedy, Steins;Gate ranges tolerable to entertaining, but as a drama, it falls apart completely. Its characters are mostly comical and unbelievable, yet it expects you to take their plights seriously. The grim tale of fighting the inevitable that begins around the midway point is predicated on half a series of the main characters engaging in the kind of stupid and thoughtless behavior that is only acceptable within the context of comedy.

It operates on a kind of dating sim logic where almost all the pivotal characters (themselves shallow dating ... sim cutouts too; there's the airheaded childhood friend, the redheaded tsundere, the catgirl maid, etcetera) of the story (the scale of which extends far beyond Akihabara where the events of the anime take place) just happen to be teenage girls living within the vicinity of the protagonist, no matter how unlikely. That one of them happens to be the one of the most brilliant researchers in the field of time travel is only the most egregious example I can bring up without getting into spoiler territory.

The opening's good, though.

I don't understand why so many people like this anime. It's the Butterfly Effect stretched out for 24 episodes which makes the story weaker and more convoluted.I thought it was extremely predictable and drawn out. I found Mayuri Shiina very annoying. She spent the entire anime acting like my 8 year old niece. Which would have been fine if she was 8. Seeing a grown woman,who isn't mentally challenged, act like a child is very weird. Some animes I watch all the way thru because I enjoy the characters and the episodic story progression. And some animes I watch all the way thru because ... I've already invested a certain amount of time and I just want to see it's conclusion. Stiens gate is the latter. This anime was not fun for me at all. The main character who I actually thought was unique and interesting was wasted on this rehashed story. If you're thinking about watching this anime watch the Butterfly Effect first and save yourself 12 hours of repetitive nonsensical story telling.

when i turned on steins gate i was hoping for a serious expose on microwaves and time travel; i am currently sticking things into my microwave to see if they pass the time/space mesh and show up in my memories when i was a small person.

ever since i can remember, last week, i have been experimenting with microwaving objects. when i heard stein had unlocked the secrets to time travel, i knew that all those hours standing very close to the microwave were not just rewarded with a slight head buzz, but also with science.

as i watched the drama of teenage love, ... through constant bouts of panic and nihilistic philosophical rants in front of the mirror, I couldn't help but wonder when it was going to break down the proper methodology of sending a frog back in time. all i could get was a thick black goo all over the place.

Needless to say it was NOT a documentary. But I should mention that the red head was actually lilith, the lady in red, who shows up now and again to represent the whore of confusion in modern illuminations. I would constantly draw a hex for warding and fear not cretens I would also draw protection from the back of my dollar bill from the evil eye. I could relate to the main character because he was also a mad scientist.

This one time I built a hat that blocked the government from spying on me.

The most frostbitten and grim problem in science fiction is that it does not go well with actual science.

The second problem is that it usually appeals only for popular and trendy themes without going further into their hard scientific side, which can be used to understand them realistically. I'm not talking about turning all science fiction into thorough research on the problems and tying it up to reality, but about careless swinging the science like it can do everything at any time you wish. Sad to say it, but a lot of science fiction authors pretend not to notice that science needs a REALLY long ... time to progress - therefore, they write stories about sudden revolutionary plot devices or techniques which can make science move faster and attract the common viewer's attention.

The worst problem is very often these are invented or operated by young and unexperienced ones. And if they need to be experienced or just able to do something right, authors turn them to the Chosen Ones or geniuses, to describe the whole impossibility of the plot.



And here comes Steins;Gate: an anime about the youth of the nation changing the world. While still being young, unexperienced and, most of all, plain mindless.
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Through approximately the last 10 years Japanese authors developed a kind of fetish about exploiting the young geniuses theme. Note: somehow in every third series, movie or OVA you can see a young adult, or nearly adult, or worst of all - a teenager savviyng no worse than its adult counterparts, which - in the worst case - will stand for a kind of moving useless background doing nothing intelligible. They are supposed to be professionals, but their professionality is only stated, never proven.

This is due to the fact creators need to describe the characters of specific age in order to attract a specific target audience so that their actions were understandable for viewers, or even persuaded them to think about their own actions. Even if the authors have to give to the child a mind and/or charisma which basically is unable to accumulate in such a young age. Yes, even if that child would be born and raised in a Masonic lodge and would learn to converse from aged seasoned prostitutes.

When in school, I knew a lot of really smart people, guys and girls. You can say we were attending the same club (the biology club). They were very aspiring, and later did well in their lives, but no one of the smartest girls was a egregiously imbalanced wench with a nearly perfect appearance publishing in scientific magasines since grade school. Hell, even the smartest girl of our club looked like a mop wearing loose T-shirt: she only cared for her mind, not for her appearance. Nerd girls go in this category too. You may like their intentions, but not their looks.

There are really few true geniuses in our world, but... now it's a kind of fashion to give a genius label to anyone who does not behave like a typical consumer. I do not deny that some people grasp something from childhood better than others - but not every second one. However, if we now look at the creations of Japanese authors in total, we see that in the anime version of Japan (note: described as real, otherwise it is an alternative history) the normal young people of current generation are not exposed to glamor (well, forget about kogals for now), do not smoke and drink heavily, have no streak for delinquency (we're laking about positively presented characters here, not obviously evil gang-bangers), are not typical consumers, and are not led by any basest interests. Pure ingenues.

No, of course not everyone are included in this list, but really a lot. And do not think I am a misanthrope: I respect everyone, unless the person in question is not a neo-Nazi, a feminist, a priest or a consumerism victim, which only wants to eat, to excrete and to entertain themselves.

Idealisation does not stop only on geniuses. Here come overly rich characters with their own maids or butlers, who own the whole lot and can easily make you vanish. Oligarchy is presented not in a negative vision, but in positive - these people bathe in champagne and eat caviar with golden ladles, spit on all others'heads emitting infernal laughs while covering their mouths, but we are forced to think this can be worked off. Instead of donating money for orphans, disabled people, cancer patients or the aforementioned science to make it go faster, they are living high lives, but still presented as lovable.
Noblesse oblige? Screw these plebs, I'm the rich one here, plebs gonna suffer.
Double standards, don't you think so?


So, if we now look at the typical characters from a bad-written anime script, most of them are just loose, licked up, ideals. Stereotypical, formulaic bishounens and bishoujos; one can understand by looking at them they are nothing but the mind, the honor and the conscience of the nation. Even if they are totally washed otaku guys/yaoi fangirls. Every fifth of them is a genius and can save the world in one finger flick, but simply does not want to. Not because he or she can be quietly eliminated for these actions, but just because he or she just does not want, you see, there are more important problems, such as what said person will eat today.
And, sadly, a few characters have a good, realistic image that would remind you of one of your friends. Not the escapist with a half-meter long crimson haircut, but your neighbor or friend or drinking buddy. They do not necessarily need a wild backstory with tears and drama: you simply make the characters actions appropriate in this situation, so that you can interpret it from your point of view.
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This anime is suffering primarily because of such kind of idealization of characters. A lot of formulaic, predictable and just boring gals are attached to the bunch of losers simply because... what? Right.
Here be place where a Main Problem of Juvenile Science Fiction appeared: yesterday's kids created something that mature and wise people with experience (as we thought) did not came up before. Customisation for the audience. Let's check them up: a stupid naive moegirl, an imbalanced foreigner girl with overly idealised mind AND appearance with no reason of being a classical tsundere, an annoying overly rich catgirl, a kuudere villain girl.

The typical fat otaku is displayed as idealised hacker. Let's just close our eyes on it: he even looks like a no-lifer... but, again, really heavily stereotyped. Again: mind, honor and conscience of the nation.

There goes time traveler Japanese girl saying that C(S)ERN will conquer the whole world in 2036. Whole world!
What about Islamic countries and its uncontrollable monotheistic doctrine? Want more videos about heads cut off, now starring C(S)ERN scientists?
Russia, which became even more wild in the last 20 years? They won't even reach Moscow without drowning in swamps.
North Korea, which dares to oppose everyone while being poor? It is the big and dangerously brainwashed hive which can lash on everyone the dictator does not like.
That's because there are a lot of Japanese science fiction authors (just like their American counterparts) thinking that their homeland is the center of the world: the homeland dies - the world dies along. They do not know a thing about the defensive abilities of other countries - they only judge the world by themselves. This makes a dystopian scenario origins quite clear.


Where was I? Even counting the fact that mature and wise people had already traveled in time before the losers club made it, the situation is not getting better. Authors have not explained the working principle of the oven: they just realized if they try to push at least one theory in the area where they know nothing, nerds and real scientists will bomb them with letters of offense. Therefore, they decided to keep silent, instead calling random pseudo-scientific thematic gibberish for nerds' fun and joy - just add a pair of facts taken from some Japanese gonzo editions for techies. If these things are already popular memes - they are already known by the people and will make more profit. The same reason forced them to make characters use said popular memes: the more visitors from the popular anonymous forums join the audience, the more of this series will be a profit. This is what you call a fanservice, not naked protagonists.

As everyday in modern Japan, this is never stated, but if you look, you'll see a very glaring detail: female domination in inappropriate places. Go and compare male protagonists with female protagonists: you can easily find out that females are always better, smarter, cuter and stronger in their will, and males are no-good losers. Liberal feminist conspiracy? You decide.

Art is nice, animation is good, but music is quite generic. Pop and rock with electric guitars, nothing new, conceptual and interesting. And generic piano in dramatic scenes. They could add some interesting instrument.

The only good thing in this anime is a complex multi-layered plot, which made everyone sing gospels for. But this plot, though really interesting, is hanging on pseudo-scientific strings and fanservice, and first I really enjoyed it.


But, if you try to forget everything mentioned before and just simply enjoy the show, you will notice the strange thing. Whenever the plot needs to be pushed forth, authors inject more and more undescribed and unreasonable rear-pulled plot techniques. Previously I've mentioned the Chosen One, and I really hoped there won't be such kind of characters.

WRONG.

Previously I endured the existence of impossibly smart characters, impossibly rich ones, impossibly naive, impossibly strong-willed and other impossibly idealized. But the power of Chosen One lying in Okarin hit my limit.

I barely completed these series.
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Later, my smart friends attended the top- and nearly top unis of the country, and I decided to choose something more mundane. Now I am a post-graduate microbiologist reseacher, I learned well about the inner works of science, and the ones mentioned in these series are nothing but... yes. Idealised ones.

In modern society, in a lot of cases, science is completely trusted or is not trusted at all. The hype around these series is caused only by this fact. An early idea about LHC opening a black hole was just shamelessly exploited like in a low-budget B-movie, but target audience ate it up. No matter that there was no black hole in actual LHC work at 2012: if there is a hypothesis, there is an exploitation of it. Hype must go on.

They tried to darken the inner works of scientific society, pretending they know everything, but in reality it looks like a bad kind of darkfic.


On the other side there are people that trust science selectively and can easily distinguish pseudo-scientific gibberish for wannabe-kind of nerds from the real scientific facts.

You may also remember that over-hyped things never fulfilled all your wishes. This one is a nice example of being not so good as I wanted to.


The main fact is somebody really know about inner works of science. And they can't judge the book by its cover.

Unfortunately, Steins;Gate is nothing but cover. Therefore, +3 for the plot.

Nothing more deserves even a single plus.


That's all I can say about it.

Steins;Gate is crammed with internet culture, memes and easy/attractive female protagonists. A better name for this show would be Waifu;Gate and it's an anime that pads time with the sound of cicadas.

Even if you manage to put aside the many ludicrous contradictions, thanks to a setting who's premise is time travel, you still run into other issues.

At one point there are several attractive women sharing a single room with two other men. These characters are between sixteen and nineteen years old. How is every single character, except the landlord, a virgin. My only guess is to relate/pander to the target audience.

Let's double down and also ... put aside the unbelievable characters.

Half way through the series something bad happens and the protagonist tries again and again to stop it by traveling back in time. This touches on the worthwhile concept of fate. He repeats this process hundreds of times over the course of several episodes.

Put that into perspective. We watch the protagonist do the same thing over and over for several episodes straight. It wastes our time.

When he's finished he then has to undo everything he did leading up to said repetition. The next several episodes are a complete inverse of episodes we've already seen; so we already know how each of them will end. It's more wasted time. Everything that happened could have been compressed into twelve episodes.

Ultimately Steins;Gate is a love story where the climax is a first kiss between two adults.

minor spoilers ahead:
the "top anime" section hasn't done me wrong before so i came into this with high expectations. this is probably the biggest letdown since my friend recommended devilman crybaby.

this series starts off at a snail's pace and doesn't pick up until about 10 episodes in. it is extremely whack. once it picks up you think its gonna keep it up but you literally watch this dude undo all the changes made in the past and it is so uninteresting. this show is better than melatonin. sometimes funny, but that's about it. last 4 episodes were very good though, i will say.

Arguably the most important element of a show like this is the characterisation. I'm usually not a big fan of otaku types, especially the zany weirdo ones. Steins;gate has some compelling character moments but looked at as a whole the cast is constructed from a heap of annoying clichés, a collection of muppets, if you will.

The whole story structure feels like it was directly taken from the VN, which was questionable decision since it didn't fit cohesively with the tv show format. What's with all the side quest episodes for secondary characters just popping up right in the middle of a dramatic and tension ... filled arc? What's with the instances in the story were it is apparent that the gamer of the VN would've had to make a decision?
Those scenes were just badly implemented and thats coming from someone who doesn't even have played that many VNs (but enough games that I know my fair share about structure and narrative).

My favorite part was the first cour, which a lot of folks seem to dismiss as necessary buildup to get to the hype stuff. The mystery and atmosphere was really compelling, so it disappointed even more when that was followed up by an overwrought and tediously confusing time travel plot.

In conclusion: This is not the worst show I've ever seen by any means, but it's also not the masterpiece that most people seem to see it as.
Maybe it just aged badly, quite like me in that regard I suppose.

Story: 3/10. The first half of the show was a drag to get through, although it layed out the rules of the D-mail and time travel alright; too bad this was diluted with random journeys to the maid cafe with the most boring character Feyris, as well as episodes where literally nothing happens. Seriously, most of the initial episodes could've been used to establish deeper relationships between characters, but we just get these characters doing their generic character stereotype: Daru tells perverted jokes, Mayushii tuturus and Kurisu acts like a tsundere.

When the show actually picks up at episode 12, it really is just a few ... episodes of Okabe being dumb and not talking to anyone else about his predicament just to kill some episode time, and then he finally realizes what he has to do to fix everything. We get a pretty interesting arc about Suzuha, but of course that only lasts for like an episode before we get two harem episodes of Okabe with Feyris and then Ruka. The show ends up picking up again towards the end, but it breaks the rules of time travel it established to give a cheesy ending leaving alot of plotholes.


Art: 8/10. The show has decent art and animation, no complaints here.

Sound: 8/10. The music in this show is probably the only thing that stands out to me.

Character: 2/10. The characters are undoubtedly the worst aspect of this show. The majority just serve as a plot-device for Okabe to overcome some sort of trial, and the extent of their character is some generic, run-of-the-mill anime stereotype. Kurisu's only purpose is to help Okabe with time travel, and when she's not servicing this purpose she's a generic tsundere with a bland personality; Daru's only purpose is to hack stuff, and when he's not doing that he just tells perverted jokes. And Mayushii, wow, I'm not sure why she's so popular. All she does is TUTURU, not to mention her only purpose is to exist so Okabe can try and save her. I can go on and on about my most hated characters Feyris and Ruka, but they're so forgettable it wouldn't matter.

The only saving grace is Okabe, he has an actual personality and, at the expense of every other character just being a device for Okabe to grow, he matures from start to end. So, +1 for him.

Enjoyment: 2/10. I didn't enjoy much in this show except for the later episodes dealing with Suzuha. Everything from the characters to their relationships to their personalities all felt bland and one-dimensional. The actual logic behind time-travel was interesting in the beginning, but amid the awkward pacing the show was a drag to get through; and when the show reached a turning point, it decided to throw out its set-up to depend on the concept of fate for an intriguing story. I'm not sure what it was trying to go for here. To make matters worse, it turns out everyone can remember world lines to a degree, so all that deep talk about time traveling erasing the past you hold dear and making you grow distant from your loved ones is just tossed out the window; it's totally fine, Okabe and Kurisu can just have their perfect ending now.


Overall: 2/10. The show takes too long to pick up and maintains an awkward pace throughout. It has a a few high points among many low points, but its high points aren't much higher than its low. I'm not sure what's so special about this show, maybe I need to re-watch to 'get it', but the logic of time travel made sense and there wasn't any point where I felt lost; I just felt the actual good parts of the show were diluted by bland characters and terrible pacing. We'd have dragged-on comedy dilute the effect of a dramatic event many times for instance, and a lot of episodes are just Okabe contemplating the same thing many times before he decides to actually act on them. For a guy who says he depends on his lab mates, he really likes doing everything himself and messing up the situation even more.

So, this can be a nostalgic anime for some and I get that, what I won't accept tho is clouding of judgment when it comes to rating the overall experience.
This anime has some of the most annoyingly written characters in any piece of media I have consumed during my 22 years of living. The story does not suffice for that, either. The experience as a whole gives off an animated Wattpad story vibe, written by some nerdy kid who had put himself in the shoes of the MC.
It could've been something great.
Props to anyone who liked it past 2011.

Warning- SPOILERS.

Coming into this show, I thought it would be a masterpiece. I was hyped to experience what is apparently one of the highest rated shows of all time on AnimeNew.net. But this shit is just garbage.

But what I watched, was absolutely nothing like any of the other top anime I've seen. It didn't have the animation production value, it didn't have a full cast of multifaceted characters, it didn't have a satisfying plot, and despite the brief 24 episode length, I found it to be extremely repetitive and constantly having to recycle old ideas.

This show is so different from a genuinely impresive anime that ... it's extremely confusing to me how anyone could watch this and think "This is one of the best shows ever."

For starters, let's examine the characters.
--Rintarou Okabe. Guy. Pretentious unemployed guy who thinks he's a mad scientist despite not having any real skills. Regular schizo.
--Kurisu Makise. Girl. American scientific genius who falls in love with Okabe.
--Mayuri Shiina. Girl. Okabe's childhood friend who has no other reason to exist than to fawn over Okabe.
--Itaru "Daru" Hashida. Guy. Okabe's roommate who has insane hacking ability but only uses that to assist his unemployed roommate Okabe.
--Luka Urushibara. Girl (or is she?). Neighborhood friend of Okabe's. Transgender. Falls in love with Okabe.
--Faris NyanNyan. Girl. Runs a Catgirl Cafe. Rich spoiled girl. Develops a thing for Okabe.
--Barely any others.

Are you seeing a pattern here? This is anything but a fully developed universe. The template they are working with is not a full fledged world like Naruto, or Fullmetal Alchemist, or even Sword Art Online. This is just a harem anime, existing to soothe the egos and stimulate the passions of lonely teenage boys. And I don't necessarily have a problem with harem anime in itself, I just don't like when it pretends to be meaningful, and pretends to actually be able to grapple with deep subjects, when it's a transparently masturbatory fantasy.

The fact that everyone in this world only exists for the benefit of the main character and that all the women magically end up infatuated with him, despite him being an unemplolyed schizophrenic, is not beneficial to the story. It is immersion breaking.

The majority of the hype seems to be about the time travel element. And I can understand this being appealing to people. But when I compare this story to every other time travel story I have ever come across- such as the time turner from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, or Back to the Future, or Groundhog Day, or Looper, Steins;Gate has by far the least interesting, least impactful, and least appealing version of time travel.


Basically, the authors of the story decided that just because you have the ability to travel back in time, doesn't mean you have the ability to change fate. So the main character, Okabe, goes back in time over and over, trying to change something, only to find that he cannot do so.

Furthermore, there is a strange "life for a life" thing going on-- when the main character saves one life, fate steps in and takes another life of a person close to him.

Now the main character, despite having the ability to teleport back in his timeline, feels completely helpless. Pretty crazy, right? Not exactly what you would expect from a show about traveling back in time, which you would expect allows you to change anything.

Furthermore, every change the main character makes in the timeline, costs his friend a day of life. Please pause for a moment and consider how insane these rules are. Where did this come from? What mechanism is ensuring that an extra person dies to compensate for the life that was saved? Is there some kind of deity watching over this universe, saying "oh look, we're one death short" and then just killing someone to make up for that? Basically yes.

Traditional time travel stories open up Pandora's Box and allow the characters to go back and genuinely change anything. But Steins;Gate says "You can go back, but the Hand of God will prevent you from doing anything important. You can only use time travel to do things that don't make any difference." This is just astronomical levels of stupid. It turns time travel from a fascinating tool into window dressing.

So these are the mechanics of time travel in the show. What do they do with it? Simple. They make the main character deal with this handicapped version of time travel over and over, banging his head against the wall, failing to use his time travel ability to create ANY lasting positive change for 24 episodes, milking his suffering for emotions and drama.

Then at the very end, they relax this handicap, and allow him to make just ONE lasting and positive change, at the exact moment needed to create a happy ending. So convenient. This is incredibly lazy and stupid storytelling and I'm astounded that more people aren't seeing through it.

It is hard to overstate just how much the "Fate" element in itself separates Steins;Gate from other time travel stories. The set of possibilities that are opened up by time travel are tantalizing. But in a bait and switch, it is revealed that none of the things that time travel lets you do normally, like win the lottery, are even remotely possible in this story. Lame!

If anything, time travel in this universe allowed the writers to put in LESS work than in a traditional linear story, because every character except the main character cannot see the plot unfolding as he hope between universes. So they don't go through character development. The writers don't need to think about how they react to different events. It's like they're continuously going through amnesia. They remain exactly the same from beginning to end. The writers barely had to do anything! Genius!

I don't really find anything in this show impressive at all. The main character is a pretentious douchebag who lords his intellect over his friends, and who remains condescending and douchey to his friends all the way to the very end of the show. There are more plot holes than you can count. I kept waiting for something clever to happen, but it never did. This show was a complete waste of time. By far the dumbest and worst time travel content I have ever come across. I would give it a zero if I could.

Letho72 on /r/anime put this across very well, and I quote:

"I agree with S;G. Well, it's not in my least favorites, but it was just acceptable to watch.

The ending was pretty good, would have liked a whole show like that. But the first 15ish episodes were just so slow and boring, it was like a SoL except they didn't give me any characterization and the "oh look Okabe is chunni!" joke got old after episode 2. So I'm left here with 15+ episodes of cringe where I still don't know anything meaningful about the cast.

And then the ending happens and I'm suddenly supposed to care ... about everyone. And people always tell me 'but the ending!!" Yeah, it was good. That doesn't change the fact that I had to sit through 2/3 of a boring show just for a cool climax. The ending doesn't justify how poorly done the rest of the show is."

Hello. I would like to say that all the people who overhype this anime disgrace actually good anime like Monster, Battlestar Galactica and others.

The story starts out very slowly and develops nowhere worth of notice, we are left with an open ending

The art is satisfactory, but nothing special. The main character looks kind of silly, but I guess that was done for a comedic purpose

The sound is generally very good, but that's it.

Characters are plain, unlikable, boring and cliché. I think they are supposed to be funny and relatable, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

This was one of the least enjoyable animes I ... have ever seen. I'm trying to think of another one that I didn't like that much and I can't come up with anything. I guess the reason why I dislike this anime so much is that I bothered to watch all the episodes and that I didn't just drop it at episode 5. In the end, MAL score fooled me.

Just writing this review and thinking about Steins;Gate gave me an actual headache! I am not even kidding! That's why it's so short.

Join this club if you agree! http://myanimelist.net/clubs.php?cid=62741