Steins;Gate: Soumei Eichi no Cognitive Computing

Honestly surprised at the high score this has. If you want cutesy, "slice of life" I guess, 1d interactions between characters, you'll get that from this. You can take the Steins;Gate cast out and insert any random characters in this with the same ultimate results. In that way, I'd call this fan-service-y. I'd rather just go invest in an actual S.O.L. anime.

If you want to see characters you liked in the show interact in more "random daily life," surface-y ways, by all means! No judgement - enjoy! And to be fair, there were certainly moments in the original that went beyond "character development" and into ... "just meeting some tropes/fanservice." These ads hit those tropes.

The problem for me is these ads really fail to deliver on any level that made me like the original show in the first place - anything beyond tropes and fanservice (again, not the ecchi kind). Obviously. They're each 3 min. shorts designed to get IBM generally on the brain.

It takes all of ~7-15 minutes to watch all of them (depending on the watch speed), for any completionists. The point is simply that you (arguably) gain nothing by watching them. They're overall pretty "meh." This was 100% just IBM taking advantage of Steins;Gate mentioning them, and collaborating to make an ad... idk...¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Watch them off of the high of finishing steins gate if you "just need more steins gate!!!" or if you're feeling nostalgic. Otherwise, meh. I'm skeptical of any scores beyond a 5 ("average") being anything other than complete adoration for the series. On their own, this set of shorts are average. As "extensions" of the series, they're arguably bad (they add nothing except more teasing of Kurisu x Okabe shipping).

Note: I watched them a long time ago off of the high of the original, which is when I gave them a 4. I rewatched them on 2x myself just before this review to try to be more fair. At the time of writing this review, I find myself being more forgiving to these ads for being average, and less forgiving for little moments of tropey fanservice in the original (which I'm currently re-watching for the 3rd time, and seeing more of than I did the first or even second time I watched). So let that color how you read my review and what you expect out of these.