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Disclaimer: This review assumes full knowledge of the original Steins;Gate and thus the premise of Steins;Gate 0

The Steins;Gate 0 manga is a solid adaptation of two routes from the visual novel. Unlike the anime, which serves as a sequel to the Steins;Gate 0 VN, the manga opts for a conventional adaptation approach instead. The first four volumes adapt The Promised Rinascimento (PR) while the last two volumes adapt Vega & Altair (VA). This comes with its strengths and weaknesses. On one hand, they focus on fleshing out fewer routes rather than speedrunning every route in the same volume count. So it's nice that the routes ... aren't as rushed as they could have been. But on the other hand, it means that the Steins;Gate 0 manga is absolutely not a replacement for either the visual novel or the anime. It doesn't cover nearly enough of what you need to fully understand Steins;Gate 0 and so I cannot recommend this to any first-timer. It's merely a nice supplement through which you can re-experience the story of PR and VA rather quickly. Every route in the visual novel is vital to understanding the story. Steins;Gate 0 itself is about the circumstances that made Operation Skuld possible. So the whole idea of the story is that it took the efforts of countless iterations for it to even happen. As such, the manga is quite limited since it only has 2 routes (+ a few pages of Milky Way Crossing). It's largely just a retelling of 40% of the VN that doesn't add much narrative value to the overarching series. It would have been nice if the Steins;Gate 0 manga covered iterations shown in neither the VN nor the anime. But I suppose it's nice for anybody who wanted to see VN-exclusive events in a medium outside a visual novel though. For a first-timer though? This manga is absolutely not the most sensical starting point.

As for how it holds up as a manga, the quality varies quite significantly from chapter to chapter. Some chapters are handled superbly. But others are too rushed. I feel this especially in the last 2/3 of the adaptation. There's a couple of super emotional scenes from the VN that are glossed over in the span of only 3-4 pages in the manga (such as "the return"). So they don't end up hitting nearly as hard as they're supposed to. And one of the biggest appeals of S;G 0 to me is just how emotional many of its moments are. Many of these remain in the manga of course. But this manga won't make a long-time SciADV fan cry or anything.

The manga, does however, make a few interesting changes here and there that make reading it worthwhile to any SciADV fan. My favourite addition of the manga comes in the last two volumes, where it adds an extended reaction to something completely glossed over in the VN and the anime. I also love how the manga makes PR's value in the recursive world line chain extremely clear through the addition of a few manga-original lines. Besides the aforementioned additions, the manga also makes some changes to the narrative as well. In particular, a certain twist is completely deleted from VA (which is a change I actually like). And additionally, several fan service moments are removed from the story as well. This makes S;G 0 feel much more tonally consistent than the VN or the anime, which was amazing.

But my biggest gripes with the manga is in how little it adds to the overarching narrative. It sticks way too close to the visual novel, and adds very little besides the few additions I talked about above. In doing so, the manga also does not provide much clarity on the connection between the routes. This can easily fool people into thinking that 1) Vega & Altair happens immediately after The Promised Rinascimento and 2) Milky Way Crossing is a direct continuation of the same iteration as Vega & Altair. Neither of these are true. It's confusing enough in the visual novel but even more confusing in the manga. I also don't like how the manga ends at exactly the same point as the visual novel does. The manga's ending is extremely unsatisfying since it does not cover the post-credit scene in MWC.

To be honest, if you want to experience the Beta attractor field in manga form, I'd recommend the Epigraph trilogy's manga adaptation over this. The Epigraph manga adaptation was halfway through before they cancelled it in favour of Steins;Gate 0 but it easily remains the superior telling of the story. If you don't know what the Epigraph trilogy is, it's one of the three piece of source material for the Steins;Gate 0 visual novel (alongside Annularly-Chained Ouroboros and Arc-Light of the Point at Infinity). It's what Steins;Gate 0 was originally supposed to be. It's better in story, better in pacing, and better in artwork.

That being said, the Steins;Gate 0 manga is still a solid adaptation that I'd urge any SciADV fan to check out. If you can, please support the official localization! This helps show UDON Entertainment and MAGES demand for official English releases of the SciADV manga! Support it enough and maybe we'll see English translations for the Chaos;Child, Occultic;Nine, or SciADV spin-off manga adaptations.

TL;DR: Solid 7/10 manga. The artwork is fine, the story is solid, and the characters are great. But this isn't intended for a first-timer to read and it does not replace either the VN or the anime. It has a few moments sprinkled in that make it worthwhile for any SciADV fan though. And in general, it's an interesting take on the story.

Children's Collapse is a great supplement to the Chaos;Child visual novel. But even though this is a prequel, do not read this manga until you have finished the main story.

As a manga, it's not quite as enjoyable as the likes of other pieces of SciADV side material. And if you've listened to Slumbering Fools, you already have the gist of what happens in Children's Collapse. But I think Children's Collapse has made Slumbering Fools more or less obsolete at this point. It goes into much more depth on Mio's backstory specifically and it makes sense why she behaves the way she does throughout the ... events of the VN. So I'd say that this is a must-read for SciADV fans — not as much as the likes of The Wrong-Sider Memoirs or Children's Revive but still a must-read.

The manga adaptation is by default not great for having to cram a 40-hour long game into the span of a single volume but somehow, it's still significantly better than the nightmare of an anime adaptation we got.

Since the manga is only 1 volume long, it doesn't have the length needed to properly depict the story. So what it opts to do instead is to rewrite the narrative from the ground up. It doesn't cover anything from the NoAH routes and it even outright deletes a few important characters from the story. But the manga handles its time constraints pretty neatly.

It rearranges parts of ... the original story and adds original content to it, mixing elements of the VN's chapters together. While one might automatically think that makes it bad by default, it actually rearranged the story in a tasteful way. I think the coolest change it made was in moving the iconic O-FRONT scene from chapter 6 in the VN to the very end of the story. If you were to do the unthinkable and read the manga before the VN, then nothing happening here would make sense. But with context of the VN, it's actually a pretty interesting read to see how they approached adapting such a long story into such a short amount of time. All in all, despite how much harsher the manga's time constraints were, none of the changes it made were nearly as offensive as the anime adaptation's changes.

If you haven't played the visual novel, there is no reason for you to waste your time with this manga. But if you have, it's potentially an interesting adaptation that doesn't take much time to finish. Unfortunately, I can't really give it higher than a 5/10 since it's only 1 manga volume long and it just fails miserably at conveying what the visual novel was going for. If you really want a really short recap of the VN, I'd recommend Chaos;Child episode 0 over the manga. But even that isn't much better.

Just play the Chaos;Head NoAH visual novel. There isn't a good substitute for it. It's a fantastic story that couldn't work in any other medium.

This manga is a must-read for after you've finished the original Robotics;Notes visual novel.

It completely re-contextualizes the original story and provides a significant amount of depth to the main duo, Misaki, Mizuka, Airi, and the main antagonist. The content in this manga is very vaguely hinted at in the VN and yet never outright shown explicitly. But the reveals in this manga are absolutely mind-blowing. I don't even think the Robotics;Notes experience is complete without it.

As a manga itself, the artwork is good, the character interactions are as charming as always, and the story is great. I don't really have many complaints for it ... besides it perhaps being a bit too short. It cuts itself off very abruptly. It feels a bit anticlimactic, even if we know what happens afterwards in the main story (and even the anime adaptation). I'm not sure if that's also how the original Misaki Memoirs light novel ends, but it still feels cut too short. Nevertheless, despite its shortcomings, even the manga adaptation is still a fantastic prequel story that fills in many of the gaps left by the visual novel.

However, even though this is a prequel, I can't recommend this to a first-timer because it doesn't make sense without context of the original story. It also contains massive spoilers for the VN. But if you're planning on going through Robotics;Notes, you need to go through this manga or else you won't have a complete picture of everything going on.

Revival Legacy is one of the many pieces of Robotics;Notes side material and a fantastic supplement to the original visual novel.

By and large, it's a retelling of the first 7 chapters of the R;N VN from Frau's perspective with some minor divergences throughout. It's not incredibly ambitious and it doesn't add too much to the main story but if you loved Frau and you loved the Robotics;Notes cast, you'll love Revival Legacy too. Many of the character interactions you see in Revival Legacy never happened in the VN or any other iteration of the story. So it still ends up feeling very fresh and like ... a new story. Honestly, I think it's even better than the anime adaptation as a supplement, as low of a bar as that may be.

But if you have not read the Robotics;Notes visual novel prior to this, I can't really recommend Revival Legacy. But regardless, it's a funny, cute, and wholesome supplement to the VN.

For anime adaptations based off of visual novels, Muv-Luv Alternative stands out as one of the better ones. This is no train-wreck adaptation like Chaos;Head and Chaos;Child. The MLA anime is legitimately good, season 2 especially. I'd honestly put season 2 above the anime of Robotics;Notes and Higurashi DEEN.

Anyways, let's get into the pros. As was the case in season 1, the mecha animation was absolutely phenomenal. It's eye candy to look at. It's what makes the anime worth watching for anybody. Moreover, the pacing is pretty good for the most part. They didn't try to do a rush job and adapt the whole thing ... in one go. They paced the whole story out such that if they were to adapt everything, it'd be done in 3 cours. Hopefully, we get that 3rd season some day.

That being said, season 2 had some unfortunate issues. As was we all know from season 1, the MLA anime demands prior VN knowledge from its audience via Extra and Unlimited. But because they didn't adapt Extra earlier, season 2 made some... interesting adaptation decisions. They rushed through one of the most impactful parts of the VN in chapter 7 because it was very reliant on its audience having gone through Extra. Episode 3 in particular was just unbelievably disappointing. Instead, however, they lengthened chapter 9, opting to adapt the manga at 2 chapters per episode for Sadogashima, meaning 4 episodes spent on what only took 2.5 hours in the VN. While this did mean that Sadogashima was handled superbly, parts of chapter 7 were handled very poorly. Additionally, as was also the case in season 1, we still have the rather stale and lifeless character designs and colour palettes. The 2D animation did improve between the two seasons but it was still not exactly the greatest thing in the world.

Anyways, if you've already played through the trilogy, the Muv-Luv Alternative anime is absolutely worth watching. Don't let the cynicism of the fandom fool you. Honestly, if it weren't for how poorly they handled episodes 3-4, I think this would definitely deserve a higher score.

Muv-Luv Alternative is the 3rd and final part of the Muv-Luv trilogy. It is also the highest rated visual novel of all time on VNDB, which is the MAL equivalent for visual novels.

As the overwhelming majority of VN->anime adaptations go, I was expecting complete garbage from the anime adaptation. But needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised by its quality. It's nothing spectacular but it's definitely fine. The mecha action is well-animated and the CG looks pretty solid. The pacing itself isn't horrendous although it is a bit rushed in some of the earlier parts of the season.

In general, it's genuinely not a bad adaptation. ... If the VN is a 9/10, the first season of the anime is a 7/10. The main issue is that it's not friendly to newcomers into the franchise as it requires context from the first two parts of the trilogy, of which neither have been adapted.

I would recommend this to anybody who has read the original trilogy via the visual novels.