Reviews

I almost feel bad not liking this anime as much as most people do, since everyone seems so passionate about it, but as an avid fan of science-fiction, I have to say this show's treatment of time-travel is a complete mess. There are so many contradictions, so many wild misunderstandings of real life ideas, and so many moments where I felt like saying, "But hold on a second, why can't you just ...," that I eventually gave up keeping track of the faults, and just pretended like the decisions the characters had to make, and the things they did made sense, and let the emotions of the show carry me. Because this is truly where it shines. The chemistry between the characters is excellent and it's a pure joy to be in their midst for the while it lasts. So I wonder if by criticizing the sci-fi for its lack of coherence, I'm in a way not taking Steins;Gate for what it is. This is after all a show where CERN is an evil organization creating black holes with the LHC in order to make all of time a communist utopia, and the transfer of huge amounts of data through text messages can be explained by hacking into the LHC and compressing the data using a black hole, which is as absurdly hilarious as it is mysterious.

Even taking it mainly for its characters though, there are some issues, particularly in pacing. The first episode is very confusing, and it doesn't help that the crazy concepts abruptly being introduced come side-by-side with the main character being himself, who for the first half of the show as a joke keeps insisting to everyone he is a mad scientist and talks about paranoid theories he doesn't actually believe. One is left not even sure what to take seriously as for someone unfamiliar with the show, time-travelling is no more believable than conspiracy theories are. After this confusing first episode it then takes about five more before the plot is even established, the ones before mainly being used to set up the characters, and only in episode 13 does the show actually get properly serious. This structure makes sense when one considers the anime is based on a visual novel, and in a way it's admirable that they are seemingly truthful to it, but it does not make for good pacing for an anime. It's too unbalanced. Other than all that, the darkish visuals, and the music do what they are supposed to do.

Concluding, I would call Steins;Gate a fairly above average time-travelling thriller, but mainly for its amusing characters.