Most of the characters range from pointless to downright awful. Moeka and Shouichi are two of the worst characters I have seen in fiction and hold no place in any story that takes itself seriously. Ruka and Fenris are just pointless and bring nothing to the table. The story bends over backwards to make Kurisu as likeable as possible to the point were it comes off as contrived. The only truly good character (imo at least) was Okabe.
The ending is at best boring and unoriginal and at it's worst completely contrived and unrealistic. Guy gets the girl, all the good guys end up happy, badguy is just some heartless dick who gets what is coming to him and everything wraps itself up nicely. This is all fine and good if you only want to see the characters happy, but I went into this thinking it would actually try to make you think or try to think outside the box a little. Instead your given the most cliche cut and dry ending possible to the point where the story has to bend over backwards just to make it work. Characters start remembering timelines they have no reason to be able to remember because the story says so, and the final confrontation just has each character acting dumber then the last. It's lazy, unoriginal and frankly just poorly written.
The pacing is off too. I don't mind the slow start, and I thought the middle of the series is the one aspect that was genuinely fantastic and engaging, but then it cuts away from everyone so the main character can start going on dates with the useless side characters around the city followed by the completely garbage climax. It's as if the writers got to the ending of episode 16 and then just gave up trying to make an engaging story. whoever thought it was a good idea for the ending arc to be a compilation of Okabe going on dates is a moron.
And then theres the movie which adds NOTHING to the series and is just a cheap cash grab by showing more Okabe/Kurisu proving that it's ok to recycle the EXACT SAME STORY AND ADD NOTHING as long as you don't forget the artificial emotional payoff.
To all the people who said this is a masterpiece. Screw you for making me think this anime would be worthwhile. Try watching something that at least tries to bring something new to the table and is actually thought provoking. I'm sure my review will get down voted like crazy (I've written reviews on Bleach to similar effect) but the honest truth is there are so many better and thought provoking stories out there that deserve more attention then they ever get that should be experienced before this one.
Is this anime bad? No. It's a 6/10 in my books despite all of my ranting. I just can't help but be angry when I read comments like "this anime is a masterpiece that you must experience" It's not, by any stretch of the imagination. FMA:B and Clannad I can understand even though they're not my favorites.. I can at least see what they bring to the table, but I'm completely dumbfounded with this one.
