So what IS Steins;Gate? To put it simply, it's a well-thought-out cute whacky time-travel story. It's a lot like Doctor Who, actually, but with a little more grounded conflict and intelligent plot design (so like Doctor Who on a good day). If you go in with no expectations you'll be entertained, you'll ooh and ahh, you'll route for the over-the-top characters, and you'll get a nice dose a romance and a disney-esque ending (except more clever). I would have loved to have written a bouncy and satisfied review about how much fun this show was and how other people should get a group together and watch this, but that's not gonna happen. You see, the most important line of that above description was "if you go in with no expectations".
At this point, no one is going in without expectations.
This review is for those who haven't already seen the show. I'm writing this not because I don't think you should watch Steins;Gate, but because when you do I want you to not have to go into it with unrealistic expectations.
This show has had the crap hyped out of it. The MAL community has stuck it in the number 2 spot of all time for scoring, hundreds of thousands of people have favorited it, dozens of 10s reviews are written every day, and people keep on talking about how it "changed their life" or is "the best anime of all time". We've seen what happens when shows get this kind of popularity: a counter-culture arises intent on proving that this fame is unwarranted, finding the most obvious problems with the show and using this to destroy it. Bleach, Fairy Tail, Naruto, Attack on Titan, Sword Art Online: all have risen to astounding heights and all have been met with vicious opposition pointing out that they're full of fillers, or have shallow and cliche characters, or are melodramatic, or are repetitive. Well, Steins;Gate doesn't have these problems. It isn't superficially "bad", it's not entirely unoriginal, and it doesn't take itself very seriously which gives it a huge defense against anyone being nit-picky. There's no flaw you can hone in on. Sure, you can chip away at the edges, but that's not enough to justify writing a scathing review. It also feels like a pretty cool show, which makes people even reluctant to attack it for its tone or for being too sappy. What happens as a result is that we're left with no one espousing anything but praise for Steins;Gate despite the fact that, well...
Well, we'll get back to that. Time to for the review portion.
ART & SOUND
Not particularly relevant. The art is pretty standard aside from the color palette, which consists of a lot of greys, whites and blacks. This felt appropriate for a scientific show and was a nice reflection of how the characters felt about their lives. The opening and ending were both pretty solid, but nothing otherworldly. The OST left absolutely no impression on me, which I suppose means that it at least wasn't jarring.
EVERYTHING ELSE
Breaking up the elements of a story is a terrible way to review it. The story is going to succeed based on how well these elements work together, not how "good" they are on their own.
Steins;Gate is a time-travel story. While I wouldn't call it "groundbreaking", it definitely manages to use the elements of the genre in a way that is fresh and endearing. Steins;Gate uses most of classic elements of time-travel: time paradoxes, various timelines, the relationship between the past, present and future, but it does a really good job of establishing what the rules and limitations of time travel are and how it functions, and then sticking to them. Because it strictly abides by the rules of its own universe, it makes plot revelations related to time-travel very satisfying because you realize that you probably could have figured them out beforehand it you'd put your mind to it. The device used to time-travel in Steins;Gate is a toaster oven (the use of an absurd mundane object makes me think of Doctor Who once again) and it uses just the right about of obvious not-meant-to-be-taken-seriously pseudoscience to make this work. It was also refreshing to find that right off the bat the characters in Steins;Gate weren't trying to invent time travel because there was something they wanted to do or change with it, but instead simply because time travel is really f*cking cool and they wanted to see if they could do it. In addition, instead of just having one mad scientist Steins;Gate understands that science is not usually something that progresses that drastically at the hands of one person: it takes a team of talented and intelligent people to make progress, and it was the endearing dynamics of the Future Gadget Lab and its array of talented and untalented members that oftentimes made the show so enjoyable.
As the story develops, we start to see Steins;Gate make very clever use of its time-travel elements and begins to build a plot that uses many of the small details from its early episodes to make sense. It proves that it's capable of being dramatic and even occasionally a bit dark, but in the end it always comes back to its ridiculous roots and towards the end it shows that it can use its attention to recursive detail to craft some relatively hysterical scenes as well. The characters, with the exception of the main two, are all pretty standard archetypes who exist mainly to further the plot and add to the humor, but they are well-written and the jokes land more often than not. They don't feel forced, and they don't feel recycled even though the bubbly moe girl and the cute, nice, and generally flawless Nagisa-from-Clannad characters are essentially built on the same foundation as ever (along with others, like the romantically unthreatening best friend). The two main characters are original, well-crafted individuals with real depth and personality. They're also adults, which should not be such a big deal but this is anime so unfortunately it is. Both of them are definitely prime examples for standards of character writing, and they easily carry the show, adding a great deal of charisma and much-needed empathy for when the show decides to be dramatic.
But these are all things that have already been said. Everyone talks about this show all the time, and they use far more exaggerated hyperbole than I just did to sing of the show's many merits. It gets described as the most compelling, amazing, and important story ever written for the reasons I just described. But here's what I see:
1. Good time travel. Nothing genre-changing, but well-integrated and used smartly = clever
2. Good humor. Doesn't feel the need to draw attention to its jokes, creative with its laughs = funny
3. Good characters. Chemistry is present, well fleshed-out, elicits an emotional connection from the audience = cute
Steins;Gate is clever, funny and cute.
But guys, it doesn't redefine story-telling, it doesn't do anything exceptionally unique, and it really mean anything. At the end of the day, Steins;Gate doesn't do anything that exceptional. It doesn't provide any reasons that it should stand above anything else. Solid execution does not warrant a spot in the hall of fame.
It's a fun show: it's smart, funny, and touching. And if that's why you enjoy it, then that's great. It's good at that. But the expectations this show has at this point far exceed being "fun". It's supposed to be the story of the century, a life-changing masterpiece that will forever alter the way you see the world. I, for one, went into it being told that this was the case, both by the MAL community and by a few friends who had already watched it. The result? I was disappointed. What otherwise would've been a show I could have enjoyed exceptionally became a constant source of letdown as time and again it failed to really be anything OTHER than clever, funny and cute. The ending struck me as an all-new level of bad, not because the ending was actually bad, but because I had been led to expect Madoka Magica or even Evangelion and instead I got Disney's Frozen. It amazed me that people who had actually seen something like Evangelion were telling me that THIS was anime's masterpiece. Yeah, Eva has tons of things wrong with it. It's really easy to poke holes in the show's structure. But what it DOES manage to capture in the tumultuous internal suffering of its characters is TIMELESS. Regardless of how old Eva gets, people will be able to look back and find truth, meaning, revelation, and significance in the words of Shinji Ikari, Asuka Langely, Misato and others. For Steins;Gate, that just isn't true. It doesn't try to make you look at the world a new way. At one point, it has a very distinct opportunity to end. If it had, my opinion of it would have been slightly different. It would have somewhat told a story of accepting loss, learning that we can't undo our mistakes or the past, and being able to move forward because we are able to see the importance of what we do have over the sorrow of what we have left behind. However, the show happily threw this away in order to finish tying up all its plot threads and make that picture-esque ending happen. Time-travel fixes everything. Now we're back in Clannad: Afterstory.
Steins;Gate is overhyped. It cannot live up to expectations, which is a pity, because it's a pretty damn good show. What's more of a problem than this, though, is just how much the show is talked about. People discuss this show at an unimaginable frequency. The truth of the matter is, there just really isn't that much to talk about. Once the plot has been reconstructed by a couple of fans, all that's really left is to make fan art. There's no moral discussion, there's no philosophical aspect, there's no new way to look at story-telling or some original element that people can examine: it's just an entertaining journey that's difficult to poke holes in. If you haven't seen it yet, go watch it! You have my full recommendation. But please, don't go into it expecting to have your perception of story-telling forever altered. You'll just end up being disappointed.
