Steins;Gate focuses on one man's battle against the world and all logic known to humans. "Mad Scientist" Okabe Rintarou, AKA Hououin Kyouma, an eccentric, seemingly paranoid delusional 18-year-old scientist who, unexpectedly, creates a time machine that allows him to send phone messages back into the past. From this premise, the entire story of Steins;Gate begins unraveling, and so the questions start: is it ok to change the past? how many times would you do it? why? and what would you do if the results from it were unexpected?
Steins;Gate begins off as an extremely confusing anime, the first few episodes are hard to understand, as they feel like the paranoid delusions of a schizophrenic man: delusions of grandeur, an "organization" chasing after him, talking on his own, and other nonsense. However, as the episodes go by, everything slowly starts clicking into place perfectly. The pacing of the story might, at times, feel off, but it's nevertheless very good. It drives us to where it wants to, taking its own time, explaining everything as it goes while still allowing the audience to figure things out on their own with some logic, just to sometimes prove them entirely wrong, while still maintaining a completely logical explanation to all of the anime's events.
This anime was recommended to me as an emotional one: it was supposed to make me cry. However, I can't call Steins;Gate a sad anime, as this adjective doesn't fit its nature. However, one adjective that perfectly fits it is "grim". Few times have I watched anything as grim as this. Steins;Gate's story is architecturally designed to make you feel hopeless, to suffer as you see everything go wrong again and again, and as you see the protagonist's mind deteriorate more and more. The despair that this anime manages to induce at times is much greater than any other anime I've ever watched; it is a feeling of utter desolation, like everything is lost and all that's left is to give up. It's an anime that will pain you, it will mess with your head and toy with your emotions, while trying to make you pretend things are actually alright, since you and the protagonist are the only ones to know everything that happens.
The concept behind Steins;Gate's plot revolves entirely around time traveling, as previously mentioned. The way this is pulled off is quite simply amazing, the entire plot makes sense and doesn't seem to ever contradict itself. The interesting thing is that the way time travel is done throughout the anime isn't, generally, through some machine that physically transports you back into the past, but instead through changing the events of the past or transporting the protagonist's mind back in time. What defines the plot, however, is that the protagonist, Okabe, is the only person able to retain the memories of a previous timeline, which eventually becomes a truly despairing thing, as he's forced to carry horrendous memories as he loops back in time again, and again, and again. All of this works like clockwork to make you psychologically hurt, it starts piling up on you, and you begin to get lost in the story as it keeps branching, going back and forth, seemingly to no avail; it truly is despair-inducing.
Visually, the anime has some great animation and pretty good character design, but what defines it are its dark and gritty color palettes and locations. Not only is Steins;Gate's story grim, but the entire visual style too: it feels desolate, abandoned. In the anime's visuals, the shadows are harder than the sunshine, every single place feels dark and void of life, the entire world of this show transmits a feeling of impending doom, and while at first this sort of visual style definitely feels off for what starts off as a quirky sci-fi anime, it all quickly starts feeling normal as the plot progresses and everything progressively gets worse, to a point in which the entire world matches the audience's feelings perfectly.
The only thing I could possibly complain about in this anime is the sound design. At times, it feels a bit lazy, with some sound effects sounding compressed, sometimes not even feeling like they fit the action being carried out, and other times having the anime miss a chance to implement certain sound effects to add greater impact to certain scenes. Soundtrack-wise, I must admit that the OST to Steins;Gate was somewhat forgettable, it hardly stood out, and I can't remember any of it other than the OP and ED songs, both of which are not bad. The voice acting is, for 90% of characters, spot-on and pretty good: the voices fit their characters, and while at times the characters' personalities might not entirely fit the situation, the way their voice lines are delivered are always spot-on: the sadness, the happiness, the misery, all the feelings the characters experience are perfectly portrayed by their VAs, which makes for a very convincing experience.
I decided not to really spoil the plot in this review because I'd truly recommend anyone who hasn't watched this to go ahead and do it, and if possible, play the Visual Novel first. Steins;Gate was an anime I wasn't planning to watch in the short-term, but fate made it so I did, and I wouldn't go back in time to undo it. It's quite frankly a masterpiece in many ways, with a perfectly-written plot and an atmosphere that seeps into you and slowly consumes you. This is one anime that understood how to connect with its audience, eerily so, and therefore, I think this is an anime everyone should watch, including you.
