Steins; Gate [Final Impression]

Steins; Gate is unfortunately over, but let’s not cry just yet and try to remember everything that made this show so great in a final impression.

Animation & Art

The style for this anime was something I really loved, it was not so much about shiny explosion and  wonderful wardrobe. The setting was really dark most of the time, the color were always contrasting between the white of Okabe’s lab coat and the darkness of the world around him. The focus was not so much about the action happening around the character, but on the character themselves. There were so many close up on the character’s face whenever something important happen and every time you could clearly see the emotion on that character’s face.  Anime share the characters feeling through their words and expression, the words were most often nowhere to be found when something dramatic happened, they had no need to be any words, because the character’s emotion were clearly shown and beautifully at that.

 

I have seen more colourful and more beautiful anime before, but they were not able to communicate the character emotions just as well as Steins; Gate. Hence why I give Steins; Gate a 9/10.

 

Rating 9/10

Characters

 

I think this is where the anime shine the most, yes the art was beautiful, the story was awesome, but in the end we love the characters of this show more than anything else that compose it. The story is all about the characters and how they react to the change in their life.  Okabe has become an iconic character to me with his amazing imagination. He will forever be remembered as the mad scientist Hououin Kyoma, code name El Psy Congroo. It is so cheesy, but it fits Okabe so well. From the beginning of the show you can tell who Okabe really is and what he really wants in the end, you can see him play this beautiful act called life and meet all those people.

 

Kurisu was your usual tsundere girl…or was it? She felt much more human than most of the tsundere I saw in previous show. She had a history, she had her problems and she had her way of dealing with them. In the end she was the most intelligent character of the group, but she was still one of the most insecure of them too.

How sad was it when we saw Moeka shoot Mayuri for the first time, how troubling was it to see everything in the story change so quickly without any warning. How interesting was it to slowly forget about Mayuri and eventually not even care that she dies again and again, how was it to go through the same process as Okabe. The initial suffering, the pain of losing someone we though would never disappear, then even when using all your wit and power you still cannot figure a way to save that person, you feel powerless and you eventually lose up to the point where you simply break down and you don’t give a fuck anymore, this is the way we deal with pain when it is insurmountable, we forget there is even a problem, we flee from reality.

 

This is why the characters where so absolutely magnificent in Steins; Gate, they felt real and you were ut in a position where you could really learn to love or hate the characters. I give the show a 10/10 on characters.

 Rating 10/10

 Original Sound Track & Opening/Closing theme:

I really liked the ending and opening, they were catchy, but in the end they were most likely the worst part of the show, which might actually be a good thing. While it was good it was nothing stellar and there were some way better intro and outro during both the Spring and Summer season. So I don’t feel like it was anything better than above average, but in the end who cares about the intro and outro when the show is this awesome? You don’t care about an introduction, you want to get to the story right away.

Rating 8/10

Storyline

 

The story in Steins; Gate is just majestically well done, it is well constructed and every episode that past brings an even more intense episode. There were some things here and there that I disliked, some inconsistency, but in the end we are watching the story of a mad 18 years old scientist who creates a time machine using a microwave and a cellphone.  So the universe never takes itself too seriously to begin with. The science is not meant to be exact, this is not the purpose of the show, I feel like in the end, it doesn’t matter if the time travelling happens because they ate green bananas or because they sent bit of data to be compressed in a black hole.  No one knows how to create a time machine, so if they want to say that a microwave and a cellphone can send stuff in the past, why not. The story was not as solid as the character, it had some holes, but they were all so minor and the story was so enjoyable overall that I can’t really complain about it.

 

If anything I would like to complain of how sucked into the story I was, that would be my biggest complain. Therefore I give the story a 9/10, it was not perfection, but it was really close to it.

 

Rating 9/10

 

Overall Entertainment Value

I think that this show win this category hands down. There was nothing wrong with this show, everything was at the very least above average in term of quality. The characters were fantastic and fun to watch and follow, you actually cared about them, contrary to many show. Every character had its place in the story and there was none that was useless or simply a waste of air time.

 

The universe was fantastic and it was so awesome to follow the story of this mad scientist, who had no clue what the hell he was doing , try to save the world from world war III. How cool is it when there is a time travelling show that actually kind of make sense and use the many layers of time to its advantage. I’m not saying that the show was trying to tell us how time travel work, they made it really clear from the beginning that time travel is just fantasy and therefore just as any fantasy, it cannot be done in real life. That was the real signification behind that phone microwave, it was meant to show how ridicule the idea of time travel is in a real world perspective. But when you disregard how you achieve time travel, it is an awesome concept.

 

Okabe had to suffer through the same week over and over again and when you think that everything is over, it is all to be redone.  And the reason why it was so fun was because the character were well constructed and you were really following the characters of the story, both from an emotional and psychological stand point. In the end this is what makes an anime great, when you feel that you become involved emotionally and psychological in the show you watch, when you feel like you are a part of it.

 

This show was such fun to watch, I simply must give it a 10/10 for entertainment value.

 

Rating: 10/10

Conclusion

I think the best word I can think of when describing Steins; Gate would be mind-blowing. This show is the best of  2011 up to now and by the look of  the Fall season, I would say that it might very well keep the number one spot for the year. It now is a part of the list of show that I will rewatch and that I encourage people to see. It was an epic 24 episodes journey through time that made those 3 weeks the show takes place in looks like the longest and most eventful weeks ever. The show was beautiful, the character were absolutely legendary, the story was great and the sound wasn’t that bad. It has everything to be loved. I can still remember Okabe shooting his name ” HOUOUIN KYOMA”, there is no words to describe how awesome that character was.

I recommend this show to anyone who have yet to watch it, but it is quite the serious and complicated show, so if your favorite shows consist of Pokemon, Naruto and K-ON, you might want to look for something else instead.

This show gets a 9/10 from me, a definite buy and a definite win.

Final Rating: 9/10

ZeroG signing off