Common Name: Steins;Gate 0
Alternative Names: Steins;Gate Zero, Steins Gate 0, Steins Gate Zero
Score: 10/10, 4/5
Length: 23 Episodes
Genre: Thriller, Drama, Action, Comedy, Mystery, Sc-Fi, Military, Grimdark
Summary: Following one of the darker timelines in which Okabe Rintarou, formerly the mad scientist "Hououin Kyouma," fell prey to his own weakness and gave up trying to reach the Steins;Gate world line, it's generally safe to assume that everything has changed. While the threat of a third world war still looms in the distance, Okabe has decided to try his hand at a normal life, desperate to leave his old one behind. Try as he might, though, fate has a funny way of working against him as a coworker of the deceased Makise Kurisu, Okabe's rival and love in the Alpha worldlines, encounters Okabe and draws him into an experiment in testing the abilities of an AI copy of Kurisu. Not only that, but this world's Suzuha claims to have lost track of a young girl she brought with her from the future. As if it weren't bad enough that this lost child happens to be Mayuri's adopted daughter and a near look-alike to Kurisu, it seems that this Shiina Kagari might very well be the thing that triggers the third World War. So, as fate would have it, the hope of a brighter future seems to rest heavily on the shoulders of an already broken Okabe Rintarou that has sworn off any such responsibilities. Perhaps, though, when the chips are down and hope is nearly lost, what the world really needs is a revival of the unbeatable Hououin Kyouma.
Review: For the purposes of this review, I'm just going to assume that everyone here has either read, played, or is generally acquainted with the original Steins;Gate series. I make this assumption because, quite frankly, this show will make absolutely no sense unless you are previously acquainted with the parent series to this one and are already well acquainted with its complex story and characters. If, however, you are not acquainted with the original series or game, I highly recommend running away now, grabbing a computer, and binging the entire series (via your preferred method of doing so) before coming back to this review. With that said, I've one last advisory when it comes to watching this show. Remember that gut-wrenching bit in the first Steins;Gate? Ok, that's not actually a fair question since there are a lot of those moments in the first Steins;Gate. So, to be more specific, remember when the show hit emotional bedrock watching Mayuri dying over and over and Okabe just going insane from all his fruitless attempts to save her? Yeah, my bit of advice is that you might want to avoid this show unless you're willing to put up with that same feeling right from the word go and then for several long, protracted moments as the show goes on. Put plainly, where Steins;Gate was generally a lighter and happier show with dots of absolute darkness sprinkled throughout, this show is the exact opposite.
You know you're in for some shit when your protagonist hero character starts
the show needing to try out hypnotherapy to make things "OK."
Steins;Gate 0 starts dark, stays dark, and only gives us brief glimpses of that lighter tone and comedy that was standard of the first series when its clear that things cannot possibly get any worse, barring Okabe committing suicide to end this hell he's found himself in. But here's the thing, I actually kinda like that change of pace. Sure, it's a hard point to start at, in terms of both its emotional and narrative weight; all the more so for anyone who wasn't super into the first show like I was. Yet, by changing the tone and formula the old show ran on, it's clear pretty quickly that Steins;Gate 0 is going to be a different beast entirely from the first series or even the movie. All too easily, it could have just started at this point, hit rock bottom, and then spent the whole series climbing back up. What it ops to do instead, though, is adopt the dramatic hills and valleys that made up the original show's storyline and inverted them to give us something that feels a lot more painful and grueling. In many ways, Okabe's journey throughout this show and, by association, the experience of watching this show feels a lot like Sisyphus' trail of rolling a boulder up a hill. As terrible as that might sound, though, it's not hard to suffer through it because we've already tasted success. Having seen the first series that this one is built off of, we know that the Steins;Gate worldline exists. We know, from the very beginning, that this journey's conclusion will likely be a good one since the parked time machine that will inevitably bring that worldline about is basically reduced to a "Chekhov's gun." When, where, why, how, and by whom that gun will be fired is also understood to be a point of contention, though, since Okabe is far too broken to even consider tampering with time, risking what little peace he's made for himself.
And to think Mayuri is the reason this nonsense is happening at all.
You might think I'm joking, but I'm really not.
The "whom" in that string of interrogatives is particularly suspect this time around, though, thanks to the introduction of several new characters in this series. Many of these characters, like Daru's future wife, Amane Yuki, and Mayuri's school friends, Nakase Katsumi and Kurushima Kaede, are basically reduced to being "adds" that have little to no impact to the story as a whole but instead work to pad things out. For the most part, though, these new characters all have something new or interesting to offer the show, adding a lot to the drama that was already part of the original show. The Amane Suzuha of this worldline, for example, is one that we've never actually met. While, yes, she does make an appearance in the original series as a kind of dark gag that a third World War looms in the distance, rather than the initial threat of SERN's world domination scheme, we actually know nothing about her or her version of the future. The show does quickly amend this issue to make her fit the role of the original Suzuha, but there are a few differences in her personality and history that make her far more aggressive and confrontational, if not outright antagonistic, toward Okabe than her first incarnation who was, ultimately, still very childish--a descriptor that doesn't fit this Suzuha at all.
Don't fuck with WWIII Suzuha. She'll mess you up.
As if to drive that point home, this new Suzuha comes with a piece of baggage in the form of a girl named Shiina Kagari, Mayuri's adopted daughter from the future. Or, at least, she would have come with the baggage had they not gotten separated after an initial jump to 1999 to stop Y2K from happening. So, rather than appearing as the little girl that came with future Suzuha, we're introduced to a more grown-up version of her that bears a striking resemblance to Makise Kurisu, assuming you're just looking at her face. As you might expect of the action thriller/spy drama this series likes to toy with, though, this gap in accountability for Kagari makes her not just suspicious but downright dangerous to the plan of reaching the Steins;Gate worldline. On the other hand, though, she is obsessively fond of Mayuri and thus wouldn't necessarily want to risk setting off another string of Alpha worldines in which Mayuri's premature death is unavoidable.
Damnit, Daru, don't make it weird.
Apart from these notable additions to the show, though, there's also a whole new faction of characters that latch onto Okabe strictly because of his connection to Kurisu. Among these are the characters of Hiyajou Maho, a diminutive and slobby genius of a girl who has a terrible inferiority complex whenever it comes to Kurisu (a fact that only worsened after her death), and Professor Alexis Leskinen, who can simply be described as the most American character this show could hope to imagine. Though the whys and hows of their intentions are generally unclear, these former lab mates of the late Makise Kurisu have been working feverishly, Maho in particular, to create a True AI known as Amadeus from scans of Kurisu's memories before she left for Japan. Where Leskinen is mainly used as a gag character, Maho jumps into the show in earnest due to her own burning curiosity of how this guy she never heard of or met has any connection to Kurisu. Over the course of the show, though, she becomes a character as compelling and important as Kurisu was to the original show. She is, in many ways, the Kurisu for this show given her genius that keeps the show's scientific advances moving but also because of her own dark and flawed personality that jives perfectly with the broken Okabe. Together, they struggle to gain one another's trust and respect all while working with a literal ghost of their past in the form of Amadeus, the AI that both looks like, thinks, and acts like the old Kurisu--a concept that hurts them as much as it helps them heal.
Next to Okabe and one other, Maho is easily this show's most compelling characters. At the very least, she's the greatest out of the new cast.
On top of the new cast of characters with new gags and new problems for the show to delve into, though, one of this new series' greatest features is the direction it takes its storytelling. Where the original relied a lot on brief, little arcs that went into various iterations of the show's characters that helped inform them as the characters we know today but still ended up feeling a bit tired, tropey, and weaker than the main story, this show has nothing but a main story. This time around, there is very little timeline hopping and very little happens to alter the timelines unless it's absolutely necessary. So, rather than relying on the time machine or time leap machine to solve all of Okabe's problems, his fear of what using those things might do makes him actively decide that he'll try to just solve things without them, making this show feel far more serious and dangerous. What this also does is make the show's pacing and overall arc feel far more linear. Though there are still stints of Okabe running to save people like the protagonist he is, things are typically only briefly resolved as more and more complications crop up that he is able but unwilling to solve in the manner he used to. Clearly, this hydra of problems he faces is meant to drive him into a corner where he'll need to use the time machine that ready and available for him, yet the show generally does a fantastic job measuring out the application of this drama so that things feel beyond Okabe's control but not so much so that they can't be solved. The last thing this new and more consequence-heavy format does for the show, though, is give us the time and ability to actually see Okabe and the rest of the cast struggling with both his desires and his weaknesses in a way we've never seen before. We see him act as a flawed character who is, in many ways, a despicable coward, one who will sacrifice everyone else's happiness and agency to suit his own deficiencies. Since there are no alternate versions of the characters to contend with, we get to see them all grow, change, and buckle under the weight and severity of their situation. Yet, at the same time, nearly all of them manage to rise above it like Okabe used to but abjectly refuses to now that he's given up.
Or, rather, that is until he's finally given the push he needs to overcome his fears and weakness.
Much like the first show, there are a few flaws to note though. While Steins;Gate 0 effectively eliminated the threat of loose threads and contrived connections between worldlines that abounded in the original series thanks to its more linear story, it also exacerbated one of the original show's other problems to the point that it becomes hard to miss. You see, in the original show, things moved at such a rapid pace that it often became difficult to sit and think about some of the implications of jumping worldlines. One minute you'd have Okabe trying to solve the main plot only to jump a worldline that hinged on a particular event that he or one of the other lab members changed through the use of D-Mail. The next, he'd be working to clean up that same mess using both that and the time leap machine. Yet, because the previous series spent so much time worldline-hopping, there was never any time to consider what or if anything actually changed. When it comes to Steins;Gate Zero, that question is effectively answered in one of the few instances in which Okabe accidentally shifts to an Alpha worldline where Mayuri dies. In this timeline, he gives up on saving Mayuri just like he did on saving Kurisu in this series' main Beta worldline, severing all contact with the old lab members until the "main" Okabe landed in this one's head and became desperate to get back to the Beta worldline. Through this brief acknowledgment of a separate Okabe's actions, we are given a full view of this series' main conceptual flaw: nothing is actually being changed when he "swaps" or "alters" a worldline. All Okabe effectively does is shift his original consciousness, from the first Beta worldline to other worldlines, to piggyback and undermine the decisions of his other selves to suit his own agendas. Once his consciousness has left the host Okabe, though, it's generally unclear whether that Okabe's mind is just forever the same as the swapper's or if it returns to its original state. Regardless of which it is, though, the host Okabe is left in that other world without knowing whether he changed anything or not. So, effectively, this show cracked open a can of worms where its impossible to overlook the fact that there's still a male Rukako worldline, a nerdless Akihabara worldline, and hundreds of others where everyone is forced to contend Mayuri's death. As if to make up for this fact, though, it seems that this "main" Beta worldline's Okabe is determined to actually change something--himself. Rather than just swap to a worldline where he can make everything perfect or forcing his conscience on his younger self, he's working to just let his old self swap to that Steins;Gate worldline the current one stays to make amends with the worldline he's got.
Highlighting a problem just to resolve one of the original show's greatest unknowns
and also kinda resolve it--I can't tell if that's a stupid or genius idea.
All and all, I'm still more than satisfied to call this a masterpiece of a show, but not in the exact same way as the original. Where the first Steins;Gate was a masterpiece of sci-fi literature with some compelling characters, this one succeeds at being more of a dramatic thriller with sci-fi elements. In other words, this one takes a lot more time focusing on little minute details, for better and worse, and gives the main cast and side cast their time in the sun as they all have to contend with Okabe's choices. Though many of the female characters still suffer from being potential harem members and are thus always single all the time, they are given significantly more free reign and agency in this series, rather than just being people with problem Okabe had to magically "solve." In fact, Mayuri herself gets a massive part to play this time around that is in direct opposition to Okabe's desires, rather than just being stuck in her old role as "damsel in distress." So, oddly enough, this show succeeds where the old one failed and failed where the old one succeeded. It's a mirror image of a masterpiece which is, at the end of the day, just another masterpiece. Beyond the characters and story, though, everything is much the same quality-wise. The art, animation, and music are drop-dead gorgeous and effective at making as light or tense as the situation demands. I hardly think those aspects were ever in question though. So, I think there's similarly little doubt how I feel about this show. It's a perfect successor to what I consider one of the best show's modern anime has to offer and was well worth the pain and suffering I felt waiting for it and watching it turn "The Darkest Timeline: Suffer Edition" into a dark but ultimately hopeful.