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Steins;Gate
Anime Review
Steins;Gate should probably win some kind of award for being the most confusing show about time travel ever- and we say this as big fans of Doctor Who. However, we would also happily nominate Steins;Gate for an award for having some of the best characters ever; we were usually too busy enjoying watching the kids from the Future Gadget Lab do their thing to mind how confused we were. While the story may have suffered in the conversion from a visual novel to a 24-episode anime series, and feels a good deal more convoluted than it probably should, the great cast ensured that this was one of our favorite anime not just of 2011, but overall.
Steins;Gate centers around 18-year-old Okabe Rintarou, "Okarin" for short, a self-proclaimed "Mad Scientist." Together with his spacey childhood friend Mayuri and Daru, a so-called master hacker (refreshingly realistic in the sense that he's kind of chubby and doesn't go on a lot of dates), they form the Future Gadget Lab, housed in a small Akihabara apartment.
 At first, they seem to be devoted to creating weird inventions just for the heck of it, but they get in over their heads when they create the Phone Microwave (name subject to change!), a device that can send text messages to the past. When Okarin draws the attention of Makise Kurisu, a young scientific prodigy with serious credentials, and starts experimenting with time travel in earnest, what started as a fun experiment quickly becomes a desperate battle to keep everyone alive, and maybe even save the world.
A lot of the appeal of Steins;Gate's early episodes comes from Okarin, an eccentric beanpole of a young man who would probably be a supporting character on most other shows, but earns a place here as one of our favorite protagonists. Constantly nattering about grand conspiracies, practicing his completely over-the-top evil laugh and engaging in imaginary conversations on his cell phone, he's fascinating to observe, even if the guy would probably scare us in real life. Watching Okarin go from a kid who plays at being a mad scientist, to someone who's forced to become more and more like the character he's playing to the point that it's not clear what, if any of it is an act anymore, is one of the most uniquely satisfying character arcs we can remember.
 Kurisu is also an uncommonly interesting main character, and a great foil for Okarin's brand of insanity. While we've gotten the prickly female tsundere character type by the boatload lately, Kurisu is a rarity: a character with some tsundere tendencies who isn't completely defined by that character type. She's also the main source of romantic tension in the series, without ever being reduced to simply "the love interest." Though not the main character, she's just as important to the overall plot as Okarin is, and we appreciated her lucid explanations of time travel mechanics when we couldn't keep up (but don't tell anybody that.)
Where Steins;Gate starts to get bogged down is trying to keep track of what the text messages sent to the past accomplish. Sometimes, there's a simple cause and effect relationship that makes perfect sense, and other times, the things that change in the future seem to be completely unrelated to the message. Furthermore, every time a D-Mail (a play on E-mail, since D comes before E) is sent, the time stream changes: this means character scenes that we remember may or may not have actually happened for the characters. It gets difficult, if not impossible, to keep track of which characters still know each other and who said what to whom in this timeline.
 Fortunately, since we're so tied up with Okarin, it usually doesn't matter what the rest of the extended cast does or doesn't remember from the past, and we just let it all go. However, it is disappointing that our response to such an intelligent show in general was to throw up our hands and try not think about it too hard. Giving up on keeping track of the time travel minutia makes it difficult to speculate, which would normally be half the fun of this kind of show.
While the show is generally well-directed, of course it's not perfect; some might find the pacing of the early episodes a bit slow for their taste, and the characters' faces aren't always properly drawn. However, the action sequences are always well done, and the production of Steins;Gate always seems to deliver the goods when it really matters: the show is host to some truly memorable dramatic moments. Some might find it crosses the line into melodrama at times, but we felt that the drama was generally believable (to the extent that time travel stories can be) and affecting.
 However, the show does show its visual novel roots at times; at one point, we swore the show was emulating a dating simulation pattern, even though the original visual novel by 5pb. and Nitroplus is not a dating sim. Like the brilliant student that the teacher expects more from, we were so used to Steins;Gate being creative and different that when we saw typical visual novel tropes pop up, it seemed like it was beneath the rest of the show. We didn't think there was a bad episode per se, but the writing becomes a little contrived for a brief stretch of the second half.
Preferences for anime openings are a personal thing, but we would be remiss if we didn't mention the great opening sequence, "Hacking to the Gate." In addition to featuring great vocals by Kanako Ito, it's one of those sequences that manages to convey all of the major themes of the show and provide a healthy dose of foreshadowing without spoiling anything; it's fun how your perception of the theme changes the more you know. Of course, we should have known what we were in for when we saw that black butterfly flying around.
 With the series licensed in North America by Funimation and a movie continuation on the way, there's more from the Future Gadget Lab in store. Until then, we'll just be practicing our Mad Scientist laughs and trying to be as cool as Okarin thinks he is- or, maybe as cool as Okarin actually is? It's hard to know for sure with Steins;Gate. Currently, all 24 episodes of Steins;Gate are available streaming on Crunchyroll.
Reviewed by Karen Gellender,
December 2011
Below: Scenes from Steins;Gate.
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