The sad truth is, there’s really no good way to go about this for me. When I take stock of where I am with Steins;Gate 0 right now, it’s not pretty. But nothing good will come from savaging it, especially since after last week’s episode much of what made this one so weak were repeat offenses. And we’re so close to the end that it only makes sense to see it through, especially given the enormous affection I have for the first series.
Still – this show really is a mess at the moment. The writing seems mostly trying to do damage control, to hold things together by whatever means possible even as the structure the first series (and of course the VN before that) built crumbles all around them. Admittedly, it will help tremendously if the combat scenes are over, because they’ve been legit some of the worst I’ve ever seen in anime. It would also help if Kagari were out of the picture, though apparently after having been shot like 15 times she’s going to be just fine. And please – can someone turn off the soundtrack?
As far as the Prof. Leskinen development goes, that’s been telegraphed almost since his first appearance. And honestly that’s fine – I don’t think it was supposed to be a surprise that he was the big bad (I sure hope it wasn’t). I could have done without him literally dissolving into evil laughter so often, but I knew he was going to be outed as a supervillain sooner or later. And the idea of him hatching this plot with his future self is one of the more interesting elements “0” has introduced to the equation.
As to what happened with Suzuha and Mayuri, we may be staring at one of those cases where “time paradox” is used as a pretext for “gaping plot hole”. If nothing else it’ll be interesting to see how the writing extricates itself from this. If Mayushi died, she never adopted Kagari in the future, and Kagari never went on a rampage. If they escaped the missile and got to the past, why didn’t Okarin’s Reading Steiner activate? Did they actually go to the future instead of the past, maybe because of the missile? Maybe now that there’s really no time for the extraneous ridiculousness that’s gummed up the works in the second cour, Steins;Gate 0 will be forced to focus on the bare essentials and salvage something from this narrative crater the last few episodes have left it buried in. I sure hope so – if “0” is the way Steins;Gate goes out as an anime, I want it to be on a higher note than this.
Stefan
August 16, 2018 at 12:53 amThey never get it. Only Mirai Nikki gets to have trashy scenes and still work.
Haraga
August 16, 2018 at 4:35 amI’m not defending the current state of the show, but technically Kagari was adopted by another Mayuri, not the one that went into the machine. There is another Kagari that is supposed to be born in this world line later.
The action scenes, though. They were terrible. Why wouldn’t anyone at any point during the production question them? They barely worked as stills in the VN, and in motion, without any significant changes to the layout, they turned into absolute garbage.
Panino Manino
August 16, 2018 at 7:38 amThey say that the novel is bad, but even without knowing it it’s obvious that this adaptation is not good.
At least is “hilarious?”
I’m just watching to see Suzuhara’s face, so that’s ok.
Water Imp
August 17, 2018 at 2:41 am>_> I just want my free sub: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRJiP5ku-u0
*Sigh* there are often too many series that eventually path down this road.
Guardian Enzo
August 17, 2018 at 5:50 amIs there a captain’s hat involved?
Water Imp
August 20, 2018 at 10:24 pmNo hat. Just the free sub.
kanda92
August 17, 2018 at 7:16 amI recently played the SG visual novel, and so I remember the time travel rules more clearly now.
Time Jumps usually don’t diverge much from the original timeline unlike D-mail since some points in the future are fixed according to the observer’s (Okabe) perspective, if the change is insignificant, Reading Steiner won’t activate, in this case meaning Suzuha and Mayuri failed to change the future enough for Reading Steiner to activate. Also regarding the Kagari plot hole, the time machine, assuming it managed to escape the blast, has the possibility to travel to the future, thus while Mayuri disappears in 2011, she may arrive in the future.
I am thinking of starting the SG0 novel now (and explore the Kagari-free route), since anime adaptions usually cannot explain the story how it’s meant to be told.
Stefan
August 17, 2018 at 10:58 amThe sad thing is that S;G used to be an exception to that.
GC
September 5, 2018 at 7:06 pmI hate when anime has normal people (even skilled soldiers) defy the laws of physics and common sense. Like someone swinging a sword in close proximity and the other person they are fighting just casually dodges it. In this case Suzuna dodges bullets from machine guns only 5-10 feet away from her.