Readers of a sensitive nature should probably look away.
I’m not going to beat around the bush – I pretty much hated this episode and everything about it. And that’s been the unfortunate trend with Steins;Gate 0 after it’s strong opening arc – every time it manages to conjure up a good episode, it follows it up with a clunker. For the sake of my own karmic health I try to keep this short of post short – I have a lot of affection for the original Steins;Gate and it gives me no pleasure to savage it now.
- OK, first of all – the soundtrack. So intrusive, so overwrought – I just kept screaming for it to stop, and it just wouldn’t stop. It was like the big-face girl on “Wings” – “When you look at where a face is supposed to be, you see face. But if you look to either side, you see…more face.”
- That ties neatly into the second point, which is that every time “0” tries to go for an emotional climax it delivers an overwrought (I tried to think of another word that would work so as to avoid using that one again, but nothing else fit) anti-climax instead. Steins;Gate delivered big drama, yes – but it did so organically. It was a product of the narrative – there was no clumsy manipulation involved.
- Last and worst though, that whole scene on the rooftop. My God, so many things wrong there:
- How did all those soldiers (and Kagari) get to the rooftop without Suzuha noticing them – was the D-mail really that riveting?
- How did all those soldiers (and don’t tell me you wouldn’t send the very best special ops people you have when a time machine is at stake) manage to miss Suzuha with automatic weapons while she was taking out most of them – with a pistol? You can’t have it both ways – Suzuha is such a super-soldier that she can take out an entire company of special ops, but such an incompetent that she doesn’t notice them arriving on a cramped rooftop?
- Why did all those soldiers stand around doing nothing as Suzuha – having just killed most of them, mind you – was standing over Mayuri? Why didn’t they riddle her with a thousand bullets?
- Why does Kagari still exist? Every time she appears the series goes to pot.
The really sad thing is, this should have been an effective development – Mayuri’s situation certainly has plenty of pathos to go around. But to me that makes the disappointment worse, because that means that this all comes down to a problem of execution. And next week S;G 0 may deliver another great episode and hook me back in, at least a little – that’s been the trend. But the ship has sailed on this series as a whole being considered a sequel on par with the original – I don’t know whether there was a story here that needed telling or not, but even if there is, it’s coming up short in the telling.
MayuC
August 8, 2018 at 11:47 pmAbout time you stopped pretending you care about this anime. Just drop the reviews and do something else. Either that, or pay attention to the show and try writing a solid review. One or the other.
Guardian Enzo
August 8, 2018 at 11:53 pmIf I didn’t care about it, I wouldn’t care when it sucks. That’s just the problem.
The good episodes prove it can still be a good series. Just makes ones like this that much more frustrating.
Eugene
August 9, 2018 at 12:51 amOr you could just follow another reviewer instead of getting so annoyed by what someone else thinks.
Enzo’s been fair in his assessment of SG0, it quite obviously isn’t as good as ths original.
Guardian Enzo
August 9, 2018 at 1:05 amI appreciate the sentiment.
It gives me no joy to write a piece like this, believe me. But would it be better to lie? I just don’t think so – I’ve said what I thought for almost ten years here and I don’t think changing that rule is the right approach. There have been very good eps of this series, as good as all but the very best from the original – and I’ve praised them expansively when they’ve happened. This, IMHO, was not one of them.
Alonom
August 9, 2018 at 2:41 amYour comment just made me realize for how long you’ve been managing and writing in this site.
I myself am a follower since winter 13 (best season ever btw ) when your reviews made me catch up on and watch chihayafuru and shin sekai yuri. They were the series that got me into seasonal anime. Huge thanks for that.
It’s probaby way way too early to ask that but are you planning on making top 10 anime of the decade at the end of 2019?
Guardian Enzo
August 9, 2018 at 2:47 amYes – it’s too early to ask! But that seems like a logical thing to do, doesn’t it?
It’s funny you say that about Winter ’13, as Kotoura-san was the only non-sequel I finished that season. Carryovers like SSY and sequels were about all that made it decent for me. I’m partial to spring ’07 and spring ’12 as best-ever seasons. myself.
Alonom
August 9, 2018 at 2:58 amOh yeah I completely agree with you on winter 2013 being a bad season. It has a sentimental value for me because only in january I found out about the concept of seasonal anime and of all the carryovers that came from the fall season.
So technically my favorite season would be fall 2012
Guardian Enzo
August 9, 2018 at 3:15 amYep – fall 2012 was a great season. Which makes 2012 a great, great year – one of the top 2-3 in anime history in my view. Fall had its share of highly-respected headliners like SSY, Jormungand and Psycho-Pass. But to me, if was the season of underappreciated gems – Robotics;Notes, Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun, Kamisama Hajimemashita, Zetsuen no Tempest…
Thanks for sticking with LiA for all these years!
Alonom
August 9, 2018 at 3:54 amHope to stick around for many years to come!
Darrel
August 9, 2018 at 3:14 amSG0, unlike its predecessor, seems so afraid of disrupting the status quo it has built, which cripples the momentum of such a show. In addition, barring the new cast and Daru, the cast really lacks good chemistry which made its predecessor incredibly entertaining even in the less plot driven episodes.
Rasu
August 9, 2018 at 4:38 amI got really confused with this episode, was Suzuha’s mom killed? Suzuha talked about paradoxes, but: her first arrival which ended in Kurisu’s death for the sake of her own future =avoid Third World War, this attempt to bring Mayuri with her for a new timejump, and, her mother being killed just at that moment… aren’t those three by far worse paradoxes than the one she tried to avoid with Daru “cheating” to create the time machine?!
I knew since the first series that in reality killing Kurisu doesn’t guarantee that time machines and war can’t exist (Suzuha’s existence and her arrival even if it’s from another timeline causes enough damage as a paradox and is a detonat in every single travel, it’s the proof that it’s meant to happen one way or another in most of the time-space branchs), and because of that possibility Z;G0 exists since it’s the reason why she spent a whole year to check if her mission succed or not, also, Kurisu can’t be the only genius in the world, that’s a a really naive way of thinking, and that approach was one of the things that made S;G0’s premise interesting at the beggining, to watch how it wil be developed… but, it became such a vicious cycle: “stop the creation of time machine but create one because who knows if maybe that’s not the answer and so it can be of use to reach everybody’s happy ending”, doesn’t sound good, right?, and maybe that’s the reason I just acepted S;G’s good ending by trying to not think much in other possibilities ’cause it was the S;G’s line!, the ideal line were nobody (even the viewers) have to worry about that, a world without time machines and where the lab members, especially the main trio (Kurisu, Rintaro and Mayuri) live without punishment…; don’t get me wrong, I loved the original, I wanted a spin-off exploring those possibilites in the beta line out of pure intelectual curiosity, but, how it has been executed ’till now…, I’m with Rintaro: Do they have to ruin this pacific timeline? for real?!, yeah, maybe it doesn’t guarantee that Mayushii won’t die from another reason (accidents and illness aways exist), but it was fine, why to send all the effort to waste just because of “curiosity” or “paranoia”? why?!, or worse: Does Mayuri have always to be the one to be eliminated and to suffer God’s/the universe’s wrath by being the hitting bag everytime that time machines are created?!, because that stopped to appear as “a sad coincidence/accident” a long time ago, really? why her and only her?! is just another tragic destiny carrier as Mawaru Penguindrum’s Himari?!, I’m pretty sure that Okabe dind’t decide to chew the “apple of destiny” this time, he really tried, so why?!, and to top: Mayuri lives but suffers (just like that Kurisu in previous chapters), why can’t they just take Rintaro’s advice and enjoy this timeline current peace, the guy is trying to move on at his own pace, obviously not perfectly, but, he can’t be the only one who tries to move on instead of not letting go the past (sorry S;G0’sguys, but for his mental and emotional sanity, no matter how much they long for Hyouin to come back, it’s better if he doesn’t for the time being, maybe one day when a proper scar is formed and a new future is constructed, it’s difficult and everybody struggles, but, respect the guy because he has a point: they’re all alive and that is what matters the most, life is alway’s changing, that’s one of the many messages of both series, but, this guys just doesn’t seem to acept that simple fact), I won’t deny is interesting and a bit realistic way of portraying most of the character’s conficts and how those can affect thenot just their relationships but the present (it wasn’t a mistery that beta time line wasn’t going to be a happy one), because it’s true: Rintarou was able to manipulate time and some events to some extent, but he can’t control other people’s decisions and actions (people that aren’t neccesarly their friends or even have to live in the same country) … but this events were made in such a messy way, I can’t help but being confused at what happened and how it was decided to make it happen, there’s some stuff that seems so weird even knowing how the characters’s ideals and emotions are crashing together.
And yeah, Kagari wasn’t that necessary, it’s too much, and her character isn’t the best to say the least, not to mention the forced “Kurisu look”, I can’t stand her, Nae is a better character than her in both series and even in Robotic;notes or in the spinoff where she becomes a yandere after daddy’s incident (and that was absurd enough).
kanda92
August 10, 2018 at 5:10 amYuki is Suzuha’s mom, not Mayuri ,the only paradox would be that Mayuri adopted Kagari in the future, so if I understand correctly, the adult Kagari will disappear from the worldline (The way the paradoxes are solved, good riddance?).
Regarding the reason why upsetting the status quo, it does make sense from the characters perspective, Okabe wants to live in this “bubble” without any timetravel because of his trauma, and his friends will never truly understand how that experience made him feel. From Mayuri’s perspective, she just sees him suffering, and her time travelling to that specific date seems like the only feasible solution to her, seeing Hououin Kyouma again and make things right. So yeah it boils down to two people acting on their own selfish desires with their intentions in the right place, just opposite goals xD.
Basically episode 23A (of the original series) leads to Steins gate, while 23B leads to Steins Gate 0.
I agree that this episode/series would have benefited from a better execution, higher budget (if that was any problem at all).
Stefan
August 10, 2018 at 8:17 am“Mayuri will stop being a hostage for one day”
Writer’s myopia or irony?
I love how they sealed themselves shut with Suzuha’s simultaneous incompetence and superhumanity.