The Spring 2018 Anime Preview Guide

Steins;Gate 0

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Only a few months have passed since the members of the Future Gadgets Lab inadvertently unlocked the power of time travel using a phone and an old microwave, but for Okabe Rintaro it may as well have been an eternity. While his friends' memories remain mostly hazy, Okabe can still clearly recall crossing over hundreds of world lines, watching as his friends suffered and died innumerable times for meddling with the fabric of the universe. Though he ended up saving the life his best friend Mayuri, Okabe is still suffering from the trauma of being unable to prevent the murder of another woman he loved, the brilliant young scientist Makise Kurisu. Ever since the end of that eternal summer, Okabe has focused on forgetting the past and moving on with his life, but he is constantly reminded by future freedom fighter Suzuha that their current world-line is set to be torn apart by a devastating Third World War, and all of the Future Gadget Lab members will be caught up in the struggle. As Makise's past life continues to resonate well into this doomed future, Okabe must decide whether he will once again return to the world of Steins;Gate and fight the future one final time. Steins;Gate 0 is based on a visual novel, and streams on Crunchyroll, Wednesdays at 1:30 PM EST.

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James Beckett

Watching Funimation's SimulDub for Steins;Gate 0 is like getting together with a bunch of old friends you haven't seen for far too long. The original English dub for Steins;Gate remains one of my all-time favorite localization efforts, and Steins;Gate 0 starts off on the right foot. J. Michael Tatum and Jackie Ross fall perfectly into their old roles, and the rest of the supporting cast feel equally at home. The dub has a new crew writing and directing behind the scenes, with Jeramey Kraatz and Cris George taking over the roles respectively, though S;G 0's dub retains the original series' charm and snappy pace so far. It may not be the most faithful translation, but this cast works so well with the material that I'd say the loose adaptation ultimately works in the show's favor in English.

The only major addition to the cast so far is Maho, played by a capable Monica Rial, though she's also unfortunately at the center of the dub's strangest misstep. In the original Japanese, Maho serves as the translator for the English-speaking Aleksis, and the dub makes the odd choice of having Monica speak the original Japanese lines before transitioning suddenly into English, all while Aleksis continues speaking English the whole way through. I understand the intent of this is to remind the audience that the characters are technically still speaking Japanese before reverting to the English translation, but it just comes across as awkward. One major hiccup aside though, Funimation's work on Steins;Gate 0 continues to be exemplary, and it will no doubt please fans of the franchise's first season dub.

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James Beckett

Rating:

For all of its myriad faults, the original Steins;Gate remains a perennial favorite of mine, because so few other anime have done such a good job at marrying heady science fiction with such a likable cast of unrepentant dorks. It's a messy show, and it drops the ball hard in some key areas of character development, but there's just too much earnest charm and confident storytelling at work in the show for me not to love it. I went into Steins;Gate 0 with some trepidation; having not played the game it's based on, I had no clue whether this alternate-timeline follow up to the original would work as a complementary piece of the original puzzle or come across as hasty cash grab.

Thankfully, Steins;Gate 0 seems to be the real deal, at least as far as this premiere is concerned. We pick up right where the original series left off at the end of its 23rd episode, except in this version of events our hero Okabe didn't go through with the heroics that brought Steins;Gate prime to its happy ending. Instead, Okabe has gone full on tortured fallen hero, even going so far as to don a jet black ensemble to reflect the depths of his anguish. Were Steins;Gate 0 just a little off in its execution, this would come across as unbelievably corny, but thankfully this episode nails the weight of the trauma that has been bearing down on Okabe's shoulders across his many trips through time, making the more somber tone feel justified. While much of this episode is devoted to recapping the events that led the Future Gadgets Lab to fracture, this is definitely not a place for newcomers to start. Without the experience of the show's first 24 episodes, I reckon that this episode would feel overstuffed with sadness, but longtime viewers will likely appreciate the show diving into the darker doomed world that the original Steins;Gate only ever hinted at.

While this series is under the new directorial stewardship of Kenichi Kawamura, original writer Juuki Hanada and the original voice cast and many crew members at White Fox Studio all return for this adaptation of 5pb.'s visual novel. This means that the premiere is aesthetically in line with the original series, which is to say that it looks and sounds great. The episode does a great job of tweaking the series into something much more unsettling than Steins'Gate's early episodes; dramatic closeups and moody camera work ensure that the audience is never unaware of the deep psychological stress that haunts Okabe at all times. Outside of his solo scenes, the original Future Gadgets Lab members all play off one another without missing a beat, and the few new characters we meet also look to be exciting additions to the cast (though I really hope the series doesn't follow through on all of the loli jokes with Maho Hiyajo).

Some tweaks to the character designs will take getting used to, and there are a couple instances of off-model characters throughout, but what we've seen of Steins;Gate 0 is so far on par with its predecessor's high standards. It remains to be seen if the show will be able to make a compelling story out of a scenario that fans already know a happier outcome for, but the quality of this premiere has assuaged my fears. Even if poor Okabe has to suffer for it, it's good to have Steins;Gate back.

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Nick Creamer

Rating:

Seven years out from the original Steins;Gate, I really wasn't expecting a straight-up sequel. But after a charming OVA episode and an interminable feature film, here we are, following Okabe and his friends in the months following the events of the original series. Or at least, one possible version of those events - the specifics of this particular worldline feel somewhat uncertain, and it's clear by the end of this episode that Okabe's great victory from the original series was far less effective than he'd hoped.

It's to this show's great credit that it actually feels like a genuine sequel, from the tone and writing to the visual presentation. Though we've switched directors, 0 still possesses the same stifling color palette and compositionally enforced sense of alienation from the original, and the animation actually feels stronger here than in the original series. In basically all aesthetic respects, it really felt like I was stepping directly back into the Steins;Gate universe.

As for the story, I also greatly enjoyed this episode's melancholy reunion between the old show leads. Okabe spent the entirety of the original Steins;Gate being psychologically beaten down one episode after another, and in this new series, you can absolutely feel how those experiences still weigh on him. Okabe is emotionally exhausted, burnt out on play-acting, and haunted by trauma that flares up whenever he's reminded of that one cruel summer. This episode's idle conversations between very familiar friends did a great job of asserting how badly Okabe had suffered, making his resistance to Suzuha asking for further help feel entirely natural.

All in all, Steins;Gate 0 easily clears its principle hurdle: feeling like a genuine, natural extension of the Steins;Gate world. The show feels somewhat limited by its color palette and a little lethargic in its pacing, but honestly, those were also complaints you could level at the original series. Personally, I felt the original Steins;Gate wrapped up its story very well, and am not necessarily thrilled by this premiere's introduction of an entirely new conflict. But if you're eager to spend more time with the old Gadget Lab crew, Steins;Gate 0 will make you feel like they never left.