Steins;Gate 0 Episode 1 Review

By Sarah Campbell
8 years Ago

The shadow-government organization that’s out to kill you is all fake until it isn’t&period; Steins&semi;Gate 0 is the sequel to the 2011 anime Steins&semi;Gate&period; It was a fun show full of quirky characters that were repeatedly killed and/or tortured into insanity because of time travel and government conspiracies&period; &NewLine;This is one of the anime I’ve been anticipating the most since I heard it was announced&period; I loved the original Steins&semi;Gate, despite its flaws&period; I haven’t read the Visual Novel the sequel is based on yet, so I won’t be able to say if this is a good adaptation or not&period; Hopefully, it will be a solid story regardless&period;&NewLine;Because this show is a direct(ish) sequel to the original, it is impossible for me to discuss this anime without talking about its predecessor&period; I would highly recommend that you watch or read the previous series before jumping into 0&period; Just be warned, there is an uncomfortable amount of sexual assault and transphobic slurs in the original&period; I have no reason to believe that the sequel series will be much different&period;&NewLine;<h2>The Opener</h2>&NewLine;The episode opens with Mayuri and a little girl who looks like Kurisu standing in a bombed out building at the end of the world&period; Suzuha stumbles upon them, and Mayuri laments that things might have turned out differently if she had done more for Okarin in the past&period; An image of Kurisu flickers on a screen outside&period;&NewLine;It looks like WWIII happened despite all of Okarin and Suzuha’s hard work at the end of the original&period; Except that’s not entirely accurate&period;&NewLine;<h2>Okabe</h2>&NewLine;This series takes place in an alternate world line, where after failing to save Kurisu the first time, Okarin gives up and tries to move on with his life&period; He gives up his chuuni tendencies, stopped visiting Akihabara and the lab entirely, and just tries to live a normal college life&period;&NewLine;Mayuri picks Okabe up from a hypnotherapy session and convinces him to come with her to eat lunch with some of their old friends&period; Faris and Ruka cannot handle the life changes that Okabe has made&period; It’s understandable&period; Dude dropped off the map in the summer, and pops up again in the winter acting like a completely different person&period; Apparently, the only person that he’s been in contact with after Kurisu’s death was Mayuri&period;&NewLine;<figure id="attachment&lowbar;137411" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-137411" style="width&colon; 1920px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="wp-image-137411 size-full" src="https&colon;//cdn&period;bagogames&period;com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/15060231/many-kurisu&period;jpg" alt="" width="1920" height="1080" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-137411" class="wp-caption-text">Source&colon; Steins&semi;Gate 0, Studio White Fox</figcaption></figure>&NewLine;Skipping ahead a little, Okabe has some intense PTSD flashbacks and hallucinations on the way home&period; The events of the previous series affected him profoundly&period; Despite the fact that his inaction is literally allowing WWIII to end the world, it is hard to root against his staying out of the conflict&period; It’s a very human reaction, which contrasts well with the beginning of the first anime where he behaved like an over-the-top anime character&period;&NewLine;<h2>Suzuha</h2>&NewLine;Back to the café, Mayuri gets a text from a friend, Yuki, asking her to meet her at the lab&period; Everyone decides to tag along, and we cut to the lab itself&period; Suzuha is annoyed with Daru for tooling around on the internet instead of working&period; Her original and only plan didn’t work out, so now she’s settled for hanging out and making Daru research time travel on his own&period; Their expository banter is cut short when Suzuha hears footsteps outside&period;&NewLine;<figure id="attachment&lowbar;137409" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-137409" style="width&colon; 1920px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="wp-image-137409 size-full" src="https&colon;//cdn&period;bagogames&period;com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/15055945/yuki&period;jpg" alt="" width="1920" height="1080" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-137409" class="wp-caption-text">Source&colon; Steins&semi;Gate 0, Studio White Fox</figcaption></figure>&NewLine;It turns out to be Mayuri’s cosplay friend, who they casually reveal is Suzuha’s mother&period; I literally didn’t recognize this character, to the point that I don’t think she was even in the original series&period; Mayuri had a cosplay friend that was mentioned, but I don’t know if she ever actually appeared on screen&period; I could be wrong about this, but I don’t think she even got a character portrait in the VN&period; It’s super weird that the anime revealed the answer to the Suzuha’s mom mystery in the first episode, and the answer is this character we’ve never seen before&period; Despite this, the artist did a pretty good job of making them look related in a way that isn’t just same-face syndrome&period; &NewLine;Suzuha hides, because she doesn’t want to talk to her mom&period; It works out until Okabe needs to use the toilet that she’s hiding in&period; After he stumbles upon her, they go up to the roof and argue about the plan&period; She reminds him that everyone in the world will die if he does nothing and tells him about how she watched her mom die right in front of her&period; Suzuha still believes the plan will work if he just goes back and fixes the past, but Okabe doesn’t believe it’s possible&period; Every change he made in the original series only made everything worse, to the point that the back-half of the series was just Okabe fixing all the shit he ruined in the front-half&period;&NewLine;This doesn&&num;8217&semi;t really have anything to do with the subject at hand, but I&&num;8217&semi;m glad they changed how they draw the teeth in this anime&period; They were really distracting in the original Steins&semi;Gate series, and a more stylized look works a lot better&period;&NewLine;<h2>The Conference</h2>&NewLine;After the fight on the roof, Okabe goes home&period; He has the hallucination I mentioned earlier and agrees to go out drinking with his college friends&period; The following day he does some work as a guide to a conference one of his professors recommended, and he meets Maho Hiyajou, who is probably going to end up playing a major part in the series to come&period;&NewLine;<figure id="attachment&lowbar;137410" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-137410" style="width&colon; 1920px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="wp-image-137410 size-full" src="https&colon;//cdn&period;bagogames&period;com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/15060147/maho&period;jpg" alt="" width="1920" height="1080" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-137410" class="wp-caption-text">Source&colon; Steins&semi;Gate 0, Studio White Fox</figcaption></figure>&NewLine;In the crowd, Okabe spots Moeka and tries not to panic&period; Since it is a beta world line, he believes that she is not working as an assassin for any shadow governments&period; Probably&period;&NewLine;The conference proper starts, with Maho acting as an interpreter for the American professor who is presenting&period; He explains that their current project is based on research that Kurisu did while she was alive&period; The same research that allowed her to create a time machine that projected a user’s consciousness into the past is now being used to create an AI that is based on a human’s memories&period;&NewLine;The episode ends before the introduction of the AI, but I think we can all guess who’s going to pop up on that screen next week&period;&NewLine;<h2>Conclusion</h2>&NewLine;So, this episode was a pretty strong opener&period; I’m looking forward to seeing how the series develops from here&period; To be perfectly honest, I’m not a huge fan of some of the cinematography decisions in this episode&period; In particular, the scene between Mayuri and Okabe on the train was not great&period; &NewLine;Cinematography hiccups aside, this series looks like it’s going to be some good stuff&period; I’m excited to see where they’re going with this new AI plot point&period;&NewLine;&nbsp&semi;&NewLine;

Categories: Anime and Manga
Tags: Anime and Manga Review Episode Guide Steins;Gate 0 Studio White Fox Top Stories

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