Hi all ~
Finally, it's summer! Vacations!!! No more deadlines!!...okay, so not that. Anyway, to commemorate the beginning of summer, I am going to post a review of the anime I just finished watching : Steins;Gate (I wonder why it's a semicolon o_O)
The main reason I watched Steins;Gate was for one, it was ranked number two only after Fullmetal Alchemist : Brotherhood (on myanimelist) which as obvious from my previous post is my one true love and secondly there are no good jdrama to watch. Atleast not good enough for me to rant and make a post about anyway. Going off topic, I heard that Hero (KimuTaku Jdrama) season 2 is coming this summer. For those of you who do not know Hero, please skip the next few lines :). When I first heard about the Hero sequel I went: WHAAAAAAAAAAAAATT? a Hero sequel without Matsu Takako and Abe Hiroshi?! This is a disaster. That said, I will watch it, but I am not expecting too much. End of Hero rant.
Back to the point, Steins;Gate for me is a big leap from the genre I usually watch. I have not ventured much into the sci-fi world (unless you count Detective Conan which I don't because it is more mystery/crime/detective than sci-fi), atleast not pure sci-fi without action/detective or any other such tag also attached. It was surprisingly captivating. Was it on par with Fullmetal Alchemist : Brotherhood? I think not. But it really is very good in its own way.
Steins;Gate is basically about university student and self-proclaimed "mad scientist" Okabe Rintaro AKA Okarin AKA Hououin Kyoma who spends his days in his "Future Gadget" laborotary with fellow lab members his ditsy, cosplay-loving childhood friend Shiina Mayuri (AKA Mayushi) and the token perverted "Super Hacker" with a love for Maid Cafes, Hashida Itaru (AKA Daru). Okabe is not without his own quirks, prone to loud proclamations of scientific babble, talking to no one in his phone about some organization that is out to take over the world and tops it all with his evil laughter. They are joined by 18 year old genius scientist with an academic publication to her name, Makise Kurisu (AKA Assistant AKA Kurustina AKA Zombie AKA whatever other nicknames Okabe comes up with), and a few others When Okabe and the others build a time machine that can send texts to the past, they recklessly use it and finally have to face the consequences of their actions.
In detail,
Plot : The plot was probably the best part of the series. It was pretty slow in the beginning. Although I have heard people say it gets better after episode 4, I didn't think there was such a clear demarcation. It just gradually got captivating and by about 10th or 11th episode you are at the edge of your seat. The whole series tied into a nice loop with an amazing ending despite a confusing first episode. Steins;Gate is basically about time-travel. It starts off with a bunch of eccentric nerds wasting time in nerdy ventures in their dusty, run-down lab which results in disastrous consequences which they may or may not be able to undo. Their time machine initially can only send texts to the past which convinces the reciever of the text to take a different course of action that results in a different future. Starting with silly stuff like the number of the winning lottery ticket, they eventually realize that changing the past changes a lot more than they are aware of. I expected the time-travel to cause a very confusing and convoluted plot where the direction it veers into is so different that you forget how the story started. (one good example for a confusing plot was Tsubasa Chronicles. I still don't fully understand it and I don't think I ever will), but that is not the case here. All in all, the plot is the most definitely what kept me glued to this series.
Characters: At one look, the main character Okabe Rintaro is probably just another eccentric guy you've seen in many other anime and similarly voiced by the GOD of voice actors : Mamoru Miyano. But then again he is not. And that made him interesting. Despite being annoying initially Okabe becomes so endearing that I missed his stupid conspiracy babbles after the series took a serious turn. The side characters, individually, also appear like copies from other anime but it is their interaction that made them better. The downside for me was that I could not connect with even one of the side characters even though they made a fun bunch together. Separately, they were just that : characters. And since Okabe is the only character who retains his memories after a time-leap (everyone else forgets), he's the character with the most growth and obvious character development. Of course this means less character development for the rest of the characters which is to be expected as from their point of view, it's the same day only Okabe knows it's the same day but different things happen. The two best parts about the character design was. 1. Okabe's relationship with Mayuri. It was nice to see someone would go so far to save someone else who was neither family nor a lover. It spoke volumes about Okabe as a person, that underneath all that mad-scientist bluster was a kind and caring person. Unfortunately, there was no explanation given as to what formed this strong bond between Okabe and Mayuri. The fact that they were childhood friends was just thrown at us viewers. I would have liked to have seen some flashback that caused such a strong friendship between two seemingly very different individuals. 2. The chemistry between Okabe and Kurisu (romance non-withstanding). I loved that no matter how many times Okabe time-leapt and everyone lost their memories, Kurisu always believed what he said (even if it would have seemed unrealistic or far-fetched) and had his back. That she was his one constant. Their constant arguments surprisingly endeared them to me and I usually dislike tsundere characters because they always end up hitting/punching/thrashing other characters (mostly the love interest). And my favourite character was definitely Okabe.
Overall Steins;Gate was a very interesting (albeit a bit short) anime. Would I rank it number two after Fullmetal Alchemist : Brotherhood? I don't know. I am not fully happy with the any other character except the main character and their development was minimum if there was any at all.
Special mention : I usually watch anime in the original language as I can understand most of the Japanese and I am a huge fan of Mamoru Miyano (Voice actor of Okabe) but I have to mention that the English dub by Funimation was really good. More than the voices of the characters, I thought the English script was excellent. Usually a lot is lost in translation and cultural references, but despite that, Funimation has done a brilliant job.
Recommended if you like anime with good plots and/or are bored like I am with nothing to watch!
El Psy Congroo!!
~Charana
Finally, it's summer! Vacations!!! No more deadlines!!...okay, so not that. Anyway, to commemorate the beginning of summer, I am going to post a review of the anime I just finished watching : Steins;Gate (I wonder why it's a semicolon o_O)
The main reason I watched Steins;Gate was for one, it was ranked number two only after Fullmetal Alchemist : Brotherhood (on myanimelist) which as obvious from my previous post is my one true love and secondly there are no good jdrama to watch. Atleast not good enough for me to rant and make a post about anyway. Going off topic, I heard that Hero (KimuTaku Jdrama) season 2 is coming this summer. For those of you who do not know Hero, please skip the next few lines :). When I first heard about the Hero sequel I went: WHAAAAAAAAAAAAATT? a Hero sequel without Matsu Takako and Abe Hiroshi?! This is a disaster. That said, I will watch it, but I am not expecting too much. End of Hero rant.
Back to the point, Steins;Gate for me is a big leap from the genre I usually watch. I have not ventured much into the sci-fi world (unless you count Detective Conan which I don't because it is more mystery/crime/detective than sci-fi), atleast not pure sci-fi without action/detective or any other such tag also attached. It was surprisingly captivating. Was it on par with Fullmetal Alchemist : Brotherhood? I think not. But it really is very good in its own way.
Steins;Gate is basically about university student and self-proclaimed "mad scientist" Okabe Rintaro AKA Okarin AKA Hououin Kyoma who spends his days in his "Future Gadget" laborotary with fellow lab members his ditsy, cosplay-loving childhood friend Shiina Mayuri (AKA Mayushi) and the token perverted "Super Hacker" with a love for Maid Cafes, Hashida Itaru (AKA Daru). Okabe is not without his own quirks, prone to loud proclamations of scientific babble, talking to no one in his phone about some organization that is out to take over the world and tops it all with his evil laughter. They are joined by 18 year old genius scientist with an academic publication to her name, Makise Kurisu (AKA Assistant AKA Kurustina AKA Zombie AKA whatever other nicknames Okabe comes up with), and a few others When Okabe and the others build a time machine that can send texts to the past, they recklessly use it and finally have to face the consequences of their actions.
In detail,
Plot : The plot was probably the best part of the series. It was pretty slow in the beginning. Although I have heard people say it gets better after episode 4, I didn't think there was such a clear demarcation. It just gradually got captivating and by about 10th or 11th episode you are at the edge of your seat. The whole series tied into a nice loop with an amazing ending despite a confusing first episode. Steins;Gate is basically about time-travel. It starts off with a bunch of eccentric nerds wasting time in nerdy ventures in their dusty, run-down lab which results in disastrous consequences which they may or may not be able to undo. Their time machine initially can only send texts to the past which convinces the reciever of the text to take a different course of action that results in a different future. Starting with silly stuff like the number of the winning lottery ticket, they eventually realize that changing the past changes a lot more than they are aware of. I expected the time-travel to cause a very confusing and convoluted plot where the direction it veers into is so different that you forget how the story started. (one good example for a confusing plot was Tsubasa Chronicles. I still don't fully understand it and I don't think I ever will), but that is not the case here. All in all, the plot is the most definitely what kept me glued to this series.
Characters: At one look, the main character Okabe Rintaro is probably just another eccentric guy you've seen in many other anime and similarly voiced by the GOD of voice actors : Mamoru Miyano. But then again he is not. And that made him interesting. Despite being annoying initially Okabe becomes so endearing that I missed his stupid conspiracy babbles after the series took a serious turn. The side characters, individually, also appear like copies from other anime but it is their interaction that made them better. The downside for me was that I could not connect with even one of the side characters even though they made a fun bunch together. Separately, they were just that : characters. And since Okabe is the only character who retains his memories after a time-leap (everyone else forgets), he's the character with the most growth and obvious character development. Of course this means less character development for the rest of the characters which is to be expected as from their point of view, it's the same day only Okabe knows it's the same day but different things happen. The two best parts about the character design was. 1. Okabe's relationship with Mayuri. It was nice to see someone would go so far to save someone else who was neither family nor a lover. It spoke volumes about Okabe as a person, that underneath all that mad-scientist bluster was a kind and caring person. Unfortunately, there was no explanation given as to what formed this strong bond between Okabe and Mayuri. The fact that they were childhood friends was just thrown at us viewers. I would have liked to have seen some flashback that caused such a strong friendship between two seemingly very different individuals. 2. The chemistry between Okabe and Kurisu (romance non-withstanding). I loved that no matter how many times Okabe time-leapt and everyone lost their memories, Kurisu always believed what he said (even if it would have seemed unrealistic or far-fetched) and had his back. That she was his one constant. Their constant arguments surprisingly endeared them to me and I usually dislike tsundere characters because they always end up hitting/punching/thrashing other characters (mostly the love interest). And my favourite character was definitely Okabe.
Overall Steins;Gate was a very interesting (albeit a bit short) anime. Would I rank it number two after Fullmetal Alchemist : Brotherhood? I don't know. I am not fully happy with the any other character except the main character and their development was minimum if there was any at all.
Special mention : I usually watch anime in the original language as I can understand most of the Japanese and I am a huge fan of Mamoru Miyano (Voice actor of Okabe) but I have to mention that the English dub by Funimation was really good. More than the voices of the characters, I thought the English script was excellent. Usually a lot is lost in translation and cultural references, but despite that, Funimation has done a brilliant job.
Recommended if you like anime with good plots and/or are bored like I am with nothing to watch!
El Psy Congroo!!
~Charana
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