Steins;Gate 0

Open the Depress Gate and the fun will really be 0 most of the time. The story of how everything had to return to the way it was and exactly how that happened is full of sad crying, resignation to fate, and negativity that I just would never recognize from the original Steins;Gate. This is why I cannot say I like this version whatsoever. Okabe's biggest problem is Okabe himself, and it takes an incredibly long time for that to change. Oh, and when Hououin Kyouma finally shows up in what’s probably the strongest and best scene of the entire anime series, it is already too little, too late, and a shadow of what I had gotten used to. Until then, it goes from depressing part to depressing part, finding more reasons to explain why it cannot be done, figuring out things that the attentive audience has long expected, and filling the spaces in between with extraneous nonsense and occasionally even fan service. The original concept behind Steins;Gate is still intact, and the ending was pretty good, too (in other words, the last three to four episodes or so were even quite entertaining). In the end, I am not going to say how disappointed and depressed I am with what I have seen and push the rating down, because even if it was somewhere else in spirit (or perhaps even without spirit) compared to the original show, I still cannot bring myself to say that it is a bad anime series. It could well be a bad experience in certain parts considered to be poor perhaps, although as a whole it still holds up thanks to a few engaging scenes, and I am even going to award it 5.5/10, and this is because of the original concept behind this show. (2018.09.29)