NOTE: If you disagree with my criticisms that's perfectly fine, I'm willing to listen to any and all counter-arguments.

For those unaware, Steins;Gate was originally released as a visual novel in 2009, but wasn’t translated into English until 2014 (well after the anime originally aired). I’m well aware that attempting to adapt a 25+ hour long Visual Novel with 6 endings into a 24-episode anime is obviously going to result in content being cut. So, a good amount of my complaints would have resulted in a significant impact on the running time if they were remedied.

Sadly, this is a result of the problem with Japan’s seasonal tv schedule. If an anime adaption only gets one season it has to fit a long story into a maximum of 26 episodes, each only 21-22 minutes long (not counting the opening and closing songs). That being said, some complaints I have would have had no or minimal time impact if they were resolved. I did try to look at the anime as its own ‘thing’ and avoided trying to directly compare it with the VN at every scene. The problem is that even if the VN did not exist many of my criticisms would still remain, but most issues exist as a result of changes when the story made from the journey from text to screen. As a consequence, I’ll be referring to the VN throughout to help support my arguments.

Time Travel
At the beginning of Steins;Gate, there’s a scene where Kurisu is giving a talk on time travel at Okabe’s university. Her and Okabe briefly debate, and Kurisu gives a 20-minute-long lecture on the various theories on time travel to serve as an introduction of the concept to the viewer. She goes through each one giving the audie- Oh, wait, that scene was cut from the anime. Instead we get a 30 second scene where Kurisu supposedly embarrasses Okabe with her knowledge of time travel which ends with her admonishing him, and Okabe is shown dejected.

I understand the viewer complaints that the way time travel is presented in the anime feels both overly simple and convoluted at the same time; and the reason for that is because scenes like the above have been completely removed from the anime. In the VN we have many scenes of round table discussions between the characters and Okabe's inner thoughts to guide us through the time travel concepts, consequences of it and so on. The anime spends less than 10 minutes total (that’s NOT a typo) on the actual theory in comparison.

Honestly, even with my pre-existing knowledge I became confused trying to follow along as there's such a shoddy job done of explaining the time travel aspect during the course of the show. I think fans are too willing to excuse the pretty blatant shortcomings, and (being a bit presumptuous here) I think its because the show does a good job of making the viewer 'feel' smart. I think the directors of the anime either didn’t want to ‘bore’ the viewers or realised that they didn’t have adequate time to discuss the concepts in any great detail, so their solution was to only include a few brief scenes explaining it and then to move on quickly as possible so that the viewer can’t stop and think about how little it all makes sense.

The authors of the VN made a huge amount of effort to make it as plausible and clear to the reader as possible, and it shows. It captures your imagination and makes you think about the long-term impacts of the characters decisions, the alternate worlds theories and so on. The only scene in the anime that I thought that made a decent effort was

Spoiler, click to view

Suzuhzas talk with Okabe and Kurisu in episode 14

, and even that was very brief. Describing it as ‘butchered’ is putting it mildly. The VN is like reading a good Hard science fiction novel, while the anime is like watching a half-baked Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster.

Characters
A common complaint even among the bigger fans of the show is that some of the characters feel two dimensional, even stereotypical. In the entire run time of the anime, I thought only Okabe, Kurisu and Suzuha received a decent amount of character development. Simply put, most of the characters only show up when they’re needed to move the plot forward and aren’t given enough time to expand on their background, personalities and so on. As an example, this is why it feels a bit odd when

Spoiler, click to view

Ruka and Faris suddenly express romantic interest in Okabe

despite barely showing up in the previous episodes or interacting with him one on one directly. The reason? Their character arcs and daily conversations with him and the rest of the Lab team have been excised. I’m not going to claim that the characters from the VN are on the level of a Dostoyevsky novel, but they are believable as characters with their own thoughts, fears and failings. In the anime, the characters feel thin because THEY ARE thin.

Thinking about it, barely any of the characters in Okabe’s circle are even properly introduced to us. Here’s an example: right at the beginning of the VN Okabe tells us who Mayuri and Daru are, the nature of their relationship, how long he’s known them for etc. In the anime, I mean they’re just there in his life and it felt as though I was expected to already know who they were supposed to be. In the first episode Okabe says he’s known Mayuri ‘Since they were kids’ and Daru is his ‘Super Haker’, that’s it? Could they not spend even 30 seconds properly explaining who they are to us?

I also want to address another common complaint, and that is that characters, Okabe in particular, seem to make irrational or hasty decisions. The VN is in a first-person view, so that you see everything from Okabe’s perspective. I cannot emphasise how important this is to the story, because you feel all of the things he feels. When he is deep in thought about a problem, or going through a personal crisis it endears you to him and helps you understand his perspective. So, when he makes a decision that seems irrational it is expressed clearly in the VN why he is making that decision, and it is usually after a discussion with the other characters (again, a discussion most likely not present in the anime). How does the saying go, ‘We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions’? Why didn’t the anime show more of his point of view? Its been a long time since I’ve seen Death Note but a lot of that show took place in the characters heads with their thoughts spoken out loud to us, hell I think that was one of the main reasons it was so successful. Is there a reason anime is adverse from doing this more often?

Before I move on to the next section, I want to give a concrete example of the problems the anime has in regards to character actions. There’s plenty for me to choose from but I’m going to bring up one scene in particular that really bothered me.

Spoiler, click to view

In episode 23, we are re-introduced to Suzuha and she tells Okabe about WW3 and the need to re-write the past. How do you think he should react to this shocking revelation? Maybe by asking some questions about: How did World War 3 start? How is almost the entire population of earth wiped out? Is SERN responsible for it? Why is Suzuha wearing military fatigues? How about, you know, just expressing some joy that Suhuza is back alive in the flesh?

Well, he does none of these things. In fact, he barely even offers any resistance when Suzuha tells him that she needs his help and he also doesn’t ask for more information like he clearly should. In the VN, he acts as you would expect anyone in his position would by collapsing at the absurdity of the situation and refusing flat out to help Suzuha due to the trauma he’s faced. It takes a lot of coaxing to get him to agree to come along which is done in part by answering the many questions he (and us) have about the situation.

Pacing
The next thing I want to bring up is the pacing. Episode 1-12 are often described as being ‘slow’, and a common view is that not a lot happens in these episodes. But, the consensus is that they are necessary, especially as the stakes are raised in the next half of the show. My thoughts? I’m going to make a crazy claim here, one that is probably going to confuse most folks and say that the pacing is… too fast. Episodes 1 to 12 (around 4 hours) are covered in chapters 1 to 5 of the Visual Novel, and even if you read at a pretty brisk pace it’ll most likely take you more than 12 hours to read those chapters. Why is it that people can make it through this part of the visual novel without too many problems yet I’ve heard a lot of people complain that they dropped the show after a few episodes?

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou is an example of a slow-paced anime, this isn’t. Steins;Gate problem is not that the pacing is slow, its problem is that there is no ‘hook’ for the viewers established in the early episodes to make them continue watching. Yes, we have the time machine and we can send messages back to the past but the show does not successfully garner viewer interest because they haven’t brought any mystery into the equation. The VN makes the implications of the time machine more interesting, and also brings in intrigue as we wonder about SERN and the other characters impact in the story. Hell, SERN is barely even mentioned in the early episodes of the anime. Even the interactions (again, almost all removed from the anime) that you have with the other characters were entertaining enough on their own to make me continue reading the VN.

In reality, the anime moves at a quick pace. If you re-watch and go on a scene by scene basis a lot of ground is covered by the anime in each episode. Too much in my opinion, there’s not enough breathing space. This is a problem I also had with Violet Evergarden, another anime commonly described as ‘slow’. This is something that’s actually quite tough for me to argue in a manner I’m happy with, but here’s one example to give you an idea of what I’m talking about. When the

Spoiler, click to view

time leap machine is created, it done as an afterthought. Kurisu seemingly invents this ground-breaking piece of technology in less than one episode (barely one morning?) while in the VN it is shown as a difficult several days long effort by all involved.

Its importance is not given enough emphasis. Keeping the story moving is fine, but the show went from A->B here far too quickly, it does that a lot in fact.

There are another series of issues I want to bring up that I’ve not seen many others talk about, all of which significantly hindered my enjoyment of the show:

SERN
SERN is presented as an actual threat in the VN. They are part of a wider conspiracy involving the Committee of 300, an ever-present group of shadowy figures who appear in the other Science Adventure games. The committee of 300 and their relationship with SERN is completely removed in the anime. In the brief moments the anime talks about SERN it presented as an, honestly really generic evil organisation. The ‘dystopia’ SERN is responsible for is presented in such a boring manner too, I mean it sounds like your average dystopia present in a mediocre action film. Where’s the sense of danger? The VN did such a great job of building a picture in your mind about how disturbing the society of the future will be if SERN succeed. I actually think this lessened the impact that

Spoiler, click to view

Suzuha’s letter had in episode 16. Because we know how important her mission is in the VN, we understand how distraught she must be at not accomplishing it while I didn’t care nearly as much while watching the anime.

Tone
The VN is hardly adult in comparison to most visual novels out there, but it touched on some disturbing themes, showed some dark character moments and had a fair amount of bad language. I don’t think something needs swearing to make it good, but it was impactful when the scene needed it. The anime, simply put, is sanitized. Here’s just one example of a change for the worse: In the VN, when Okabe goes to Moeka’s apartment to

Spoiler, click to view

get information on her d-mail Kurisu tells Okabe to kill her if he needs to… and he tries to! It shows you how desperate the characters are to succeed and given all the events leading up to this moment it makes sense too. In comparison, Okabe has to muster the courage just to throw a single punch at Moeka in the anime.

I wouldn’t call the atmosphere in the anime ‘happy’, but it was just so different to the VN. I’m not saying the VN wasn’t filled with humour or softer moments but when it was serious it FELT serious. The anime does not capture the despair, melancholy and pain present in the darker sections of the VN. I thought episodes 16 and 21 came somewhat close to the atmosphere of the VN, that was about it.

Art
I’m not going to claim that the original VN is an artistic masterpiece but it has a distinctive style; if you send me a screenshot from the VN from any scene I’ll immediately know ‘That’s from Steins;Gate’. Its expressive, using a bright mix of colours and shading. The art in the anime on the other hand is a bit dull and lifeless. It looks like any other show out there, there's nothing to set it apart. The style of the characters has been subtly changed too, and I feel as though part of the overall personality and charm of the them and the world of Steins;Gate itself has been stripped.

Music
The music is one of the few things I enjoyed from the anime adaptation. It was done by Takeshi Abo, who also composed the music for the VN and the other Science Adventure games. This was the first anime project he worked on, and I’m not sure if it was due to a tight schedule or not but a good half of the soundtrack is taken from the VN and the actual OST is rather short. In terms of the anime soundtrack, some tracks are general ambient tracks to build the mood but there’s some memorable themes at the more emotional points which suit the anime well. If you’re not familiar with Abo’s other work, two old-school ones I can recommend are ‘Rhyme Star’ and ‘Marionette Mind’.

I actually had a lot more to talk about but I think the above just about summarises my main complaints with Steins;Gate. Hopefully I’ve changed some minds on here as I wanted to provide an extensive counter argument to the overwhelmingly positive reception it has. Just to make something clear, if I was viewing Steins;Gate as is (no knowledge of the visual novel) I still would struggle to give it anything more than a 7. I’d strongly recommend folks buy the game from Steam, and install the fantastic improvement patch from the Committee of Zero. El Psy Kongroo