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Old 10-15-2012, 11:38 PM   #101
big bad birtha
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Oh holy essays there's a bunch said in this thread. If there's anything you want to point out, say so, otherwise, I won't see it. There's no way in hell I'm reading all that. Anyway, I've watched through episode 3, so I guess I'll give in my input.

I can't really say much for the plot yet. I've mostly just noticed a bunch of talk about time machines and how it took three episodes for everyone to realize the obvious fact that the microwave
Spoiler: show
is a time machine.


I'm okay with the characters, but the main guy annoys me to no end. It's like the creators are positively begging you on their hands and knees "PLEASE LOVE THIS GUY! WE'VE PUT ALL OUR BLOOD, SWEAT, AND TEARS TO MAKE HIM LOVABLE!", and to me, it just feels cheap. Especially the laughing and pretending a secret agency is out to get him. The otaku guy's alright, hat girl is alright, suit girl is alright, cat girl MIGHT be okay if that's just an act as a part of her job (if it isn't, she's awful). Also I hope the scientist douchebag doesn't end up getting a harem. That would be horrible.

All in all, the show's okay. I honestly wanted to come in hating on S;G after seeing the fanbase, but other than the MC, I haven't found anything to really hate on. If anything, I'm just indifferent.
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Old 10-20-2012, 02:16 AM   #102
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I'm halfway through this, so I guess now is a good time for a update.

For the most part, my opinion hasn't really changed much. I'm a little bit more used to the main character, and I'm a tad interested, but I'm still not really too excited from this show. There's also a few things that have been bothering me. Bitching about the halfway point in the magic spoiler box.

Spoiler: show
Probably my biggest complaint is how Okarin overreacts to everything. Like after he makes a change in the timeline, he makes such a god damn fuss about it, even though he should already know how and why it's happening. It's like "Oh my god things have changed!" and he gasps for 15 minutes.

Another thing I'm not too fond of is how all of the messages work. I wish the creators considered this, because most people would think that it's a prank. I get some of them, like Okarin obviously will buy it since he has the memory keeping thing. I also understand them being flexible with this, since obviously if everyone thought it was a prank, the plot would go nowhere. However the trap and catgirl ones were really dumb. A vague message sent to a woman's pager about her eating habits changed the gender of a child? REALLY?!


I also hate how many dumb harem scenarios are forced down your throat. A bunch of wacky situations where the main guy does something and is misunderstood by the main girl and she calls him a pervert and throttles him? Check.

Speaking of the main girl. The Zombie's moe quirks are annoying. It might be an act, and if so, cool, but her getting embarrassed about everything and acting like a bad tsundere gets annoying.

Despite all my bitching, I don't really dislike S;G. I'm still interested in what's going on, and look forward to seeing how everything is explained. I don't have expectations for the explanations, but I still look forward to them.
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Old 10-21-2012, 11:27 AM   #103
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Yeah, Okabe "Okarin" Rintarou really does drag this series down from time to time. He has his pluses, I feel, but he's definitely got his minuses.

(you can click; I don't know when it's safe to click but avoid if you're still around the start of the series, I guess?)
Spoiler: show
As you've no doubt already noticed, Daru is pretty much the brains behind Okarin's entire operation. All Okarin does is wear a white lab coat and shout-talk. That's it. Daru does the hacking. Daru does the actual physics knowledge. (Later joined by Kurisu/Chris but I'd still say he's the major brains even then behind the physics operation.) What does Okabe contribute to the team? One could argue that he's about as worthwhile as Mayuri is. And at least Mayuri is adorable. Okabe is obnoxious. ^^;

Quote:
Originally Posted by big bad birtha View Post
Despite all my bitching, I don't really dislike S;G. I'm still interested in what's going on, and look forward to seeing how everything is explained. I don't have expectations for the explanations, but I still look forward to them.
That's pretty much it.
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Old 10-22-2012, 09:15 PM   #104
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I've finally finished S;G. My opinion is basically the same as what I said last post. The show has more than its fair share of retarded moments, though I guess it did get a little exciting towards the end (though it also got more retarded). S;G deserves a 5.
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Old 02-05-2015, 09:02 PM   #105
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I just had to watch Steins;Gate, given the fascinating contrast between DCD's scathing review and its extremely high rating on Anime News Network. To be exact, it's THE NUMBER ONE RANKED ANIME OF ALL TIME.

Awww, Dopple, this was a good show! Why you gotta hate . It's true that the characters were stereotypical, and each assigned a gimmick (there's ways to make Kurisu tsundere without being so painfully blunt about it), but I still enjoyed the character interactions overall. It reminded me quite a bit of The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, with the cozy atmosphere of a bunch of guys and girls hanging out together in a room and trying to unlock the mysteries of the universe. Even Okabe and Kurisu are like a gender swapped Haruhi and Kyon, with Okabe playing the role of the delusional, hyper club leader, and Kurisu as the frequently annoyed voice of reason.

In the first half, the show is like 90% banter, 10% actual drama. It may as well have been a sitcom. Even when things were happening that the characters should have been taking seriously, they'd just go ahead and crack another banana joke. A major event brings an abrupt end to all the joking, though. It's like if The Big Bang Theory suddenly took a very dark turn. Spoilers ahoy:

Spoiler: show
I had a bad feeling about Okabe letting all sorts of people into the Future Gadget Laboratory, and blabbing about the time machine to way too many people. It makes sense that this ended up coming back to haunt him in a really big way. It was sad to watch Okabe's struggle to save Mayuri, and the emotional toll it took on him. Later on, this was further compounded by him having to choose between saving Kurisu, the girl he's in love with, and Mayuri, the girl he loves like a daughter. To me, the drama during this stretch of episodes was the show's strong point.

I wasn't a fan of the last three episodes. Seemed like a cop out after the emotional build up of Okabe and Kurisu confessing their feelings for each other, Kurisu deciding to sacrifice herself for Mayuri's sake and the couple saying their last goodbyes to each other. Then Suzuha suddenly shows up out of nowhere, deus ex machina style and says, "lol hey guys, I figured out a way to save Kurisu after all!" I think it would have been better if the show had the tragic ending of episode 22. That said, I didn't hate the ending THAT much. It was by no means a Clannad After-like abomination, just less than ideal.


I don't make a big deal over scientific inaccuracies. If you want a realistic time travel movie, watch Primer, which is a lot more scientifically accurate, but also a lot less fun (not to mention it's nigh-impossible to understand). "This cell phone connected to a microwave is a time machine, I ain't gotta explain shit" is fine with me, Back To The Future and Terminator style. I give them a pass on stuff like this as long as it's not too bad, because they're just trying to write a stupid story for cryin out loud.

Overall, I give the show an 8/10. It was very enjoyable, but less good than the similarly themed shows Madoka and The Melancholy (both of which I gave 9/10).
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Old 02-08-2015, 10:23 PM   #106
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Damn it, why'd you guys have to write such huge essays?! This thread took forever to read :O although I skimmed over some of the ones discussing the technical aspects of time traveling, because I'll be damned if I can understand that stuff anyway.

Spoiler: show
It's a shame that both Talon and DCD disliked Kurisu, because this probably led to them being indifferent to the Okabe/Kurisu sexual tension throughout the story, and eventual love confession. As I said, the drama that took place in between Mayuri being shot to death for the first time and Kurisu sacrificing herself to save Mayuri was the strongest part of the show, and if you guys were emotionally detached to all that stuff because you didn't really care for Kurisu, then that would have made the story lose a lot of impact indeed (example: Kurisu catching Okabe crying after he went back in time, Kurisu realizing that Okabe was dealing with something serious when he actually called her "Kurisu" instead of "Christina").

I have to agree with Talon that in terms of pure looks, Moeka was the hottest girl. Even after she shot Mayuri I'd still hit it, come on, she showed up in a tight leather outfit, what do you want?! I even found the fact that she was shy IRL but chatty when communicating through text cute, since it reminded me of myself! But yeah, it was also a huge turn off for me when it was revealed that she was brainwashed by FB. There's the good kind of crazy, and then there's that crap.
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Old 02-08-2015, 10:58 PM   #107
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I still don't see the appeal anyway. It was tragic for me that Makise Kurisu was voiced by Asami Imai because Chihaya has a much better personality (and looks) than Makise Kurisu.

In terms of pure looks, Mayuri is the best. She's well-rounded (no puns) and has a nice face. Ruka has a nice face but a weak (male) body, Suzuha is ugly, and so is Feris.

The weak or deplorable characters were a big part of why I disliked Steins! I cannot divorce that. Mayuri possibly exempted, they're unwelcoming stereotypes packaged with inorganic quirks to latch on to. Quirks that don't have any deep meaning like "El Psy Kangaroo".
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Old 02-09-2015, 01:16 AM   #108
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The forced character quirks are true, I can't defend that. Even Moeka's cute insistence on communicating via text, they took too far. She'd be standing face to face with Okabe, yet still pulled out her phone and sent him texts. That's when the show stopped making a point about her being shy and just did it for the sake of the gimmick. And as I mentioned before, Kurisu's tsundere personality they could have made more subtle instead of using the same old painfully cliche lines, "I-it's not like I was worried about you or anything!"

Quote:
Suzuha is ugly, and so is Feris.
!!!!!!!!

That's rather extreme. I thought Suzuha was very hot (admittedly she cheated by wearing those tight clothes). Feris wasn't top tier, but was certainly okay looking. Speaking of forced quirks, I can understand her doing the nya nya thing while she was working in the maid cafe, but then even outside of work she'd keep talking like that! That's not cute anymore, it's just annoying.
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Old 02-09-2015, 04:35 PM   #109
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A discerning friend finished this recently. I had lunch with him today. Told me he'd give it a 9 out of 10.

So we've got:
  • 9: Talon's friend in town
  • 8: Mcsweeney
  • 7: Talon, Yuki
  • 3 or lower: Doppel (who rated it "atrocious")
I'll be one of the first to agree that Steins;Gate is overrated, moreso back when it was brand new than today when the hyper kiddos have moved on to other, newer things. But I'd still say the anime was good, and I wouldn't be surprised if the game experience were even better. I gotta say, Doppel: you seem to be pretty alone on this one. ^^;
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Old 02-09-2015, 05:37 PM   #110
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The anime was discernibly better. I told BPK about a plot line that was removed from the anime because it was "too stupid":

Spoiler: show
Where Mr. Braun's daughter, wanting revenge for Kyouma getting her Dad to suicide, jumps back in time and founds SERN and tries to murder Kyouma in every World Line he jumps to.


There were other, similar "twists" to that. To the anime's credit, it cut out a lot of that stuff to fit things in time-wise, although it still had the horrible deus ex like for solving the Feris problem and convincing her to undo rescuing her father.
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Old 02-09-2015, 06:28 PM   #111
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There's also bbb who rated it a 5. Midgeorge thinks very highly of the show, but I'm not sure what his final rating was. DCD's "atrocious" rating is probably exaggerated and borne out of a desire to knock the show down a peg from its revered status in the anime community. It certainly does not deserve to be the #1 ranked anime of all time on ANN, that I can get on board with. I think that the show is a solid 8 if it ended after episode 22, but the ending actually makes me want to knock it down to 7.5.

I also agree with Talon that the soundtrack sucked. Mediocre OP and ED, zero pieces of memorable background music. Another reason why it's inferior to Madoka/The Melancholy. I actually think that Madoka's soundtrack is as important to the show as it is in Star Wars, without it it would have been significantly worse, so huge props to Yuki Kaijura for that.
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Old 02-09-2015, 07:15 PM   #112
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There might be some truth to that, as I was highly protective on VNDB of Muv-Luv Alternative not being rated more highly than a hipster VN, so I ended up rating the Steins game even though I had never played it, and gave it a low rating (5).

I think I could appreciate the mystery of the story a bit more than I did. The mechanics are interesting enough (and in a major form of flattery, I stole some concepts for my VN's time travel mechanics) even if the author tends to bend his universe's logic as he sees fit. I think being trapped in a "Bad End" you repeat over an over would be a legitimately horrifying situation.

But I still can't get over the weak/obnoxious characters, the dullness of the first half of the story (punctuated with a few discoveries using the Microwave-Phone) and annoying plot twists. The Suzuha Arc was, I believe I felt, the climax of the series, because that was followed by:

-Feyris deux ex bull-crack
-Ruka empty fluff fanservice
-Moeka proving she's retarded
-A forced Makise Kurisu romance

With how silly the last third of the story was, I think I could appreciate the first half better. Even if the plot barely went anywhere.
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Old 02-09-2015, 07:49 PM   #113
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I liked the Ruka stuff!

Spoiler: show
Even if the method they used to change his gender made little sense. I thought it was funny when Okabe looked like a pervert when he was trying to check out Ruka's chest to see if it worked, and him being rebuked for being an insensitive jerk when he called her a guy. I also enjoyed the episode where Okabe went on a date with Ruka, with Okabe Googling restaurants and feeling like the world of dating was completely alien to him. I know that I would be feeling the same way.
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Old 02-09-2015, 07:59 PM   #114
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Ruka's transformation actually made a lot of sense, to the biologist me:

Spoiler: show
Environmental factors can influence the sex of an offspring. The most famous one is temperature, so it feels plausible that some slight changes in diet could influence the hormones produced that would determine if a baby becomes male or female. The only far-fetched part is that Ruka's mother would not see the pager messages as spam.

Now, the one wrinkle in this is that human biology doesn't work that way, as a man's sperm contains either an X or Y chromosome, so the sex of the baby is effectively done at conception. Yet for people who don't know that detail, but know enough about hormones or reptile eggs, it would be sufficient.
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Old 02-09-2015, 08:16 PM   #115
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Doppleganger View Post
Ruka's transformation actually made a lot of sense, to the biologist me:

Spoiler: show
Environmental factors can influence the sex of an offspring. The most famous one is temperature, so it feels plausible that some slight changes in diet could influence the hormones produced that would determine if a baby becomes male or female. The only far-fetched part is that Ruka's mother would not see the pager messages as spam.

Now, the one wrinkle in this is that human biology doesn't work that way, as a man's sperm contains either an X or Y chromosome, so the sex of the baby is effectively done at conception. Yet for people who don't know that detail, but know enough about hormones or reptile eggs, it would be sufficient.
It's incredibly unlikely, but to be fair to Steins ...

(response to Doppel; spoilers inside)

Spoiler: show
You can be genotypically female while being phenotypically male: in XX male syndrome, the sperm which fertilized the egg carried an X chromosome but one which, during meiosis in the father's testes, had accidentally obtained the SRY gene.

So, while this is incredibly unlikely, I can imagine the possible scenario where an XX individual has an SRY gene on their paternal X chromosome ... but that the native X chromosome material it replaced was minimal (or even downright non-functional in humans) ... and then, SUPER CONVENIENTLY, under one set of hormonal circumstances in the uterus the developing fetus becomes a phenotypic male (because the SRY stuff gets to play out) whereas under another, different set of hormonal circumstances the developing fetus becomes a phenotypic female (because the native X stuff overrides the SRY stuff). Something like that. It's still pretty handwavey and seems incredibly, incredibly unlikely, but it's at least based on human biology rather than amphibian, reptilian, or avian biology.


Quote:
Originally Posted by Doppleganger View Post
The anime was discernibly better. I told BPK about a plot line that was removed from the anime because it was "too stupid":

Spoiler: show
Where Mr. Braun's daughter, wanting revenge for Kyouma getting her Dad to suicide, jumps back in time and founds SERN and tries to murder Kyouma in every World Line he jumps to.
I feel like I have heard this before, back when I was watching the series, and if I had to guess it would have been you who told it to Yuki and I via this very thread.
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Old 09-01-2016, 01:55 PM   #116
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Sup.

I recently (as in, within the last 30 minutes) finished watching Steins;Gate, subbed. I have to say... this is the best anime I have ever seen. At first I was really struggling to get my head around how freaking weird all the characters were - at least from a Western point of view - and later once they really started to grow on me (especially Okarin and Kirisu), I realized that this is one of the better parts of the show for me. My knowledge of tropes is insanely Western, and so I was unable to pinpoint a lot of the personality types right off the bat, meaning I was - in general - constantly learning new things about characters, their senses of humor, motivations, likes, dislikes, that never would have occurred in the types of media I am used to reading or watching. (For example, I am a historiographer, which means I can generally predict how a historical text will go, or what the principles behind a text will be, even if I'm reading it for the first time, just because I know that's how history and history writing works. Same principle for a lot of the media that I consume. Steins;Gate didn't run into this problem until the last couple episodes.)

I also thought it was absolutely hilarious, and touching, and thoughtful at the same time. I excuse myself from commenting on the science of the show because honestly that's not really what this is about. That misses the forest for the trees, or rather, misses the trees for the depth of the roots.
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Old 09-07-2016, 05:26 AM   #117
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Anybody seen the Steins;Gate movie? Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi it ain't, I'm sure, but might be mildly amusing?
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Old 10-10-2016, 09:55 PM   #118
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Quote:
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Anybody seen the Steins;Gate movie? Disappearance of Suzumiya Haruhi it ain't, I'm sure, but might be mildly amusing?
I'm not sure why I didn't see this post before now. I saw it. It was weaker than the show overall, but if you didn't have enough closure before, the movie did a fairly decent job in giving even more closure. I don't think it was really necessary, I actually liked the OVA ending the best, but the movie is a pretty good self-contained story that really explores the more romantic side of the plot, but from a different perspective.

There are some definite comparisons you could draw between it and Disappearance, but yeah it really doesn't hold a candle to it.


MG - Your experience with it is a lot like how most people experienced it. I definitely can't fault you for thinking it's the best anime you've ever seen. It really is that good - good enough to place pretty damn high on my list as well.
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