Mind you this is based on the games (S;G and S;G0) which covers much more than the series and spoiler-y so don't read it if you are yet to play the games.
For readers who are vaguely aware of Steins;Gate, you may be interested to know that it's actually part of a wider universe called the Science Adventure series (or SciADV for short).
Steins;Gate works really well as a standalone entry (and I didn't even realise it wasn't a standalone thing until a year or two back) but it's part of a loose overarching canon.
Most of the games have various errors but there's a translation group called Committee of Zero who not only retranslate all of the games (sometimes from the ground up) but also do a lot of technical work. They've been doing essentially a reimplementation of the entire engine as well, although I don't know that it'd be accurate to say it's a clean room implementation or anything like that.
I will mention that the first entry, Chaos;Head NoAH takes a while to get going (like a few hours) and gets quite gruesome towards the end (to the point that I wanted to quit) but once you get past it, the rest is all a lot tamer in comparison.
The whole series is a very long time investment as far as VNs go but I personally got really into the series and spent a few months(!) just getting through the mainline entries which culminated with the most recent entry: Anonymous;Code.
Without going into any details, there's a loose canon across the series that Anonymous;Code finally digs into and makes you look at the entire series from a new angle. It's a bit controversial but I appreciated it.
It's not really that clear what the future of the series is as there's a remake coming up called Steins;??? where it appears to be a remake but there's a bunch of fans hoping that it's more in the vein of Final Fantasy 7 Remake where there's really more going on under the hood.
There are also the anime adaptions but I wouldn't recommend them. I've seen most of them, and I'm really not a snob about this sort of stuff but just due to the medium of VNs (with multiple routes and that), they aren't able to successfully replicate a lot of the twists and turns at all which take time to build up.
It's pretty bizarre to me to have even stuck with a VN let alone played through like 6 over the span of like half a year or more? Honestly, I'm not even sure if SciADV is actually "good" or if it's just one of the first franchises in a long time where I haven't ruined it for myself by reading Wikipedia in advance. I think it's pretty good though.
Not recommending the Steins;Gate anime adaption is pretty wild, it's an incredibly highly rated Anime series. The story telling language of a VN and an Anime are very different so it's no surprise they don't perfectly capture the complexities of the other medium. They don't have to be the same to be worth watching.
fwiw: no idea on the other anime adaptions quality
Oh yeah, the Steins:Gate animes are perfectly fine to be clear! I was only thinking of the non-SG animes which are... pretty messy!
The Chaos;Head anime barely makes any sense, even having read the VN because it only got 12 episodes. I haven't finished Chaos;Child or Robotics;Notes which seem fine so far for C;C anyway, it doesn't quite feel the same.
There is Occultic;Nine which anime only in that the VN was never localised plus the game itself isn't on Steam so there's nothing to base a patch off of.
Anyway, take my thoughts with a grain of salt and not like some correct stance haha
Do you think the Chaos;Head anime could have been good like SG if it had had more episodes? Or is the fundamental nature of a VN story hard to adapt to a linear anime format?
I came into Steins;Gate completely cold. I watched it when it came out and I only just realised there's more to the universe. It's a ridiculously good anime, probably a top 10 for me. It's got a really cool storyline with loads of plot twists, interesting characters and deep mystery.
> Well, it's more because of its cult status (especially on imageboards) than actual objective appreciation.
No way. There are nearly 3M user ratings on that website. How many of those would you say belong to regular imageboard users? A few tens of thousands, tops? And when was the last time you saw a Steins;Gate meme?
I stopped watching the show around halfway through, it got sad :( I don't have anything against sad shows, I like a lot of them, I was just having too much fun watching a group of friends do cool science things
To be more specific, it was a visual novel -- which is like a reading-heavy/gameplay-light RPG. Equal parts book and game. (The nearest mainstream western equivalent would be something like Planescape: Torment.)
The anime adaptation, while good, didn't come close to capturing everything.
Worth watching? Not really but they are definitely worth playing. It's hard to fault the anime adaptions because they have limited time compared to the 20 - 40 hours that some of the VNs take. Many of the other entries (Chaos;Child is great) are definitely worth it but won't really hit as well if you're just watching the adaption. The main reason being that VNs have multiple paths so they reveal information piece by piece. The adaptions generally try to include all of the information at once in a linear fashion but it doesn't really have the same effect.
I focused too much on the non-Steins;Gate works when I replied (as pointed out elsewhere) so to be clear, when I say "worth watching", I was referring to the "other animes" bit. Steins;Gate's adaptions are great! It's the other SciADV anime adaptions that aren't quite on the same level
Mind you this is based on the games (S;G and S;G0) which covers much more than the series and spoiler-y so don't read it if you are yet to play the games.
Never expected to see S;G on HN, can't believe I've never come across this before either.
Many thanks, OP
I feel it's up there with NGE and Lain in anime I'd expect to see discussed here
This is a really interesting attempt to make Steins;Gate internally consistent.
What stood out to me is that it's not really "time travel" in the usual sense.
It's closer to a system where:
* each world-line is a fully fixed history * only one is active at a time * changes correspond to switching between consistent states
So instead of modifying causality, it's more like constrained state selection.
That framing avoids paradoxes almost entirely, which is pretty elegant.
It also feels surprisingly similar to how some physical models separate:
* underlying structure (fixed) * observed history (projection-dependent)
Curious if others interpret it this way.
For readers who are vaguely aware of Steins;Gate, you may be interested to know that it's actually part of a wider universe called the Science Adventure series (or SciADV for short).
Steins;Gate works really well as a standalone entry (and I didn't even realise it wasn't a standalone thing until a year or two back) but it's part of a loose overarching canon.
Most of the games have various errors but there's a translation group called Committee of Zero who not only retranslate all of the games (sometimes from the ground up) but also do a lot of technical work. They've been doing essentially a reimplementation of the entire engine as well, although I don't know that it'd be accurate to say it's a clean room implementation or anything like that.
For those interested, you can see the various patches here (https://sonome.dareno.me/projects/) and this guide should give you an idea of the ideal playthrough order (https://old.reddit.com/r/steinsgate/comments/13cjnui/kurisus...)
I will mention that the first entry, Chaos;Head NoAH takes a while to get going (like a few hours) and gets quite gruesome towards the end (to the point that I wanted to quit) but once you get past it, the rest is all a lot tamer in comparison.
The whole series is a very long time investment as far as VNs go but I personally got really into the series and spent a few months(!) just getting through the mainline entries which culminated with the most recent entry: Anonymous;Code.
Without going into any details, there's a loose canon across the series that Anonymous;Code finally digs into and makes you look at the entire series from a new angle. It's a bit controversial but I appreciated it.
It's not really that clear what the future of the series is as there's a remake coming up called Steins;??? where it appears to be a remake but there's a bunch of fans hoping that it's more in the vein of Final Fantasy 7 Remake where there's really more going on under the hood.
There are also the anime adaptions but I wouldn't recommend them. I've seen most of them, and I'm really not a snob about this sort of stuff but just due to the medium of VNs (with multiple routes and that), they aren't able to successfully replicate a lot of the twists and turns at all which take time to build up.
It's pretty bizarre to me to have even stuck with a VN let alone played through like 6 over the span of like half a year or more? Honestly, I'm not even sure if SciADV is actually "good" or if it's just one of the first franchises in a long time where I haven't ruined it for myself by reading Wikipedia in advance. I think it's pretty good though.
Not recommending the Steins;Gate anime adaption is pretty wild, it's an incredibly highly rated Anime series. The story telling language of a VN and an Anime are very different so it's no surprise they don't perfectly capture the complexities of the other medium. They don't have to be the same to be worth watching.
fwiw: no idea on the other anime adaptions quality
Oh yeah, the Steins:Gate animes are perfectly fine to be clear! I was only thinking of the non-SG animes which are... pretty messy!
The Chaos;Head anime barely makes any sense, even having read the VN because it only got 12 episodes. I haven't finished Chaos;Child or Robotics;Notes which seem fine so far for C;C anyway, it doesn't quite feel the same.
There is Occultic;Nine which anime only in that the VN was never localised plus the game itself isn't on Steam so there's nothing to base a patch off of.
Anyway, take my thoughts with a grain of salt and not like some correct stance haha
Do you think the Chaos;Head anime could have been good like SG if it had had more episodes? Or is the fundamental nature of a VN story hard to adapt to a linear anime format?
It's actually the third highest-rated anime TV show of all time by user rating: https://myanimelist.net/topanime.php
And for a long stretch in the 2010s, it was #1.
Well, it's more because of its cult status (especially on imageboards) than actual objective appreciation.
Personally, I saw it again a year or two ago and it was good, but clearly (and not in a good way) a VN adaptation. Still worth watching.
I came into Steins;Gate completely cold. I watched it when it came out and I only just realised there's more to the universe. It's a ridiculously good anime, probably a top 10 for me. It's got a really cool storyline with loads of plot twists, interesting characters and deep mystery.
> Well, it's more because of its cult status (especially on imageboards) than actual objective appreciation.
No way. There are nearly 3M user ratings on that website. How many of those would you say belong to regular imageboard users? A few tens of thousands, tops? And when was the last time you saw a Steins;Gate meme?
Also, absolute meme shows which are imageboard fodder don't tend to rank very highly. See, e.g.: https://myanimelist.net/anime/32615/Youjo_Senki (#808 on the all-time list.)
People really liked the Steins;Gate anime on its merits.
This may well be, but japanese image boards are huge
I get the feeling he was more so referring to the others, because the others besides S;G are pretty meh.
~tuturuu~
El psy kongroo
I stopped watching the show around halfway through, it got sad :( I don't have anything against sad shows, I like a lot of them, I was just having too much fun watching a group of friends do cool science things
Happy 15th anniversary of the anime :)
El Psy Kongroo.
Steins;Gate is an anime [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steins;Gate_(TV_series)
It was a sort of video game first, though:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steins;Gate
To be more specific, it was a visual novel -- which is like a reading-heavy/gameplay-light RPG. Equal parts book and game. (The nearest mainstream western equivalent would be something like Planescape: Torment.)
The anime adaptation, while good, didn't come close to capturing everything.
Super Mario Bros. is a movie [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Super_Mario_Bros._Movie
I haven't laughed like this all year. Great reply!
This is the kind of snark I come to HN to see
Watched the animes. Are any of the other stories in the universe worth watching?
Worth watching? Not really but they are definitely worth playing. It's hard to fault the anime adaptions because they have limited time compared to the 20 - 40 hours that some of the VNs take. Many of the other entries (Chaos;Child is great) are definitely worth it but won't really hit as well if you're just watching the adaption. The main reason being that VNs have multiple paths so they reveal information piece by piece. The adaptions generally try to include all of the information at once in a linear fashion but it doesn't really have the same effect.
Thanks, I've not tried VNs but I may start with this one.
I focused too much on the non-Steins;Gate works when I replied (as pointed out elsewhere) so to be clear, when I say "worth watching", I was referring to the "other animes" bit. Steins;Gate's adaptions are great! It's the other SciADV anime adaptions that aren't quite on the same level