Title: Steins;Gate Collection 1
Encompasses: Episodes 1-12
Published by: Madman Entertainment (Australia), Funimation Entertainment (North America)
Genre: Mystery, Romance, Science-Fiction
Audio: English / Japanese
Subtitles: English
Classification: This title has been classified as M for Animated Violence
Special Thanks: Madman Entertainment for providing me with a copy of this release to review!
The microwave is a time machine. Okarin proved it. The self-anointed mad scientist nuked bananas into some gelatinous version of the future. Or maybe it was the past. Doesn’t matter. No one thought he could do it, but he did it anyway. He sent text messages through time to people he knew. To his friends. Some of them female. Pretty. He should have been more careful. He should have stopped. Tampering with the time-space continuum attracts unwelcome attention.
Clandestine organizations of nefarious origins take notice. SERN. Always watching. Okarin knows; he can feel their eyes. That’s why he started the top secret Future Gadget Lab. To stop them. You should join. We get to wear lab coats, and it’s dangerous. Danger is exciting because it’s deadly. The microwave is a time machine.
Even without having received a formal review on this site, Steins;Gate has already achieved an award on The Otaku’s Study – second place in my “North American Anime Release of the Year” awards. That being said, now that I have my hands on an Australian blu-ray copy of this title I can go into more depth on this title. To me, factoring in the intended genre of a series, having a well written storyline is key to keeping my attention…. and fortunately unlike the previous 5pb/NitroPlus series anime adaptation ‘Chaos;Head’ which had a lot of potential but fell short due to a restrictive episode count, it seems that they are headed towards providing a much better experience storyline-wise.
Storyline
Time Travel isn’t exactly a unique “technological advancement” for a series, heck Doctor Who is almost at their 50th Anniversary and from episode one it has involved travelling through the space time continuum. Where this series goes well is that it isn’t a series about a group of people travelling through time…. at least not yet and not as the main focus. The storyline follows Rintaro Okabe, an eccentric and self-proclaimed ‘Mad Science’ who heads up the Future Gadget Laboratory with the goal of finding a means of travelling through time. The thing is…. from the first episode he has the capacity to do so…. and through a simple text message after witnessing the murder of main female protagonist Kurisu Makise, had inadvertently rewritten history and sent the world down a whole different path.
This shocking discovery (Of which only he remembers) sends him to investigate further along with the rest of his group – Mayuri Shiina who is Okabe’s long time childhood friend and self-proclaimed “Hostage” and Itaru “Daru” Hashida who is an experienced hacker as well as an otaku. With the assistance of Kurisu (Who turns out to be a neuroscience researcher and is no longer dead) they dive into uncovering the mysteries of what their time travelling is capable of while attempting to uncover the activities of the “evil” organization known as SERN who have been doing some research into the same field. As their attempts progress the timeline gets more warped, with Okabe still being the only one to retain his memories…. but the question is….. asides from green gelatinous banana’s and text messages – how far can they go and what can they uncover?
While the storyline does focus on the above mentioned characters primarily, it does include a number of other characters whose roles will be expanded in the second collection. The online alias John Titor who claims to come from a dystopian future, the “new working girl” in the shop below the lab who seems to know more than she really does, the quiet girl who is after the same computer as Okabe is, a feminine boy who lives at the local shrine and a maid cafe worker who has secrets behind her cutesy catgirl charms. The characters are incorporated well given the first half of the series attempts at setting itself up for the second half, but I look forward to seeing where the second half takes them.
For at least the first twelve episodes of this series, we are presented with something which in my opinion has been cleverly thought out and well implemented – making good use of the character cast, the setting and the ideas they presented to us. As I mentioned above however, the first half of the series is more casual as Okabe et al. works at testing the limits of the time machine, testing impact of jumping timelines and slowly uncovering the mysteries and if all of Okabe’s conspiracies are necessarily fictitious. I look forward to how the dynamic of the storytelling shifts given the cliff-hanger this collection leaves you on (To the point where I don’t really wish to wait another month to find out).
Design
For those who are familiar with the visual novel series, you may be aware that the character designs had a rather… unique design to them aesthetic wise which made them stand out from other titles (See HERE). Unfortunately they were unable to replicate that style exactly into the anime adaptation, but the character designs and detailing do aid in replicating a similar darker mood to them while still delivering quality. It is the standard I have come to expect from Huke, who was also behind Black Rock Shooter. The environment designs are also worthy of a mention, complementing the characters and theme of the series well. While there wasn’t too many opportunities for major animation, the characters movements and emotions were portrayed as I would have expected from the characters.
There were no noticeable edits to the designs for English release, although with the speed the dialogue progresses you do occasionally need to pause to read some of the numerous text messages prevalent throughout the episodes.
Music / Voice Acting
Steins;Gate includes a single Opening and Ending theme. The opening sequence Hacking to the Gate by Kanako Ito (Who also performed the visual novels opening theme Skyclad no Kansokusha) is in my opinion an enjoyable song coupled with great animation that really suits the theme of the series and what I expect from a 5pb/NitroPlus science fiction series. The ending sequence Tokitsukasadoru Juuni no Meiyaku by Yui Sakakibara is another great song however is rather basic in the animation. The rest of the music included in this release is simple and mostly lingers in the background, but it does its job of delivering impact at the right time well.
As with most Funimation releases, Steins;Gate Collection 1 features both the original Japanese, and an English dub. The English dub cast manages to carry across the characters respective roles nicely, especially for the overly eccentric Okabe voiced by J. Michael Tatum (Black Butler – Sebastian Michaelis) and the more calm and level headed Kurisu Makise voiced by Trina Nishimura (.hack//Quantum – Sakuya). Special mentions outside the main voice cast go to Tyson Rinehart as Daru and Jad Saxton (Ga-Rei-Zero – Miku Manabe) as Faris.
Extras
Steins;Gate Collection 1 offers a nice collection of goodies in its release. These are as follows:
- Episode 01 Commentary with Trina Nishimura (Kurisu Makise) and Tyson Rinehart (Itaru “Daru” Hashida)
- Episode 12 Commentary with J. Michael Tatum and John Burgmeier (Head Writer)
- Akihabara Map (Which zooms in and around the different locations from the series)
- Textless Opening and Ending Sequences
- Trailers for Deadman Wonderland, Texhnolyze, Ergo Proxy, Ga-Rei-Zero, Serial Experiments Lain and Funimation.com – as this is the blu-ray release I am viewing I assume the trailers will be different on the DVD release.
Final Word
I thoroughly enjoyed my time watching Steins;Gate and appreciate not only the complex concepts incorporated into the plotline, but the work on not having the English localization seemingly impact on the experience too much. I look forward to seeing the second collection when it launches next month.
As the anime adaptation would most likely have left out quite a lot of the alternate storylines from the original visual novel release, I hope we will see the visual novel localized and released at some point – to make the full Steins;Gate plot available to all fans of this series.
Final Score
Storyline / Character Development: A
Design: A-
Music/Voice Acting: B+
Extras: B
Personal Preference: A
Overall Score: A
