Steins;Gate: Things The Anime Does Better Than The Visual Novel

Any fan of the genre would have likely heard Steins;Gate when it comes to iconic anime within the science fiction genre. Steins;Gate shows the misadventures of Okabe Rintarou as he and his friends discover a way to send messages back in time. However, as iconic as this anime is to fans, not everyone would realize that Steins;Gate was actually an adaptation of a visual novel of the same name.RELATED: Best Psychological Anime, RankedWhile the Steins;Gate anime generally takes cues from its visual novel source, some fans would admit that there’s something to the adaptation that the visual novel just didn’t have. In fact, certain aspects of the anime make it superior to the visual novel, to some extent.

8 A More Straightforward Experience

Before emphasizing specifics, perhaps one of the best things the Steins;Gate anime offers is a more straightforward experience regarding Okabe’s misadventures with time travel. Given its focus on an animated format, the Steins;Gate adaptation offers a more straightforward look into Okabe’s journey with the PhoneWave and the D-Mail mechanism.

Unlike the visual novel, which spares no expense when it comes to elaborating even the tiniest of details, the anime ensures that viewers get only the essential details in telling Okabe’s story. This is the element that makes most adaptations hit-or-miss, and thankfully Steins;Gate’s anime adaptation won the hearts of many with its cohesive yet captivating take on the visual novel’s story.

7 Standard Viewing Experience Is Always Safer

While it’s true that the visual novel offers more features compared to the anime, the Steins;Gate adaptation shines in its simplicity. Gone is the need to tinker with interfaces and menus just to get to the reading part of the game; instead, the screen does all the work for viewers.

There’s no need to interact with menus, read text messages from the in-game smartphone, or even think about what to do next. Instead, it’s already implied that Okabe will act in the way expected of his character, making everything much more fast-paced and thrilling.

6 Meets The Challenge Of Cohesion

As with any anime adaptation, the main challenge of Steins;Gate as it was being adapted was condensing its main story arcs into 24 episodes, and a single original video animation (OVA). Again, as with other anime, each Steins;Gate episode lasted around 20 minutes or so, meaning White Fox had to adapt the visual novel’s hours’ worth of storyline into an 8-hour or so viewing experience.

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Thankfully, Steins;Gate did manage to pull this off. By focusing on the game’s main arc and streamlining the way other arcs happened, Steins;Gate managed to present a cohesive narrative that adapted most of the events in the visual novel.

5 The Cinematic Angle Makes Things More Dramatic

Compared to the first-person focus of the visual novel, the Steins;Gate anime takes its story and shares it from a third-person point of view. This gives the anime a cinematic feel, with the viewers acting as witnesses rather than entities living inside Okabe’s head.

This provides more room for the plot to go around, since viewers as witnesses can finally make room for things to happen outside Okabe’s point of view. Not to mention, the cinematic angle adds more drama to the suspenseful scenes, as there’s no way of telling how Okabe might react to the more intense happenings throughout the story.

4 Animation Adds Action To The Drama

Fans of the media who just want to go straight to the action will appreciate the adaptation’s emphasis on animation. Unlike the reading-heavy visual novel, the Steins;Gate anime puts a lot of focus on showcasing exactly what’s going on in a scene, possibly shortening hours’ worth of reading into a few minutes of dialogue and action.

Thanks to this element, there’s a lot of room for White Fox to play around with how Okabe and his friends act out scenes, akin transforming a script into a film. Moreover, the aid of animation adds a greater level of detail to the more suspenseful and dramatic moments in the visual novel. For the busy viewer, seeing a story unfold in mere minutes instead of having to read for hours can be a godsend.

3 Visuals Demonstrate Difficult Concepts

For an anime with heavy emphasis on time travel, it’s predictable how intense the narrative could get by the time Steins;Gate reaches its climax. Thankfully, the visuals within the Steins;Gate anime make it easy to demonstrate the tricky nature of time travel.

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A good example involves the times Okabe and physicist Makise Kurisu debate and explain the concepts involved in time travel. The anime takes the time to visually demonstrate to viewers. While the visual novel does have narrative emphasis and explainers in the form of text, viewers who like to see things in action may prefer animations instead.

2 It Cuts To The Relevant Choices

Some visual novel loyalists might argue that fans aren’t getting the full Steins;Gate experience if they don’t play through all the endings of the visual novel. While this is true from the perspective of completionists, playing through all of Okabe’s choices and paths doesn’t necessarily change the fact that there’s a single True Ending to the story.

As such, the anime taking that True Ending and rolling with it is the choice that makes the most sense. While it’s true that the anime did cut some minor details with regards to certain shocking plot points, it was still able to portray all the necessary parts of Okabe’s story in true Steins;Gate fashion.

1 Replay Value Makes For An Enjoyable Experience

Given the rather abridged nature of the anime, it makes sense for some people to be concerned as to how it encapsulates the Steins;Gate experience. However, its condensed format makes it quite ripe for rewatching, making it much easier for fans to find details they might have missed or plot points they might have misunderstood throughout their initial viewing.

Perhaps most importantly, the condensed nature of Steins;Gate makes it quite easy for fans to try and get into the series’ other media should they wish to do so. These include playing the visual novel source material, playing the visual novel’s sequel Steins;Gate 0 and even watching its anime adaptation.

Steins;Gate was released on October 15, 2009 and is playable in the PC, PSP, PS Vita, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, iOS, and Android.

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