English Dub Review: Steins;Gate 0 “Rinascimento of the Unwavering Promise -Promised Rinascimento-“

And now for something completely different.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Okabe’s jump last week using the time machine has done the reverse and sent him far off into the future, year 2036 to be precise. Here, the collapse of society that Okabe and friends were fighting to stop has already happened, and the Future Gadget Lab has formed a resistance group to survive the oppressive forces that control the world.

After getting saved from some goons by future Suzuha, Okabe is escorted to meet with Daru, the leader of the resistance, who explains that in this timelines, Okabe became a broken man after being traumatized by enemy forces. Okabe is a symbol of the resistance, and his friends are happy to see him “Awoken” and alive.

While this reunion is going on, Rumiho and Ruka, both fighting on the ground, fall into an enemy trap and have to fight their way out. Ruka offers to fend off the enemy soldiers while Rumiho and the others escape, confident that he won’t die before meeting Okabe. He isn’t wrong, but after his intense battle, Ruka sustains fatal wounds, causing him to die in Okabe’s arms after he and the others came to save him.

After witnessing another tragedy, Okabe meets with Daru and Maho. After hearing more of their plight, he demands to use the time leap machine again to go back in time. His mission is determined: find Steins;Gate and save the future, so this wretched world is never created in the first place.

Our Take:

A change in scenery was exactly what Steins;Gate 0 needed to keep things interesting. Not wanting to stagnate in a repeat of the time travel sequences in the original Steins;Gate, we get flung not into the past, but the far future, to see the dire consequences for the failure of Okabe’s mission. This reorients our perception of the cast, more specifically the members of the Future Gadget Lab, who in this future is a group of freedom fighters, not just a bunch of quirky nerds playing at being scientists. This is different from what we can usually expect of Steins;Gate, but that is not at all a bad thing. Seeing the Future Gadget Lab as the heroes of a fallen world is pure, unabashed cool. It feels like an entirely new series to explore, one that goes much more into the meat of what’s at stake here.

In addition, this post-apocalyptic setup delivers on the promise of Steins;Gate 0 much better than certain episodes of this show have. This is the dark and gritty alternative to the original Steins;Gate that scratches that particular itch. And its pulled off with sincerity and emotion. There are plenty of great moments here, like seeing Ruka die in Okabe’s arms after a dazzling display of sword-fighting. Of particular note is how important Okabe is to the rest of the Future Gadget Lab. More than just a funny guy in a jacket, he’s evolved to be a symbol of what his friends are fighting for. It’s a beautiful way of putting the events so far into context. Okabe’s odyssey he’s gone on so far has put him at a crossroads to choose whether or not he’ll be the hero everyone wants him to be, and that tension keeps the impact of the episode strong.

In the pursuit of fairness, one cannot ignore how word-heavy this episode is, which has plenty of Okabe repeating events of the story that we already knew. Exposition is rarely interesting, but the vocal performance here gives Okabe’s monologuing a desperate essence that keeps the viewer immersed into Okabe’s struggle. While it seems that this is something of a one-off, since Okabe won’t be staying in the future for very long, this episode is far from inconsequential. This week does a superb job of setting up the stakes for the final few episodes of the show and bringing us closer to Okabe’s fight to save the future.