Back to Kaidu-'s Profile Kaidu-'s Profile

You have heard of “monster of the week”, now get ready for “bad parent of the week.”

What was that final episode, anyway?

Really, what was that?

Before talking about the anime in general, I just have to say that the final episode is one of the worst things I’ve ever watched.

Now, let’s begin.

... Drama is something that has been walking side-by-side with the sport’s genre for a long time. It’s the most common element used to drive the characters’ motivations and fuel their development.
Anime such as Ashita no Joe, Touch, Ping Pong the Animation, and many other well-regarded sports anime all fit in this category, and what do they all have in common that Hoshiai doesn’t? The answer is that, at their core, they are still sports anime, and the sport has a reason to be there. It serves a purpose that couldn’t be fulfilled otherwise.
Hoshiai didn’t needed to be a sports anime. In fact, strip away every instance of sport this show has and replace it with something like a cultural club or something and the results are not very different.

Edit: news got out that the show was meant to be 25-episode long. While that does answer why many plot points were not resolved, it's unlikely this will ever get a second season, and even if it does, the points I made here remain the same for these 12 episodes. What is done is done and +13 episodes wouldn't take back what happened during this "first half."

The show has eight main characters. That is alarming enough given it wants to dramatize all of them in just 12 episode, while still holding into the soft tennis aspect, but it seems the show wasn’t satisfied with just that and decided to dramatize the side characters too.
It is as if the only way it knows how to make those characters fit into the story is to put them in some kind of predicament. However, it doesn’t even do that right because it’s more worried about setting up dramas so it can have a moment of tension during the episode, rather than solving those issues in a compelling way. It’s like a mystery show holding its mysteries’ resolution until the final episode, while introducing more and more mysteries as the story goes by for the sole purpose of holding the viewer’s attention, since it doesn’t know of any other way to do that.
I will give credit where credit’s due, though. The characters are well written enough to stand on their own initially; they have unique personalities and unique traits. However, none of that matters when the show only uses them to incite drama. They are like punching bags only waiting for the blow to give the audience some kind of conflict.

The term “forced drama” has never been more fitting. The show is desperate to make the viewer feel some kind of tension, but setting up soft tennis matches, creating interesting rivals or compelling and well-written conflict is too much work, so it relies on the cheapest tricks in the book to do so. And believe me, it goes beyond the “bad parent of the week” everyone talks about.

The conflict is generally the same. Almost all the kids have bad parents who do not approve of their behavior and want to dictate how their children should live. The show tries to pass a message about that, but fails miserably when every single drama feels so incredibly forced.
Unlike the main characters, the parents (which in a way are the “villains” of the show) are one-dimensional and stupid characters. Every word of dialogue that comes out of their mouth feels like it were generated by a computer that had a very basic idea of how these characters should be. They are purposely selfish without any given reason and end up being literal plot-devices meant to create drama. And when the show does the same thing for the 5th time (that is, introducing a bad parent), you just kind of don’t care anymore.
The only bad parent that could have been interesting is the main character’s father, which was completely forgotten after a certain event and never mentioned again. However, even he felt like a generic one-dimensional villain that you could find anywhere. He is bad because he has to be, and that’s it. It’s like that with EVERY bad character. This is beyond lazy writing, it’s offensive.

The drama itself is terribly handled. Some dramas take a whole episode while others take ¼ of one, with absolutely no set-up whatsoever. The characters are hardly affected by it and they only act as if it matters when it’s meant to create more conflict. Said conflict also doesn’t matter because most of the time it’s inconsequential. Episode 9 is probably the worst offender when it comes to this: Nao traps Shingo’s sister in a room for absolute no reason and everyone just laughs it off. It’s not brought up ever again and Nao is fine and dandy in the next episode.
Some dramas are also completely forgotten, like the matter with Yuuta’s mother or the family conflict of the student council president. Some are resolved in a very rushed and cheap way that makes you wonder why they even exist in the first place.
I can’t put into words just how desperate the show is to get some kind of reaction out of the audience.

And then, at the end of the anime, almost NOTHING that was brought up was resolved.
The show is also trying to pass a message about social matters, but it fails at that, too. It obviously tries too hard at it, taking me out of the experience. When a character talks about a delicate topic, it feels like they are reading a self-help book about it rather than giving their perspective as a teenager.

If that was not enough, it can’t even do soft tennis matches well. The opponents are mostly uninteresting. Coincidentally, the only interesting opponent got like that after he stopped being an opponent, showing just how one-dimensional the show is trying to make its villains look like. I feel like it’s doing it on purpose, honestly. The matches are very cheaply written too, following a formula of having the character adapting to the play-style of their opponent, but taking forever to realize obvious things, only dragging the match to pretend there is conflict.
On the technical aspect, the show started beautifully and declined to a depressing state. The animation gets so inconsistent it’s hard to ignore. Character models sometimes look off and there’s an intense reutilization of animation during the tennis matches. Enough to be noticeable.
To put it simply, it gets ugly. It’s a shame when the first episode had such a consistent production and fluid animation.

There’s a constant overutilization of songs, too. The opening theme is played constantly in key moments, making me desensitized to it when I should be feeling sad or happy. The theme with the piano is also overused during the matches, playing non-stop as if the show only has that one song. It’s not bad, it’s just tiring and lazy.

You might hear that Hoshiai no Sora “got bad” or “went downhill” after a couple of episodes, but I disagree. I honestly believe the show had problems right off the bat. It’s just that the culmination of drama with little to no resolution became more evident as the series went on.

Before I end the review, here are a few arguments I have read defending this show:
-In real life, not all problems are resolved, so it’s okay for the show not to solve everything
This is not real life, this is a work of fiction created by humans (although in this case a computer algorithm might as well have created it) and it’s meant to tell a cohesive story with a beginning, middle and end. This rule also applies to the subplots. There’s absolutely no reason to bring up a conflict if it’s not getting resolved or doesn’t play a role in the main story, and, as I said before, many things in Hoshiai are almost inconsequential, and even when they are consequential, it’s meant to force the plot to go in a certain direction, making it even more forced.
-This was never a show about sports, it’s primarily about drama
But it still has a sport. Putting it aside and rushing the games is still lazy.
-The character don’t appear affected by their family drama because they don’t want to show it
That is true to some extent, but it doesn’t excuse ignoring said dramas altogether, while having characters feel bad when it’s convenient.

Hoshiai no Sora is a show that has desperate desire to create conflict, alongside one of the cheapest and most dishonest writing I’ve seen, created one of the worst shows I’ve watched this year. It forgets the unnecessary plot points that the show itself had introduced, and rushes others. It tries to send a message, but it feels like it’s lecturing you about it. It fails at everything it attempts. There’s not a single redeeming quality besides the decent production of the first episode. There’s not a single thing to take out of this show, except maybe a good involuntary laugh.
Had it been a comfy slice of life soft tennis anime, maybe the end result would’ve been better.
Saying I didn't enjoy it would be an understatement though. This gave me good laughs.

Thanks for reading, and forgive my poor writing and bad English.

This is one of the worst adaptation to ever come out in recent memory. Not only it's a bad anime, but it's also an insult to the original manga by Fujita-sensei which is considered a classic in Japan.

Let's go over the biggest problem: it's rushed like hell.
How rushed? Well...
Imagine if you had to adapt JoJo part 5 into 13 episodes...
Or HxH into 24 episodes...
Or FMA into 16 episodes...
Or... Well, you get the idea.
The original manga is 43 volume long. This anime is 36 episode.
This means that even if they adapted a volume per episode, it wouldn't do ... it. So they had two choices: either cut whole volumes or cut small content. They choose both.

Now to the problems that this causes: it's a mess.
There is barely any characterization for the characters we are supposed to care about, and the character development is so sudden it makes no sense. Characters will do things that they would normally never do for no reason at all because of it.
The story also just keeps jumping nonstop from one point to another, dramatic moments will happen with no build-up whatsoever and sad songs will play at a sad moment that no one cares about.

Technically speaking, it's also ugly. Character movements are too stiff, actions scenes barely have any action and are just static shots of a character delivering an attack. Excessive post-effects are added to some scenes and they also look ugly (for example, the white bloom that is present through the whole hospital arc fight).

It also manages to have a terrible directing and editing. Characters will just stand somewhere or walk while talking with nothing happening on-screen (as in episode 4 when two character are talking on the side walk), some cuts are TOO SUDDEN (episode 13 cuts to the opening all of sudden almost as if it wanted to make a cliffhanger, but it just made it worse) and the narrative in general is really just too much simplified.

As I re-write this review, all of my points are still valid and the show has only gotten WORST. It's downright offensive to the viewers and to the original material.

There's not much too say. It's just a really bad and insulting show. A real waste of good source material.

TL;DR do yourself a favor and read the great manga

The development team behind the original Steins;Gate aimed for a rate of 99% science and 1% fantasy.

I’m not sure what the anime staff for Steins;Gate 0 were going for, but if I were to guess, it would be 84% rule of cool, 15% fantasy and 2% science.
If you paid attention, you probably noticed that those numbers do not add up. That’s on purpose, because Steins;Gate 0 doesn’t really care about making sense or not, and whether you notice those things and let them bug you is entirely up to you.

The amateurish team behind the series had to adapt a non-linear Visual Novel ... that had many routes, each with its own plot points and own character development. As a result, the history was divided into arcs, while still having the main story going on, but not focusing entirely in any of them. If it sounds a bit messy, it’s because it is.

The show has many plot points that may or may not begin a story arc, and the viewer is never too sure to what he should be focusing on. For once, you might think Amadeus and AI is the main theme of the series, only for it to be forgotten for a while to focus on conspiracies and information warfare, which is then put aside so they can tell a story about amnesia. Then everything comes together near the end in a very messy way.
Along with the awkward pacing and dubious writing, it becomes just too confusing for the viewer to keep track of everything that is going on.
My biggest issue with it are the many dropped plot points, but there's so much going on that most people will just forget about them.

It doesn’t help that the soundtrack for this series is basically just the game tracks that play whenever the sound director felt like. By itself, the soundtrack is amazing, but its usage here is boring and uncreative. As a matter of comparison, the original series hardly had a game song come up, and most of the episode’s duration were dead silent, with only background noise going on. This created an amazing atmosphere for the series.
It is the complete opposite here though. In almost every scene there is a track playing in the background. It’s not trying to create an atmosphere or anything like that.

As for the directing, it is mediocre and very amateurish, as expected of the staff for this show. By itself, that wouldn’t be too much of a problem, but when it tries to do something “different” it comes out jerky and very distracting, along with the poor animation that really becomes an issue on action scenes. It’s hard to enjoy and take them serious when everything moves like a malfunctioning robot. They even try to do some clever tricks to hide the bad animation, like zooming in a shot to simulate movement, or do shaky camera, but the result is straight up laughable.

With all that said, the show does have some good moments. The first half is watchable, actually improving some stuff from the source material, and episode 8 was amazing for me. The character interactions are great and heart-warming, but can get a little too fan service-ish.
As the story progresses, more is introduced and it becomes hard to follow. Maybe even the staff was having a hard time following it, since the show straight up forget some plot points or never really go anywhere with them. It gets exceptionally hard to watch towards the end, as it has some of the wackiest and inconsistent directing I’ve seen in a anime, with visuals that make no sense and are only trying to be cool. It also have some plot holes, which is ambiguous given the nature of the series, but I still believe that there are some plot holes here and there even considering that.

As for how the plot progresses, its conveniences goes as far as changing a character personality or making them act in a way that they never would just so that the story can flow, almost as if the staff couldn’t think of a better way to do it. Sometimes I felt like there were no “rules” and anything could happen.

It also tries to do drama, and I think it did a good job the first time, with a good build up and an excellent setting, but maybe it got too confident because of it, and the other times are not as good. However, it gets to a point where it desperately attempts to make you cry. It’s so blatantly obvious and pathetic that you can’t get sad. In fact, you might even laugh. The poor animation and awkward directing just make it worst.

For most people, this show will be disappointing. That’s expected, as the original set the bar so high. Steins;Gate 0 tries to reach that bar, but the lack of a competent staff like the original and all its flaws makes it impossible to do so. This end up being just a 23-episode long fan service series.

At the end, if you’re able to ignore, excuse, or simply don’t notice those things, you might enjoy Steins;Gate 0.

(And with that said (and If you read until here), excuse my grammar errors and poor writing. This is my first (and possibly last) review.