Steins;Gate was one of the best anime ever produced, his unique take on time travel and it's memorable characters gave me one of the best experiences I ever had watching a show. On the other hand, Steins;Gate 0 end up been another brilliant series but for different reasons. I first gotta talk about the character development in this show which was incredible. Okabe Rintarou which was a very loud, over the top but unique character in the original series is now a very depressed person who is suffering for the decisions that he made. His Hououin Kyouma personality is gone, so our dear mad scientist is now a sad scientist. I am sure many people will dislike this new version of Okabe but you need to understand that this was the most logical result. After everything that happened, it wouldn't make any sense to have our over the top mad scientist throught this entire show. Steins Gate 0 takes the Okabe Rintarou character and manages to give it more deep and make him even more relatable to the point that it makes the ending of the original Steins Gate even better because now we know why Okabe was able to make all the decisions that he made to reach the Steins Gate worldline.
However, Okabe is not the only character that gets more deep, one of the strongest points of Steins Gate 0 is that it takes some characters that didn't get enough screen time in the first series and give them some proper character development, Mayuri and Daru are able to shine more in this show, especially Mayuri who I think gets the best character development out of all characters in this show(yes even better than Okabe). We also get some new characters like Maho, Kagari and Amadeus that get some proper development too.
When it comes to the narrative of this show, this is a very character driven anime, the time travel is still very important but the character development was definitely the most important aspect of this anime. The anime still deliver in giving us some very epic scenes involving time travel it also deliver in giving us those heartbreaking scenes that make the original show so emotional. Steins Gate 0 might be a different take of the Steins Gate story but still has some elements that made the first anime so great.
However this series does have some issues, and it has to do with the direction.The original Steins Gate was very well directed, most of the episodes of Steins Gate 0 are very well directed too , but there were some episode that had some problems, espeacially during action scenes (those who watched episode 18 know what I am referring to). Now, those action scenes weren't the most important scenes of this anime because this is more a sci-fi drama than a action/shounen anime, and the most important scenes of this anime had a great direction, so it didn't affect my enjoyment of the show that much.
The animation and art wasn't that special, just like the original show. The soundtrack was as great as the original show, the opening "Fatima" was great but still couldn't top the iconic opening of the original Steins Gate.
Overall, this anime was not able to top the first show but it was still able to deliver another incredible story with fantastic character development.
