Hacker Cinema
Steins;Gate
2011 · TV series · 24 min episodes · 1 season
AnimationScience FictionFantasyMysteryComedy
A group of friends have customized their microwave so that it can send text messages to the past. As they perform different experiments, an organization named SERN who has been doing their own research on time travel tracks them down and now the characters have to find a way to avoid being captured by them.
17 positive4 neutralfrom 21 commenters
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23 comments on Hacker News
I focused too much on the non-Steins;Gate works when I replied (as pointed out elsewhere) so to be clear, when I say "worth watching", I was referring to the "other animes" bit. Steins;Gate's adaptions are great! It's the other SciADV anime adaptions that aren't quite on the same level
Oh yeah, the Steins:Gate animes are perfectly fine to be clear! I was only thinking of the non-SG animes which are... pretty messy!
The Chaos;Head anime barely makes any sense, even having read the VN because it only got 12 episodes. I haven't finished Chaos;Child or Robotics;Notes which seem fine so far for C;C anyway, it doesn't quite feel the same.
There is Occultic;Nine which anime only in that the VN was never localised plus the game itself isn't on Steam so there's nothing to base a patch off of.
Anyway, take my thoughts with a grain of salt and not like some correct stance haha
Not recommending the Steins;Gate anime adaption is pretty wild, it's an incredibly highly rated Anime series. The story telling language of a VN and an Anime are very different so it's no surprise they don't perfectly capture the complexities of the other medium. They don't have to be the same to be worth watching.
fwiw: no idea on the other anime adaptions quality
Cowboy Bebop: The Movie
Your Name
Violet Evergarden
Perfect Blue
Paprika
Metropolis
There's a bunch of great animated movies.
If you're referring to series then among the best Seinen classics are shows like:
Berzerk (1997)
Monster (2004) [My personal favorite]
Cowboy Bebop
Steins:Gate
Vinland Saga (newer)
Frieren (newer)
There's a lot of Shounen classics as well, my favorite probably being
Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood
granted there's several tropes in it that aren't going to be as enjoyable to watch on repeat for older folks. But the storytelling and plot is practically like Breaking Bad but in anime form.
Your Name (2016, Makoto Shinkai) and Ping Pong the Animation (2014, Masaaki Yuasa) are both IMO top notch (and the creators are active and have extensive oeuvres). The Shape of Voice (2016, Kyoto Animation (RIP)) was also much acclaimed. Of these, I recommend Ping Pong the most (and Yuasa's other works as well).
I suppose for more sci-fi/fantasy, Rebuild of Evangelion (2007-2021) might be interesting, although to me, its popularity in Japan and why the retelling was made is actually more interesting to me than the works themselves. It didn't win any particular awards or acclaim, but I was a fan of the incredibly stylish manga series, and I personally enjoyed the Blame! (2017, Hiroyuki Shesita) CGI anime film for those into the Japanese post-cyber-apocalypse sci-fi aesthetic.
I think these days, the economics of anime has driven more interesting work into series rather than features. Recently some memorable ones I've enjoyed are Steins;Gate (2011-2015, White Fox), Devilman: Crybaby (2018, Studio SARU), Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022, Trigger), Pluto (2023, M2), and Frieren (2023, Madhouse).
Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, Postal, Detective Pikachu, Sonic 1&2. Not necessary the greatest of cinema, but all of them did a good job of turning the source material into a movie. Probably helps that the source material of all of them is relative simple and leaves plenty of room for interpretation.
Also Steins;Gate, though that's a visual novel turned anime, not a regular game. But probably the best example of staying very close to the source material and succeeding.
I don't know if you've seen Steins;Gate 0 (the sequel?) to Steins;Gate (technically it happens in between the last and second to last episodes) but I say the series holds up about as well as it could have.
There are some rough parts but it's a pretty solid series overall. Arguably the VN is a better portrayal but that gets into a whole other discussion.
Indeed.
I imagine it also had a measurable impact on the sales of Dr Pepper. It took me a year to kick the habit of drinking it, which started after binge-watching Steins;Gate.
I'd recommend trying to watch a bit more of Steins;Gate and Attack on Titan. They both get very rewarding as they go on. (For the latter, it's a bit more hit-and-miss, but the hits don't ever stop. Unlike the Game of Thrones kind, where there's a sheer drop-off starting Season 5 that only gets worse and never better.) And, as another commenter wrote, there's something much deeper and more nuanced about the main character's over-the-top personality in Steins;Gate than initially appears.
I also enjoyed Ergo Proxy, Texhnolyze and Planetes. Ghost in the Shell is still the only movie I revisit every now and then (out of all movies ever). They are all slow, I want to take the time to watch them again some day.
Very different but I also enjoyed Naruto as I grew up myself. It's long (but you can skip all fillers) but sometimes very deep. I enjoyed Kenshin but never finished it.
As mentioned below Samurai Champloo is also nice and Steins Gate (nice, strange atmosphere) and Death Note: very psychological: He thinks that I think that he thinks and I'm smarter so... Love that. And One Punch Man, puts a smile on my face.
If you want weird: FLCL. What was that about?
I think it depends on the show in anime. SPOILERS FOLLOW. Erased is not a parallel world, but someone trying to change their past. Madoka finds Homura repeatedly doing whatever is possible to save Madoka. Steins:Gate is timelines and parallel worlds (think of how many times Okabe again and again tries to save Mayuri). Girl who Leapt Through Time is the Groundhog Day story, same day over and again; bit like Tatami Galaxy. No idea where something like Haruhi Suzumiya might fall where time is played with in many different ways.
Meanwhile Evangelion (the later films) and Attack on Titan both seem to be veering towards some kind of inability to stop the same grand narrative cycle repeating again and again...
FLCL is a world where change seems distant or impossible, and the sameness itself is stifling and a major source of conflict in the plot, as in Seinfeld.
Steins;Gate's protagonist's alter-ego Hououin Kyouma is a larger-than-life egotistical (comedy) genius which is analogous to Jerry when he's on-stage in the monologue segments of the show. But that same SG protagonist as his "normie" self Rintaro Okabe is crippled by self-doubt, upstaged by his own alter-ego, and would do anything for his friends, much like the version of Jerry we see outside the monologue segments. If you've seen the last episode of Seinfeld, the parallels between the two are a bit more clear. In Seinfeld, the past catches up with Jerry and the crew, and they cool their heels in jail as a kind of karmic payback or comeuppance for their years of prior shenanigans. In Steins;Gate, at a certain point the comedic backdrop lifts, the folly of Rintaro's ego and hubris is laid bare and elevated, and the karmic debt seeks its due via time and space.
For a British flavour, try:
People Just Do Nothing, two pirate radio DJs and crew trying to hack it https://imdb.com/title/tt3762198/
Detectorists, two small town “smartest guys in the room” try to rediscover their friendship through their shared love of metal detector operation https://imdb.com/title/tt4082744/
And for a Japanese kick:
FLCL, a coming of age story about nothing, but writ LARGE https://imdb.com/title/tt0279077/
Steins;Gate, hard to generalize and hard not to spoil anything but it feels like if Back to the Future were made as a modern anime https://imdb.com/title/tt1910272/
Two things I usually note when recommending Steins;Gate.
Either the sub or the dub is well worth watching, but the dub is one of my favorites. In particular, it shines with Okarin's mile-a-minute pseudo-scientific conspiracy rants.
If you like the premise and the characters, but are frustrated at the slow pace, hang in there. The plot does eventually kick into gear, and it doesn't waste any of the character development or world building.
Steins;Gate, a Japanese light novel and anime, includes John Titor in the story in an awesome way. It also includes some bit of hacker culture that I think is more real than the typical American movie "hacker". I recommend it!
Edit: As pointed out in the comments, this was originally a visual novel! There are many ways to enjoy this story.
Just based on the experiences I have with them, I feel like the Big Problem with recommendation engines is that they're bad at teasing out why somebody liked something and end up falling back on an obfuscated equivalent of P(likes A | likes B), which ends up dominated by people obsessed with a particular genre, franchise, or theme. Or worse, it relies on extremely generic tags. If you buy, say, Steins;Gate and Rosenkreuzstilette on Steam, it's going to keep recommending the most garbage VNs and PG-13 nukige on the planet until the sun explodes because you obviously like VNs and anime (as opposed to quirky sci-fi stories and Mega Man).
There's a paragraph about this in the article that discusses automated identification of clusters, but it makes it sound like there was a lot of human judgment/guesswork in figuring out why any given set of movies clusters the way it does.
> Each new algorithm takes on average three or four hours to churn through the data on the family’s “quad core” Gateway computer.
Huh. I don't think I would have guessed that Gateway was still around in the days of quad-core desktops.
Code Geass, Death Note, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, Shingeki no Kyojin, No Game No Life, Steins; Gate (these are top notch) Boku no Hero Academia (Season 1 and 2), Sword Art Online (first 13 episodes, maybe 25, but after that is terrible), Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood, Full Metal Panic (season 1, FUMOFFU, Season 2). Psycho-Pass, Made in Abyss, Accel World, Ga-Rei Zero (these are just amazing, but not top)
Be careful with FUMOFFU, leads to death due to laughter
They cover a wide variety of range, not all of them might be of your taste. You also need to get used to some things that are Japanese culture in animes (their way of being fun, their way of being embarassed by stuff that is not in your culture and so on).
Insane plot (like REALLY incredible): - Code Geass - Death Note - Steins; Gate - Shingeki no Kyojin (not completed, season 4 coming soon) - Made in Abyss (not completed, season 2 coming soon)
Epic (you feel hyped): - Sword Art Online - Full Metal Panic - Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (this anime is amazing, but I recommend watching it only after you've watched quite a few animes. Rewatching it leads to improvement. It's like when you try wine for the first time and it sucks, then it turns great) - No Game No Life - Boku No Hero Academia - Accel World
Laugh: - Full Metal Panic FUMOFFU (requires watching the season 1 first)
This list is purely based on my taste, but I watched over 200 animes (lot of bad stuff too, sadly), so for a beginner it's a good baseline.
Good plot (not like the insane ones, still good): - Psycho-Pass (AMAZING soundtrack) - Ga-Rei Zero - Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood
I really enjoyed it and I would highly recommend it. It had the deep philosophical aspects to it but has a decent amount of humor to go along with it as well. I have been recommended the visual novel which i haven't read though. There is also a movie to go along with it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steins;Gate#Anime
Thoroughly offtopic, would you recommend Steins Gate? I haven't watched any anime for a while but enjoyed Ergo Proxy and Eden of the East.
Last anime I watched where I experienced something similar was Steins Gate. It was a bore up until episode 12 and the story just took off afterwards.
> That pretty much goes for any movie or anime, I would say.
The possible exception would be Steins;Gate; I contend that the mad-scientist ranting sounds better in your native tongue.
(I am aware of the position that it's somewhat less authentic and will concede that the English version of Mayuuri's tu-tu-ruu is of lower quality.)
Referenced in the excellent anime Steins;Gate: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1910272/
The first thing I thought of when reading this was Steins;Gate. Such a good show. Especially with the OVA and extra episode.