Steins;Gate Part 1
Released By: Manga Entertainment
Rating: 12
Running Time: 293 Mins
Audio: English & Japanese DD 5.1
Release Date: 15/7/2013
Reviewed By: Sandra Scholes

As Chaos;Head is an anime where three young characters fall into a television set, and into another dimension, Steins;Gate is about using something else everyday to become something out of this world. In this anime, scientist Rintaro tampers with his microwave oven and by accident turns it into a time machine.


Rintaro isn't alone, though, his friends Mayuri and hacker, Daru are all part of the Future Gadgets Lab. It might sound like a great place, but it's only an apartment above an Akihabara electronics store.

Rintaro finds he can do almost anything he puts his mind to and he sets about sending text messages to the past. Doing this has caused a rift in time, though and the effects of what he has done makes him the perfect target for an evil organisation who want to kill him.

There are more science-fiction anime series around nowadays, it seems obvious how popular they really are. Stiens;Gate Part 1  is an excuse to immerse yourself in hours of entertainment. Co-directed by Hiroshi Hamasaki who directed Texhnolyze and Shigurui: Death Frenzy, and Takuya Sato who directed Strawberry Marshmallow and Armitage III. As they are responsible for making these anime capable of bringing out the three dimensional version of the manga, Hamasaki and Sato have shown us the visual side of it and the characters actions throughout.

Based on an Xbox 360 visual novel developed by 5pb and Nitroplus, it has also been made into a movie, manga, drama CDs, a radio show and a boardgame. Described as a sci-fi thriller, Stiens;Gate Part 1 is a tense, psychological drama about one kid's quest to set right all the damage he has done to the timelines. Think of Doctor Who, Jules Verne and HG Wells and you will be thinking along the right lines as it also doffs its cap to other series of the same time travel genre. The Blu-ray version gives an extra dimension to the whole look of the series as the animation is clearer and crisper, and the line art looks superb in comparison to the standard DVD release.


Bonus Material: Opening and Closing Animations, and trailers for other anime in the Manga Entertainment series.

Verdict: Deep, well animated and probably one of the best anime there is.