Sometimes you come across items that everyone hail to the sky and you just look at it and wonder if it's the Emperors New Clothes. Steins;Gate is such an anime for me.

It spends the first half establishing what seems to be a thriller sci-fi, unfortunately not sophisticated enough in the sci-fi department to be truly interesting (some elements are simply not explained but just taken at face value) but still promising of possible future plot twists that will make up for it.

Too bad then that the second half turns into a classic "confront yourself and your choices" kind of anime, unfortunately without having used the first half to establish the characters enough for us to care about their choices and the consequences of the same.

This anime doesn't know what it wants to be and spreads itself too thin over a plot that ends up not satisfying in any department. It should've either taken the thriller-concept and run with it, or worked harder with the character build-up and consequence-concept. As it is we simply know too little about the characters to understand their motivations and some even come off as badly written plot devices because they literally have no other character traits than what the story requires of them.

I truly, honestly do not understand the hype about this anime and would strongly recommend you watch Kanon 2006 instead if you want to see an anime with good character build up, plot twists that make you care and a story that gives you all the feels.