Anime: Steins;Gate: Fuka Ryouiki no Deja vu 5m4q6m

This movie is a spiritual continuation of Steins;Gate and it does a fairly good job at it.

The opening is underwhelming compared to all the other openings in other Steins;Gate instalments. The OP itself is great though a bit uneven in tone, which catches the one listening off guard. The actual opening is just CG of a plane and visualisations of world lines, as if they were following the plane. Cannot say that this is particularly exciting. Steins;Gate in general, be it VN or anime, has had quite decent opening sequences and this is somewhat underwhelming in comparison. The ending likewise simply has the credits roll, but the ED itself is better than the opening and as good as other EDs of Steins;Gate or perhaps even better.

The plot is less ambitious than the prequel and is somewhat sidelined by it. Steins;Gate was a very unitary work, where all the pieces fell where they should. There is not a lot of room for development. There is also no longer a cool "conspiracy" premise to go along with it and instead the plot dives deeper into the mechanics of time travel as presented in the anime. To be more precise, it delves into the weird theory that Makise Kurisu came up with on a whim towards the end of Steins;Gate as well as developing more on Okabe's ability. The premise is rather calm in this way. It is quite cool how they worked in deja vu into the lore of the anime fairly well. So the movie was made a sequel to Steins;Gate, but at the same time the storyline does not introduce anything particularly new.

Like Steins;Gate 0, this movie is very well integrated into the Steins;Gate story, even if the movie itself suffers a bit because of the unitary nature of its prequel. Okabe has several "flashbacks" to other world lines. In particular, one of these visions placed him at Suzuha's end in the Steins;Gate VN, and although it is a bit abstract in the movie, the ending itself is rather dark and heavy. Another brief vision is an extension of Moeka's arc from the VN. In the VN it was quite different from the plot of her arc in the anime. Both of these arcs were rather dark, as it is shown in the movie but it considering that only people who have played the VN would recognise those scenes their value is a bit diminished. Then again a lot of people have played the VN and so should anyone before or after watching Steins;Gate. Several of the scenes even directly mimic ones from Steins;Gate like the one where they complete the time-leap machine. There is a metric tonne of other similar moments. These scenes kinda play on the prequel, but they are remade well enough that it adds emotional weight to the movie and makes it look sophisticated.

The people that write the script for Steins;Gate anime in general care very deeply for this concept of symmetry to all of their work on this story and they believe that this works to make the viewer care for the story. This concept is very similar to the paragraph above, but it has a slightly different structure to it. For instance, Makise Kurisu has a short monologue very similar to the one Okabe had at the very beginning of Steins;Gate. The first scenes also greet the viewer in a familiar setting where Okabe once again challenges the TV the way he would the viewer. It is true that such moments do bring the viewer to such scenes from Steins;Gate. I think it is a bit naive to place so much faith in this symmetry, but it is oddly pleasing and does do something to tie the movie even more to the prequel story.

Once again, there are no glaring plot holes as I could find them, but there are still inconsistencies.

The comic element to the story is about the same as it was with the prequel, but stuff like Daru's comments to the family of alpacas with human faces having offspring is quite funny.

Character development in Steins;Gate is uneven, but that seems to be the point. The main character now is Makise Kurisu and her character does get developed a fair bit, though not too much beyond what was already explored in Steins;Gate. Amane Suzuha is also now something in between what she was in Alpha and Beta world lines; a strict and pragmatic person but she also much more readily shows emotion. Okabe is mostly sidelined here, but he resembles a lot himself as he was in Steins;Gate 0 as in he adamantly refused to use time machines, which is interesting. Most of the other characters here are in the background. In general, everything rests on Makise Kurisu as a character, but she is a well written character so it is not a problem. That said the lack of any real character development apart from Kurisu is a bummer to say the least.

The animation appears to be more consistent than as it had been for Steins;Gate. There are still some places where the quality drops, but it does not linger and does not draw attention to itself. In general the animation is good.

The soundtrack is nice and mostly has an ambient feel to it. However, it is mostly made up of somewhat changed or extended pieces from Steins;Gate and some new OSTs.

To end this, don't go into watching this expecting yet another masterpiece. Do expect a reserved, but decent and original storyline that serves as a nice ending to the Steins;Gate series. It is not even necessary to watch this to end Steins;Gate, but if you have enjoyed the more intricate moments of Steins;Gate and Steins;Gate 0 and want to see those characters again and for the whole series to be spiritually tied in a neat little bow, then this is worth watching.

Steins;Gate, the series, was a pretty good product. While in my opinion quite overrated, mostly due to the shameful average level of the competition really, I can summarize the roots of its deserved success in one word: balance. As I've thoroughly explained in my related review, while it tried to tackle more than it could handle when it comes to time travel plausibility, stumbling on worse and wider plot holes as the story went on and became more serious, the wise choice of first presenting you with a good comedy and only later on switching to drama did the trick, as it gave you the time to grow enough fondness for the quite charismatic characters to be able to really enjoy the following drama even if it came with a - mostly - inevitable crumbling of all the fictional physics rules about time travel.
It worked because it wasn't rushed: the first comedic half wasn't a pointless filler, it did set up the story while getting you in the right mood, and the second half took all the time it needed to work on the drama without stereotyping it too much. And while it had to sacrifice time travel plausibility to make the drama work, it did start from decently thought out premises, taking enough time to work upon those too so that science nerds (like me) would be happy enough about the effort to also be quite forgiving when later on many of these premises would be violated.
Finally, it worked because the leading character was one of the most charismatic, well thought out (and quite exceptionally performed I might add) charas in recent memory. The rest of the cast was ittedly quite stale, but it did nevertheless shine because all their interactions had to go through Okabe as a filter.

In this movie, none of these strong points are retained.

It's rushed: it gets down to the drama pretty soon, neither taking time to get you back in the mood (which is excusable as it's a straight follow up) nor trying to set up any sensible set of rules for the time travel issue at hand. A very arbitrary crisis is simply pulled out of the hat without being worked upon or being thoroughly explained, just to give an excuse for the drama, as opposed to what happened in the series where the - at least to some extent - believable, relatable drama was slowly given birth from - again, to some extent - believable, detailed reasons. As often happens in storytelling, going directly for the actual point instead of first developing the setting and have the former feel an inevitable offspring of the latter just doesn't work as well.

Moreover, Okabe is chained into a side role this time around, the leading character, the one through whose eyes we are told the events being Kurisu. And, well, as said, without Okabe as a filter she like everyone else is a rather dull, stereotyped character. Thus, while the drama per se isn't actually all that bad (although it definitely is a bit too much of the been there, done that kind), without a charismatic lead to pull you in everything becomes if not really boring at least quite... forgettable.
Neither there is any time (nor effort, actually) to give some space to the rest of cast either: they orbit around to be plot devices in a couple instances, delivering a key sentence here and there to move things, but they mostly are mere extras. Which, again, is to some extent justifiable given the time constraints of the movie format, but still contributes at making the product feel overall quite shallow in comparison to its prequel.

As for technical matters, the movie feels very consistent with the series. One could hope for something more from this media format in of budget, when it comes to visuals especially, but there was nothing wrong with them to begin with (quite the opposite), so again nothing to specifically complain here. But neither to praise.

All in all, this movie is what we could have expected for it to be, especially given the quite satisfying, conclusive ending of the series: arbitrary fan service (in the broader meaning, don't worry). The series sold well, they just had to crunch out something more, even though there was little genuine plot related reason to, nor themes or characters that really offered chances for further development (and, indeed, there's hardly any real development here). On the other hand, they could have gone the usual, lame "recap gekijouban" way, but they still tried to offer something new, so kudos for that are in order nevertheless.
A fair offer that will please fans of the franchise, and while I doubt it would really impress anyone but the real fanboys, it still is a pretty decent watch to go with a beer in one of these cold evenings. The average competition still is what it is, so you can't really go wrong with this, in all fairness.