An unbearable work of fiction that perfectly encapsulates everything wrong with anime, an embarrassment of the medium that frankly makes other art (especially Steins;Gate) feel worse after engaging with this. It has glimpses of being something, of doing anything well, but it's ultimately horny edgelord chuunibyou garbage through and through that fails to comment on anything but it's own state of mind. Disgustingly imbibed with misogyny and male entitlement, Takumi is an unbearable head to exist in that gets no better through his suffrage and mandatory anime power-up. For your female cast, you have all your favourite cookie-cutter archetypes with nothing beneath the hood: Kuudere, Tsundere Daddy Issues, Moe, Undying Loyalty and Sister Complex. There is one female character I took any interest in and she gets the least screentime and is written like average cartoon genius. Each one is subservient, undeveloped or perverted. I don't care if Takumi is meant to be a piece of shit, that's not my point. The issue is it's not executed in a way that is at all meaningfully critical of such an existence, drowning him in so much Christopher Nolan type BS to make his development intangible instead of at all confronting him and those who might identify with him. Takumi wins, he lives against all odds, he gets the girl. Even if he suffers for it, his delusions are rewarded and he makes no meaningful change by the end because the improvements he make aren't even in reality. The most honourable thing he does is suppress delusions rather than ever go beyond them. Perhaps it's just because I pulled the plug before the epilogue route, who knows. The entire narrative is swamped and absolutely disjointed by amateurish writing established on pseudo-science and pretentious anti-intellectualism. It gets better in the last 3 chapters, but ultimately ends on a cliche wet fart that felt like a otaku high schooler tried to rewrite the last two episodes of Evangelion without understanding half of the symbols. It sucks because there are glimpses of something, glimpses that gets realized in the rest of SciAdv. The NewGen killings are compelling and the boldness to take on a depraved protagonist has so much narrative potential, but it lacks the tact or the maturity to do any of it with grace. This is without me choosing to opt into any of the disgusting delusions the game serves to keep it's horny audience satiated. The first route was a profound waste of twenty hours of my time and I frankly don't want to stomach the six romance routes to get whatever true ending the pathetic writing and clearly fractured team of authors can muster. I really hope Chaos;Child pays off at all, makes serious positive reform for what was attempted here, because what is here is frankly an insulting and disparaging use of time.