One thing I really love about these semi;colon anime is how they always incorporate social media, mass communication and technology into their stories.
- Occultic;Nine has a main character that is basically a
NicoNico internet celebrity, and another that
runs a popular clickbait blog. Relevant information is also being found in Facebook timelines or talkshows.
- Steins;Gate had half of the main cast regularly
browsing and/or
participating in 2ch threads.
- Chaos;Head had Takumi not only browse 2ch regularly, but he also was a hardcore
MMORPG player and frequented chatrooms.
- Robotics;Notes’s cast all had
twitter accounts (and I believe that in the VN you can even check your friends’ status/latest tweets). It also had an in-series popular anime franchise that everyone online still talked and speculated about, and the MC was a high level player of a
spinoff game that spawned a competitive scene around it. Not to mention all the cool
VR shenanigans.
All these series also have a very heavy focus on internet rumors to set up the mysteries or reveal story-relevant information, and we frequently get to see the internet freaking out or reacting in one way or another to things that are happening. Hell, here in O;9 we get to see NicoNico's usual brand of shitposting comments during the fortuneteller's stream. It’s all very small details, really, but it makes their worlds feel very realistic, and is something I wish more anime that are set in modern settings paid attention to.