Steins;Gate – 08

The time traveling trap test

First of all, let me apologize in advance if I seem a bit scattered in this post. I will most likely have the attention span of a threatened squirrel for the next few days until I’ve got Anime North over and done with. If any of you are also going to the con and see a female Izaya (namely, me) say hello! Or just stare at me from the shadows knowingly. I know you otaku folk are shy. I’ll be doing coverage of the whole event for those of you not going though, so don’t worry! Lots of pictures and fun. Wait, why was I here again? Oh, right, Steins;Gate!

Okarin reacts to Titor’s words as any mad scientist would – replace fear with insane cackling and treat it like a game. He explains that they jumped world lines and only Okarin remembers the difference due to his Reading Steiner ability. Thus begins the newest goal for the lab group: to send a D-mail so that at least one of the other members can recall the sudden transition in timelines, or at least to further test Okarin’s uncanny ability.

Test 1: send a D-mail to Daru revealing information so that he would have won the Feyris cup. The text sends, but there’s no dramatic sequence indicating a timeline shift and Daru never did win that tournament anyways. After a bit of thinking, discussing with Kurisu and more thinking, Okarin finally lets Moeka send the next text since she’s being so pushy.

Ruka stops by to give Okarin an “I’m sorry I messed up your lottery ticket” watermelon before they start Test 2: send a D-mail telling Moeka so that she will have a different phone than the one she has now.  This time, the world line actually shifts and no one kows who this ‘Moeka’ girl is. In changing her past so that she would have a different phone, Moeka never ended up becoming a lab member. Ever.

No Moeka, you can not ‘sext’ with the Okarin of the past

Kurisu doesn’t remember the old timeline, but she is at least aware that it was a D-mail that changed everything. She seems like she believes in Okarin’s Reading Steiner ability too. They call it a day after the shock of yet another timeline jump, so the girls walk home together. However, that’s when Mayuri gets a call from Ruka who wants to visit the lab.

Ruka’s lab visit is…interesting. He’s shoved into a dress almost as soon as he walks in, seducing pretty much every lab member in the vicinity with his androgyny. The poor cross-dressing lad admits that he overheard them talking about D-mails when he came to drop off his watermelon. Then he drops the bomb…he wants to send a D-mail so he can be born as a girl.

Life would be infinitely better if these two had switched genders

After Kurisu’s very educational confirmation that Ruka is, indeed, biologically male, he proposes his master plan. Send a text to his mom to tell him to eat lots of vegetables, because that raises the chance of the baby becoming a girl! This sounds totally bogus, since your gender is determined by whether the sperm from your dad has an X (female) or a Y (male). Anyways, they humour him and tell him to get his mom’s pager number so they can send her a text.

Test 3: send a D-mail to the mom’s pager before Ruka was born in 1993. Surprisingly enough, the timeline actually jumps again, leaving Okarin gaping like a beached whale in the middle of the lab again. From what he can tell, Ruka is still male. This means the timeline shifted in some other way that we’re going to have to wait until the next episode to find out…

Bonus D-mail Pic Attachments:

It’s okay Kurisu…I wish my legs were as smooth as Ruka’s too.

ECCHI FILTER OFF SWITCH HAS BEEN BROKEN.

The seduction was going well, aside from the fact they were in a park filled with 5 year olds

Ruka wants watermelons instead of a banana

End Thoughts: Yay, we’re making up for the lack of time traveling! I would have been disappointed if they didn’t deliver after the huge revelation in episode 7. Admittedly, the things they used time travel for seemed pretty trivial. But I’m willing to bet if I say that statement without a clause, it’s going to bite me in the butt. That last test with Ruka’s gender change experiment will bear some interesting results, and I suspect Moeka’s text may have made more alterations than we first assumed. It’s just that FOR NOW, all those experimental results were kind of on the dull side. Oh Steins;Gate, you tease, you.

So what could have happened in these timeline shifts? Well, anything could have happened. I thought Moeka would try to alter events so she could snatch up that IBN 5100, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I haven’t an inkling of what could have diverged from a simple “Eat your veggies” text. Unless pagers somehow mess up the system, why would they jump timelines? Is there some sort of veggie boom going on now? What the hell?! Giving Daru a winning strategy changes nothing, but the power of vegetables prevails over all.

There are some things I really like about Steins;Gate. Okarin for one. The comedic aspects are also surprisingly sharp and the pervert jokes are actually tasteful (usually). The story is without a doubt deep, involving and impossible to turn away from. But it’s slow. Oh is it ever slow. You know it’s bad when you travel through time TWICE in an episode and still have nothing happen. It’s more than usual, mind you, but we don’t get to see the true effects of all this rippling yet.

I also felt the need to edit my screencaps like what i have to do with Deadman. I appreciate the drab colour schemes mixed with the stark, bright colour themes, but I swear every episode I end up with the same set of screencaps. A bunch of crazy Okarins, a few Moeka closeups with her phone, Mayuri smiling, and shots of them crowding around the computer. Always. The same. I need more dorama!

As a mini head’s up once again, I’ll be a bit behind on aniblogging due to the weekend convention I’m going to. I mean, I’m sitting here with red contacts lenses in my eyes right this very moment as a test run, I’m obviously so hardcore I’m gonna be there all day. Every day. So I’ll see you later and who knows, there might be something special for you in the episode 9 post? Take care and El Psy Congroo!

About Overcooled

A neuroscience graduate, black belt, and all-around nerd. You'll either find me in my lab or curled up in my rilakkuma kigurumi watching anime.