Steins;Gate – 23

This is only the start of Mayuri’s violent rampage. Once she gets a taste for it, she will never be satisfied…

How’s school everyone? Are you suffering yet? Sucks to be you because I don’t have classes until next week! Our university likes to start a week later, so they can justify the amounts of torture they conduct during the school year. I’m sure I’ll have a lot of complaints that will be a joy to read before I start actually talking about whatever I’m blogging about. Wait, what am I blogging about right now? Right, Steins;Gate. THANK YOU, INGENIUS SEGWAY. Now let us begin.

Suzu tells all the lab members that in 2036, 5.7 million people will die as a result of the vicious World War 3 battle. Does this bother Okarin? Not in the slightest. Suzu is offering to go back in time with him to save those people, but Okarin has learned his lesson and he will never touch a time machine again. However, Suzu mentions Scooby Snacks Kurisu, and he just can’t say no. It’s a pretty sweet deal that if he saves the woman he loves, he saves the world.

Leaving his phone behind, he ventures into the time machine with Suzu to go back in time to just before Kurisu is stabbed. The only rules are that he must not let his past self see his future self because LOL TIME PARADOX. He manages to avoid his past self, who is running up the stairs to see what the weird sound he heard was (the time machine). He doesn’t manage to avoid Kurisu though, literally bumping right into her. He starts to cry, which would naturally freak out someone you’ve met for the first time. An announcement on the PA snaps Okarin out of his reverie, and he bolts.

After the conference by the half-baked scientist who just stole John Titor’s theories, Okarin lies in wait in the room he knows Kurisu will be found dead in. Apparently, he’s Kurisu’s dad and is one hell of an asshole. Kurisu shows him her theory on how to make a time machine and offers that they co-publish it as a paper to redeem him. However, he decides things will be better if he takes all the credit and just kills his daughter.

The only father who spanks you if you get A+ on your report card

Before he can fully strangle Kurisu, Okarin comes out of hiding and tackles him. He’s a bit of a looney, and assumes they’re teaming up to ruin his scientific career, being all SMART and that. He pulls out a switchblade and comes running at them, but Okarin nobly stands his ground. He successfully disarms him, but the wily bastard grabs a screwdriver instead and takes another whirl at putting one too many holes in Kurisu’s head. Seeing no other way but to kill her father, he charges forward and ends up stabbing Kurisu instead.

How NOT to fight with a knife, featuring Okabe Rintarou

The man flees, leaving Okarin to wallow in the horrific realization that HE is the one who killed Kurisu. Suzu retrieves him at this point and they go back to the present where Mayuri and Daru were waiting. Okarin, once again, is walking trainwreck. As he mopes, they turn on the TV and see Kurisu’s dad safe and sound. By stealing her theory and using it for evil, eh started a time machine arms race that had people going to all sorts of lengths in order to obtain the plans to create one. Of course, the more time machines people make, the more chaotic things get too.

Okarin has given up, convinced he’s got another case like the endlessly dying Mayuri on his hands now. Mayuri suddenly turns violent and slaps him, which brings him to his senses immediately. Suzu also helps sober him up by explaining that he needed to fail once before trying a second time in order to properly receive a video mail from his future self. Puzzled, he opens the file which is now a blurry video of his older self relaying a very important message.

There is a way to save Kurisu and the future. The two conditions for this to happen are to 1. convince his past self that he really did see Kurisu get stabbed and 2. destroy the paper. As Scamp mentioned in his post, Okarin is special and it seems that as long as the past doesn’t change for him, the future won’t either. How time progresses and how things unfold seem to depend almost exclusively on what he perceives. With this new ray of hope, Okarin goes into Mad Scientist mode once again in order to go to Stein’s Gate and make things right again.

Bonus Screenshots:

“But what does it mean?” “It means I have a sexy voice in the future and I get laid every day, THAT’S what it means.”

You figured out how to make a time machine? BAD CHILD! Why can’t you be out doing drugs or something?!

“So, what’s the fuel?” “Kittens and babies mostly.”

>Brings gun >Only uses it to open a door

End Thoughts: I was a bit skeptical about the series continuing on with the WW3 storyline, since it seemed like the last episode was a perfectly good place to wrap things up. But hey, things turned out better than expected. Okarin thought he would never use Hououin Kyoma as a persona to face life again, but this episode’s events forced it back out of him. However, now it’s less of a mask to protect him from all the hardships he has to go through, and more of a battlecry of confidence. It’s a mark of his pride, will and determination. I’m sure there’s a big part of him that’s still afraid of traveling through time and having the future of the world rest on his shoulders, but he’s ready to face that now.

Seeing Okarin have to go back in time yet again after he already breathed that sigh of relief was really something. Just when he was starting to accept his fate, he gets a chance to change it yet again. Having Kurisu die as a result of that was almost like fate was shrieking “you STILL screwed around with time? You haven’t learned your lesson yet!” I knew that Okarin would have something to do with Kurisu’s death since we heard his scream in like, episode 1. Although it wasn’t shocking, I still liked it. Just when Okarin thought he was safe, his whole world came crashing down on him again. Maybe I’m a sadist, but I love all the crazy things he gets put through just to see how he overcomes it with a twirl of his lab coat and a deranged laugh.

Bringing everyone back kind of makes their dramatic deaths go in vain now though. Suzu is back in full force, and if all goes well, Kurisu will be back too. The only downside is that Kurisu is very unlikely to remember anything about Okarin at all, unless she suddenly remembers the other timelines. Still, it’s always a bit weird to have a character die, be emotionally committed to the fact that they’re dead, and then have them come back. It almost makes their death less meaningful. But this is a time travel anime, and lives can be extinguished and ignited at any time. This makes getting too attached when someone dies a bit of a challenge, but at least all the deaths thus far are depressing enough to tug at your heartstrings anyways. Even I was sad when Kurisu died. Again. But at this rate, we might actually have a happy ending! I’m shocked! If Okarin can manage to procure enough ketchup packets, he’ll be sure to trick his other self! The world is saved, all thanks to Heinz. El Psy Congroo.