Weird.
?yes. Weird. Two recommendations from The Escapist turn out to be interesting yet both have similar qualities in which it starts off looking mediocre with hints that something is off until around the conclusion of episode three in which shit gets real and the plot really begins to move. Since this is also a fairly new anime, I wonder if that?s a recurring trend.
Now this review of Steins;Gate will be a little incomplete. Why? I only got past episode six. I was hoping to watch all 24 episodes but my laptop kept crashing and erasing the episodes I saved, so consider this a first impression review that I may later go back to retype once things have settled down. With the dreaded holidays coming up, I?ve got to work hard on both game and anime reviews to get ready for my best and worst lists to be posted on New Years Day while at the same time balancing saving up for a new laptop. My old one has served me faithfully for such a long time, but she?s coming to the end of her lifespan and it would be nice to have a replacement before this one dies so I can back her up.
But enough of that! There is a review here!
Steins Gate, or Steins;Gate as it?s sometimes spelt, is about a self-styled mad scientist named Okarin.
Oh, sorry. Hououin Kyoma. Kyoma often has a habit of coming off as completely bat shit, and one recurring theme is finding out what part of the anime is Kyoma genuinely interested in scientific discovery, which part of it is just him wanting to get into his assistant?s pants, and which part of it is the sad pathetic whimpering of a conspiracy theorist hyped up on caffeine from too much Dr. Pepper.
Now I honestly had a hard time getting through the first few episodes, computer issues not withstanding. Though it did present an interesting mystery right from the get-go, the characters were hard to like until I realized the hot redhead and the shy girl that Kyoma nicknamed Shining Finger for some weird reason were involved in the plot and that there was another mystery as to which one of them was this mysterious time traveler John Titor.
Yes I said ?Time Traveler.? As in Dr. Who. As in Mikuru Asahina. As in Bill and Ted. Steins Gate revolves around the conspiracy theorist Kyoma who claims he?s out to change the structure of the world, wanting to take down an Illuminates-esque group he calls the Organization by developing time travel or coming into contact with people from the future before the Organization does. To this end, he recruit?s a nice pair of tits attached to a girl named Mayuri who seems to be the one funding the experiments because she?s the only one with a job, a fat bastard who balances tricking the naïve Mayuri into saying really perverted things, jerking off to 2D hentai, and being the only one who shows brilliance by also demonstrating himself as a capable programmer and hacker. They run the ?Future Gadgets Lab,? that is to say they hang out in Kyoma and Fat Bastard?s (No I don?t remember his name) apartment over a CRT TV repair shop and fuck around with weird inventions.
Mostly.
In episode one Kyoma demonstrates his knowledge on time travel by going to a convention on the subject with Mayuri, only to later accuse the speaker of plagiarizing another time travel theorists work and speaking to a nice looking redhead named Kurisu.
?considering that she?s American, it?s probably Chris, full name maybe Christian, Christen, or Christina, but because none of the voice actors take any time to go easy on the hard K, it is always spelt Kurisu. But things don?t go well, Kyoma evades Chris by acting insane, accusing her of being from the Organization and later talking to himself into his cell phone, and yes, he spends a large chunk of the anime time acting schizophrenic. Oh, and later on he finds Chris murdered.
OR DID HE?! Kyoma sends a text message on his phone stating that Chris was stabbed to Fat Bastard. Kind of. He sends a message into the past to change the future. Somehow Kyoma?s text message goes five days back in time, prevents Chris?s assassination, but he?s the only one who remembers the events because later on Mayuri states that the convention we just saw him attend was cancelled and we later see Chris with pristine un-knifed tits.
So just how did Kyoma send the message into the past? He hooked up a cell phone to a microwave.
Ah yes, a cell-phone controlled microwave. The Phone Microwave (Name Subject to Change) somehow sends whatever was being microwaved and whatever was being sent to the phone to the past, though they only find that out after Chris?s assassination was averted. The reason they were experimenting with it is because it was somehow turning bananas into what they referred to as Gel-Bananas, bananas that turn green and mushy. Just to demonstrate why this is a weird phenomenon, you later see Kyoma microwaving a banana normally by pressing buttons on the microwave instead of using the phone to send the program, and sure enough it didn?t turn green! And luckily it didn?t explode either.
Much of the anime is spent trying to learn the rules of the microwave time machine, as later on instead of microwaving an entire bunch of bananas they simply put one banana into the Phone Microwave (Name Subject to Change) and turn the microwave on using the phone, but the banana disappears from the microwave and reappears on the bunch of bananas in the shape of a gel-banana.
But what about the conspiracies? Yes time travel is interesting and I?m a fan of fleshed out fictional science like the mass effect of Mass Effect, but this is a mystery after all. Why was Chris shivved in the tits? Why did a derelict satellite crash into the building the convention was being held in? How did the scientist know to cancel his convention and let the alternate future un-shivved Chris talk in his stead? Who is Shining Finger? Why does that boy dress like a shrine maiden?
Kyoma later finds out a group called SERN was indeed experimenting in time travel, and through a strange young woman that Kyoma nicknames Shining Finger (No I don?t remember her name either, my attention was elsewhere) tells Kyoma about an old PC that SERN uses to encrypt their messages by using an outdated code, kind of like Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory?s DVORAK. He finds out through a time traveler who was popular in net circles nicknamed John Titor who supposedly came from the future ten years prior to the events of the show was after SERN, but he becomes more concerned when, like the shivving of Chris, everyone suddenly forgets Titor exists and he fades into obscurity via one conspiracy theorist chatroom that Kyoma frequents. After finding the PC and getting Fat Bastard to investigate SERN, they later find out SENR lied about an experiment with singularities and were attempting to send people back in time, only during the events of the show they find out that the people being sent back in time didn?t exactly make it through unscathed.
There are plenty more mysteries, and though I?ll admit Kyoma does get more than a little annoying at times and it?s hard to root for Mayuri with how stupid she is and hard to root for Fat Bastard when the world of 3D still has plenty to offer.
But that said, the other characters are interesting and they give an effort to flesh them out. It?s implied something in Chris?s past had made her extremely biased against the theory of time travel, the fact that time travel is introduced leads to you becoming suspicious of a few other characters who seem to be hostile towards Chris, reminding you that in the pilot we clearly saw her getting stabbed.
Or maybe the time travel is all bullshit and Chris is a Highlander?
Either way, the mysteries and a few of the characters are interesting enough to get Steins;Gate a pass from me. Also, keep in mind that supposedly Steins;Gate is the sequel to another show Chaos;Head which I never saw, so keep an eye out for my Chaos;Head and Steins;Gate review maybe around February. Meanwhile, my next anime isn?t going to watch itself and my hefeweizen isn?t going to drink itself.
Sociopaths drink Coke, depressives drink Pepsi, schizophrenics drink Dr. Pepper
--Pyramid Head
Next Review: Chobits
?yes. Weird. Two recommendations from The Escapist turn out to be interesting yet both have similar qualities in which it starts off looking mediocre with hints that something is off until around the conclusion of episode three in which shit gets real and the plot really begins to move. Since this is also a fairly new anime, I wonder if that?s a recurring trend.
Now this review of Steins;Gate will be a little incomplete. Why? I only got past episode six. I was hoping to watch all 24 episodes but my laptop kept crashing and erasing the episodes I saved, so consider this a first impression review that I may later go back to retype once things have settled down. With the dreaded holidays coming up, I?ve got to work hard on both game and anime reviews to get ready for my best and worst lists to be posted on New Years Day while at the same time balancing saving up for a new laptop. My old one has served me faithfully for such a long time, but she?s coming to the end of her lifespan and it would be nice to have a replacement before this one dies so I can back her up.
But enough of that! There is a review here!
Steins Gate, or Steins;Gate as it?s sometimes spelt, is about a self-styled mad scientist named Okarin.
Oh, sorry. Hououin Kyoma. Kyoma often has a habit of coming off as completely bat shit, and one recurring theme is finding out what part of the anime is Kyoma genuinely interested in scientific discovery, which part of it is just him wanting to get into his assistant?s pants, and which part of it is the sad pathetic whimpering of a conspiracy theorist hyped up on caffeine from too much Dr. Pepper.
Now I honestly had a hard time getting through the first few episodes, computer issues not withstanding. Though it did present an interesting mystery right from the get-go, the characters were hard to like until I realized the hot redhead and the shy girl that Kyoma nicknamed Shining Finger for some weird reason were involved in the plot and that there was another mystery as to which one of them was this mysterious time traveler John Titor.
Yes I said ?Time Traveler.? As in Dr. Who. As in Mikuru Asahina. As in Bill and Ted. Steins Gate revolves around the conspiracy theorist Kyoma who claims he?s out to change the structure of the world, wanting to take down an Illuminates-esque group he calls the Organization by developing time travel or coming into contact with people from the future before the Organization does. To this end, he recruit?s a nice pair of tits attached to a girl named Mayuri who seems to be the one funding the experiments because she?s the only one with a job, a fat bastard who balances tricking the naïve Mayuri into saying really perverted things, jerking off to 2D hentai, and being the only one who shows brilliance by also demonstrating himself as a capable programmer and hacker. They run the ?Future Gadgets Lab,? that is to say they hang out in Kyoma and Fat Bastard?s (No I don?t remember his name) apartment over a CRT TV repair shop and fuck around with weird inventions.
Mostly.
In episode one Kyoma demonstrates his knowledge on time travel by going to a convention on the subject with Mayuri, only to later accuse the speaker of plagiarizing another time travel theorists work and speaking to a nice looking redhead named Kurisu.
?considering that she?s American, it?s probably Chris, full name maybe Christian, Christen, or Christina, but because none of the voice actors take any time to go easy on the hard K, it is always spelt Kurisu. But things don?t go well, Kyoma evades Chris by acting insane, accusing her of being from the Organization and later talking to himself into his cell phone, and yes, he spends a large chunk of the anime time acting schizophrenic. Oh, and later on he finds Chris murdered.
OR DID HE?! Kyoma sends a text message on his phone stating that Chris was stabbed to Fat Bastard. Kind of. He sends a message into the past to change the future. Somehow Kyoma?s text message goes five days back in time, prevents Chris?s assassination, but he?s the only one who remembers the events because later on Mayuri states that the convention we just saw him attend was cancelled and we later see Chris with pristine un-knifed tits.
So just how did Kyoma send the message into the past? He hooked up a cell phone to a microwave.
Ah yes, a cell-phone controlled microwave. The Phone Microwave (Name Subject to Change) somehow sends whatever was being microwaved and whatever was being sent to the phone to the past, though they only find that out after Chris?s assassination was averted. The reason they were experimenting with it is because it was somehow turning bananas into what they referred to as Gel-Bananas, bananas that turn green and mushy. Just to demonstrate why this is a weird phenomenon, you later see Kyoma microwaving a banana normally by pressing buttons on the microwave instead of using the phone to send the program, and sure enough it didn?t turn green! And luckily it didn?t explode either.
Much of the anime is spent trying to learn the rules of the microwave time machine, as later on instead of microwaving an entire bunch of bananas they simply put one banana into the Phone Microwave (Name Subject to Change) and turn the microwave on using the phone, but the banana disappears from the microwave and reappears on the bunch of bananas in the shape of a gel-banana.
But what about the conspiracies? Yes time travel is interesting and I?m a fan of fleshed out fictional science like the mass effect of Mass Effect, but this is a mystery after all. Why was Chris shivved in the tits? Why did a derelict satellite crash into the building the convention was being held in? How did the scientist know to cancel his convention and let the alternate future un-shivved Chris talk in his stead? Who is Shining Finger? Why does that boy dress like a shrine maiden?
Kyoma later finds out a group called SERN was indeed experimenting in time travel, and through a strange young woman that Kyoma nicknames Shining Finger (No I don?t remember her name either, my attention was elsewhere) tells Kyoma about an old PC that SERN uses to encrypt their messages by using an outdated code, kind of like Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory?s DVORAK. He finds out through a time traveler who was popular in net circles nicknamed John Titor who supposedly came from the future ten years prior to the events of the show was after SERN, but he becomes more concerned when, like the shivving of Chris, everyone suddenly forgets Titor exists and he fades into obscurity via one conspiracy theorist chatroom that Kyoma frequents. After finding the PC and getting Fat Bastard to investigate SERN, they later find out SENR lied about an experiment with singularities and were attempting to send people back in time, only during the events of the show they find out that the people being sent back in time didn?t exactly make it through unscathed.
There are plenty more mysteries, and though I?ll admit Kyoma does get more than a little annoying at times and it?s hard to root for Mayuri with how stupid she is and hard to root for Fat Bastard when the world of 3D still has plenty to offer.
But that said, the other characters are interesting and they give an effort to flesh them out. It?s implied something in Chris?s past had made her extremely biased against the theory of time travel, the fact that time travel is introduced leads to you becoming suspicious of a few other characters who seem to be hostile towards Chris, reminding you that in the pilot we clearly saw her getting stabbed.
Or maybe the time travel is all bullshit and Chris is a Highlander?
Either way, the mysteries and a few of the characters are interesting enough to get Steins;Gate a pass from me. Also, keep in mind that supposedly Steins;Gate is the sequel to another show Chaos;Head which I never saw, so keep an eye out for my Chaos;Head and Steins;Gate review maybe around February. Meanwhile, my next anime isn?t going to watch itself and my hefeweizen isn?t going to drink itself.
Sociopaths drink Coke, depressives drink Pepsi, schizophrenics drink Dr. Pepper
--Pyramid Head
Next Review: Chobits