Review: Steins;gate

Besides being a fan of anime, I am a dyed-in-the-wool Trekker. (And yes, I said Trekker, not Trekkie) And out of all the plot lines in all the episodes of all the Trek franchises (yes, I even liked Voyager and Enterprise) my favorite by far are the episodes where our intrepid heroes travel back in time. In fact, the whole idea of time travel (along with the headache-inducing concept of temporal paradoxes, butterfly effects, and so on) has always fascinated me. Wouldn’t it be great to travel back in time to see just how much the history books got right (and wrong)? It would certainly answer a lot of questions and ambiguities. Or, better yet, wouldn’t you like to have the power to right some of history’s most heinous wrongs? Or, never mind history, don’t you wish you could correct some of the mistakes you made in your own life? (Goodness knows, I’ve made more than my fair share, which I wouldn’t mind warning my past self to avoid) Yet, at the same time, you have to wonder: if you were to, say, prevent an accident that killed hundreds, or avert a war that killed millions, would one of those people that you saved from death end up growing up and becoming the next Adolf Hitler? Even if you limited your historical meddling to a small scale, say, warning your past self of a bad decision, is that the right thing to do? As painful and harmful as some of my past decisions were, I can’t help but acknowledge that I learned from those mistakes, and thus they helped to define who I am today. Might meddling in the past actually make things worse in the present?

When I heard that the plot of Steins;gate involved time travel, I naturally took interest and added it to my “must watch” list. Steins;gate is, in fact, based on the second in a series of “science adventure games” published by 5pb. and Nitroplus. Steins;gate is the second game of this series, preceded by Chaos;head and followed by Robotics;notes, both of which were also adapted into anime form. I had in fact watched Chaos;head some time ago, and while I found it to be enjoyable, it didn’t “wow” me. So I didn’t really have very high expectations for Steins;gate, which is why I put off watching it until recently. Well, if I had access to a time machine now, I would go back and tell my past self to drop everything and watch this show RIGHT NOW. Yes, it is that good.

Steins;gate tells the story of Rintaro “Okarin” Okabe (aka Hououin Kyouma), self-proclaimed “mad scientist” and all-around goofball, who, together with several of his friends have formed the “Future Gadget Lab,” ostensibly tasked with inventing strange (and largely unsuccessful) gadgets, but who mostly loaf around in their Akihabara headquarters surfing the Net, attending various otaku events, playing dating-sims and doing various other random things. One day Okabe discovers that he and his gang have unwittingly invented a device that can send text messages back to the past. And that’s when everything starts going pear-shaped, in a BIG way.

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