In the twenty-third and penultimate episode of Steins;Gate, Okabe discovers the last piece to saving Kurisu. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Steins;Gate.
Y’all, if anything else, this has been a wild ride. I have enjoyed this strange little show not just because it’s got some of the most ridiculous plot twists I’ve encountered. I really do think it plays with archetypes and tropes associated with time travel in fascinating ways, and two of those examples are in this episode.
So, first things first: oh, lord, the end credits to the previous episode. Yeah, I’m glad one of you lovely people gave me a heads up because if I’d not known to watch the post-credits scene, the beginning of this episode would have been very, very confusing. Thank you for that! It’s another of those aforementioned twists that is initially quite bewildering, but incredibly brilliant once you think about it. I do love a story that is circular like this, where the answer was always right there in the beginning. This episode does not negate what Okabe has done. If anything, it validates him and places his actions within a necessary framework to undo what Dr. Nakabachi has wrought. Of course, Okabe has no idea just how vital July 28th was to all of this, and I get why he (AND ME, LET’S BE HONEST) believed that all that needed to be done was to go back to the normal world line.Â
Let’s appreciate, then, that my wish to see Suzuha again was granted in a way I literally did not anticipate once. I love that her return grants us a chance to see her in a future that’s just slightly different, and we get a sense of that from her clothing, the time machine’s abilities, and her general demeanor. She’s much more confident here, and part of that is because she has to be. She has to convince Okabe to go forward with the plan to save Kurisu, knowing full well that he has to fail, that she cannot warn him of Kurisu’s death. It explains something I did notice: she sent Okabe into the radio building with virtually no plan at all. And why would she? She needed him to be the one to stab Kurisu, to kill her accidentally, so that his future self could pursue the plan to open the Steins Gate.
Which is fascinating because this is a deliberate usage of fridging—killing a woman so that a man has a new character motivation—except the motivation is to MAKE SURE THE WOMAN DOESN’T DIE. I’ve just??? Never seen that??? Ever? So, Kurisu dies, Okabe is so eternally fucked up and traumatized from it that he is motivated, over the course of fifteen years, to open up another world line that allows Kurisu to die and be saved.Â
But before I talk about that, I need to talk about Dr. Nakabachi. I believe you can draw a straight line between his treatment of his daughter and her loneliness, her desire to be loved like Okabe loves Mayuri. He spent so much time away from her, and we find out here that the reason she was even in the radio building was because she sought out his validation. No, she was desperate for it, willing to give up half the credit she deserved for her work in time travel theory just so that her father would actually pay attention to her. I felt a kinship to this dynamic because I know what it’s like to have to fight for the attention and validation of a parent, and I also know what it’s like to suddenly realize that is a fruitless, worthless endeavor for some people. It’s not easy to have a parent who defaults to sharp edges, to cruelty, to jealousy and resentment. Dr. Nakabachi doesn’t see his daughter’s attempt to connect as anything other than disrespect, and it’s horrifying to watch that unfold. Plus, there’s the gendered element of it that’s hard to ignore: his daughter is smarter than him, and he can’t accept it at all.Â
So it’s not lost on me that a bitter, violent, and resentful man is the one who starts World War III after trying to kill his daughter. Okabe fails to stop him, and he accidentally causes the very thing he aimed to stop. But what I’m so thrilled by in “Open the Steins Gate†is how the logic of this universe’s time travel necessitates everything that came before. When Future Okabe’s video is finally able to be viewed, it was clear to me why Okabe had to convince his past self that Kurisu had died. Past Okabe had to embark on his three-week nightmare journey. He had to accidentally push the world into another world line, he had to watch Mayuri die, he had to undo all the D-mails to save the world. And I love this because this progression matters. So often in time travel stories, everything is undone to the point that character and story growth are unimportant in the end. I’ve written a number of times about how much I dislike that narrative tool, and this entire show is the LITERAL OPPOSITE of that. Even in that final scene, Okabe comes full circle. His mad scientist persona has a resonance it never did before, and there’s such joy in getting to hear him laugh like that again. (And I love that Suzuha just stares at him in confusion, given that she wouldn’t know what that was.)
So, all Okabe has to do is trick himself into thinking Kurisu died. That’s… challenging. But not impossible! I’M STILL VERY SCARED ABOUT THIS FINALE, OKAY.Â
The video “Open the Steins Gate†can be downloaded here for $0.99.
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