{"id":6953,"date":"2018-08-23T13:00:14","date_gmt":"2018-08-23T20:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/?p=6953"},"modified":"2018-08-13T14:17:24","modified_gmt":"2018-08-13T21:17:24","slug":"mark-watches-steinsgate-episode-23-open-the-steins-gate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markwatches.net\/reviews\/2018\/08\/mark-watches-steinsgate-episode-23-open-the-steins-gate\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Watches ‘Steins;Gate’: Episode 23 – Open the Steins Gate"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the twenty-third and penultimate episode of Steins;Gate<\/i>, Okabe discovers the last piece to saving Kurisu. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch Steins;Gate<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, if anything else, this has been a wild<\/i> ride. I have enjoyed this strange little show not just because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s got some of the most ridiculous plot twists I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve 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.<\/p>\n

So, first things first: oh, lord, the end credits to the previous episode. Yeah, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m glad one of you lovely people gave me a heads up because if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d not known to watch the post-credits scene, the beginning of this episode would have been very, very confusing. Thank you for that! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another of those aforementioned twists that is initially quite bewildering, but incredibly<\/i> 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<\/i> 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S BE HONEST) believed that all that needed to be done was to go back to the normal world line.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just slightly<\/i> different, and we get a sense of that from her clothing, the time machine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s abilities, and her general demeanor. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s much more confident here, and part of that is because she has<\/i> to be. She has to convince Okabe to go forward with the plan to save Kurisu, knowing full well that he has<\/i> to fail, that she cannot warn him of Kurisu\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death. It explains something I did<\/i> 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.<\/p>\n

Which is fascinating because this is a deliberate<\/i> usage of fridging\u00e2\u20ac\u201dkilling a woman so that a man has a new character motivation\u00e2\u20ac\u201dexcept the motivation is to MAKE SURE THE WOMAN DOESN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T DIE. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve 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<\/i> be saved.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/i> 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like to have to fight for the attention and validation of a parent, and I also know what it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like to suddenly realize that is a fruitless, worthless endeavor for some people. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not easy to have a parent who defaults to sharp edges, to cruelty, to jealousy and resentment. Dr. Nakabachi doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see his daughter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s attempt to connect as anything other than disrespect, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s horrifying to watch that unfold. Plus, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the gendered element of it that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to ignore: his daughter is smarter than him, and he can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t accept it at all.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m so thrilled by in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Open the Steins Gate\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is how the logic of this universe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time travel necessitates everything that came before. When Future Okabe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s video is finally able to be viewed, it was clear to me why<\/i> Okabe had to convince his past self that Kurisu had died. Past Okabe had<\/i> 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<\/i>. So often in time travel stories, everything is undone to the point that character and story growth are unimportant in the end. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s such joy<\/i> in getting to hear him laugh like that again. (And I love that Suzuha just stares at him in confusion, given that she wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what that was.)<\/p>\n

So, all Okabe has to do is trick himself into thinking Kurisu died. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 challenging. But not impossible! I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122M STILL VERY SCARED ABOUT THIS FINALE, OKAY.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The video \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Open the Steins Gate\u00e2\u20ac\u009d can be downloaded here for $0.99<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n

– My YA contemporary debut, ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now out in the world!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong>If you’d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"