WARNING: This article contains spoilers for Steins;Gate.
Turning a microwave oven into a time machine may sound awesome but it loses its appeal when discovering time travel makes you a target of a sprawling global conspiracy. The only thing that makes this is worse is being forced to see your friends die over and over again as a result of traveling back and forth through time – which is what happens to Okabe Rintarou in the anime Steins;Gate.
Based on the visual novel of the same name, Steins;Gate follows the self-proclaimed mad scientist Okabe Rintarou aka Hououin Kyouma as he discovers how dangerous sending messages (i.e. D-Mails) to the past can be. As a time travel story, Steins;Gate overflows with insane twists and turns, so here are the 12 craziest things that ever happened.
The Alternate Endings
Steins;Gate ends happily after Okabe saves everyone and averts World War III. But in the alternate world lines, Okabe meets some rather dark fates.
In the OVA Divided by Zero, Okabe doesn’t travel back in time to save Kurisu and instead moves on. This leads to Steins;Gate 0, where he finds redemption with the help of an Artificial Intelligence that resembles Kurisu. Meanwhile in the movie Steins;Gate: The Movie – Load Region of Déjà Vu, Okabe is erased from reality as a side-effect of his time leaps and must be brought back by Kurisu.
Okabe Isn’t Really Crazy
Just when Okabe and friends close in on achieving time travel, SERN sends its agents to take their research by force. In a different future, SERN uses time travel to enslave the world while in another timeline, time travel sparks World War III. It turns out that Okabe’s paranoia was justified, just not in the way he thought.
When doing his mad scientist routine, Okabe blames every mishap and time travel on “The Organization,” a conspiracy he made up. The existence of SERN and the dark futures prove him right in the worst possible ways.
The Green Banana
Since his “time machine” is a microwave oven with a cellphone stuck to it, Okabe’s ramblings about time travel sounded stupid. At least that was before he and Daru actually got the contraption to work.
Not only do they successfully return a gelled up banana to its original bunch, but doing so serves as the starting point for their succeeding discoveries. After this, the Phone Microwave becomes capable of sending messages to the past and the gang discovers how to Time Leap (i.e. transplanting a human consciousness back in time).
“Error. Human is Dead. Mismatch”
After Daru hacks into SERN’s data servers, he opens files of the organization’s human experiments, only for the lab crew to discover the nightmarish Jellyman Reports.
Humans can physically travel through time but it’s not a pretty sight. Because of many uncontrollable variables, the human body is basically crammed through a tight time hole. What comes out is a mess of green gel, bones, and organs that used to be a person. Worsening this is that the 14 test subjects could be teleported into matter, such as walls or underground where their bodies couldn’t be recovered.
Akihabara Loses Its Moe Culture
Every time Okabe activates the Phone Microwave, he returns to a familiar timeline that underwent subtle but significant changes. The most shocking alteration happened after Faris NyanNyan sent her D-Mail, changing all of Akihabara as a result.
When Akihabara is first shown, it’s a thriving city known for being an electronics and moe hotspot, teeming with tech and maid cafes. But because of Faris’ D-Mail, Akihabara’s more eccentric side is never born and the city remains a shopping center for second-hand computer parts.
Akihabara’s loss is only the first of the anime’s most devastating world line changes.
Okabe Talks To Himself
Just when he’s about to give up on saving Kurisu and the future, Okabe gets some inspiring words from none other than himself. Or at least him from 15 years in the future, where he’s a lot older, wiser, and more determined than ever.
The older Okabe’s video isn’t just one of the anime’s last big twists before it ends, but his existence only confirms that the ideal Steins Gate world line is attainable. In this future, not only is a time travel arms race and war averted but Okabe gets to save those who matter to him the most.
Luka Becomes A Girl
One of Okabe’s closest friends is Luka, a trans woman with a serious crush on the mad scientist. But in one world line, Luka is born as a girl – which Okabe discovers in the most uncomfortable way imaginable.
Luka always wanted to be a girl and found a way to do so with the help of the Phone Microwave and a D-Mail sent to her mother’s pager, even dating Okabe in her alternate future. This sadly doesn’t last long, as Okabe has to undo his friends’ bettered lives to return to the original timeline where Mayuri lives.
Moeka And Mr. Braun Are Part Of The Conspiracy
For Okabe, the revelation that SERN has been manipulating events from the shadows isn’t that surprising since shady organizations are nothing new to him. What gets to him, though, is that his new friend Moeka and his friendly landlord Mr. Braun are with SERN.
Not only was Mr. Braun (codenamed FB) working as Moeka’s superior, but Moeka kills Mayuri right before Okabe’s eyes. He later sympathizes with their reasons for following orders they felt they had no escape from, but Okabe is traumatized by this betrayal of trust and the number of times Moeka kills his best friend.
Suzuha Is John Titor
Since she’s just a part-timer at Mr. Braun’s TV shop, Suzuha is initially dismissed by Okabe as another eccentric resident of Akiba. Her claims of being a soldier from the future are actually true, and her real motives play an important part in the anime’s latter half.
Hailing from the dystopian future of 2036, Suzuha (alias John Titor on @chan) travels to 2010 using a time machine that was mistaken for a downed satellite. She’s a rebel fighter who is part of a resistance movement led by an older Okabe and Daru. Additionally, Daru is her father.
The Many Deaths of Mayuri
The most tragic arc of Steins;Gate centers on Okabe’s futile attempts to save his lifelong friend Mayuri from death. No matter what he does and plans, Mayuri is either killed by SERN’s agents or die by accident.
Mayuri’s tragic deaths are the only things that manage to break through Okabe’s mad scientist façade, revealing the caring and vulnerable man he hides behind his eccentric persona. The episodes where he repeatedly tries and fails to save her from a seemingly predestined death are the hardest to watch in the whole anime.
Saving Kurisu
It’s only too late when Okabe discovers that saving Mayuri by returning to the original timeline would only kill Kurisu since she wasn’t fated to live in that world line. But thanks to the planning of an older version of himself, not all is lost.
Watching the final episode of Steins;Gate is a crazy ride, as audiences finally get to see how the sprawling story of world lines and time travel final wraps up. Seeing how everything neatly goes full circle while also recontextualizing the events of the first episode adds to the entertainment value and emotional gratification.
Okabe and Kurisu Kiss
After more than 20 episodes of insults, evasions, and mad scientist rants, Okabe and Kurisu admit their feelings for one another just before Okabe undoes the first D-Mail. They confirm their love by kissing each other in the lab where they spent three weeks bickering over time travel and other things.
While some anime veterans would say this was predictable, it was still impossible not to freak out when the two finally set their walls aside and to be emotionally honest with one another. To top it all off, their romance plays a major role in subsequent Steins;Gate installments.
