The moe. Oh gods, what will we do without all the moe?!
What They Say:
All the anime is gone from Akihabara! The single message Feyris sent changed the entire city. Okabe wonders if he should ever use the D-Mail again. And Suzuha’s getting ready to leave…
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Tinkering with the past in even small ways can be quite problematic as Rintaro has discovered as things cause more problems than expected as the timelines diverge and new changes come into effect. The unexpected hits in surprising ways and it can have effects that one couldn’t even dream of. For Rintaro, the agreement he made in the previous episode that allowed Feyris to send a message back into the past has had one such massive impacts on a select group of people as she has somehow eliminated moe anime from existence. Akihabara is but a shadow of its former self because of this and that’s really done one hell of a job on the gang when they realize what she’s done.
Rintaro’s also made quite the realization in addition to this as things that changed before which he didn’t realize have definitely happened as he basically gropes the hell out of Rukako to prove that he’s a he, only to realize that he’s not longer a he but truly a she. Suffice to say, it doesn’t fly well with Christina and leads to some fun there. The world keeps changing heavily for Rintaro as these events go on and while he had it fairly well controlled at first and kind of bought into the messiah idea, the more things change that he has no control or influence over, the more concerned he becomes about whether this device should be used again. The impact is starting to weigh on him more as the differences are becoming more apparent. Watching the evolution of Rintaro’s thoughts on the whole matter has been a lot of fun to watch.
This episode spends a lot of time on the characters once again without any seeming deeper purposes to it when it comes to the larger story at hand. There are lots of fun little moments as this group interacts with each other and as Rintaro deals with the small changes that have happened, but there’s also a good bit of fun as some of the other gadgets get brought out to be played with which only serves to cause more problems. Things do make a small shift towards the end which has an impact on Rintaro as he starts to get a greater grasp of what’s going on with all of it, but there’s still a lot that’s really up in the air at this point. But Rintaro’s mindset continues to churn with ideas and plans, questions upon questions.
In Summary:
Steins; Gate is a series that continues to offer a lot of really interesting ideas overall but it’s felt like it lost a bit of steam with this episode. It’s the kind of episode that will likely work better when it’s all viewed in marathon form, picking up right after the previous one and sliding into the next, but when taken individually it feels like it’s spinning its wheels just a little too much. It does open wonderfully though in a way that will delight its principle audience however and it has several cute moments with the cast throughout, including what happens to poor Rukako under Rintaro’s hands. But what is made most clear here throughout this episode is that the butterfly’s wings are very much flapping away and changes continue to unfold from what has come before. I’m very curious to see where it will go for the remainder of the series, which is quite a lot of way to go. With it getting closer to the halfway mark, I’m hoping it’ll have a big plot point coming up soon to start focusing in on things. It needs to start hitting that kind of material more.
Grade: B-
Simulcast By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
