Steins;Gate is one of my favorite anime of all times. So I got really excited when this movie was finally available.
When Steins;Gate TV series ended, I was wondering how could Okabe get back Kurisu’s heart while he’s the only one who remembers everything. Sure Kurisu has her dreams, fragments of memories, but that would be far different from what’s in Okabe’s memory. Without balanced understanding about each other, it would be almost impossible for them to become proper couple.
And of course, there’s no better way to make Kurisu understands Okabe than having her experiencing the sadness of losing a dear person, but having a choice to go back in time for a “do over”. Having first hand experience would give Kurisu much better understanding of Okabe’s mind, and put her on equal ground.
This movie is set 1 year after the TV series and the extra episode. Kurisu is alive. Mayuri is alive. Okabe is living in Steins Gate world. However, Okabe’s ability to retain complete memory from all the world lines he had explored got him confused. Okabe can no longer differentiate which world is “real” and got all of them mixed up. To some point, this caused him disappeared from Steins Gate world line.
While everyone else completely forgotten about Okabe (as if he never existed in the first place), Kurisu becomes the only person who still remembers him. with a little help from a mysterious person, she end up creating the time machine, the one that transfers one’s memory to his/her past self. Then Kurisu leap back to her old self trying to fix things to save Okabe.
Unsurprisingly, Okabe refused to be helped. For him who had traveled so many world lines to save Mayuri and Kurisu, he really knows how difficult (and how dangerous) it is to change past. The slightest chance that altering the past will bring back the possibility of putting Mayushi or Kurisu in danger, Okabe asks Kurisu to let him disappear and to forget him.
Kurisu is trying hard to obey Okabe’s wish and trying to move on. But the more she tries to tell herself that it’s ok to forget Okabe, the more she will regret it in the future. Then, Amane from the future is once again plays an important part. She’s telling Kurisu that even she decides to “forget” Okabe, she will end up inventing time machine in the future due to her regret.
So Amane uses her time machine to send Kurisu few years back. The goal is to do something drastically different so that Okabe would easily recognize this world line as something different than all others. Doing so will help Okabe to establish “what’s real” a bit easier. Guess what Kurisu choose to do? She goes back to 6 years ago to meet young Okabe, stole his first kiss and implanted the Hououin Kyouma persona of “mad scientist”.
Happy ending. Okabe returns. And Kurisu now understands all the pain he went through by traveling all those world lines.
In anime, usually the first girl who met the hero will end up with him. I was thinking Steins;Gate was a bit unusual because Okabe ends up choosing Kurisu, not Mayuri. Not that I complain about that. I like Mayuri’s tutturu~, but I love Kurisu’s character even better. I like smart girls, so Kurisu is one of my favorite heroine of all times. Now with this time travel twist, Kurisu kissed (young) Okabe and made him used the “mad scientist” persona to protect Mayuri. Kurisu IS the one who created “mad scientist” craziness in Okabe, so there’s no way he can forget that, lol.
A brilliant closure to an excellent story !
