Steins; Gate looks like it’s going to be awesome as long as it doesn’t pull another Chaos; Head. But given that the staff has a much better track record this time along, I think they should be able to avoid that. The character designs are less ridiculous as well which is promising. I’ll confess, there’s nothing I love more than a good conspiracy theory: two of my favorite books are Foucalt’s Pendulum and the Illuminatus trilogy. Steins; Gate seems poised to deliver.
I’m already sold on the main character Rintarou Okabe. He’s a self proclaimed mad scientist who’s clearly insane, but there also seems to be some truth in his delusions. His fast-paced thinking and dialogue keep the show fresh and interesting even when he’s just giving a monologue in his lab. I’m not quite sold on Mayuri yet— she seems a bit too cute and cheerful, but that probably only means she’s covering up an even darker secret.
As for the mystery, mixed-up memories and cellphone messages from the future, I have no idea what’s going on, but that’s how a good mystery should be. I’ll definitely be blogging this series unless the next episode is a complete disaster.
This episode was good and had a lot of funny parts, but I still didn’t enjoy it as much as the last episode. Honestly, I think the summoning battles are the weakest part of the show— the chibi fighters were hilarious the first time they appeared, but the actual fights aren’t all that interesting. It’s the interactions between the different characters which is the highlight of this show. Using the summoning battles as a way to make jokes around the characters works great, such as Yuuji’s proposal to Shouko, Hazuki’s promised reward, and everyone cheating in the final battle, but the actual battles themselves are, over a certain limit, just time spent away from the better parts of the show. To me, this episode skirted that limitrather closely.
After watching the first episode of Level E, I decided against blogging it because nothing much seemed to be happening and it wasn’t all that funny. Boy was I wrong. The entire first episode was simply a setup for the amazing twist the creators were preparing for episodes two and three. This just goes to show not to judge anything by its first episode.
My personal favorite part of this show was Kraft, the Prince’s retainer who is most affected by his pranks and is always trying to kill or oppose him, but ends up falling into his schemes anyway. He provides a “sanity” check on the prince, but in doing so has ended up becoming even more insane.
