Steins; Gate 13 — Time’s Up

Wow. In my eyes, this episode managed to even surpass the previous one. Okabe kept going back in time to save Mayushii, and failed a total of three times. For the first time, she was shot by Moeka, as we saw in the previous episode. The second time she is run over by Moeka’s car after Okabe forgets the bomb threats. The final time, she is pushed into the path of the subway train by Mr. Braun’s daughter.

Okabe needs to slow down and think. For all the time he spent telling everyone to trust him, he could have just told them what was actually happening and gotten some help. And for goodness sake, why doesn’t he talk to part-time warrior? Especially since he now knows that she’s actually a warrior. She probably knows more about what’s going on than he does. I think he’ll probably gain his sense soon enough though.

I mentioned a while ago that Mayushii seemed to be one of the weakest characters, but this is no longer the case. The relationship between her and Okabe is excellent, seeing how she’s willing to follow Okabe around with no idea of what’s happening. The flashback about how Okabe took Mayushii hostage was very well done.

This episode seemed to lend credence to my theory that there’s something special about Mayushii. She mentioned earlier to Okabe that he didn’t needed her anymore, and something certainly seems determined to keep her away from him. Okabe seeing her in the alleyway reaching towards the star was suggestive as well.

I still think that CERN may be more interested in killing Mayushii than in capturing the others— when Mayushii was killed, Moeka placed a call to tell someone of her death. Also, Moeka shot Christina. If CERN’s goal was to get information about the time machine from them, this wouldn’t be a very smart move. Although given the situation, they might have had to prioritize preventing Okabe from switching timelines.

But my biggest question is why Mayushii died the final time in the subway. Her death that time didn’t seem to have anything to do with CERN. There’s the possibility it’s merely a coincidence, but I doubt it. There may be a deeper reason that Mayushii keeps dying than CERN’s involvement. Something to do with her watch stopping, perhaps, unless that’s only some overly obvious symbolism. It could be fate, but I’m hoping for a more interesting reason.

One thing doesn’t fit for me in this whole ordeal: why does Okabe even need Christina’s new memory transfer invention? Didn’t he keep all his memories from the old parallel universes when they sent the cellphone messages because of his seeing Steiner ability? He even mentioned that it felt different since he didn’t get a cellphone message. But didn’t he keep his memories before too? So why doesn’t he send a message to more than three hours in the past to have more time to escape?

10 thoughts on “Steins; Gate 13 — Time’s Up

  1. Probably the same reason why Madoka’s wish was specified in such a way., to control what happens. The D-Mail as Okabe noted previously is too uncontrolled, you don’t know what the butterfly effect for each is. The time leap allows you to control what happens

    1. Right, that’s certainly true if he sent a message to someone else, but could he send a message to himself further back than three hours and still retain his memories? If he could I’d imagine it would be equally controllable as transferring only his memories.

      On re-reading my post it wasn’t worded very well, but what I was actually confused about was when Okabe said after travelling back in time “There’s nothing to indicate that the world line changed. It’s different from a D-Mail. I really am back at 5:00 PM.” It wasn’t entirely clear to me how it was different. Is the lack of a text message on a cellphone really that substantial of a difference?

      But after thinking about it some more, I realize now that he didn’t actually go back in time with the text messages. He appeared at the same time, but the past had changed. So he wouldn’t have had his memories until after the fact. So it makes sense now. Anyway, thanks for your comment, it led me to think things through a bit more. 🙂

      1. I believe its because his reading steiner ability never happened, so that would mean he didn’t change world lines. Time leaping may be simply going back on the same world line to the point in time.

        I tend to think the difference using a picture of a few million parallel lines. D-mail lets you travel horizontally from one line to another but not up or down. Time leap allows you to travel down but not up, along the same line you were at but you don’t physically move so there aren’t 2 of you.

        Suzuha seems to be an actual physical movement (i noted this from her saying she would “leave” after finding her dad), so her method is different from both the d-mail and time leap. Her method might allow 2 physical suzuhas but that might cause the entire line to collapse or something if they met

        Since new world lines are spawned for every single decision anyone in the world makes, a time leap could be thought of as creating a 100% copy of the previous world line and splitting from there.

        That’s my interpretion anyway

        1. Yeah, that’s mostly what I’ve come to think as well. But it seems to me that on some level, both the time leap and the D-mail take a 100% copy of the previous world line, make some change, and split from there.

          The difference seems to be, as you say, that with Okabe’s reading Steiner, his memories get transfered over to the same point in time that he came from in the old world line, while with the time leap his memories are sent back to the branching point.

          And with Suzuha, yeah, it does seem like she physically transfered back in time (esp. if she is Daru’s daughter, as seems plausible). Unless she sent her memories into someone else’s body or something else even more crazy…

  2. “Okabe needs to slow down and think.”

    Agreed. He needs to talk with somebody about what is going on. Part-time warrior is a start. At the least she can be prepared for what’s happening. Christina’s smart, so she might come up with a better plan than “run around until we get caught”.

  3. The general consensus on the blogs seems to be that Mayuri is invariably killed in every alternate timeline because such things as birth and death have been predestined. I suppose Okabe’s realization in an earlier episode that, although events can be altered, relationships remain the same in every alternate timeline. In a way, that’s both comforting and distressing, isn’t it? Surely you’ve considered it: if you went back in time prior to your conception and did something that changed the instant of your conception by even a few minutes, would the same sperm still reach the egg? Would you be someone completely different? What of those loved ones of yours born after you? Would your potentially changed birthday change the timeline such that they would not be the same people? Herein, the series seems to be asserting that the answer would be a firm no, although it did, indeed, allow for gender changes. Yet, you would theoretically be able to travel back and give advice to your loved ones without suffering guilt from the knowledge of the possibility that your time-traveling might indirectly erase the existence of any of your younger acquaintances.
    That having been said, I agree with you with regard to the Part-timer. As soon as he encountered her near the alleyway, he should have grabbed her hand, sprinted with her to Mayuri, then explained everything. That’s what I would have done, anyway. Yet, we can’t chalk-up his having not done that to poor writing; he twice deliberately kept the information from Christine. Any normal person would have sucinctly explained everything, but Okabe is not a normal person. He’s consistently been portrayed as a bitt off-kilter. His desire to be the only person on the planet who knows that he has traveled through time might actually originate from a desire to possess and internalize something — anything — that makes him special from a scientific perspective.

    1. I have my doubts that we can conclude that all births and deaths are predestined, or that relationships remain the same in different world lines – our sample space is rather small, after all, and the changes have mostly been to the recent past, aside from Ruka’s.

      I don’t think that Okabe’s refusal to tell anyone is a product of poor writing either: it’s perfectly consistent with his previous actions, and a (misguided) attempt to protect his lab members.

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