I was very disappointed to hear that Suzuha never got married. Although there are always extra-marital affairs to keep my hope alive. I was hoping that Suzuha would turn out to be Daru’s mother and we would get some infinite recursion. In the limit case, will their genes become identical?

This was a great episode all around. As predicted, Daru turns out to be Suzuha’s father (but the mother is still a secret – my guess is Moeka). But the part that was not expected was that the only person who figures this out is Mayuri. So far, Mayuri has come across as the slowest and dullest of the lot, but here, she’s the only one who can see what is obvious to the viewers. And I think this makes a lot of sense. Okarin and Christina think too much like scientists and look at facts and specific details. Daru and Suzuha are too personally involved to see anything clearly. Mayuri is the only one who can use something vague like the idea that “they look good together” to reach the conclusion that is right in front of everyone.

I complained in the earlier episodes that Mayuri was one of the weaker characters and seemed like a rather standard moeblob / damsel in distress, but this is simply not the case. She’s slow, childish, and less witty than Okabe and Christina, but she certainly isn’t an idiot. She’s probably the most level-headed lab member. The creators of Steins; Gate are doing an excellent job at the characterizations.

They also threw a great curve ball with Suzuha’s trip to the past becoming ineffective due to memory loss. Getting to see what happened to her and her relationship with Mr. Braun were great. (This brings to mind something else: Mr. Braun’s daughter. Who is her mother?! Could it be Suzuha?) But the part where this twist paid off the most was for Okabe’s decision to send the D-mail. You can see clearly his transformation from eccentric mad scientist to founding father of the resistance, willing to make everyone but himself forget Suzuha to save Mayuri and defeat CERN.

In this episode Suzuha explains her mission and what happens in the future. It turns out to be a dystopian society ruled by CERN, where Christina is revered as the creator of the time machine, and Okabe is considered a terrorist who led the resistance that Suzuha belonged to. Suzuha has actually gone back in time not only to find her father, but also to find the IBN 5100 to hack into CERN’s database and delete their records of Okabe’s messages along with their knowledge of his invention of the time machine. Daru works on fixing Suzuha’s time machine so that she can complete her mission and save Mayushii in the process.

It seems increasingly likely that Daru is Suzuha’s father, as I predicted. Seems like we should find out for sure next episode. The conversation between them was nice, but a bit heavy-handed in my opinion. It’s become a bit too obvious that Daru is her father. Even Mayushii has noticed. Or perhaps all this is just a red herring…? (I doubt it)

Heavy-handed would describe much of this episode, actually. The entire explanation of the future from Suzuha may have revealed a bit more than necessary, and it seems to be a rather generic dystopian future. I’m sure there’s more to it, but I’m still a bit disappointed. I’m the kind of person who enjoys the mystery and the process of finding the solution more than the solution itself.

The biggest question that remains now is Moeka— what is she doing and who is FB? Since she is trying to prevent the invention of the time machine, I’m guessing that she doesn’t work for CERN. Perhaps she’s from a different resistance group than Suzuha, whose goal is to stop CERN by preventing the invention of the time machine entirely. This seems like a much better plan, actually, except for the fact that she’s already too late.

After many more tries attempting to save Mayushii on his own, Okabe finally decides to tell Christina what’s going on. Fortunately, Suzuha overhears their discussion, and the three work out a plan to save Mayushii. Apparently Okabe was only jumping to nearby world lines, where the future diverged only by a little, and they need to make a larger jump. Fortunately it turns out that Suzuha is John Titor and happens to have access to the crashed UFO which is actually a time machine.

Okabe’s increasing desperation managed to up the notch even more from the previous episodes. He begins to catch on that nothing he does is working, and even tries something different: asking Moeka questions at gunpoint. He probably should have taken her cellphone before her gun, but oh well. It doesn’t seem like Moeka is actually with CERN, but works for FB, whoever that is. I’m not going to speculate much since episode 15 is already out and any speculation would likely be proven wrong in short order.

Okabe finally gives in and talks to Christina too (well, more like she forces him to, but whatever). Interestingly, he decides to attack Moeka head on and alone before he decides to talk to Christina or Suzuha. Okabe and Christina have the most interesting and dynamic relationship in the show, and it managed to become even stronger with Okabe’s breakdown. He calls her by her actual name and even learns that she wants her own personal fork (wtf? why?). The part where as he left for the past, she mentions that in the past she wouldn’t know he called her Kurisu was touching. Christina has an excellent mad scientist laugh too, by the way.

The revelation that Suzuha is John Titor wasn’t particularly surprising. One thing that is somewhat unexpected is that Suzuha appears to have known Okabe in the future, as she has a device he invented and seems to be aware of his Reading Steiner ability. I suppose her coming to work at Mr. Braun’s store wasn’t a coincidence then. This seems to suggest that there is a deeper reason for her presence than recovering the IBN 5100.

We also learned that the Steins; Gate universe doesn’t seem to subscribe to the butterfly effect theory.  There are only a few points where history diverges drastically. The Gulf War, Y2K, and the invention of the time machine. I’m not really sure why the first two are so special: the gulf war seems much less significant, than, say, the fall of the Soviet Union only a few years earlier, and I don’t think Y2K was ever that much of a threat aside from the usual conspiracy theorists who predicted that the world was going to end. They just got more attention for a while. Now 2038 may cause some more significant problems…

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?

Those are some crazy compression ratios. Hey, CERN, want to give me access to the LHC? Then I can store petabytes of anime on a floppy disk!

Steins; Gate has been one of my favorite shows this season, with some great characterization and by far the wittiest, best directed dialogue in any recent anime. That’s why what happened this week’s episode was entirely unexpected: the creators completely blew the previous episodes out of the water. Not only did this episode continue (or even surpass) Steins; Gate’s well established trend of spectacular dialogue, but the plot took a tremendous leap forward as well.

And boy does the shit hit the fan hard (spoilers): the lab gets stormed by CERN, led by Moeka, and she murders Mayushii. I speculated before that Moeka was with CERN, but I definitely didn’t expect her to go far as killing Mayushii. I have no doubt that Mayushii will return— this is a show about time travel, after all— but this still hit hard, especially in a show which has been so peaceful up till now, with the exception of the first episode.

There are three big questions that this episode raised for me (and my most recent conspiracy theories are included).

1. What is special about Mayushii? Mayushii, although she initially seemed to be one of the most straightforward characters, is now the person most deeply enmeshed in enigma. I mean, the intro to this episode was a conversation about her chasing Okabe which took place before mankind even existed (although it seemed like Okabe’s dream). But there is definitely more to her than meets the eye. She has been with Okabe since he was a child, and we know that Okabe had also opened Steins; Gate at that time. I’m led to wonder whether Steins; Gate or even the time travelling microwave are products of Okabe or science, or whether Mayushii may turn out to be the one responsible.
2. What is part-time warrior up to? She claims she is searching for her dad, which may be true, but there is clearly more to her than that. In this episode we learned that she knows of Christina’s work with CERN through a prophecy— which sounds like a perfect word to describe the memory transfer procedure Christina just invented — and she also realized that CERN was going to attack the lab and escaped. It seemed that she was hesitant to abandon them though.

   I’m thinking that John Titor might be associated with CERN, since he and Moeka were both searching for the IBN 5100. But come to think of it, part-time warrior’s dad wasn’t John Titor, but Barrel Titor. Perhaps Moeka is John Titor, and is part-time warrior’s mother. Now who is her father? Well, part-time girl was heading to the time travel forum to meet her father. Who else was going to go but cancelled due to changes in the timeline? Daru. And we already know that Daru has the hots for Moeka. Of course, this entire discussion presupposes that part-time girl was born in the future, which, according to Christina’s theories, is impossible. But there doesn’t seem to be a rule that memories have to be sent from and to the same person.

3. What is CERN‘s goal? Interestingly, CERN only decided to interfere when Okabe decided to stop messing with time travel. It’s possible that this could be a timely coincidence with the memory transfer device’s completion. But transferring memories doesn’t seem much more dangerous than sending cellphone messages, especially when Okabe already has been transferring memories (of which CERN is no doubt aware through their eavesdropping). The more likely explanation is that CERN is concerned about time travel being made public. They appear to have even greater capabilities than Okabe, with the ability to even stop time. It seems that Christina’s theories are not the end of the story.The other interesting point is that Moeka shot only Mayushii, which leads back to my first question. Mayushii knows absolutely nothing about time travel, so she is the person they have the least reason to kill. Of course, it’s possible they want to interrogate the others first or use them. But both Okabe and Daru understand about as much of how time travel works as Mayushii. Which leaves Christina as the only valuable person from this perspective. Which leads me to reach the opposite conclusion: that Mayushii was killed because she is in fact the most dangerous lab member in the eyes of CERN.

In addition to the exciting plot developments which will inspire all anime fandom to have fun creating conspiracy theories, the dialogue in this episode continued to be topnotch. As just one example of this show’s masterful use of dialgoue, let’s take a look at the conversation between Okabe and Christina on the bridge while heading home from grocery shopping. While they talk about the decision to reveal their invention to the world, Christina worries that they won’t have time to meet her father. To which Okabe replies, “I’ll solve all my lab member’s problems” and calls Christina his dear companion. This was after Okabe decided not to use the memory transfer device. At this point, I was wondering if CERN hadn’t replaced Okabe with a clone. What happened to his mad scientist act?

But then, to Okabe’s surprise, Christina said “Thank you”, and Okabe became blustered and confused, and tried to check her temperature because she was saying “un-assistant-like things”. Then Christina denies being a tsundere in a very tsundere way, and asks what’s wrong with Okabe for saying such weird things. So my point is, Okabe acts completely out of character for the beginning of this episode, but the dialogue makes it seem perfectly natural: because the other characters realize that he’s acting out of character. This is one way to make your characters take unexpected actions and also appear even more consistent.

To make what Okabe said earlier even more believable, they bring it up again a few minutes earlier: after Christina begins to cook, Daru asks what happened to solving all his lab member’s problems. Another pro-tip which anime creators often forget: viewers have memories longer than ten seconds. Make use of them. I also love it when shows can do a convincing job of inerleaving the serious and comedic elements, which this scene was a shining example of.

I look forward to hearing your conspiracy theories in the comments. No spoilers from the visual novel, please.