It is very rare for me to say that any series, or film, or any narrative really has a “Perfect Ending."
Besides being something entirely subjective to the viewer it’s innately difficult if
not impossible to achieve perfection.
So when I say that something has a perfect ending I don’t want to give off the illusion
that it has no flaws, but what I am getting at is an ending that far makes up for those
flaws in various ways.
Steins;Gate is an example of one such ending.
Steins;Gate was originally a Visual Novel released in October of 2009 in Japan for the
Xbox 360 of all systems before being eventually ported to PC in 2010, and various Sony Consoles
in 2011 and 2012.
Before making its way to North America with translation of the PC version in 2014.
Before that however most North American fans of the series were introduced to the story
through the 2011 Anime Adaptation of the Visual Novel, either though watching in in subs when
it aired, or in 2013 when released by Funimation with an English dub.
I realize that I just threw a bunch of dates at you, far more than usual, but I hope you’ll
forgive me since we are talking about Steins;Gate where keeping track of dates and events is
par for the course.
Sufficed to say that this story has been cemented in anime culture for a while, it’s tale
about multiple timelines, redemption, and bananas being regarded by some, espically
me, as one of the best stories, adaptations, and endings that have been released in our…well
I don’t know if medium is the right word but you get my point.
So when it’s official sequel Steins;Gate 0 was announced and then released in 2015
I was cautiously optimistic.
On the one hand, more Steins;Gate sounds like an amazing thing considering my love for the
original narrative.
But it’s too often that I’ve seen brilliant endings tainted by follow ups that did less
building on what came before and more so became a sad excuse for an homage that did more harm
than good.
Even Steins;Gate itself wasn’t immune to this problem but we’ll get to that in a bit
The Goal of Zero for me was to make up for past mistakes, and bring about a new chapter
in a story that quite honestly didn’t need it.
It needed to not only expand on what came before but justify its own existence.
And Spoiler Alert, it did far better than I could have hoped.
But to understand how it pulled that off, we have to set the scene and remind ourselves
of what it was up against.
Ladies, Gentlemen, and others My name is Arkada and Today on Glass Reflection we are looking
back at Steins;Gate, and talking about how it’s sequel Steins;Gate 0 built upon perfection.
Let’s Jam.
Now, to me one of the ingredients for a perfect ending that Steins;Gate uses is the genre,
science fiction, and more specifically the sub-genre of Time Travel to great effect.
It’s main character the self-proclaimed Mad Scientist Okabe Rintaro, through absolute
accident stumbles upon the creation of a device allowing him to send text messages to the
past, thus influencing history.
The first half of the story is both the discovery of the devise and its initial testing, with
the second being the complete reversal of everything to return Okabe back to his original timeline.
In a broad sense, the narrative of Steins;Gate works perfectly because it has to by design.
When you write a tale about time travel, especially one where the same events are re-visited multiple
times you need to know where the story is going to go before you sit down to write its
first iteration.
Unless you are writing a story in which time is fluid and ever changing, what a character
might do on their second, or even third time through has to be kept in mind and presented
as plausible based on what’s shown to the audience the first time through.
You can’t change can’t say that a character went back in time and then burned down a building
when you already showed us the building standing tall past the point when it burns down.
Otherwise you start getting into paradox territory and that’s not something we really have
time for today.
Steins;Gate works because it’s ending is already known and even shown to the audience
within its first hour of gameplay, or episode of anime depending on the version your watching.
Despite telling a tale that takes many MANY hours to get through it exists within a very
carefully crafted closed loop that by design comes with its own innate finality when the
loop is fully completed.
While this works brilliantly if we were only talking about a stand-alone narrative, like Steins;Gate
used to be, it becomes a serious detriment when you start to add things, like say a sequel, down the line.
The best endings are crafted when they are made first or at least planed out far in advance
so the story knows where it will eventually end up.
But changing the ending once it’s been established is where things get dicey.
What normally ends up happening is either you are somehow able to tack on a story to
the already existing narrative, either through a side-story, another perspective, or some
other chicanery to explain your new content.
OR you muddle through a sequel that doesn’t hold up to the original because it innately
doesn’t have the same structure or finality to it that the original have.
Let’s take a look at an example of the latter.
In April of 2013, after the success of the
original visual novel and it’s 2011 anime adaptation, WHITE FOX released into theatres
“Load Region of Déjà vu” the official theatrical sequel to the original story.
It tells a tale in which our previous main character Okabe begins to suffer serious temporal
side effects to his previous time travel adventures and begins to phase in and out of time.
Leaving the series’ second main character Makise Kurisu to take the lead and find a
way to ground Okabe back into reality.
It’s a 90 minute film that I wouldn’t say is necessarily bad, just ill advised.
Why?
Because it’s a sequel to a time travel story, that doesn’t really involve time travel.
Now I understand that traveling through time is complicated and has many repercussions
that generally cannot be represented in the amount of time that a film gives you.
On top of which the original story was entirely self-contained, and to me if you were to revisit
anything from the original timeline in a sequel, I feel that you would never be able to do
it justice.
Thankfully this movie does not do that.
Instead what we have is a film that focuses more on how the characters are dealing with
their good friend who claims to have traveled through various alternate dimensions, as well
as resurfacing memories of those dimensions that conflict with their perspective of reality.
Downside though is that while it had a surprisingly amazing take on time travel, with its blend
of concepts and theories from a variety of sources melded into one cohesive and not extremely
complicated whole, the film is rather unoriginal.
As a joke I could say that the subtitle of the film should be the Disappearance of Hououin
Kyouma, in reference to the Haruhi film of a similar name.
However the amount of truth to it makes it a rather uncomfortable joke.
Sure there are large and noticeable differences between the two, but the comparison is surprisingly
accurate in enough ways to make it slightly depressing.
The story doesn’t add anything to the original narrative, it doesn’t give us closure to
any events that previously happened, and overall it’s a skippable affair for all but the
most hardcore of fans who just want to see more of their favorite characters.
It took what was once a perfect finale and gave it a bit of a sour note at the end.
Not completely unwelcoming for some fans, but enough for others to just feel slightly off.
This is where, Steins;Gate 0 comes in.
The brilliance of Steins;Gate Zero is that
it is NOT a sequel to the original story.
Rather it is tale expanding upon one briefly mentioned plot thread and technically takes
place INSIDE the previous loop.
It also does this without massively impacting the existing story.
I’ve avoided plot spoilers for Steins;Gate up to this point for the most part but this
is your official warning that if you have not played Steins;Gate or watched the anime
then you should stop this video now and go do that thing.
Ok?
Good moving on.
At the end of Steins;Gate, Okabe with the help future soldier Suzuha uses a time machine
to travel back several weeks to the events of the story’s first few hours, in an attempt
to save the life of the character Makise Kurisu.
After his first failed attempt to do so he and Suzuha return to the roof of the radio
building that they set off from to take a reprieve.
During which time Okabe, disheartened, gets a pep talk from his childhood friend Miyuri
as well as a video file from his future self.
Congratulating him on his failed attempt and giving him the solution to the problem of
how to save Kurisu.
Okabe then proceeds to make a second attempt and the story continues to its true ending.
Steins Gate 0 is the story of that Future Okabe from that message, the one who fails to save
Makise Kurisu and then spends the rest of his life trying to find the route to Steins;Gate.
What originally seemed like a deus ex machina to the finale of a time travel plot became
the basis from which its sequel would be developed.
Taking place in the Beta world line Zero is about an Okabe who has become disillusioned
with the world through his failures and falls into a deep depression.
He hangs up his lab coat, forgets about his alternate mad scientist personality, and tries
to live a normal life.
All the while doing his best to forget about the girl Makise Kurisu, the one who helped
him get back to his original time line, the one who he left bleeding on the floor in the
radio building, the one he couldn’t save.
One of the biggest questions to those while reading the original story was just how much
punishment Okabe could take.
Throughout the original story he was put through hardship after hardship, watched his friends
die countless times and Zero addresses what happens when Okabe is finally given an out.
He takes it.
That’s not where the story ends however, in fact we know where the story must end because
it’s already ended.
We know that this Okabe will eventually regain the drive and motivation to search for a solution
that will save Kurisu from death and lead to a version of him reaching Steins;Gate.
We just don’t know how.
One of the main difference between Zero and the original though, we know how this story
ends before it even begins.
The entertainment with it is in how it weaves its new narrative around the pre-existing story.
In some ways this works really well, in others not so much.
Zero is a much darker tale, which is odd to say considering some of the more gruesome
subject matter of the original story.
Where previously we would just have death either shown or alluded to us at various intervals,
we now have an entirely new narritive starring a guy’s suffering from some serious depression
and anxiety issues who now has his demons coming back to haunt him.
The shadow overlords of the previous story haven’t gone anywhere, and the threat of
a terminator like future still lingers
That said though it is still Steins;Gate and does have its moments of light hearted ness,
even if they are few and far between.
It still holds the brilliance that steins;gate once had and hell,
no other story will have you grinning like a madman to yourself at the prospect of
a guy putting on a lab coat quite like Zero.
Ultimately Zero does something I thought impossible.
It creates a sequel to a closed loop time travel story that not only builds upon the
original but also justifies its own existence in one fell swoop.
So what would I recommend?
Don’t watch the film unless you’re a hard core fan, but DO pick up the game.
Sure we’ve been hearing about an anime adaptation of Zero since Zero was even released but for
all the alternate anime endings, and teases we get we still as of writing this, don’t
have a release date on the horizon beyond the vague “maybe 2018 or 2019” which isn’t
much of a comfort.
And that’s it from me.
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And until next time,
El
Psy
Congroo
stay frosty everyone!