I apologize in advance for my poor English. I'm not a native speaker.
Many people watching Steins;Gate for the first time feel that the way Okabe saves Kurisu is forced or that he simply "tricked" the universe. However, the key point of the attractor field convergence is not Kurisu's death itself but rather the D-mail that Okabe from the past sends upon seeing her body. This D-mail is crucial because it gets recorded by SERN, ensuring that the timeline follows its predetermined course.
To prevent Kurisu’s death without altering this essential event, Okabe must ensure that the D-mail is sent exactly as before. However, changing the message at that precise moment would be impossible. The only viable solution, then, is to make the past Okabe believe he saw Kurisu dead, even though she is actually alive. This way, he still sends the D-mail, preserving the timeline while allowing Kurisu to survive.
This means that the true point of convergence is not Kurisu’s death but the transmission of the D-mail. By manipulating past Okabe’s perception, he breaks the cycle and reaches the Steins;Gate worldline, where both Kurisu and Mayuri survive.
OmTsTM
2025-02-26 06:00:17 +0000 UTC
Before that you should really watch ep 23 beta
Hoji
2025-02-26 04:09:11 +0000 UTC
Just to further give some detail as to this idea: kurisu only recalls the event of the stabbing and where she was stabbed when okabe explicity mentioned it to kurisu at the end of ep 21, despite being with okabe throughout the story.
You can argue to this idea with the idea being that okabe also mentioned the stabbing to kurisu in ep 2. To that idea, I believe that the relationship between them hadn't developed yet to a point where it made kurisu remember. Throughout all the worldlines, they were strangers during that moment and before.
Therefore, even though kurisu and okabe are strangers in the steins gate worldline, kurisu was able to reply to okabe with her catchphrase since they had a history of being together throughout the previous worldlines.
Hoji
2025-02-26 03:52:55 +0000 UTC
Regarding the memories, the other lab members were able to recall since okabe was forcing them subconsciously to remember their memories from the other worldline. A sense of deja vu. Here, however, okabe is just giving them pin badges. Whether they remember what had occurred throughout the story is up to them, as Mokea seems to have a sense of okabe saving her. This is just my interpret ofc.
Hoji
2025-02-26 03:30:45 +0000 UTC
I feel most explanations I got are headcannon :D I like that the show gave many people so much to think about and I enjoy that in this case. =)
M U
2025-02-26 00:24:46 +0000 UTC
Yeah, 23 & 24 feels random, crammed and antithematic. I took it as cool feel good fanservice and enjoyed it because of that. it felt like the secret 100% ending, though :D Also, I would say it is not lack of sacrifice it is that potentially the memories of everyone do not bleed through anymore (I hope that was just bad portrayal, in my headcoanon they did) and that the message went from "This is tragic, you have to choose, the world is not fair, but we can deal with that and it is allowed to feel sad about that" to "lulz, we can fix everything alsways,just work hard" :D
M U
2025-02-26 00:24:05 +0000 UTC
I will try to adress some piints to clear them up:
1. no, my point was why he could get the metal oopa when it was "supposed" to cause the files to be intact, so it should be a predetermined thing that always happens. Like, he should not be able to change the oopa and casue a timeline change as that is the Mayushi situation, he coul dnot find something to save her in the beta timeline.
2. it is unfortunately iffy ho wmany memories she gets when, so yeah, this method was more reasonable but still :D
3. No, he does not need past okabe to go to the other timeline. That is not him, it is a differnt okabe or otherwise it woul dopen another can of worms. like when is something "worldmorphing timetravel" and when is it another real timetravel kind? He goes not back to the original worldline so to speak as that would cause problems, he goes back to a worldline like that. :D
4. He does not need to see Kurisu in the blood only, she is a scientist that invents timetravel. I know the anime tells it like this now by its rules, but her not amtetring with all we kno wis just ridiculous to me (opinion of course).
5. & 6. Yeah, like, why is Suzuha fading but he is not? None of them should fade, they are traveling in the timemachine (iirc? if not this point does of course not apply), so they are in something like "space betewwen worldlines" during timetravel and thus unaffected (only way it works with the timemaschine in my mind). So either both cease or none. :D (Really unsuer abou tthis as as I said the erasing timetravel stuff is newly introduced in 23 and extremely ill defined logically).
7. I got that late,r but I guess you saw :D Still, she should not exist in Steins;Gate timeline as that was the point of it, all is free and not determined (I thought?)
8. I disagree, he is on eof the original 3. That is like doing Bleach naruto and sidelining one of the main 3 group (yes, that is a jooke, I hated it there as well). Daru had extremely high potential and all of it was wasted. Someone said it might be because he isnot a girl and thus had not a backstory in the VN, which I unfortunately suspect is the case.
9. They did not even show signs of that, though. Again, not enough information. :D
I think in general 23 & 24 felt extremely shoehorned in characterwise and I only enjoyed them so much because the characters are dear to me. But the character work in these last 2 eps was pretty against everythign before and I still dislike the message "lulz, no, you can fix everything in the end" and only let it pass because in this particular scenario I was happy for the characteres :D
M U
2025-02-26 00:21:56 +0000 UTC
I think that the memories are clear for whoever does the time traveling, which was always Okabe but if someone else had used the machine they would also have all their memories and not the murky ones that everyone else seems to have, which appear to come from moments that are more important to them.
When they traveled to the past in the time machine to save Kurisa the first time and fail, there isn't 3 Okabe's because that is the "same" Okabe both times. It could be that Kurisu's death was not predetermined by fate like Mayuri's. He only tried once and it could have just been by chance that he killed her. The rules for physical time travel vs D mail vs Kurisu's time travel machine (the headset thing are different. In one, you're physically traveling to the past without changing the world line, in another you're changing the world line without traveling backwards or forwards, and in the last you're transferring your consciousness to your past self without changing the world line. World line's can be changed based on your actions after traveling to the past, but the act itself does not.
Most of that's not fact, just my thoughts/head-canon from watching several times.
Zach S
2025-02-25 23:11:00 +0000 UTC
I would say the ending gets better the more you think about it.
The 'normal' ending of the visual novel is what you saw in episode 22. What we see in ep. 23 and 24 would be the 'secret' ending or the perfect route, which I guess it would be too perfect to be true by design. In the anime, they kinda tried to cram elements from all the routes into the show which is why I think it feels so jarring.
The main problem is less about the lack of a sacrifice and more about the effort we feel as an audience, the character puts in solving the problem. The whole context of WWIII and the consequences for failure are setup in ep 23 and resolved immediately in ep. 24, especially in contrast with the problem of saving Mayuri.
I think the ending itself gets better with the context of Steins;Gate 0, as its whole focus is talking about the deus ex machina moment with future Okabe sending the video in ep 23, and the sacrifices made for this ending to be possible.
Sauron275
2025-02-25 23:06:09 +0000 UTC
14:55 "Why could he get the metal one before?"
The machine gives you a random Upa. And the metal one is established to be very rare. So the chance of getting two metal Upas in a row is very low.
15:25 "Just ask her to play possum"
You can't honestly believe that she would listen to such a strange request from a random person. He doesn't really have time to explain things to her, either.
15:50 "He's trapped in the timeline again [...] Why would anything change here"
That's the point of the plan. All events need to be remembered by everyone the same way, so that past Okabe goes to Alpha and back.
17:52 "Why does this work?"
It works because it doesn't change the important, established events. Everything can still play out the same in the eyes of everyone. The key here is past Okabe seeing Kurisu lying in a pool of blood and sending the Dmail. That can still happen after "our" Okabe gets stabbed. In the Alpha worldline Okabe had to live because he's predetermined to die in 2035 (I think) on that worldline. Here, Okabe doesn't need to survive for the world to continue on as normal.
21:10
So the events from this point onwards should go like this: Okabe sees Kurisu "dead", sends the dmail. He's moved to Alpha, where SERN will intercept that message. Goes through the 3 weeks of hell, and at the end, removes the message from the SERN database before they see it, which moves him back to Beta... BUT a Beta where Kurisu didn't die, and the paper was destroyed. So a Beta without World War 3 and a dead Kurisu, which he calls Steins;Gate.
The only "big" plothole that this sequence of events has is the fact that "our" Okabe should be erased along with Suzuha. But here he kind of "overwrites" past Okabe.
So to summarize, this is how it should go, without the "plothole": from the perspective of past Okabe in Alpha, he should remove the message from the SERN database, thinking he just sacrificed Kurisu's life for Mayuri's, but instead he'll be moved to the Steins;Gate worldline, where all is great and everyone's happy. This would be a bit more grim, because the Okabe we followed would essentially stop existing, at least the "him" from after getting back to Beta for the first time.
23:00 "Why would she fade now?"
Okabe and Suzuha are moving into Steins;Gate worldline, which means a worldline where Suzuha (hopefully) never has to go back in time. Ideally it would be a world with no time travel being invented. Therefore, she cannot exist on that worldline yet.
23:00 "In seven years?"
Based on Suzuha's age, she should be born in seven years from the end of the anime.
26:55
I understand your frustration with Daru being "underused" or not having a lot of development, but from a storytelling perspective, not every character has to have a rich backstory and undergo big changes. Some characters can be static "plot devices", and if a story at least makes them feel "real" then that's fine I think.
27:25
From what I understand, the world in Steins'Gate is predetermined. The Steins;Gate worldline just makes it so that no one can know their future. But everything is still set in stone.
Something I think about often is how would Okabe react if someone dear to him died in the Steins;Gate worldline? Would he be able to accept it? Or would he desperately try to find a way to create the time machine again.
28:55
People remembering things from other worldlines has always been established as more of a "dream-like" remembering, or deja-vu type deal. It was never depicted as a clear memory of events.
39:55
Haha. I agree with this one, though that wouldn't have been as cinematic and romantic, so I would give the show a pass here :)
I'm writing these as I watch, so I probably missed a lot of your realizations and reinterpretations later on in the video, but I hope that this will be helpful regardless :)