"Holy fuck!" is what I shouted at my Vita's screen when all of a sudden the credits began rolling. I wasn't ready for that. Wait, strike that— Given how long I've been working on making my way through Steins;Gate, I was shocked I hadn't finished it ten times over. But the narrative didn't feel over.
Of course, it's not over. I hit one out of, what? Six different endings? Definitely not the true ending—which I have hazy memories of from watching the anime—but one of the others. I've never before gone through a visual novel after watching the anime, so it's interesting, actually, to see how different the experience actually is—and how these endings are dictated by seemingly innocuous phone interactions.
Okabe Rintaro is a year out of high school and fancying himself a mad scientist. He rents a room where he and his friend Daru, a computer wiz, invent gadgets. Well, "invent" might be a bit rich of a term given the tape-and-string nature of these things, particularly seeing as how they tend to lack science, creation, or any kind of actual building. But I digress. Their latest invention is, perhaps, a bit of an anomaly: A microwave with a phone taped to it that (theoretically) will start the microwave when messaged. The practical application seems limited, but if there's one thing science has shown over the years is you might think you're inventing or learning one thing, but in reality you're inventing/learning something completely different. The so-called PhoneWave may suck for what it was intended, but Okabe and Daru discover it does something much more unique: Send messages to the past.
So in broad terms, Steins;Gate is a story about the invention of a time machine, the the friendships that form, and the dangers that arise.
Rintaro is our perspective character. He has a bit of an abrasive personality, especially when he slips into "Hououin Kyoma!" mode, which is his mad scientist (and preferred) moniker. He has this annoying habit of getting bent out of shape when people don't call him Hououin Kyoma, yet stubbornly uses nicknames (and other dubbings) for everyone else that they prefer him to not use. In my mind, the mad scientist persona is partly a shield he uses to keep people at a distance, and partly a projection of the person he wishes he could be: Cool, confident, in control, uncaring. It, along with his ramshackle lab, is a fantasy, like a kid playing dress up. But he becomes more endearing as the VN advances and we see the the facade start dropping—his need for that shield, that projection decreases.
Time travel, of course, takes a fairly central stage throughout Steins;Gate. Basically every time travel story is going to have some muddled logic and paradoxes, and this is no different on that front. It does do a pretty good job of outlining the "rules" for this particular system, which relies on parallel timelines (visualized as individual strands on a string) and, given their method really only transmits data, there's no messy "same person in multiple places" bullshit. That said, there's a LOT going on the time travel (and its implications), so I think that the less you hyper-focus on the mechanics, the happier you'll be with the story.
So let's talk that ending a bit. Not so much the specifics (I'm going to try to keep this spoiler free), but whether it—as a non-true ending—feels like a viable ending point. I'm of the opinion that given the time commitment for a VN like Steins;Gate (it basically took me two months to work through), even non-true endings need to feel good. Kudos to the portion of VN fans who can get their way—either naturally or with a walkthrough—to the true ending, but I'm not one of those. Not with VNs of this length and time commitment. So I want endings to feel appropriate, even if they're not "true." If the ending split happens where I think it does (ie, where I think I stop remembering stuff), it's a surprisingly lengthy ending. It grapples with some interesting moral questions that I found pretty crucial. So that's good. But it only feels like an ending if you're solely looking at the things that happen at the point where the story splits. It creates a problem and solves that problem, while the larger storylines of the VN (ie, everything leading up to the split, lol) are left open.
And I think I'd notice that even if I hadn't watched the anime. Yes, having watched the anime definitely makes the difference markedly obvious, but I doubt people fresh to the story will reach this ending and think, "Yes, this feels like an ending." Granted, ending writing for this sort of project has to be really fucking hard—each non-true ending focuses on a specific character and Rintaro's relationship with them—but there should be ways to bring a larger sense of resolution. It doesn't have to be every little detail or anything, but at least find an answer to the major arc even if it's not the answer.
I'm sure at some point I'll want to go back and fish for those other endings—Steins;Gate has a way of lingering in my thoughts—but for now I'm very ready to move on to other things. If it had given me an appropriate-feeling non-ending, I'd have gone 5 stars on this without a doubt. The journey, however, is strong enough to still justify a pretty high rating.
