Steins;Gate - Generic Discussion Thread

[Kaoru Chujo]

Originally Posted by Kanon

...Girl or boy, I think Kobayashi Yu was a bad choice for Ruka. She doesn't fit shy characters like him. When he freaked out, all I could hear was Sa-chan's voice... who is pretty much the total opposite of Ruka....

I understand what you're saying, but I'm enjoying the Master Painter anyway. I see one special feature of this anime being that all the best characters are voiced in an extreme and somewhat unreal way. Mamo-chan voices Okarin in an extremely artificial way, but makes it work. Ditto for Kana-chan. And Seki-san has established a comic character that nevertheless is the technical expert here. Ruka is so extreme in his femininity that the intensity makes it almost masculine, if that makes sense.

I've just been sent a link to a nice little video of Kana-chan guiding a couple of young presenters (?) around the show's studio. You briefly see the older man who is the show's sound director, Fujiyama Fusanobu. He began as a sound director in the 1980s and has done all kinds of mainly second-class shows, from Plastic Little through Clamp School, his best being Saiunkoku. I'm guessing he had something to do with the show's vocal style. You also see one of the producers there, indicating how important the money people are in guiding a show.

Spoiler for Hanazawa Kana studio video:

[Kafriel]

This keeps getting more interesting by the week, gotta love it...so many win events, best was Daru's reaction to cosplaying Ruka And yet the fun parts are balanced out by the plot that keeps moving quite a bit. I think Okarin risks a great deal with every D-mail sent, what if he somehow affects his own lab and turns out homeless and without assistants? Still, we don't know if Ruka is indeed a girl or not atm, nor do we know what happened to Moeka...she did reply though, so maybe we'll see her next week. S;G rating: rising!

[Solace]

Originally Posted by Guardian Enzo

Well, as someone who has no prior exposure to the material it seems to me that if Ruka did indeed change genders, there are going to be serious consequences. Even Okarin hinted that he only went along with it because he figured it wouldn't work. We're not talking about a card game or $50 lotto ticket here - changing someone's gender is a very big deal. If indeed this did happen, I fear there will be some kind of grave butterfly effect - and that's not even considering my dismay at losing the best trap of the season.

Changing your gender from birth would be a massive butterfly effect. While Ruka is pretty much a girl no matter how you look at it, it isn't like the fact that he is a guy is hidden either. Every single moment his gender was important to decision making (simple conversations to entire relationships to national statistics, medical history, etc.) would ripple through the time line.

In the context of the story, if telling yourself not to buy a different phone has a big effect, changing someones entire life would have to be huge.

Of course the question is....is Ruka any different? If not, then what did the message actually change?

[Guardian Enzo]

Another possibility is that - for whatever reason - in this timeline Ruka is pretending to be a girl but is actually a boy. That would explain the "-chan", and put Okarin in an interesting position as the one who knows the truth (along with Ruka's Dad, presumably). Of course, even the pretense of gender change would still have a butterfly effect.

[Kotohono]

Originally Posted by Dist

Speaking of which, if all they did was send numbers to a pager, how did Ruka's mum read it? How do those pagers even work?

Pagers were basically a mobile version of an answer machine, so that people could leave a message on it if it was called. And the message could later be played, it couldn't actually make or take calls though.

So I think they had explained that in the episode somewhat, that they basically send a number code to the pager, that would be interpreted in to the default voice on the device, which is why they had more of a limit on the message than normal.

[Kafriel]

Of course, even the pretense of gender change would still have a butterfly effect.

Didn't Ruka already do that though? He wore a neck ribbon and was clad in clearly girl's clothes before the experiment; he only said he didn't like cosplaying, not cross-dressing...

[Shadow5YA]

Originally Posted by Solace

Changing your gender from birth would be a massive butterfly effect. While Ruka is pretty much a girl no matter how you look at it, it isn't like the fact that he is a guy is hidden either. Every single moment his gender was important to decision making (simple conversations to entire relationships to national statistics, medical history, etc.) would ripple through the time line.

In the context of the story, if telling yourself not to buy a different phone has a big effect, changing someones entire life would have to be huge.

Of course the question is....is Ruka any different? If not, then what did the message actually change?

I assume it has to do with the food they're buying. Since Ruka's family no longer buys meat, something could have happened to the meat seller. I really don't think Ruka's gender has changed, just the fact that nobody knows Ruka is a guy anymore since Kyouma only recently told Chris and Daru about it.

[larethian]

what the, I'm shocked that some of you don't know how a pager works... am I that old......

[Kaoru Chujo]

It's a bit late, I know, but since I'm enjoying these voices so much, I've made a characters/seiyuus page for this show. It gives pics of each character and their seiyuu, with a bit of info about each seiyuu.

[Icy.Tear]

Originally Posted by larethian

what the, I'm shocked that some of you don't know how a pager works... am I that old......

Yes, yes you are. Even though I don't know how long ago it was till you were legally able to play VNs.
冗談です〜よ
Steins;Gate's voices are lovely. I start giggling everytime I hear, "Tutturu~". Daru's voice is awesome too.

[Raiga]

Originally Posted by Solace

In the context of the story, if telling yourself not to buy a different phone has a big effect, changing someones entire life would have to be huge.

Considering the little glint in Moeka's eyes before she sent the message, I doubt she actually told herself to not buy a new phone. If she had, we probably would have gotten the expected mundane results.

Lots of stories with time travel play on... I forget what they usually call it, but I guess a sort of "temporal momentum," where timelines will resist drastic overall changes, or something to that effect. Maybe that's in play here? Well, just a thought.

[Malkuth]

Originally Posted by Shadow5YA

I assume it has to do with the food they're buying. Since Ruka's family no longer buys meat, something could have happened to the meat seller. I really don't think Ruka's gender has changed, just the fact that nobody knows Ruka is a guy anymore since Kyouma only recently told Chris and Daru about it.

Should I point out that shintou priests do not consume meat anyway, and I think traditionally their families should do the same... I think.

Originally Posted by YoakeNoHikari

Yes, yes you are. Even though I don't know how long ago it was till you were legally able to play VNs.
冗談です〜よ
Steins;Gate's voices are lovely. I start giggling everytime I hear, "Tutturu~". Daru's voice is awesome too.

Legally, seriously? Most of us do not even have the option of buying VNs, because some idiot at customs will label it as loli-con!!!

[Dist]

^Steins;Gate is all ages though so anyone could play it, it doesn't have any ero content. VN doesn't necessarily equal to eroge.

Solace : Wasn't it already obvious that she clearly did not tell herself to buy new phone? All she ever had done in that lab was when she joined was suspicious activity, at one point she even tried to walk out with the IBN. What bothers me is that Kyouma didn't even notice that the IBN was gone after the world line changed .. Or did he? Well, he didn't say anything about it anyway ..

Can't really wait for next episode .. Did Ruka really change '' his '' gender or not. If he did however, you'd think there would be some drastic changes in the world line, perhaps she can Kyouma would never have even met .. But then again, do we even know anything about Ruka? '' He '' may be a boy, but he doesn't act like one so maybe he always did act like as a girl so even if his gender changed, he would make the same choices in the new world line?

I just hope they'll stop messing with the past from so long ago.. Who knows what changes next. Maybe they'll change something so that he and Daru would never even meet. If that happened, wouldn't it mean the D-Mail doesn't even exist in the new world line?

[Guardian Enzo]

Originally Posted by Kafriel

Didn't Ruka already do that though? He wore a neck ribbon and was clad in clearly girl's clothes before the experiment; he only said he didn't like cosplaying, not cross-dressing...

He play-acted, like Nitorin in Hourou Musuko when he dressed up with Chiba or Yoshino. But Mayuri and Daru knew, so presumably most of his casual circle did, too. If instead of playing he really lived the part so that no one outside his family knew, that would certainly have a butterfly effect.

[Kaioshin Sama]

Originally Posted by ninryu

Wow, Ruka is almost as moe as Mayushii.
Lol at Kurisu's reaction.

Wait, does that mean no more Moeka?

Mayushi while kind of moe comes across more as a dull airhead than an out and out moe character to me. It's moeka that's comes of as the moe character to me and maybe that feyris girl as well.

[Kanon]

Originally Posted by Raiga

Lots of stories with time travel play on... I forget what they usually call it, but I guess a sort of "temporal momentum," where timelines will resist drastic overall changes, or something to that effect. Maybe that's in play here? Well, just a thought.

Yes, I'm pretty sure that's how it works here. This is the divergence 1% limit John Titor was talking about: no matter what you change, the universe will try to limit the butterfly effect and search for a world line as close to the original as possible. This is possibly the reason Ruka got the numbers for the lottery wrong. Going beyond divergence 1% means drastically altering the world line, something that is apparently almost impossible except for the messiah.

[Dist]

^But if Kyouma is the messiah, then shouldn't it have worked as expected? Wasn't it Kyouma himself who sent the mail about the lotto 6, not anyone else.

[Reckoner]

Originally Posted by Dist

^But if Kyouma is the messiah, then shouldn't it have worked as expected? Wasn't it Kyouma himself who sent the mail about the lotto 6, not anyone else.

But he told Ruka to buy the ticket. He didn't buy it himself.

[Dist]

^Hm. Well, next episode will tell what changed .. perhaps even '' his '' gender. I still want to believe the gender changed (even though I still see veggies=girl as far fetched) because at the time of sending the message, the '' moving through world lines '' seemed much more intense for Kyouma than before.

Originally Posted by Konakaga

Pagers were basically a mobile version of an answer machine, so that people could leave a message on it if it was called. And the message could later be played, it couldn't actually make or take calls though.

So I think they had explained that in the episode somewhat, that they basically send a number code to the pager, that would be interpreted in to the default voice on the device, which is why they had more of a limit on the message than normal.

Except that when Kurisu started talking about Pagers, there was few pictures shown with people with pagers and this image was quite puzzling. To me it seems he's reading a message on the pager, not listening to one.

Spoiler for :

[Guardian Enzo]

Trust me as someone <sob> old enough to have one - pagers were for written text messages, not verbal ones. They weren't like answering machines - more like little cell phones that could only do the texting (up to 36 characters) and not the actual phone part. At least the ones regular folks carried around - the so-called alphanumeric (and there's a call-out to my username) pagers.