Steins;Gate - Episode 18 Discussion / Poll

[Arkard]

Kurisu talking about the "ultimate technique" and stalking Okabe was pretty funny. "I'll be tailing you, Daru's coming too! Daru --> Huh?" The undertones of her obsessing over the date were great ^_~ Kinda amusing how she gets more dere dere as the world line gets restored

[Jean Claymore]

Originally Posted by Dist

The way I see it is that Kyouma's '' power '' is affecting those around him when he's close to them.. or something. It's not like they remembered all and everything from their previous world lines... Well, I hope the future will tell why are they having these memories. Would be nice to get an explanation for this.. I still find this kinda lame as the power was supposed to be unique to Kyouma, even if the explanation will be what I suggested..

While mostly agreed, wasn't it Okabe who developed the Phone Microwave to send the D-Mails in the first place? Even though it was told Okabe had this unique ability, it wouldn't sound so strange 'it's because Okabe was the one who created it'..... though I too wonder if he has other abilities to make others remember about there past world lines or even bring there memories back from the future to let them know into what have they gone through with Moeka's betrayal and there time spending with Suzuha. It'd be good if it ended that way, everyone awared what exactly had happened and so. Yes, I kinda like Sakuras

But... haven't they had used more D-Mails for the mail winning lottery and the mail Okabe sent to Daru at the very beginning? I don't get why would Okabe say Moeka's the last one. Besides if I remember correctly, everyone saw what Moeka sent (about changing her cp), didn't they? So why go into more trouble anyways? Maybe we do need some plot develpment other than D-Mails and divergence.

[miroku2192]

Originally Posted by Eater of All

A light-hearted episode, but that's fine too. Reminds me those first few episodes when Okabe was just fooling around with his lab members, having fun....



By "changing his own D-Mail", do you mean preventing himself from letting people send D-Mails in the first place? If so, it's already explained (by Reckoner in ep17 thread) that:

No you missed my point. I'm saying it's easy for him to tell himself to cancel the new dmail. I want kyouma to send a dmail to himself a year earlier to go get it, or send one to rukako to not clean the shack etc. He can always prevent HIMSELF from sending it IN THIS WORLD easily by mentioning SERN etc.

[Witch of Uncertainty]

How the hell does eating vegetables result in getting a girl? I would have thought that we would have heard of a sex change operation or something in this episode. :|

[Jarmel]

Originally Posted by Witch of Uncertainty

How the hell does eating vegetables result in getting a girl? I would have thought that we would have heard of a sex change operation or something in this episode. :|

I could see some sort of butterfly effect before the mother gets pregnant.

[Elestia]

Originally Posted by miroku2192

No you missed my point. I'm saying it's easy for him to tell himself to cancel the new dmail. I want kyouma to send a dmail to himself a year earlier to go get it, or send one to rukako to not clean the shack etc. He can always prevent HIMSELF from sending it IN THIS WORLD easily by mentioning SERN etc.

You seem to be under the impression that anything the D-mail sends will have have the intended consequence contained in the mail. It does not. The D-mail is not some hypnosis machine that will bend anyone's will who reads it. And again, using the D-Mail to further alter the past can distort the current timeline even further. While you might be able to get Rukako to stop from breaking the IBN 5100 or Okabe to retrieve it earlier, he would be risking unimaginable and unknown consequences if he did.

So the safest way is to simply negate previous D-Mails, rather than trying to fix it by sending more D-mails to change the past.

[Eater of All]

Originally Posted by Jean Claymore

But... haven't they had used more D-Mails for the mail winning lottery and the mail Okabe sent to Daru at the very beginning? I don't get why would Okabe say Moeka's the last one. Besides if I remember correctly, everyone saw what Moeka sent (about changing her cp), didn't they? So why go into more trouble anyways? Maybe we do need some plot develpment other than D-Mails and divergence.

Moeka's is the last one because he just needs to undo D-mails until he can get the IBN back. Remember, the IBN disappeared starting with Moeka's D-mail. There's no need to undo the previous two since they didn't affect the IBN.

And when Moeka sent her D-mail in ep8, she told Okabe that her D-mail will be to tell herself 4 days in the past not to change her cellphone, but what she actually wrote in the D-mail... nobody actually saw.

Originally Posted by miroku2192

No you missed my point. I'm saying it's easy for him to tell himself to cancel the new dmail. I want kyouma to send a dmail to himself a year earlier to go get it, or send one to rukako to not clean the shack etc. He can always prevent HIMSELF from sending it IN THIS WORLD easily by mentioning SERN etc.

Ah I see; sorry I misunderstood.

Regarding that, I think Kanon's explanation already covers it.

Okabe's primary objective is to prevent Mayuri's death. Several failed attempts have drilled that into him. Now he is offered a hope: recurse all the way back to the pre-Moeka-D-mail timeline and use the IBN to shift beta/alpha timelines. This is probably the simplest and most guaranteed method that he has.

Your solution might work, or might not work. It is hard to tell how the butterfly effects will alter the timeline, especially when the detail that can be sent back by a D-mail is (IIRC) kinda limited. As Kanon mentioned, what got Okabe in this mess in the first place is his prior indiscriminate use of D-mails; by this point, I think he is already cautious enough not to use it for anything extraneous (not insult Feyris and Ruka as extraneous, but Mayuri is his primary objective). There is also the chance that the butterfly effects will be so drastic that he will no longer have the Phone Microwave, and thus no longer able to reverse whatever bad effects the D-mail may have.

tl;dr: Okabe's priority is Mayuri; he is being as cautious as possible.

EDIT: Ninja'd

[Kirroha]

I still don't get how Ruka broke the IBN as a girl but not as a boy.

[Dist]

So you think if you changed genders you would live your life identically to the one you're living at the moment? Probably quite a bit of things changed for Ruka, and one of those is probably regarding the IBN5100. Perhaps as a boy he never even cleaned the storehouse that day so it didn't broke..

Oh and Jean Claymore : Nobody saw what Moeka sent in her message. She claimed it was about cellphone, but that's bullshit. She was with SERN and she was a spy so why would her message be about that? Of course it wasn't. What she ultimately wanted was the IBN5100 which is what she did get with that message. If you look, the IBN disappeared the moment the message was sent. (Probably mailed the loc of IBN before Kyouma got it). Ruka's d-mail and her breaking it avoided Moeka getting it though, but now that the d-mail has been reversed, Moeka has it once again.

Originally Posted by Jarmel

I could see some sort of butterfly effect before the mother gets pregnant.

Do you guys keep forgetting what happened in the past episodes? It was explained why vegetables would increase the chances of getting a girl on the episode Ruka's d-mail was sent. Also someone posted a link here that they found on google and apparently veggies = girl isn't that '' far fetched '' according to some researchers.

[Haak]

Oh God, that "Fail" bit was so freaking hilarious. XD

[Tsuyoshi]

Originally Posted by Dist

Oh and Jean Claymore : Nobody saw what Moeka sent in her message. She claimed it was about cellphone, but that's bullshit. She was with SERN and she was a spy so why would her message be about that? Of course it wasn't. What she ultimately wanted was the IBN5100 which is what she did get with that message. If you look, the IBN disappeared the moment the message was sent. (Probably mailed the loc of IBN before Kyouma got it). Ruka's d-mail and her breaking it avoided Moeka getting it though, but now that the d-mail has been reversed, Moeka has it once again.

This begs the question then: how is Okabe going to convince Moeka do undo her D-mail? I know that by the sound of what he said at the end of the ep, he'll go directly to undo his first D-mail, but he hasn't tried to undo Moeka's D-mail yet, so I wonder if he's going to try getting rid of that one and hasn't considered undoing his own first D-mail, hence he said "one more to go" or something along the lines. Obviously, she isn't going to send a D-mail saying "it's a trap, the IBN isn't there" since the IBN is her main objective after all.

Originally Posted by Dist

Do you guys keep forgetting what happened in the past episodes? It was explained why vegetables would increase the chances of getting a girl on the episode Ruka's d-mail was sent. Also someone posted a link here that they found on google and apparently veggies = girl isn't that '' far fetched '' according to some researchers.

Quoting from this article

You're more likely to conceive a girl if:

- You drink plenty of milk and eat dairy products such as cheese and yoghurt, unsalted foods, rice, pasta, certain vegetables, mineral water, limited amounts of meat and potatoes, but avoid salt and any salty foods, wine and beer, fresh fruit, spinach, tomatoes and mushrooms, chocolate, coffee and tea.


You're more likely to conceive a boy if:

- You eat salty food, plenty of meat, fish, white flour, pasta, fresh fruit, certain vegetables, but avoid milk and dairy products, such as yoghurt and cheese, nuts, chocolate, shellfish and wholemeal bread.

^^

[Spat]

Poor Rukako, I feel very sorry for her that she has to become a guy again.
I hope it will be for the good and Mayuri will be saved from dying.

[yuugi99]

Originally Posted by Kanon

I speculated last week that canceling Ruka's D-mail would be a pointless endeavor, I'm glad I was wrong and an actual reason to do it was given in this episode. The pill would have been very hard to swallow otherwise.

Kurisu completely stole the episode for me. It would have been pretty boring without her.



Because he knows for sure what will happen if the D-mail is canceled (the world will simply switch back to the previous world line) whereas he has no idea what would happen if he did what you suggested. Sending out D-mails without thinking about the consequences is what led to Mayuri's death in the first place, he's not willing to take that kind risk anymore. That kind D-mails may appear to be harmless, but they might not be. He's just playing it safe now.

For example, in the VN, in Feyris route, Okabe chooses not to undo D-mail and instead send another D-mail to her father to give IBN5100 to him instead. World line changes, but in that new world line, not only Okabe did not receive IBN5100, he nvr meets Daru, Makise and even Mayuri does not recognise him. Instead, he is a famous Rai net player and Feyris is his gf.

What Im trying to say sending D-mail would cause unpredictable chain effect that would end up with different result than what you want.

[yuugi99]

Originally Posted by Kanon

I speculated last week that canceling Ruka's D-mail would be a pointless endeavor, I'm glad I was wrong and an actual reason to do it was given in this episode. The pill would have been very hard to swallow otherwise.

Kurisu completely stole the episode for me. It would have been pretty boring without her.



Because he knows for sure what will happen if the D-mail is canceled (the world will simply switch back to the previous world line) whereas he has no idea what would happen if he did what you suggested. Sending out D-mails without thinking about the consequences is what led to Mayuri's death in the first place, he's not willing to take that kind risk anymore. That kind D-mails may appear to be harmless, but they might not be. He's just playing it safe now.

Originally Posted by Kirroha

I still don't get how Ruka broke the IBN as a girl but not as a boy.

It was mentioned in the VN that as the boy, he did not clean the store room, instead he clean the main hall, however as a girl she cleans the store room and end up breaking the pc

[Jean Claymore]

@Dist Hm.... that actually clears it all. Because Ruka broke the IBN when he/she was a girl and Moeka didn't get the IBN so she planned to strike directly to there HQs while when Ruka 'was' a boy Moeka did get it. But something does not clear out. Wasn't it plenty enough to change the divergence when Moeka just got the IBN? I think she wouldn't have attacked the lab if having an IBN and so Mayuri wouldn't die from the SERNs. It looks like Mayuri's death is unescapable imo... The previous deaths we've seen where all because of SERNs as long as they made there move on that day and nevertheless, she died even though she was hit by the train, yet being chased.

And yeah..... I missed that part I just couldnt' follow along with Moeka's messages cause the subs where too fast. But I got this question just now, who the hell is FB? Moeka explained she worked for FB, not SERNs. Guess that's part of the SERNs, but I think we'll get more explanations in the next episode though I don't think Okabe's going to solve this in a single episode.

ROFL... speaking of which, don't they sometimes (rarely) get a muscle head chick when eating meats or a fagotty guy with pink dresses?

Originally Posted by Tsuyoshi

This begs the question then: how is Okabe going to convince Moeka do undo her D-mail? I know that by the sound of what he said at the end of the ep, he'll go directly to undo his first D-mail, but he hasn't tried to undo Moeka's D-mail yet, so I wonder if he's going to try getting rid of that one and hasn't considered undoing his own first D-mail, hence he said "one more to go" or something along the lines. Obviously, she isn't going to send a D-mail saying "it's a trap, the IBN isn't there" since the IBN is her main objective after all.

Yeah, and we still have Okabe's first message when changed Kurisu's death and that the professor's exposition had been canceled due to the 'satellite' crush, right? Anyways, I think forcing Moeka spill what she sent would be to far-fetched, I wonder what Okabe's gonna do. Maybe he would find who this FB is and have him/her persuade Maeko to send her mail back?

[ninryu]

I love how Ruka uses "boku" even when she's a girl.

[Guardian Enzo]

Originally Posted by ninryu

I love how Ruka uses "boku" even when she's a girl.

Makes you wonder if the memories aren't hidden there all along, waiting to be triggered.

Originally Posted by Kirroha

I still don't get how Ruka broke the IBN as a girl but not as a boy.

Yuugi's explanation works too, but I just assumed that Ruka
dropped the IBN as a girl, as a boy he has greater muscle mass, and thus didn't drop it.

[Dist]

Greater muscle mass... yeah sure? Have you noticed how Ruka is even when he is a '' boy ''? Nothing like a boy, very fragile and weak. Just look at her sword swinging on one of the first episodes of this anime.. Does that look like a greater muscle mass to you? You can read yuugi's spoilers from the VN anyway and you'll see that my guess was correct. With that said, I hope yuugi gets banned and stops posting the goddamn spoilers.

And what do you mean Jean Claymore? How would you know that Mayuri is still going to die? Cause you don't. It hasn't been shown if Mayuri would die now with these few d-mails undone. But Kyouma is gonna play it safe and use the IBN to erase their data from SERN's database. How is he going to do that with Moeka having the IBN is beyond me though..

[Xcomp]

Well, calm before the storm... Noticed they used the game's lab theme tune while they were eating out at the usual ramen place. Felt a bit out of place.

Otaku vocab for this episode is "RealJuu" - An Otaku who has found a soul mate and is "charged (juuden)" with real world love instead of dating sims and 2D Waifus =P

Spoiler for Differences from VN Game:

Okabe was supposed to time leap a few times trying to break the truth to Ruka a few times. Too bad they didn't keep the scene where Kurisu wanted to do some tests on Ruka to see if her brain pattern matched that of a male, lol.

It was funny how they ended up making Kurisu and Daru trail them though. That was a nice original change.

Originally Posted by Witch of Uncertainty

How the hell does eating vegetables result in getting a girl? I would have thought that we would have heard of a sex change operation or something in this episode. :|

It's just one of those superstitious things like walking under a ladder will give you bad luck or something like that... It's Anime and despite the well constructed scenarios based upon the parallel worlds theory, they can put in some silly ideas of their own just to lighten up the atmosphere

[orion]

Originally Posted by Dist

And what do you mean Jean Claymore? How would you know that Mayuri is still going to die? Cause you don't. It hasn't been shown if Mayuri would die now with these few d-mails undone. But Kyouma is gonna play it safe and use the IBN to erase their data from SERN's database. How is he going to do that with Moeka having the IBN is beyond me though..

She's died in every timeline so far. She even became a Jellywoman. (That was an impressive pic of her as one by the way.) They prob have to get out of which ever main timeline branch he's in right now to avoid her dying.