Steins;Gate 0 - Episode 11 Discussion / Poll

[CrowKenobi]

Welcome to the discussion thread for Steins;Gate 0, Episode 11.

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[HtwoN]

Hmm. This is the end of the first half, I guess? It's weird to not have a cliffhanger.

Anyway, good character development for Maho.

[Ruki0089]

Erm... i'm getting more confused about Yuki even though i played the VN...

[HtwoN]

Originally Posted by Ruki0089

Erm... i'm getting more confused about Yuki even though i played the VN...

That's the beauty of this adaption.

[Kanon]

Okabe finally told the whole truth to Maho, and Maho also lay herself bare for him, in a completely different sense. Actually, both work.

I wasn't expecting Leskinen and Maho to go back to America so soon. No doubt they'll come back, of course. I wonder if there's going to be a time skip.

Originally Posted by Ruki0089

Erm... i'm getting more confused about Yuki even though i played the VN...

Really? I thought the final scene made it clear the biker chick was actually Reyes (haven't played the VN). Yuki getting hurt twice in the exact same spots as her is a ridiculously big coincidence though.

[Dengar]

That coincidence happened in the VN too though.

[4th Dimension]

Originally Posted by Kanon

Really? I thought the final scene made it clear the biker chick was actually Reyes (haven't played the VN). Yuki getting hurt twice in the exact same spots as her is a ridiculously big coincidence though.

Yeah, that whole bit with her getting injured felt like a really forced attempt at bait and switching. Also I kinda really doubt that Suzuha's mom would be the ENEMY or something.

For me these last couple episodes kinda dragged, because most of events here are either stuff we already knew or suspected, or telling Maho things we already knew. It kinda felt on rails with the characters lacking in ability to act on their own. Like with the laptop, it was kinda obvious to me that they weren't going to be able to open it right now if it was filled with Kiritsu's research on time travel.

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by 4th Dimension

For me these last couple episodes kinda dragged, because most of events here are either stuff we already knew or suspected, or telling Maho things we already knew.

The main problem for me is that after all these episodes we have reached a point where you don't really know what the main characters are supposed to do.

Unless a story is a slice of life there should be some kind of objective for the protagonists to pursue, and so far we had a few minor ones: find Kagari, find out who is targeting Kagari, return to the previous timeline, prevent Makise's laptop from being stolen, but all of those are episodic, short lived and feel disconnected to each others.

What now? We don't know. Rintaro is still of the idea that you should never mess with time and he doesn't really have a plan on how to stop the incoming 3rd world war. He knows that someone somehow must have caused a time shift, but he's not even facing the issue, the very high possibility that if someone manipulated time he will do it again.

[4th Dimension]

Yeah. We have been kinda in a mid season slump. Or in other way, Rintaro has been trying soo hard to deny he should do anything because he is terrified of messing even this little bit of peace. Sure that makes sense, but it's not really engaging, especially for so long.

He even says in this episode that everything should be fine since without laptop noone should be able to get the time travel, when he should be aware that the time shifts are likely due to the research Kristina's dad fled with to Russia. Dude even practically gloated about it right as Rintaro was in despair over being unable to save her.

[Dengar]

Aside from being terrified of messing with this little bit of peace, he experienced firsthand how impossible it is to change the past. Remember how he actually tried to go back to change things only to be come the cause of the thing he was trying to change? Convergence is incredibly ruthless.



(Yes, I know that there is a way to change things, but as of right now he has no reason to believe a world exists where both Mayushii and Kurusu survive, and no apocalyptic future happens, nor does he know how to achieve this)

[erneiz_hyde]

This felt like a mid-season finale and then I realized it is episode 11

[GDB]

Originally Posted by Jan-Poo

but all of those are episodic, short lived and feel disconnected to each others.

What now? We don't know. Rintaro is still of the idea that you should never mess with time and he doesn't really have a plan on how to stop the incoming 3rd world war. He knows that someone somehow must have caused a time shift, but he's not even facing the issue, the very high possibility that if someone manipulated time he will do it again.

We do know. He has to live through WWIII, send Suzuha to the past, and send his message to the Okabe of the past to get him to save Kurisu. Doing so will reach Steins;Gate. This is literally how the first series ended.

This means anything else that happens to this end goal must happen in the future, and anything happening now will only be slightly related, if related at all. Best case scenario is we find out how he came to his realization on how to save Kurisu, and why he has to have his past self do it rather than doing it himself (likely takes him too long to figure it out, since Suzuha said she can only jump another few months at most before he'd run out of battery).

Originally Posted by 4th Dimension

He even says in this episode that everything should be fine since without laptop noone should be able to get the time travel, when he should be aware that the time shifts are likely due to the research Kristina's dad fled with to Russia. Dude even practically gloated about it right as Rintaro was in despair over being unable to save her.

He should be aware that the issue is WWIII, not Time Travel. The pursuit of Time Travel is what leads to WWIII, but as far as we're told there isn't actually any meaningful time travel in the future or he'd likely be unable to do what he needs to do.

[4th Dimension]

Originally Posted by GDB

He should be aware that the issue is WWIII, not Time Travel. The pursuit of Time Travel is what leads to WWIII, but as far as we're told there isn't actually any meaningful time travel in the future or he'd likely be unable to do what he needs to do.

Ummm, I'm not entirely sure what you are getting at. Yes he does know about the future apocalypse as WWIII, but he was also told in SG that it was caused by Russians and Americans having a time machine arms race. He should also be aware that Russians got their project started via the documents that Kiritsu's dad fled with to Russia.
And finally he has experienced a world line shift, and those don't happen by accident. So someone is working on it that's not SERN or his group. Well tehnically Daru is supposed to be working on it (because computer engineer = engineer = temporal engineer since anime), but he is still supposedly studying it. On top of it all I think in this very episode he notes that it was likely Russians that opened fire at the likely Americans and that they were content with just destroying the laptop. That doesn't seem like actions of people who don't know about it's meaning or who aren't confident they'll make a time machine.

[GDB]

Originally Posted by 4th Dimension

Ummm, I'm not entirely sure what you are getting at. Yes he does know about the future apocalypse as WWIII, but he was also told in SG that it was caused by Russians and Americans having a time machine arms race. He should also be aware that Russians got their project started via the documents that Kiritsu's dad fled with to Russia.

You don't fight a war the traditional way if you have time machines. If you had time machines, you win by changing the past. If you're fighting traditionally, it's because you don't have time travel at your disposal. The trigger is likely a time travel arms race, but that doesn't mean they have meaningful time travel.

[4th Dimension]

Well sure. I imagine what triggers the war is either Americans being unable to catch up or seeming to beat the Russians due to Amadeus shenanigans, and the seemingly loosing side trying to nuke the shit out of any likely project site. That would likely retard or end the arms race, but you'd now have WWIII on your hands.

But the fact that they don't have perfect time travel, doesn't mean that they can't do small scale tests. And the test in question was small, something caused for one person not to die on one date.
Albeit this change in no way helps Russians...

[Jan-Poo]

Originally Posted by GDB

We do know. He has to live through WWIII, send Suzuha to the past, and send his message to the Okabe of the past to get him to save Kurisu.

I'm under the impression that there's a plot that needs to be resolved at the current time long before the post WWIII.

We have Amadeus, Reyes, a mysterious time change, Kagari. There's clearly something going on here, and we don't know what Rintaro is supposed to do about all of this. I would be seriously disappointed if they just showed all this stuff and then it turns out that whatever Rintaro does about it doesn't matter, that he can just do nothing and nothing would change, that all it matters is something that will happen in several years, and that the current stuff we see is just fluff.

[GDB]

Unless it leads directly into WWIII or his reasoning on how to save Kurisu, then it IS just fluff. But fluff doesn't mean it's bad, just that it wouldn't tie in to the overarching plot of the series.

[Qikz]

The big thing that I think this is suffering from is the fact that we know (I still need to play the game btw, owned it since release in Japan oops) that this is set before the true end, because this acts as if he never recieved the message from future Suzuha from himself. This means he's never been captured/tortured and all of that jazz, so we can only assume that this is the prequel to that happening hence I guess the 0 in the title.

From what we understand that message was sent by an older Okabe, but we don't know the full details of how he got there. The limits the story has put on is that he can only time travel once and only back a few months at most due to lack of fuel. One can assume that unless in the future he will develop/discover the fuel himself and refuel (which also wouldn't make sense as the suzuha from the true end is her normal age and not old like Okabe as she would be if it's the Suzuha that's around now) the FG.

I hope atleast we get more Kurisu in some shape or form as she's my favourite character in anything, so I would imagine Okabe will somehow gain access to Amadeus again. There's no real cliffhanger right now other than the fact they assume nothing is going to change, but could this not be a way of changing the way the true end happens? I guess you could say if perhaps this Okabe led a different life to the Okabe in the original Beta? worldline that maybe the outcome will be different, maybe he isn't going to be an old man and will figure out how to save Kurisu in his current age meaning that the true end while still ends with him reaching Steins;Gate doesn't happen in exactly the same way.

It's so confusing, but I can't stop watching!

[Marina2]

Originally Posted by Qikz

From what we understand that message was sent by an older Okabe, but we don't know the full details of how he got there. The limits the story has put on is that he can only time travel once and only back a few months at most due to lack of fuel. One can assume that unless in the future he will develop/discover the fuel himself and refuel (which also wouldn't make sense as the suzuha from the true end is her normal age and not old like Okabe as she would be if it's the Suzuha that's around now) the FG.

If thing go on according to attraction field, another time machine will be created by Daru in the future and another Suzuha will be born and sent back in time.

[Dextro]

Originally Posted by GDB

He should be aware that the issue is WWIII, not Time Travel. The pursuit of Time Travel is what leads to WWIII, but as far as we're told there isn't actually any meaningful time travel in the future or he'd likely be unable to do what he needs to do.

Remember that, according to the original show, that's not the only bleak future available. If the arms race never happens then you can get the SERN dystopia where WW3 never happens but everything's still pretty damn bad.