…so we put a watch in your suitcase so you can travel… ON TIME! I fucking crack myself up.
So Steins;Gate is starting to creep its way up to becoming the best show this season, all because Okarin is the master of fucking the world up hardcore. I spent a chunk of time on /a/ yesterday (first in ages actually) reading some of the SG threads, and trying to avoid the majority of VN spoilers contained. I’ll try not to divulge what I’ve seen.
Steins;Gate 9, if “Too Big to Fail” was an American meme from the 2008 Recession, then it certainly applies to Okarin as he continues to scare himself with his continued meddling of the time line. Not even days after turning Ruka into a girl (yes, that happened) he realizes the IBN 5100 never made it to the lab. Trying to trace back the steps, he finds that it never made it to shrine in the first place, so it was never there for Okarin and Kurisu to carry back. Feyris overhears his conversation with Daru and asks about time travel, prompting the otaku-pandering Daru to spill everything to Feyris. Hearing that the crew have been sending text messages in the past, she asks to send a D-Mail of her own. Not wanting to alter time any further for the moment, Okarin declines. But as he then finds out, the IBN 5100 that originally went to the shrine in fact came from her father, and it is her family who controls the area and commerce around Akihabara, now a very “moe-centric” town. But Feyris is a sly one, and in their home, agrees to give up the whereabouts of the computer to Okarin in exchange for sending her D-Mail into the past. He caves in and allows it. Time shifts again and this time he finds himself with everyone, but also with Feyris’ father. When asked about the IBN, he knew of it, but states he got rid of it long ago, but not to the shrine. After leaving, Mayushi makes a statement about having to go to Nakano to pick up a doujinshi. Okarin asks why she has to go to Nakano when she can go to the local shop in Akihabara when he realizes what the change has done. Akihabara is no longer moe-centric but is just a simple technology-centric town and local businesses. Indeed, whatever Feyris did changed time even more radically than their previous attempts.
Aside from the localized memes, this episode dug real deep into what is turning out to be some pretty awesome plotan and storyan. Having not played the VN but heard pieces from it, it’s stuck mostly to it’s original story so far. The genderswap with Ruka was by far one of the funnier ones, and although I hear he goes back to being a boy through another change later on, the whole scene was pretty damn funny. I’m still waiting to see the significance of Part-Timer, who I hear interesting rumors of who she actually is. I’m also waiting for the SERN hammer to drop, and I’ve heard a few bits of info on that too, which makes me curious to see what happens in the anime. The localized meme thing was a bit odd, and it turns out several 2ch memes were in the original audio, so when CR translated them, they localized them to single or multiple equivalent 4chan memes. Probably better that way given my non-understanding of most 2ch memes.
