(WARNING: Contains REALLY SLIGHT spoilers for Spring 2011 shows… but it’s not like we’re giving the ending away anyway though, so whatever.)
Alrighty… just as Umlaut has started on his posts about the anime he’s watched from the Winter 2011 season, it’s time for me to follow up on that with thoughts on some shows from this ongoing Spring 2011 season. I’m not going to include every show that comes out this season in this posting series of course (click here for the full list of all the TV anime and OVA coming out this season), as I’m going to cover those that have initially caught my interest. If I don’t mention a show in my posts, chances are: 1.) I haven’t heard of it and may or may not make a post about it in the future, or 2.) It’s not really my cup of tea, so to speak. After finishing this series, I’ll choose maybe one or two to regularly follow on this blog as each episode of it airs.
Having put all that out there already, let’s get started with:
STEINS;GATE
OP:
ED:
Steins;Gate was described as a psychological adventure series, based off from the visual novel by 5pb. and Nitroplus, who have collaborated before to make Chaos;Head. Apparently those two are connected in the same universe, and initially that put me off a little since I wasn’t really a big fan of C;H (The story and mood was all there, but that protagonist just really didn’t really sit too well with me. I realize that he’s “special” because the plot requires him to be, but.. meh. That’s just me though). Anyway, the animation’s done by animation studio White Fox (Katanagatari, Tears to Tiara), and it’s set to run for 12 episodes apparently.
The story’s protagonist is Rintaro Okabe a.k.a. Kyouma Hououin (VA: Mamoru Miyano, known for doing Light Yagami in Death Note and Kiba in Wolf’s Rain) or “Okarin” (that’s a lot of names -_-), as he’s affectionately called by his close associate Mayuri Shiina (VA: Kana Hanazawa, one of my favorite VAs; did Kanade Tachibana from Angel Beats and Kuroneko or Ruri Gokou from Ore no Imouto).
These two are joined in their “research group” by their third and final member, Hashida Itaru (VA: Tomokazu Seki), or “Daru”, is a talented hacker who specializes in both software and hardware.
These three work together in their “research group” to… well, we’ll let Rintaro explain for now:
…. and there you have it. Pretty doable for a band of three, right?
If you’re looking for an example of an illustration for the saying “Birds of the same feather flock together”, then you don’t have to look any further than these three. All of them seem to be… erm… eccentric, to say at the very least, but are characterized as such in a very amusing manner. Rintaro though seems to be quite more unstable in some instances for whatever reason, and it’s unclear whether he acts outlandishly as a way of getting out of situations or if he’s just simply off his rocker.
Oh yeah, that reminds me… I haven’t introduced Alpacaman yet:
Well we wouldn’t want that now would we? One would wonder though what exactly Alpacaman is capable of when he’s mad… well, except for apparently destroying television sets with shoddy parts. Anyway, I guess we’ve established already just how eccentric this group is, but that still isn’t done justice with I think until you’ve watched that first episode already.
Anyway, that ray gun in the last picture? That’s their TV remote control. Yup, apparently they’re actually pretty good inventors. The main story revolves around one of their inventions, a special microwave that can do this:
Aside from creating a funky mess out of bananas, apparently it can also send text messages into the future via a phone that they usually use to input codes for the microwave. This supposed tampering with time later on creates some problems for Rintaro, as he eventually succumbs to what seems to be memory loss about some certain events, or rather, remembering completely different events from how the people around him describe them as happening. (Kinda understandable now why he’s a bit off his rocker, right?)
All of it comes to a head as he witnesses a misfortunate situation involving Kurisu Makise (VA: Asami Imai), a neuroscience researcher known for having her works published in science journals or whanot, and who for some reason seems to intimidate Rintaro a bit. After seeing that scene though, surprisingly enough, Rintaro runs into Kurisu again by the initial episode’s end, seemingly unaffected by what he had witnessed earlier.
In any case, that first episode didn’t leave that much of an impact on me as I would have expected from a supposedly psychological adventure series. Rintaro and his group were fun to watch though because of their zany quirks, but a major pulling point here is still curiosity about whatever the hell Stein’s Gate, the term used for the series title, really is (Rintaro mentions it a few times, apparently in connection with the “Agency” supposedly after him and as well with time travel), and what’s really causing his memory changes about the events surrounding him (Though I already have a hunch… it’s not really hard to connect the dots, but I could still be wrong though :P). I’ll stick around just to see what’s really going on, but with things are going as they are, I have a feeling I’ll like this more than I liked Chaos;Head.
I’ll leave you guys with a parting funny scene for now as we finish off with this. Enjoy: