2921

I know I have some gifs of the actual Mikami somewhere, but my gif folder has gotten unreasonably large and I am lazy.

2922

I’ll throw out the two I have.

2923

Wow, the resemblance is uncanny.

2924

About Steins;Gate, and as I was saying in the other thread, the Visual Novel translated in english is imminent:
http://vn.shourai.net/

And the three Drama CDs are also being translated:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQy79q0GyE4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNjUDDqThqo

2925

Wait there’s an animated movie? how is it different from the series?
I agree that after L dies it kind of loses something and the last episode was kind of anti-climatic.

2926

Live action. The Death Note movies have a heavily reworked ending that a number of people find better than the manga/anime ending since it manages to avoid all of the Near/Mello arc and just focuses on Light and L.

2927

The first movie is higher rated but I thought the second was much better. Probably because the second half of the anime provides greater room for improvement than the first and I suppose I found it more interesting because it presented such a different take on events.

What’s a Drama CD?

I know you’re just joking, but I want to clarify that there is a real difference between retcon and things changed through time travel, which is that retcon says such and such never actually happened, while time travel specifically requires the writers have the characters recognise a situation and act to change it, or have it as an unintentioned change which is then used for dramatic effect.

This is especially poignant in Steins;Gate since one of the characters remembers everything from before the world line changes, so nothing is really written out of the show.

Unless a massive retcon is coming up in which case I shall lock myself in a cupboard and cry.

2928

The anime/manga equivalent of a radio drama. A CD that is released where the voice actors/actresses play out a story in the series universe.

These are rarely translated due to the fact that they’re just audio recordings, but sometimes people will doctor up videos and subtitle them or release text transcripts that you can read along with.

2929

Just finished Steins;Gate episode 17 (can’t stop watching them :)) and wow, oh wow, the way they’ve layered the story is superb, it’s like JMS is plotting an anime (or rather, I assume there’s a manga which is the real hero). All those things from the early episodes are coming back to haunt them.

OK, the Viral Netters were retarded and I have no idea what that was there for, but forget that, we finally have an anime which is using a number to indicate something and it hasn’t ruined everything! Japanese writers seem to be in love with power ratings and exact percentages and I hate them, yet here it really works. I’m amazed.

It transitions from sad to desperate to funny to (slightly too) soppy effortlessly. Every time I think it may have tripped up or jumped the shark it proves me wrong. It has such supreme confidence in its main plot that it ties everything into it and keeps moving forward, no filler, no dumb side-plots, just layers on layers.

Anyone reading this thread who hasn’t watched Steins;Gate, FFS, go watch it now!

2930

There’s a visual novel. But maybe that got turned into a manga before the anime adaptation, I dunno.

2931

I think it’s so special because it seems like someone actually took the time to sit down and plot out the whole thing before committing anything to paper.

Also, based on earlier events I have a feeling that the ending is going to have a bit of a body blow, just my guess. There are things in the first episode I think won’t be referenced again until right at the end.

2932

I was poking around the thread and, for some reason, Blue Gender appealed to me. So now I’m watching that on Hulu. Was initially turned off by the protagonist being a quivering ball of trauma, but he seems to be mostly over that by episode five. Also, I had no idea what I was expecting, but Jesus Christ this show is a bloodbath. No idea how they’re going to keep escalating things given what they’ve already done by the end of episode five.

2933

So true! This stands out so much because Japanese shows (anime/movie/drama) commonly begins with this trope of pointing the camera at random crap/people for 5 seconds for OMG FORESHADOWING with no real important impact. Steins;Gate actually does this trope properly.

…and eps 12, too, I think. I need to watch 1 and 12 again before the finale!

2934

Hahaha, oh man. You are going to look back at this post when you’re done and laugh.

2935

I liked the first…I dunno six to ten episodes? It does a great job of subverting tropes by having the protagnist a whiny little guy with nothing special about him, and then introducing a bunch of what looks like will be the main cast of characters.

But then it slowly flips back to standard anime tropes, which is a bit of a shame.

2936

Awww, Steins;Gate 20 was a little too neat for my liking and I don’t quite understand how it ends. The first D-Mail was for the lottery numbers, but they mention events from the first episode, but I don’t recall them (as yet) sending any D-Mail to do with that. Indeed, I don’t think they have identified what caused the very first change in the timeline which happens before they commence any of their activities, so how can they undo it?

I’m pushing on to 21 so maybe that will clear things up.

Episode 19 took me a little thinking to figure out how things ended up that way and why other D-Mails had changed things the way they did. Really had to think back for that one.

EDIT: Episode 21 jogged my memory and it all fits together again into a beautiful and tragic tale.

2937

:|

Luckily my anime experience is limited to Ghost in the Shell (boring), Death Note (fun, but seriously flawed), Appleseed (boring), Casshern (incomprehensible–although come to think of it, my friend’s bootleg copy may have been completely untranslated. Whatever, it’s been years), and one episode of Bebop (boring), so that’s not so much of a problem for me. Well, I say that but
A: why are they showing me a very-young-oh-god-is-she-even-twelve girl’s breasts?
B: why is there an unbelievably annoying/incompetent very-young-oh-god-is-she-even-twelve girl piloting a mech?

2938

Nope. He believed that was the first D-Mail, but the first time shit happened and the time line happened was when he sent a message in the first episode.

2939

I’m curious if the fact he got the same feeling he gets when times changes as a child is meaningful or just some throw away bit of background information.

It would be interesting if someone else changed the timeline back then but I doubt it will have any relevance.

2940

@Naeblis - Thanks, they mention this specifically in episode 21 so my memory was jogged :)

I’d say from his reaction that it’s the first time it happened, but I could accept that as something which has only just awoken, or he senses because it affects him so directly.

I think a bigger niggle I have is the convenience of the way they recall the contents of the D-Mail in episode 17(18?). That’s a little too much of a solution generated and enacted within the confines of a single episode, and now it’s leaking into later episodes and the more it comes up the less plausible it seems in a show which has been taking pains to be quite tight with its own internal rules.