Review: Steins;Gate

Steins;Gate is everything an anime for an older audience should and could be.  Adult humor without being explicit, fanservice without nudes or feeling cheap, excellent voice acting, a cast of over-the-top and loveable characters, an intricate story line, gorgeous animation, fitting soundtrack that I absolutely felt compelled to track down -- anime bliss.  This also is the choice of Stein's Gate.

Steins;Gate is the next series in line with Chaos;Head, but other than a couple Easter eggs, the two rarely intersect, despite being the same universe.  Like its predecessor, Steins;Gate started life as a visual novel, which is reflected in the number of potential ships -- everyone but Daru is into our protagonist, it seems, though I don't doubt someone ships Daru, too.

Our protagonist is Okabe Rintarou, who calls himself Hououin Kyouma, the Mad Scientist.  His right-hand man is the super hacker, Daru, a stereotypical overweight otaku with a plethora of waifus; but the title of Lab Member 002 goes to Mayuri Shiina, better known as Mayushii, the obligatory cute childhood friend who embodies innocence.  Okabe runs Future Gadgets Laboratory out of a room rented over a TV repair shop specializing in cathode ray "braun tubes."  Okabe is attending Professor Nakabachi's special lecture on time machines when he discovers a murder -- child prodigy Makise Kurisu has been stabbed.  But a simple text message to a phone hitched to his Gadget 004: Phone Microwave (name subject to change) has caused a jump in timelines that only he can remember.  Makise becomes lab member 004, and a whole number of other characters -- Suzuha, Moeka, Feyris, and Ruka, most significantly -- become wrapped up in a string decisions that need to be undone before time runs out.  Considering that they're building a time machine, you wouldn't expect that to be as much of a problem as it turns out to be.

Go.  Run to it.  It's out on Blu-Ray/DVD combo-pack.  I only wish I could afford it.  I'll wait for a single series bundle, but right now it's two sets and will run you about $90 for the whole thing.