Steins;Gate: The Role of Moeka Pt. 1
Disclaimer: I've only watched the Steins;Gate anime and beat the Steins;Gate visual novel: I have not seen or beat Steins;Gate 0, these are just my current thoughts.
I think Moekas place in Steins;Gate isn't emphasized. One thing that may easily appear is that if Okabe is so paranoid, why does he let Moeka use it and ultimately free her of suspicion? I think for this, the very opening scene is useful to know: the brain can only process so much, missing so much information and how they connect. Even when we notice something, we may simply forget. All our understanding is psychologically colored by our perception, emotional state. We don't notice what we weren't brought up to notice. Is Moeka really the one to blame, is it part of your own paranoia? In Moeka's case, Steins;Gate quite geniusly colors what is going on differently. First, what D-Mails were sent? We know the first one is the "Kurisu is stabbed" D-Mail. He knew nothing at the time and so does not connect the mass disappearance of the crowd as connecting to the 'satellite crash' at Radii-kan. Nor of Kurisu's death. We don't understand the nature of the freak accident. We are also cast in doubt as we are frankly unsure of what is or isn't true of what Okabe says throughout. We also know he has similarly vivid dreams. He himself talks of it as though a hallucination. Because he at the time hardly understood what was going on, had so little info. When he starts recoloring his understanding by understanding how drastically D-Mail can change things and from teachings from Suzuha on what is needed to escape the fate of Mayuri's death, he at first is thinking sheerly of whats needed to get the IBN. But, when he gets it, he is finally confront with if erasing this is enough to alter Mayuri to not dying... then it is also possible to alter Kurisu into dying, that this first message was no coincidence, having now experienced the effects of D-Mail. He only realizes it when its brought up in his cognition. The other D-Mails trivial, and him gradually learning how these affect the world. Which one truly affects and scares him at first? Moeka's D-Mail. He has genuine worry and panic he erased someone from existence and even when he received a message seeming to confirm that, that emotional context of guilt and possibility of what he could have done makes him engrave Moeka into his heart as lab member 006. Because Moeka is now gone and he is focused on other things, they never interact again and thus Okabe never learns the context of Moeka's actions. Luka's D-Mail is next. When he sees her after sending it, doesn't think it worked. Then he realizes on 8/7 the IBN is gone, he suspects two people: Moeka and John Titor, who from his memory remembers time traveling to 2010 to get one. He suspects Moeka, in a way accuses her but she appears in complete distress and not the one thatstole it. Because of lack of prior interaction from Moeka's D-Mail, he has nothing to compare against. Only the day after does he realize Luka's D-Mail did work, but now he is drawn to the fact Luka seems to know something. This is where I note something a bit more sinister. Take note of how after completing the Time Leap Machine, no one wants to use it. They plan to give it up to a research institution and expose SERN. After completion, SERN tries to silence them and rob it. Had Mayuri not died, he'd not have had personal reason to enter Time Leap and learn to undo the worldline. In a manner, Moeka's actions is critical to escaping that worldline. This is why she is a lab member. Her dirty work is essential to make the set up work to escape alpha worldline work.
Steins;Gate: The Role of Moeka Pt. 2
Disclaimer: I've only watched the Steins;Gate anime and beat the Steins;Gate visual novel: I have not seen or beat Steins;Gate 0, these are just my current thoughts. I do not want to know what happens in Steins;Gate 0, I just want to post my current thoughts. I don't want to know even if I'm on the right track or if it even mentions it. Obvious spoilers in advance.
We know Okabe in the future in Steins;Gate true ending establishes the *need* for him to witness death of Kurisu at his own hands, taste failure first. We also know Mayuris death leads him to use time leap and thus ultimately enter the new worldline. Given my current thinking of what is happening in the current alpha worldline, a future Okabe researching time travel and reverse engineering SERNs work, whether due to wanting to escape static dystopia and 'bring chaos' or because of Mayuri's death given by a different cause (could be Moeka, could be by someone else). He realizes physical changes to the past converge. Moreover, he can't achieve a physical time machine past to future. But he learns how to send data, develop the divergence meter, and Reading Steiner. I think its likely he sends over some portion of his memories through a phone call to the past, which gets him sick 10 years ago. Its likely he is also being affected by these 'phone calls' he receives. Future him realizes that while convergence still happens, he can change the context: by sending over data, there is less worry of time paradoxes and consistency issues and he can achieve a self consistent world-line that places him at the center of time travel creation. He had to place it in a worldline where *he* develops the time machine first instead. He can't time travel using equipment from the future to bring to the past because ultimately causality means the reason he developed it was SERN first. He needs to genuinely convince his past self to develop a time machine. It need not matter in that timeline how coincidental his discoveries may be. There are no rules against that so long as SERN still gains dystopia: because Kurisu is now working with Future Gadget Laboratories and is the one with the critical insight to making a time machine work, this implies they find out about his work. Convergence however isn't an absolute anything, it is just a point of *stability*. By tracing back to point of divergence caused using his now state of control, he has found a loophole out of SERN control. Ultimately, this is cruelty to his past self he had to develop to himself to save the world. There is the consideration of if its *too much* cruelty: if he pushed Okabe say to brink of suicide in that worldline, then the worldline should change so as that this future him developing this time machine disappears. On the other hand, by convergence it may be generally agreed he doesn't, traumatized that may make him: in fact, that trauma is what may fundamentally push him to that future. Given the 'keep your enemies close' situation, where Suzuhas time travel allows her to own abuilding that gives Braun a place to stay, who is themselves the one that informs Moeka. However, they don't take notice immediately simply because Okabe comes off delusional: its a camoflauge. Regardless, its possible given these events and Braun and Moeka themselves were themselves the choice of Steins;Gate to be the given rounders. Moeka perhaps because of her weak will, her strong desire to meet her supervisor, which allows future Okabe to convince them to monitor IBN transport and retrieve phone to undo D-Mail. None of this is logically necessary but given the context of the story it is to me that makes the most sense. So really, who is the one acting devilish? This is what I believe what his side personality Hououin Kyouma says when he says his evil deeds are many, and he 'sacrifices' people to his experiments. In the future worldline, Moeka and Braun and Nae live freely with no one to force them to enter such tragedy. This doesn't forgive their actions, but it contextualizes why in the endings Okabe forgives them. Okabe learns they are not fundamentally at play but its something deeper and more abstract killing Mayuri.




















