#steins; gate

AoT anime is done until either December or next year, and the manga is officially over on April 9th

I need other shows to hyper-fixate on. I'm currently watching/just started:

Doukyuusei (Amazon Prime)

Great Teacher Onizuka (CrunchyRoll)

Monster (YouTube)

Stein's; Gate (CrunchyRoll)

Violet Evergarden (Netflix)

I mentioned yesterday that I’ve recently been playing “My Darling’s Embrace,” the comedic/romantic spinoff to Steins;Gate. In fact, I just finished it last night. It’s one of three such “dating sim” spinoffs in the SciAdv franchise, and it’s the only one that’s been officially lized into English. 

I was excited to see an attempt at a comedy-focused Steins;Gate title, but look: I’ve never played a “dating sim” before. My only exposure to them has been through screenshots or discussions of their tropes in anime. That had me expecting some bad things from this game. For example, I figured all the girls would be falling over our hero in some harem-esque situation (leading to inevitable jealousy/broken hearts), and we’d get leering shots of the dateable ladies in new, probably-skimpy outfits. I also naturally assumed that each “route” in the game would wind up with Rintaro Okabe receiving a confession of love before he’s ultimately dating/in a serious relationship with one of the ladies.

However, my guesses were pretty far off of the mark. Most of the character routes tell a story of Okabe spending more time with/getting closer to the “route” girl, but that’s the only unifying truth to them all. In the majority of cases, he doesn’t wind up in any relationship at all. Maybe he gets a single kiss (maybe it’s only on the cheek), or maybe they have one awkward “date,” or maybe nothing really happens except some more-sincere-than-usual conversations. Only two of the routes have any kind of relationship established (and only one has a love confession). Each “route” does at least hint that the girl in question has/develops a crush on Okabe, I suppose... which is kind of hard to believe given his behavior, but welp, that’s the trope I guess. Moreover, there are no hints of jealousy/broken hearts herein — someone who is the focus character in one route is most likely going to be 100% supportive of Okabe spending time with someone else in another route. So yeah, on average, this is far different than I expected, and not as focused on the “romance/dating” element as I was led to believe. Fine by me! The fact that this is so far removed from what I was expecting/worried about helped me to have a lot more fun with it. It’s nice to see this cast living out timelines that aren’t filled with despair and tragedy.

So here’s the setup: During the first half of the story of Steins;Gate, Okabe overdoes it on D-mail experiments and winds up shifting into the Delta Attractor Field series of worldlines. It’s largely a peaceful cluster where the biggest commonality is that the lab has run into money trouble, and the lab mems are forced to brainstorm some ideas on how the lab will pay its bills. Each “route” in the game is a separate worldline, and most of them kick off with some new idea on how they’re going to make ends meet. 

I initially figured that, since Kurisu is the canonical love interest for Okabe, she’d probably be the hardest to unlock so that she’d serve as the likely “final” route. I was completely wrong. Kurisu’s route is basically the default route and the easiest to wind up with. Most of the routes are easy to access in nearly the same way with ONE exception: Mayuri. Her route is easily the one most people will see last due to the specific hoops you have to jump through just to reach it. 

I am going to try not to spoilmuch as I give some vague descriptions/impressions of the routes below.

Makise Kurisu: Sadly, this is one of the least romantic of all the routes, but for me at least, it was one of the funniest. It’s a spin on the classic trope of two people who don’t get along being handcuffed together, and it results in an adequate level of satisfying character-building. I liked this one quite a bit. It was my first route but still one of my faves.

Moeka Kiryu: I absolutely love where this route kicks off. It doesn’t have much to do with the majority of the route, but it’s hilarious. By and large, this is about Okabe helping Moeka with some articles for Arc Rewrite as a means of earning extra cash. In the process, he learns a little about her past and tries to help her feel happier with her life. It’s solid, but that opening sequence pushes it over the top into my upper echelon of routes. 

Faris NyanNyan: All of the lab mems find themselves thrust into the middle of “The Third Akihabara Maid Cafe War” as new competitors attempt to siphon away both the maids and customers that frequent Faris’ establishment, the MayQueen. This one is... weird. I’ve never been all that invested in Faris, so this is probably a lesser route for me, but I still was engaged with it, and it does have some funny stuff.

Luka Urushibara: Okabe wakes up in a worldline where he immediately learns that he’s in a relationship with Luka. Furthermore, this Luka is male. Okabe doesn’t want to hurt Luka, but he struggles to come to terms with dating another man. This is one of the two longest routes in the game, and it definitely has some cringe-inducing moments, but I ultimately found it quite sweet. I’ve always been soft for the Okabe/Luka ship, so this couldn’t help but appeal to me. This, Kurisu and Moeka are probably my top three routes.

Suzuha Amane: Daru mistakenly comes to believe that Suzuha is romantically interested in him, so he starts to pursue her in kind. Suzuha enlists Okabe to help her correct the situation. This might be my least-favorite route because it relies so heavily on people misunderstanding intentions and angrily refusing to believe the truth. Thankfully, the Okabe/Suzuha relationship doesn’t get romantic here.

Mayuri Shiina: This and Luka’s route are the two longest, and this is the closest the game comes to being what I expected it to be all along. Meaning: Unnecessary swimsuit scenes! Sexy dream sequences! I’ve never been one to ship Okabe with Mayuri, partly because she’s just so child-like that I couldn’t see her in any kind of romantic relationship. Interestingly, that very issue is actually discussed in this route. I still didn’t embrace the ship by the end, but I did feel touched by it and more open-minded.