Finally after over 6 years of trying to get past the fourth episode of Steins gate, I have successfully watched all 24 episodes of this epic story. I almost hated myself for thinking it's boring because after watching it to the very end, I saw myself wanting more. Truly this series is worth the hype as it is the perfect representation of what happens when people mess with time travel.
The story follows the life of Rintarou Okabe, a self acclaimed mad scientist with the pseudonym Hououin Kyouma to protect himself as he believes an evil group known as the organization is after him. He operates a small lab at the top floor of an electronics shop with his friend Mayuri and the super Haker Daru.
The members of Future Gadget Laboratory ( as it is called) spend their time creating defective inventions with their most important gadget being the Phone Microwave (subject to change) as its function is turning bananas into a green gelly liquid.
Life at the lab is turned upside down when Okabe attends a science lecture concerning time travel and witnesses a young lady Makise murdered. He sends a message to the Daru about the death only to realize that they had gone back in time with some for alterations in the new timeline. Rintarou realizes that the phone microwave was actually a time machine capable of sending messages back in time but for some reason he is the only person who remembers events from the previous timeline. He names the ability "Reading Steiner" and the text messages sent in time as "D-mail".
Makisu Becomes the fourth member of the lab and Okabe calls her Christina to get under her skin. The four members of the lab continue to work together to understand this phenomenon and Okabe takes it a step further discussing findings with his online friend John Titor, a supposed time travelling expect. During the course of their research, other acquaintances are onboarded as members of the lab each with a request to send messages to the past which ends drastically changing the present and as always only Okabe can remember the pre-existing timelines. Their actions soon leads them to a dark science organization known as SERN that has the motive of being the sole controllers of time even at the expense of human life.
Constant shifting in time due to the D-mails eventually leads Okabe and the rest of the lab members to a timeline where Mayuri, Okabe's best friend is murdered by SERN right in front of him. He goes back in time numerous times to change this painful future but all his decisions leads up to Mayuri always dying driving Okabe emotionally drained and at the brink of insanity. Until finally he gets the idea of undoing every D-mail ever sent in hopes of returning back to the original time line in hopes to save his best friend.
He continues to erase these mails one at a time and it was at that moment he realizes if he undoes the first D-mail, he would return to the timeline where Makisu whom he is now in love with dies.
Conflicted between choosing to save his childhood friend or a girl he loves, Okabe is devastated and torn apart. But just when all hope seems lost, Suzuha a member of the lab who is initially from the 2036, travels back to the past with a message from his future self with an opportunity on how to save the two most important people in his life without loosing any. The solution was to fake Makisu's death which was initially caused by her father after an argument that eventually leads to world war 3. Okabe successful fakes her death even going as far as using his blood to make the scene look realistic. He returns back to the present ultimately creating a new timeline known as Steins Gate where he loses nobody in the end.
This new timeline meant that Makisu and Okabe never met but he is at the very least happy that she is alive. The two soon cross parts in the final parts of the series and Makisu even sensing some familiarity between them thus implying there might be some happily ever after for our Time traveling warrior.
Steins Gate merges emotional depth, time travelling and scientific themes. It tells the story of a young man who
sacrifices everything to save those important to him. It is a beautiful series that possesses that rewatch potential and watching has to go done as one of the best decisions I ever made
Thanks.
