Steins;Gate 23: Open the Steins Gate

Steins;Gate has come a long way since we last checked in on it. In a very anime move, once the series hit the halfway mark it began cashing in on all of the investments made in the seemingly plotless first portion. The goal was to seduce the audience with not a single character but the group interactions between lab members -- the series space carved out so painstakingly, a comfortable groups of losers and outcasts who are just predictable enough for us to feel like we know them. With the repeated deaths of Mayuri the question is just how much Okabe will sacrifice to save that series space, that group experience.

As it turns out, he'll go so far as to sacrifice the group itself. Okabe becomes a myopic, revenge-driven hero, ignoring the larger repurcussions of his actions and focusing only on preserving Mayuri. The other girls -- Suzuha, Moeka, and finally Kurisu -- are sacrificed along with what little sanity and moral compass Okabe has left in the first place. In the end he ends up back with three lab members, neither of which could possibly fill the confidant role Kurisu did

This is, as E Minor notes quite bitterly, the end of the story. It's not a particularly happy end, but it's not a particularly happy character arc -- the story of a dedicated hero who becomes so involved with his quest that, when he's finally completed it, it's at best a bittersweet success as he's destroyed everything else around him as well as his own character and morals. This is a part of the classical rise-to-power narrative, a cinema classic (from The Godfather to The Social Network), but here there's no rise to power, only a fall from whatever piddling amount of power Okabe once had. The arc is, however, complete with the restoration of the original world line, Okabe having achieved his dream but the powerful ambiguity of his sacrifices still in the air.

So of course, in the last two episodes Suzuha shows up in a spiffed-up time machine to fix everything in a neat little bow, offering a way for Kurisu and Mayuri to both live. It's tempting to dismiss this ending as a fob to the fans who don't want to leave a series with a bad taste in their mouth and who want to see their favourite characters prosper. This episode breaks with the established rules of time travel in Steins;gate pretty considerably, rules that were if not really logical at least consistent. The idea of a rigidly balanced world of sacrifice and reward that was underneath the past dozen episodes is neglected. The most obvious symbol of this is Suzuha's time machine, which can now carry passengers and go back and forward in time, with no explanation other than "this timeline is different": Suzuha's sacrifice from previous episodes is rendered unnecessary with a flick of fictional fiat.

Still, I think this desire to see everything turn out alright is interesting, because it speaks of a fundamentall fannish audience.  Steins;Gate has courted this audience right from the beginning with its immersion in otaku culture and frequent self-referential mentions of its visual novel origins, and while that may have done a lot to hook viewers it ultimately also becomes a burden on the narrative, as the story now has to meet not only its own narrative ends but also fannish desires.

I'm drawing a distinction here between being a viewer of a work, critical or not, and being a fan.  Fan culture is something completely different from appreciation, and it stems from a distinct approach to texts.  Instead of approaching a TV show or book or whatever as a cohesive narrative whole, with characters and other elements an integral part of that whole, a fannish viewer accepts the text as a modular universe whose parts can be separated from it, almost a kind of paralell universe with as much nuance and potential for interaction as the real one.  I travelled in fanfiction circles in my misguided teenage years (yeah, I know), and one of the most curious things about these hardcore fans was that they often seemed indifferent to the actual story of their chosen text -- rather, they became attached to a particular character and focused their fandom on that aspect.  With this in mind it's not surprising that these fans often end up discussing fictional characters as real people that they feel love or hatred towards.  It's also not surprising that fandom attaches itself to texts that are already excessively modular, possessing dozens of minor characters who get just enough screentime to attract kindred souls, and usually with clearly delineated story arcs -- think the Harry Potter series or any popular shounen anime.

Video games, and the visual novel genre in specific, assume a fannish (or modular) approach to their content.  In a video game, you sort of have to respond to things modularly and with fannish attachment, because -- as Philip Sandifer of the much-missed NES Project has repeatedly pointed out -- video games are lousy narrative devices.  Visual novels present much more of a conventional narrative, to the extent that they can barely be described as games at all, but in almost all examples of the genre you have to choose between characters or (more rarely) plotlines -- at some point you have to make a fannish choice, deciding which discrete element of the text you want to pursue and which ones you want to leave by the wayside.  The story is then neccesarily diffuse and fragmented.  So it's really not surprising that in the end Steins;Gate would have to have an ending that meets more fannishly appropriate as opposed to narratively sound end.  Leaving half of the girls in limbo would just not do for all of the fans those girls have accumulated over the course of the series [1].  The epilogue in the next (and final) episode goes further, briefly showcasing each character just to reassure us that they're all doing fine and have once again become a part of the community of outcasts.

Now, I'm not saying that being a fan is any better or worse than being a critic, but in the end a show cannot serve two masters (or at least it cannot without a level of deftness that Steins;Gate is frankly not capable of), and the artistic highs which Steins;Gate has shown in driving Okabe to his breaking point over the past ten episodes feel compromised and cheapened by this sudden change to a different mode.  Steins;Gate courted and celebrated (through characters like Feyris and Mayuri) fannishness to draw viewers, but that audience has in a way become a burden on the narrative arc.  "Open the Steins Gate" reaffirms this connection with its fans right from the beginning, with its opening shots of the streets of Akibahara.

Still, these last two episodes work in some ways.  The structure of Steins;Gate is actually quite clever: throughout the first half of the series many changes in the timeline occur and mysteries are brought up but not answered.  In the second half Okabe has to undo all of the alterations in reverse order, which involves revisiting the previous episodes in an unfolding pattern and resolving the mysteries raised there.  Whereas most narratives have a straightforward progression, the narrative map of Steins;Gate is a line folding back on itself, erasing all the progress it's made, until ultimately we end up in the same place we started -- as we did at the end of the last episode.  We are suddenly returned to the early days of the lab, with only three members and no time machine.

Structurally, then, these last two bits make sense: we need to revisit the first two episodes, the mysterious incidents surrounding Kurisu's speech, that we have at this point almost forgotten.  But we've already reached the end point of the regression -- we're back where we started.  That Okabe can undo the past while actively adding things, keeping Kurisu alive and creating the same community without any of the damage -- that saving the world this time requires not sacrifice but salvation -- can be seen as a kind of betrayal of the nothing-comes-for-free ethos that has underlied much of the show.  On the other hand, it's also a nicely optimistic statement: that not everything is as bleak as Steins;Gate's reversal plot and (visually, at least) dark world make it seem.  Sometimes, after all, saving the world requires not sacrifice but a new kind of creation.

I'm also interested in the attitude Steins;Gate takes towards science.  There are two approaches to science in the series.  The first is the raw geekery of Okabe's ramshackle lab, inventions created just for a couple of cool tricks and which may end up changing the world as a mere side effect, pursued out of love alone.  On the other hand there's the cold institution of the scientific world in both its academic and industrial applications.  For most of the series this approach is represented by the faceless evil of SERN, but in these final two episodes it takes the form of the vain and violent Professor Nakabichi, who is ultimately made out to be a kind of monster.

Institutional science, and Nakabichi in particular, is responsible for World War III in this timeline and a dystopia in the other one.  On the other hand, Okabe and the girls live in a kind of scientific utopia, albeit one that is constantly under siege -- where mad scientists can trip over time machines and dorky fun is the order of the day.  Steins;Gate ultimately pledges itself to the cult of the amateur and the cult of the nerd -- everything, from science to art to love, should be approached with a thoroughly unprofessional passion bordering on insanity and not cold careerism.  No matter how awkward the vessel it's in, I think that's still a worthwhile message.

Next week: Archer gets a little long-form.

[1] This is in no way confined to anime, visual novels or genre projects -- even mainstream sitcoms can promote fannish viewing.  The classic "will they or won't they" plotline is essentially projecting the fan habit of shipping onto a mass audience.  In some ways it's easier to appeal to fans than critics, and more and more media are turning this way.

Steins;Gate 10: Homeostasis of Complements/Chaos Theory Homeostasis

A bit of titling confusion here, as Wikipedia and ANN lists the episode title as “Homeostasis of Compliments” but Crunchyroll (the actual source of the video) has it as “Chaos Theory Homeostasis”, which is also their title for the two episodes preceding it. I'll use the former here, to differentiate it from episodes 8 and 9.

You are not likely to see Steins;Gate on any kind of “gateway anime” list. It's one of a series of recent series of anime that assume a strong immersion in otaku culture and involves a complex quilt of non-stop referents and obscure jokes. (Popular entries in this sub-genre include Lucky Star and most of Akiyuki Shinbo's work.) This is a show where even the subtitles appear to be in a different language. Whereas the first wave of otaku-centred shows (think Genshiken or Otaku no Video) took a realistic depiction of anime fandom as their subjects and were fairly accessible to outsiders, more recently these shows have been genre stories whose distinctly unreal characters just happen to speak channer.

To make matters more complicated, the language of Steins;Gate includes more than anime. It's equally based in conspiracy theory and complex physics, and while it's more willing to explain these elements, it still takes mental effort to keep up. Steins;Gate is then a kind of all-nerd show whose fast banter and cluttered mythos resembles a nichier version of Community. Of course, the obvious criticism is that this kind of technique is just fan-pandering namedropping, and there are times it approaches the inanity of reference humour, but all of the characters just play off each other so well it still works in terms of comedy.

So I come to this series much like I came to last week's, Dororon Enma-kun, diving into a see of cultural referents that I don't really share, although I have more steeping in current otaku culture than 70s anime nostalgia. But the purpose of the referents are essentially different in these two shows. In Enma-kun, the references harkened back to an earlier time and established a common base for the show and its audience to build on. But in Steins;Gate otaku culture isn't essentially the point – its purpose in the show is to indicate the hipness of both the show and characters as well, drawing a bond between audience and object through shared subculture. The characters reflect back on the audience, hearing their message board posts in the mouths of hot anime girls. The referents are a means and not an ends in Steins;Gate, reflective of a trend in anime to aim at existing anime fans as the target audience and exclude everyone else, making for intimate if niche shows.

The subcultural element takes front and centre in “Homeostasis of Compliments”, following up the cliffhanger from last week's episode: through the latest in a series of time travel experiments, our gang of weirdos has managed to change history so that Akibahara, the nerd capital of the world, has been changed from a kingdom of moe into just a bunch of electronics shops. This is basically the anime apocalypse, and Okabe, the only one who can remember what the world was like before the timeline shifts, expresses a degree of horror comparable to Charlton Heston at the end of Planet of the Apes.

The washed-out colour palette of Steins;Gate really lends a certain gravitas to the scene, bringing out the contrast between the previously colourful Akibahara and its current lifeless form, much in the way the grimy outside world contrasts with the brighter main characters. There's a certain degree of self-hagiography in this choice, portraying otaku as true romantics in an otherwise drab world, but it's subtle enough to be forgiveable.

This is a fairly standard butterly-effect plotline: one small change – in the case of this series a text message sent to the past – can have massive ramifications, completely changing an entire city. Still, this change is fairly comprehensible – in the past episode we learned that in the world of Steins;Gate Feyris was responsible for otaku-izing Akiba and possibly for the moe craze in general (making her public enemy number one for a lot of anime fans), so logically changing her past could create this shift. What's more surprising is when it's discovered later on in the episode that the groups' erstwhile transvestite Rukako is now a real live girl, which would seem to have nothing to do with Feyris's message. The general feeling here is of consequences spiralling out of control as the world gets further and further away from where we started. By “Homeostasis of Compliments” we're essentially at the mid-point of this spiral, where the changes have gone beyond the direct and personal but are no longer quite global.

(Incidentally, if Rukako is a girl now why does she hang out with these freaks? The core cast of Steins;Gate is in the “alleigance of outcasts” model. As a cross-dressing man Rukako fit right in, but as a girl whose only apparent oddity is a cosplay hobby she kind of sticks out.)

“Homeostasis of Compliments” was written by Masahiro Yokotani and directed by Kazuhori Ozawa. Yokotani's main writing experience seems to be in comedy, having composed sixteen (!) episodes of the also heavily referential lesbian romance parody Mariaholic. He brings that influence to this series, which still maintains a significantly lower-key sense of humour than a show like Mariaholic but features more in the way of physical comedy (Kyouma groping Rukako and Chris hobbling him for it) than other episodes. Ozawa appears to be the go-to director for this series, having already directed three episodes including the first, and helps to bring the aesthetic and pacing of this episode in line with the rest of the series. (He also worked on Shiki, which had a similar kind of dark grinding pace, although a much different art style and genre.) So from what little I know of the staff I picture this episode as kind of a balancing act between the madcap influence of Yokotani and the darker, slower style of Ozawa.

Series-wise, Steins;Gate is directed by Hiroshi Hamasaki and Takuya Sato. Hamasaki is listed as having previously directed Texhnolyze, which has a kind of similar feel to it, and Shigurui: Death Frenzy, about which I know absolutely nothing. Sato seems to have mainly worked on the Strawberry Marshamallow franchise, a show that even the normally staid ANN Encyclopedia describes as “cute girls doing cute things in cute ways”. Once again there's a kind of fusion of two genres here – the grim sci-fi series (Hamasaki) and the harem-ish anime comedy (Sato). It's a bit of an odd combination, especially the mix-and-match approach to staffing, but it works well enough. The animation is done by White Fox, a fairly new studio mainly notable for the excellent Katanagatari. Unfortunately, this series doesn't have anywhere near the visual inventiveness of that one, although the animation never really looks bad (since the show is largely talking heads, it doesn't really matter anyway.) The credits sequences are pretty uninspired, so I'm not even going to touch on them here.

In terms of plot, “Homeostasis of Compliments” is pretty light. Still dazed from the vanishing of Akibahara, Kyouma returns back to the lab and discovers (in the most awkward fashion possible) that Rukako is still a girl. Then they go grocery shopping and have a party. There's some romance drama later on, and another shift in the timeline, but for the most part the episode is focused on character interaction and plot advancement. This is really the formula for most Steins;Gate episodes thus far: the characters react to what happened last episode, then spend most of the episode bantering with each other about nothing in particular, and then the plot advances forward a bit just in time for the opening credits.

Serial dramas in the U.S. often face deserving criticism for this kind of “hollow middle” plotting. But there's a kind of charm to the length which Steins;Gate allows its digressions to go, and I think it's rooted in the story's origin as a visual novel. The visual novel (basicall an arty word for the “dating sim” genre of games, not to be confused with graphic novels, which is the arty word for comics) thrives on superfluous dialogue – every one (of the admittedly few) that I've played could be cut down to a third of the length without much plot or even character development being lost. However, these long strings of dialogue do have a purpose. As I said, it isn't to develop character so much as it is to develop atmosphere.

The seemingly banal dialogues in these games creates a sense of a relationships, forged not in a few key scenes but over many, many everyday occurences. In, say, a romantic comedy movie a relationship is an event, in a dating sim it's an object that is slowly created. This is the reason for all the hours spent on small-town hijinx in Higurashi before the bodies start dropping, to use just one example. A television series aims for a similar goal in creating an in-depth story space, a group of characters and settings that seem to be permanent icons we've grown to know over a long course of time. Is it any wonder TV audiences (and those of other serial media like comics or book series) get so attached to characters? As our relationship with the characters approaches the shape of our relationships with real people, the firm distinction in our mind between reality and fiction begins to melt away. It's no wonder that the dating sim, a genre which originates in the desire for a virtual girlfriend, shapes its narrative towards a similar end.

Steins;Gate, despite being a TV show, uses the visual novel approach to building these relationships (lengthy dialogue) instead of the usual televisual one (seeing the cast go through many different adventures and events). The use of repeated gags and catchphrases, such as Kyouma's nicknames for everyone he runs across, tie together the episodes into a coherent character construction. In this episode there's also, as mentioned before, more standard anime humour revolving around comedic violence and assorted girls' inability to cook, which I'm attributing to Yokotani. These kind of jokes are pretty pedestrian, although there is something funny yet terrifying about seeing Mayushii with knives.

The visual novel origins of Steins;Gate also shines through in its harem-esque cast. As is par for the course in that genre, the cast consists of one lead male (Houin Kyouma, considerably less generic than these leads usually are), possibly another dude as comic relief (in this case the fat uber-nerd Daru), and a shitton of women that secretly want to jump the first guy's bones. The girls even break down into standard harem anime types – you have the tsundere* (Chris), the girl next door (Suzuha), the ditz (Mayuri), the wallflower (Moeka), the blatant otaku fetish object (Feyris), the other blatant otaku fetish object (Rukako), and probably a couple others I'm forgetting. Now, Steins;Gate has developed most of these characters beyond the glib descriptions I've given them, but it still reflects the kind of casts visual novels have even when they're ostensibly about something other than which chick you get to bang at the end (as I gather the Steins;Gate game is.)

That one-guy-many-girls romance comes to the forefront towards the end of “Homeostasis of Compliments”. First we have Chris melting down during the party and showing some affection to Kyouma, fulfilling the deredere side of her archetype. The power goes out momentarily, and the normally cool and distant Chris confessions her affection for the atmosphere of the lab in general (solidifying the “series space” created by the relationships among the individual characters) and then later describes Kyouma as a “companion”. Of course, when the lights come back on they're in a compromising position. This scene really kind of reduces Chris to less of a character and more of an archetype. I mean, we even had the “It's not like I like you or anything...”

Later, Kyouma discovers that Suzuha has not just missed the party but skipped town. Despite his concerns about altering the past any further, he decides to use the D-mail to tell his past self to chase her and not let Chris stop him as she did the first time around. This seems to work, although with uncertain consequences.

There are two potential motives for why Kyouma would be willing to risk altering the past in unforeseen ways (after having just seen how easily that could happen) to stop Suzuha from leaving town. The first would be that he loves Suzuha, at least subconciously. In this view he is rejecting Chris, who has just semi-confessed to him, by telling his past self to ignore her and go after Suzuha. In this new timeline it's doubtful whether the heartfelt conversation between him and Chris even happened I think this is probably more likely, although it's unusual for harem protagonists to clearly choose one girl and reject another, much less do so halfway through the series (although Bakemonogatari did it.) While a time-travelling love triangle would be interesting, I think the more interesting option here is that Kyouma did it simply to preserve his current situation, surrounded by friends and cute girls. In other words, Kyouma has fallen in love with the series space just as much as the viewer (well, at least this viewer) has, and wants to keep everything the same. Chris's affection towards him is as dangerous as Suzuha leaving, as both threaten the status quo. As a self-proclaimed mad scientist, Kyouma is obsessed with threatening and destabilizing the world order, whether it be through taking over everything or through bringing down the devious SERN, but he is also starting to fall in love with the way things are now. In both cases Kyouma's decision sets us up for some serious conflict in the remaining half of Steins;Gate, in the first case a romantic conflict between Chris and Suzuha, while in the latter case a more interesting formal conflict between the status-quo elements of the story (what I'm calling the series space) and the overarching science-fictional plot. Maybe both conflicts will materialize.

Like the time-travel and other mad science its characters get up to, Steins;Gate is an experiment, sticking concentrated elements of hard sci-fi and harem comedy into a beaker and watching the sometimes violent reactions. It's not as though these two genres have never been fused before (hello, Tenchi Muyo) but Steins;Gate is so deep into each rabbithole that it's hard to see how the two genres can be reconciled in the end. Whether or not this conflict continues to play out or is brushed aside is the true task for the upcoming second half of the series.

* For those of you not fluent in otaku fetish lingo, a tsundere is a female character who outwardly dislikes and mocks their love interest to the point of abuse (tsuntsun) but is inevitably revealed to have a soft, tender side that actually cares for him (deredere). This started out as an attempt to develop multi-layered characters but has turned into a cliche of its own, albeit one with legions of fans.

Next Week: A look at the unofficial season premiere of Futurama.