Steins Gateの紹介
Konnichiwa, I am your host Mayu for 2AM OTTACK! In this podcast, we talk all about anime, manga,
movies, music, and history through our distinct perspectives as a born and raised Japanese non-otaku,
that's me, and an American anime fan. That's me.
How's it going, Sisko? I'm doing okay. Excited to talk about this anime for this episode.
Yeah, what are we talking about today?
So we're talking about Steins Gate, which is actually kind of an older anime, but one that
I was introduced to by the students at my school's anime club, which I am the faculty advisor.
How did your students find about this anime?
That's a really good question. I mean, they would have been pretty young when this came out, so
I wonder if they, I don't know, if it was on like a streaming service they subscribed to,
or if they read about it somewhere. I'm not really sure how they found out about it. I should ask
that question. Could you read the summary of this anime? Absolutely. As usual, I think this is pulled
from Wikipedia. Steins Gate is a Japanese anime television series created by the animation studio
White Fox based on 5PB and Nitro Plus's 2009 visual novel of the same name. The series aired
for 24 episodes from April to September 2011. It is set in 2010 and follows Rintaro Okabe,
who together with his friends accidentally discovers a method of time travel through
which they can send text messages to the past, thereby changing the present.
エピソードの進行
So far, we watched the first 12 episodes, and the 12th episode was pretty dramatic. I mean,
every episode was dramatic, but especially the 12th one. And that's where we stopped watching
for now. It's based on a video game. Yeah, I mean, a visual novel is a little bit
different than a video game because you usually don't have very many choices. You're kind of more
watching the story unfold than you are actually deciding things. But occasionally, there will be
like decision points in visual novels. So sometimes you can kind of pick between two or
three different endings or something. But yeah. Did you know about this video game?
No, no, no, no. Or at least when the club started watching the show, I don't think any of us were
aware that it was based on a video game. Although one kid said recently when I brought it up,
that he had been told not to watch the show so he could play the game first. But apparently,
he didn't take that advice. And with the club, I've watched about another six episodes. So I've
seen a little bit farther than where we are. And I'm going to try really hard to not spoil anything
that comes after the 12th episode in case listeners have... I guess we should really say
that now. Spoiler alert, we are definitely going to talk about things that happen in the show up
through the 12th episode. So if it sounds interesting to you and you're into time travel,
maybe watch it first before you listen to the rest of this episode or at least the first 12
episodes. And I'll try not to go any farther than that in my comments. But at some point in watching
the show, when I found out that it was based on a visual novel, I was all of a sudden like,
oh, this explains some of the things that are facets of the show. So yeah.
Yeah. So this became a movie in 2013. And then they made continued series,
Steins Gate Zero in 2018. So it sounds like it was a popular anime.
Yeah. I do remember seeing at some point in our adventures to different libraries,
a complete manga collection of Steins Gate that was like a very chunky book.
So I guess they've also adapted it as a manga at some point. Yeah. But I'm interested to see
岡部倫太郎の冒険
which directions all of these different productions went.
The main character's name is Rintaro Okabe. That's his real name in the anime. But
he often calls himself as Hououin Kyouma.
Yeah. That definitely sounds cooler, I think, for him. Or I don't know for other people too.
For him. I think Rintaro Okabe sounds like a... It's not like anybody would have that name,
but it's like a standard name. Hououin already sounds made up. And Kyouma. I guess there's
probably people out there named Kyouma, but the combination in particular sounds kind of silly.
So he basically makes a time machine that he can send an email, text message to the past.
I think it's not really explained how they got the time machine. It seems like a little bit of
just like a fluke that they happen to have a denshi-denshi, right? A combination microwave
toaster oven, I guess is the best way to describe it in English. That also, if you send a text
message while it's turned on, can shoot your text message into the past. It's a very interesting
concept. Yeah. I think it's interesting that they decided to make it text messages, right?
I thought it was interesting they used like a regular household electrics.
Yeah. I mean, there's a combination that I think is revealed by the 12th episode,
that there's also like part of how it works is that the TV store that's underneath them,
having the TV on, right? I wonder how much, I don't know enough about time travel science
to be able to say, this is ridiculous. There's no basis in fact here versus like something about
the type of TVs plus something about the microwave equals time travel is really possible. But
I, you know, it's good enough for me to believe it.
Yeah. We've been watching about time machine or time trip recently.
Yeah, it does. I mean, this is a show that's what like 14 years old now, almost 13 at least,
but it does feel like we've been seeing and being exposed to a lot of time travel stuff lately.
Yeah. I think of which never gets old in my opinion.
Maybe there's something about like human nature that really wants time travel to be possible.
Yeah. I want to go back to the past and to fix stuff.
Yeah. Did you ever like wish that you could go back to the past and change things?
As a kid? No, no. But as an adult, yes.
Don't you agree?
I think for me, it's the opposite. Like when I was a kid, whenever I was trying to make decisions
that I might possibly regret later, I think one of the things I thought about, like, what if I
could go back and like redo this day? Like I think seeing Groundhog Day as a kid really made me
wonder, like, what if I could do the same day over and over again? What kind of different choices
would I make? But I do remember vividly at some point thinking, what if the life that I'm living
right now is the result of me having gone back in time a bunch of times already to like redo things
in order to make it the way that it is now? That's deep.
Yeah. No, it's not. It's just like incredibly self-justifying. But it has been kind of useful
to think that way, to be like, oh, if I just made a mistake, maybe in another timeline,
I already went back in time and like changed the mistake to like not make it or to like,
you know, let's take an example of like, I fail a test, right? In some other timeline,
I go back in time and I like pass the test by studying, but then like something really
bad happens in that timeline. And I'm like, oh, this is, I should go back again and fail it because
that leads to like a better outcome down the road. And so I definitely got to a place where I was
時間旅行と記憶
like, I've already gone back and changed everything like the maximum number of times.
And like, this is the way that it's that I've like decided I want it to work out. And now I'm
just like living it. And also, if going back in time really does like reset your memory,
and then you only remember the past where you like last went back and like all your other
like memories of the other futures got erased. Isn't it possible that like we're all just
after watching Steins Gate? Yes, that's so possible. Yeah, but also it sounds like a good,
like a mechanism, coping mechanism. Coping mechanism. Yeah, 100%.
Get over something about yourself. Yeah, I think I like the the idea of how you think.
Thanks. I think it's a little bit. I think it's a little bit uncool, but
it goes like it's a, you know, if you think like that way, it makes sense. Like you can kind of
calm yourself down and then like accept the whatever in front of you. Yeah. No, I mostly
used it to be like, it's actually a good idea that I didn't like talk to this girl that I kind of
wanted to talk to. But, you know, it's still worked out. So let's embrace it. Right. So you
you're okay. That's one way to think about it. I thought you were the kind of person like you
don't actually want don't want to change anything in the past because the way you are right now
is based on how you chose each path. And it's a result of the past is you right now. Right.
And my life right now is pretty good. So probably I already fixed it to be like this good. And now
I don't need to change anything else. Cool. Nice. Um, I would definitely change. Stopping my past.
Definitely. Yeah, I made poor choices in my. Are you sure you would change them? Even if
it meant that you like didn't have the life you have right now, though? I would still change it.
There's something I regret that much. Okay, that's fair. Yeah. Not gonna talk about it on this podcast.
キャラクターの年齢と背景
All right. We got it too deep. Now we got to go back up. You got to change the past of this podcast
by deleting some of the parts of it. Maybe this computer is connected to
the past. Oh, my God. So can you guess how old the main character is?
So there's some clues that say, for example, that he's underage and so not supposed to drink alcohol.
And so that means he's got to be under 20. Because that's the legal age for drinking in Japan.
But he's obviously not going to school. I mean, kind of none of the characters. I guess, actually,
now that I think about this harder, the show is set in early August. And so that's a time when
Japanese schools are on vacation. And so there's not a lot of like description of what what else
is going on in their lives, other than like the couple of days that the show is actually
about. So I guess it's actually plausible that he's still in high school. But he both looked,
especially because of like the weird hair on his chin. He looks like he's in like his late 20s,
early 30s. But his like personality and behavior is like a middle schooler sometimes. So I guess
based on his relationship to the other characters, some of whom we have like better guesses of the
ages for, like Mayuri is obviously still in high school. He's probably 17 or 18 would be my guess.
You're right. 18 years old.
Ding, ding, ding. Hell yeah.
He's a university student.
Okay. So he's in his first year of high school.
Yeah.
He's a university student.
Okay. So he's in his first year of university.
I guess this, I found out about it on Wikipedia, but
Spoiler alert, hun.
But yeah, by watching until 12th episode, it doesn't say anything about his age. But
視聴体験と未解決の疑問
like it makes you think like, who is this guy? And like, what he's like, how old is he? And
the relationship between other characters. There are like so many questions from the
very first episode.
I think that's one of the things I actually really like about this show,
that it doesn't try to tell you everything right off the bat. And it leaves a lot of
questions unanswered. It definitely begins in Mediares, like in the middle of things. And
you sort of slowly get exposition about the characters, what things are going on, how they
work. And it's a show that really rewards you for watching it more than once. I guess
this is weird for me to say, cause I haven't gotten to the end yet, but after having watched
to about the middle or a little bit more than the middle of the show, I went back and started
watching it again from the beginning with some foreknowledge of what else was going to happen
later, or some more explanation of what was actually going on and rewatching the first
episode makes you come up with a lot more theories once you've seen a little bit of the
show and then are like, oh, maybe here, this is what's happening at this point. Whereas the
first time you watch it, you're just kind of feeling like, did somebody forget to explain
what's going on? How come everything is just like whack, like what's real, what's not.
And I think that's intentionally part of it to make you try to be a detective and uncover which
parts are real and how reliable is the narrator and how does this, how do the rules of this world
work? And I don't know, maybe it's just my sort of detective brain, but I love getting to do that
with a show. Whenever new character comes up, like they say a sentence, which doesn't make sense
at the moment. And it makes you think like, what did she mean? What did he mean?
And then, but it keeps going and I think it explains later.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a, I mean, it's a science fiction story about time travel, but it's
got a lot of really good sort of detective parts for the viewer to try to piece together as it goes
on. And to me, when I started watching the show, I really couldn't tell about the main character's
personality because the voice actor is doing an awesome job expressing the feelings, but the
face expression on anime was not easy to tell for me. So I couldn't tell if he's saying things
seriously or joking or... Yeah. The first time I watched it, I was like, oh,
this is just an anime with low production value, right? They didn't want to pay like
animators enough to like do enough in-betweens to make it really expressive. But that seems to
kind of change midway through the show. Like the characters become more expressive. It becomes
easier to tell what they actually mean. It's not as hard to figure out what's real and what's fake.
表現の変化と視聴の楽しみ
And so then I was like, wait, was the low animation quality of the first part of this show
intentional to try to make it harder to figure out what's going on?
And like, I really don't know. I'm actually not sure. I can't tell if they were saving the budget
for later on in the show when they got more dramatic and they wanted to have better animation,
or if they were like, hey animators, don't give the characters very good expressions in these first
six episodes because we want to confuse the audience, which would be so meta and really cool.
So I wouldn't rule it out. I feel like we got tricked. Yeah. I mean, I think that's part of
what I love about the show too. Yeah. I really like the main character. He is really good at
naming nicknames and naming the mission. He pretends calling some top secret agent,
whatever little thing happens. I love him calling Makise Kurisu, Christina. That's just really
funny to me every time. I'm sorry, but that's something I can relate because like, Chris,
Christine, Christina, like there's, it's a little bit confusing for me.
So like, I get why he keeps calling Christina. Wait, why? I don't know. Christina sounds,
I don't know, easier to say than Chris? Than Kurisu? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know.
Is Kurisu like a real Japanese last name? No, Kurisu is the first name. Makise is her last
name. It's something I think parents, like it's, it's like us, like hoping the name would work
both in Japan and in America. Oh, like Chris, right? Yeah. Oh, I didn't get that actually.
Oh, really? Okay. Until just now, I didn't get that that was. Oh, come on. Why? No, no,
seriously. I didn't. Cause the way that it's transliterated in the, in the subtitles is K-U-R-I-S-U.
Oh, interesting. And so like, if it was, and I think the reason is there are girls named Chris,
especially not spelled C-H-R-I-S, but C-H-R-I-S, Chris is more often. Well, I don't know. I had a,
I had a classmate growing up who was a girl who was named Chris, but she, her,
hers was spelled K-R-I-S. So I think like they could have done it that way, but also
hearing it in Japanese, it's so obviously K-U-R-I-S-U and not Chris that it would have
been like actually jarring to have to see it as Chris and be like, why is he butchering
the pronunciation of her name? And so him calling her Christina, because that's spelled with the
C-H-R-I-S-T-I-N-A is like, uh, I think it actually might be hard for some English viewers to make
the leap of why he's calling her Christina because it seems so far away from K-U-R-I-S-U.
Um, and then like, if you think about it, you can get it, but, um, yeah,
yeah. I didn't realize that Makise was her family name for some reason.
タイトルの由来
Yeah. Wow. Interesting. Yeah. All right. Thanks for pointing that out for me.
Yeah. And then, uh, Shining Finger?
Right? Um, who's else? Lukako? Uh, I don't know who named this, but like, Ferris NyanNyan?
I think Ferris names herself. She does have a regular name, but you don't find it out in the
first 12 episodes. Um, and... Wait, how, how did it, how did, uh, Baito Senshi translate it?
Part-time warrior. Like, directly. Oh, okay. All right. Yeah, that one works really well.
So you, do you remember you checking the meaning of Stein? Yes. It means stone, right?
On Wikipedia, it says Unmeiseki, like a distant stone. Huh. Yeah. Maybe. And like,
it comes from Einstein. Oh, that makes sense, actually. Yeah, no, that, that makes a lot of
sense. I mean, I, nobody in America calls Einstein just Stein. It's like a, it's like a
nickname. Like, oh yeah. Have you read like Stein's theory of relativity? Oh, really? No,
that's totally unheard of. No, no one would ever do that. Wait, you mean nobody says Stein?
As like a, as like a nickname for Einstein? No, nobody does that. I mean, not in Japanese either.
We call Einstein. Yeah. Einstein. Yeah. Okay. I don't know. So the, the idea to me of like
Steins Gate, like, oh yeah, like it was going to be Einstein, but I just shortened it. Now it's
just Stein. It based, the stone's name is Stein, right? I think, I think Stein is the word for
stone in German. Yes. Oh, I see. I see. Well, that's, it came up on the Wikipedia,
Japanese Wikipedia anyway. Cool. So yeah. And towards the, I don't know, I think it's,
it was episode 10. There's a like a scene that Christina, like typing, and then like,
ネット文化とミームの考察
um, who was, uh, Houyin Kyouma comes in and then like says nurubo, and then Christina says ga.
Yeah. And then like, you had to, we had to stop. And then like, you, you asked me, what does it
mean? I was like, I have no idea what you mean. So we had to look it up. You're not a big enough
nerd. No, I even, I never, I had never heard of it before. So yeah, it's the, it was translated
into. Never gonna give you up. Like, uh, oh wait, no. Yeah, I think it was. I think it was. Yes,
it was. And there's, there's at least one more where somebody says all your, the English translation
said one, one, one character says all your base and the other character says are belong to us.
And it's the same joke of like, this is an internet reference that only certain people
would get. Right. And I think never gonna give you up works. Uh, I can't decide if it's better
or less. Well, I think like never going to give you up is now the, the Rick roll meme is like
so omnipresent that I feel like a lot of people get it. Whereas all your base are belong to us.
Like you, I think have to have been like deep into internet culture in 2001 to get that
reference. Like that meme disappeared I think after the early two thousands. And so in a way,
I think that one's a little bit better as like revealing somebody as like,
I don't know, more in that world than never going to give you up, which like, cause Rick rolling,
like never went away. Like it got invented and then it just kept going. So that's my,
that's my feeling about those translations. But yeah, the notable guy was like,
what is this? I've, I've never heard of this and neither had you. So what is it?
It's a programming language. And then when something, uh, irregular or something happens,
like that's the message as it's a shortened word for the long message in Java or something,
somebody type and the other person has, has to reply.
And I, I think nobody really does it anymore. Yeah. So there's probably like younger people
out there on the internet who understand this better than we do younger or maybe older.
Oh, maybe cause like, yeah, back then it was a thing, right? In 2010.
Yeah. It seems like this is like a time linked thing. Like in 2010 or 2011,
if you had been around in Japan, you might, and been like terminally online,
you might've gotten this reference. Yeah. Has to be like our age.
Yeah. Yeah. Although I feel like maybe we're even too old, right? Like ideally you were in college
when this anime came out and then you really get it or something.
Chuunibyouの理解
Right. Right. Well, we didn't get, I didn't get the Japanese part of like them having conversation
in like net language. Yeah. I did from the English because I know
I'm familiar with both Rick Rowland and All Your Bases Belong to Us. So I was like, oh yeah. Okay.
I can, I can tell what he's doing here to kind of like out her as a nerd by showing that she
understands the references. Let's do word of the day. Yes. What shall we do today?
I definitely think we should teach Chuunibyou. Chuunibyou. So the main character is basically
Chuunibyou. It's written in Kanji, Chinese characters, as middle to sickness. Can you
explain this? Yes. But first I'm going to explain that when Chuunibyou, because I think there's an
anime called Chuunibyou actually. And when I saw it, because I saw it written in Romaji for the
first time in English characters, I assumed that it had to do with kissing. What? I thought it
meant kissing two second sickness or kissing two seconds. Chuunibyou. Oh, I see. And so I,
I like didn't know for a really long time what it meant. I think actually it wasn't,
it wasn't until we watched, uh, what is it called in English? The something life. Yeah. Psyche K,
the tragic life or the something, the disastrous life of Psyche K. That was when I first understood
that Chuunibyou meant middle school disease instead of kiss two seconds. That's so cute.
That is so cute. But it's definitely like funny that I misunderstood it for like a tragically long
time. Wait, wait. So when do you use like Chuunibyou as like a kissing two seconds sickness?
No, never. There's no, the byou doesn't even make sense. Cause I thought it was second, not sickness,
but like I, I don't know. I don't know why I thought it was that, but that's definitely what
was my like original interpretation of what it was. That's very interesting. Yeah. Cause especially
because people who are Chuunibyou are definitely not kissing anybody. No. Yeah, exactly. So sorry
to get back to what is Chuunibyou. So, uh, it, it, it, it's actual meaning is second, you know,
second year of middle school sickness, second year of middle school in Japan translates to
eighth grade in America, which I think is definitely like the right time to express this
people who are Chuunibyou act as though they are still in eighth grade, mostly in the sense of like
thinking that like imaginary stuff is like really cool or that they have like superpowers.
And so, um, I was once in a conversation with some other guys of my same age. Uh, we had not
grown up together and we were talking about our childhoods. And one of the people in the group
said, don't you guys like have memories of putting on a cape and climbing a tree in the night? And
the other three people in the group were just like, no, we never did that. I think the person who did
that saying they were Chuunibyou at that time would be a very apt description of like, if you
ever went through a phase where you put on a cape and climbed a tree in the middle of the night,
that was Chuunibyou. I definitely went through this too, where I would walk around doing a hand motion
from an anime. That's Chuunibyou. And like anybody who ever thought Naruto running was a cool thing
was Chuunibyou, right? Like all of those things fall in the same category.
Wait, what? Hand gesture?
It was from Bubblegum Crisis. There's a moment where a guy catches like a laser beam with his
bare hands and then flips it around and shoots it back at the person who shot it at him.
Yes, your stifled nose laugh is exactly the right response to that.
No offense.
And I was like, yes. So, oh yeah, offense, but like merited offense.
So yeah, so I definitely like went through some Chuunibyou phase myself, but the character in
Saiki Kei who is like the most Chuunibyou is a great example of this. He wears a bandage on
his hand in order to contain the dark powers he alleges reside in his hand. And that's like
quintessential Chuunibyou. He's the typical, typical version of Chuunibyou. Yeah. Yeah. If
you want to learn about what Chuunibyou is, you should look, you should watch the show,
Saiki Kuso's show. The name of the show we are talking about is the Disastrous Life of Saiki
Kei. Booyaka. Yeah. So, you know, if you want to make sure what Chuunibyou is, watch this anime,
you'll find out very easily. Yeah. I wanted to ask, so when you did the hand gesture thing,
how old were you? So to be honest, I'm not, I don't, I don't know. I don't know that I like
clocked, like what age I was, but way too long. We'll just leave it at that. Like not,
『STEINS;GATE』への期待
not like in college and like probably not in senior year of high school, but like,
maybe like beyond Chuuni, you know what I mean? Like maybe as a ninth grader, I was still doing
that sometimes. I don't think other people knew what I was doing. Like, it wasn't like
really obvious, you know? But if people can tell, something is going on. That like,
I'm in a fantasy world where I can redirect laser beams of people. Yeah. They, yep. They
probably could. I mean, I think like, I don't know. I remember being like, working in a
residential school and seeing kids like try to memorize the Naruto, like Ninja hand sign signals.
And like, that's really Chuunibyou too, right? Like, I don't know, I don't know any of them,
so I can't even pretend to do it, but like, you have to like say a particular syllable and like,
make a specific like hand motion. And there's people who can do like a lot of them because
they've practiced really hard. And that like, for me also falls under Chuunibyou. Like, yeah.
Totally. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. Like Ao Sekansan kind of does the same thing, like looking at
himself in the mirror and the spell magic. But it's like, he's still young. He's in like an
elementary school. So like, we can't, we don't call it Chuunibyou. No, yeah. He's just a normal
kid that has a good imagination. And like, for the record, I don't want to like hate on Chuunibyou
too hard, both as someone who did it and as like someone who sees other people do it. Like, I think
it's like kind of fun to like imagine you have magical powers or can, you know, use ninjutsu
or something. So like, I, I don't know, I don't find it like that weird or like negative, but it
is very funny often. And it's absolutely kind of cringe and, you know, but I embrace that.
Yeah. Yeah. All right. Would you like to add anything about this episode?
Well, I am definitely looking forward to seeing the rest of Steins Gate. I really want to know
how it ends. I have some theories already, but like, I'm not going to spoil anything. And then
I, I, I hope they don't mess it up so bad that I don't want to see the sequels.
I think that's my main thing. I would really like for it to be so good that like the other
ones are all so good. And I want to see those too. And it's definitely made me think a lot about
what types of time travel might be possible. And, you know, it's, it's definitely playing
with the idea of the multiverse or multiple dimensions or like, you know, different timelines
kind of running in parallel. And I just really enjoy thinking about all that stuff. So if you
also find that interesting, I recommend it. All right. Thank you so much.
エピソードの締め
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