Oh god. Not the cliff-hangers again?! The end of this episode promises many frustrating weeks of waiting what’s going to happen next. Seriously, the end of this episode made me really hungry to see what happens next.
I loved this episode. It was pretty much nothing but Okarin experimenting with making simple changes to the past, some of which failed and some of which succeeded. The ones that did succeed kept taking things a bit further, though, all in ways that seem pretty strange at first. Why did a simple message to change cell phones prevent that cell phone woman to join Okarin? Or did she change something else and just didn’t show it to people? Also, the idea of using pagers to send messages seventeen years back into the past, on something as vague changing genders.
Also, eight episodes in, and I have to say that I really like the cast. Sure, they have their annoying moments,but they’re very well balanced together, filling in for each others’ flaws. I’m usually not into characters doing random things unless I find the characters interesting, and that’s exactly the case here: even when they’re just shopping for bread, I’m interesting in what these characters are doing. This episode in particular just kept juggling its characters around, showing a bit of all of them.
There’s one thing that just keeps catching my attention though, and that especially stands out while making screenshots: this is one series that doesn’t care about consistency in its drawings. In fact, the entire season is full of distorted faces. Especially in the post-quake era it just shows how difficult it is to consistently make the faces of your characters expressive and believable. The shows that do this the best out of this spring season are Hyouge Mono and Ano Hana, by the way.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
I don’t know if you realised this but I think they made a mistake in this episode…They sent Ruka’s message only 5 days into the past (120 hours). Not 17 years ago which would be 148920 hours…Or am I missing something?
Oh yeah, and I may be wrong, but I suspect John Titor is actually Amane.
“The ones that did succeed kept taking things a bit further, though, all in ways that seem pretty strange at first. Why did a simple message to change cell phones prevent that cell phone woman to join Okarin?”
I’m thinking of the butterfly effect:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
from the wiki page “The butterfly effect is a common trope in fiction when presenting scenarios involving time travel and with “what if” cases where one storyline diverges at the moment of a seemingly minor event resulting in two significantly different outcomes.”
On another subject,I’m surprised I still havn’t seen you use the term “moe” in relation with stein gate when it’s pretty much a male lead surrounded by moe girls.
This was probably the weakest episode thus far,IMO.
Not many fresh jokes and the whole sex change thing was a little ridiculous.
I really was impressed by this episode. I think they used the trap well (I’ll even say in a fresh and unexpected way), and it has me wondering what happened to Shining Finger (AKA Cell Phone Girl).
Art aside, this anime’s got a great story going for it. And as for the time travel and the Butterfly Effect, I think that’s what happened when Moeka sent her D-mail. In all likelihood, she didn’t send the one she said she would, she probably sent a completely different message. That’s where the change stems from.
I would like to point out that its not JUST Moeka who disappeared from the room after that change.
There’s no IBN5001 in the room now either. 🙂
@LG no you’re actually wrong there. . .but I cant say anymore on that subject…
I agree that Moeka might have changed the contents of her mail. The whole sex change was pretty much ridiculous. Chromosomes determine the sex of an embryo, not food. Surely, Kurisu and Kyouma should have known that already. But again, they might have and just didn’t want to disappoint Ruka. Anyway, been ages since I’ve seen an episode that made me want to watch the next episode right away. Same thing happened to DConan616. Aargh.. the horrible waiting.
One might, if feeling charitable, posit that the idea was that phytoestrogens from vegetables could influence the apparent gender by causing complete androgen insensitivity, which he may already have a mild case of due to his apparent transexualism. Which is just some technobabble I cobbled together, because redirecting main power from the penis to the forward mammaries wasn’t subtle enough.
Actually it was clearly said in the episode that Okabe and co know that the whole vegetable thing is rediculous and can’t work, They agreed to the experiment because the knew it can’t work
I loved this episode, it was funny and the cliffhanger is making me want more! However… I haaaaaaate Mayuri and her “do do do” every time she sees someone. I’ve never hated a character more since the little girl from Umineko. The gender thing was stupid and wouldn’t work, but I think Okabe just wanted to send another message back to see what would happen.
“Japanese… do you speak it?” rofl
The longer I watch this show, the more I get addicted to those rather inventive names Okarin creates for other people (“Mister Braun”, “Cel Seven” etc.). For some reason I can’t get them out of my mind.