Columnist Andrew Osmond goes back in time to discuss one of the most acclaimed TV anime series, the time warping show about an eclectic group of individuals that can send text messages to the past.
January 16 will see the American cinema release of , animated by Japan’s Studio 4℃ and distributed by GKIDS (venue details here).It tells the story of a woman caught in a violent alien attack who finds herself in a time loop, reliving the event over and over, Groundhog Day-style.
The source Japanese novel was previously turned into a Hollywood film, 2014’s with Tom Cruise.Next week’s column will feature an interview with Studio 4℃’s founder, Eiko Tanaka.This week, though, I’m looking back at the most celebrated time-bending anime of all, .
Americans can find the series on Crunchyroll, while British readers can watch the English-dubbed version on Prime Video.To see the shadow it casts over anime fandom, just check the “top anime” listings on both and .Broadcast in 2011, turns 15 this April, yet it’s still ensconced as a firm fan favorite.
Yes, the semicolon in the name is part of the official title, so get used to it.Also, for anyone who’s wondering about (also on Crunchyroll, including in Britain), that’s a different series, a quasi-sequel which assumes viewers know the original, so you shouldn’t start there.I’ll discuss it later.
Steins;Gate 101 Here are some more informative names I’d suggest for is one.Another would be More prosaically, there’s (and anyone who doesn’t know what Akihabara is, click here.) Akihabara is the show’s setting, while the mad scientist is Okabe, a paranoid eccentric youth trying to crack time travel in his cramped apartment with the help of his friends, a microwave, a mobile phone and a heap of bananas.Okabe towers in his lab coat, which helps no end when he declaims in florid megalomaniac-ese.
He insists he’s watched by a shadowy organization, and conducts theatrical one-sided conversations with his mobile phone.He’s a larger-than-life eccentric who could play a certain time-traveler.Of course, a mad scientist needs his assistants.
At the outset, there are just two: Daru, an archetypal male geek with very useful hacking skills, and Mayumi, an equally archetypal cute girl who works at a maid café and greets everyone with a cheery “Too-too-roo!” It’s the show’s top catchphrase; I have a friend who’s made it his ringtone.Time travel stories traditionally come front-loaded with clues about what will happen later (and earlier). opens with Okabe disrupting a university lecture on time-travel, before he encounters a beautiful red-haired girl.Minutes later, he sees the same girl lying in a pool of blood.
Then all of this “unhappens,” with only a bemused Okabe recalling the erased events.He may be eccentric, but was all this truly his delusion? Now the girl, Kurisu, is alive and well, giving her own lecture, demolishing the outraged Okabe with conclusive proof that time travel is impossible.Yet back in his room, Okabe seems to be somehow making a breakthrough with his amateur lash-up (the bananas are integral).
Even if he can’t to the past, it transpires, he can still send time-travelling text messages - and boy, the things he could he rewrite… Complicating things further, Kurisu shows up in Okabe’s room.Forced to concede there’s something in his eccentric experiments, she and Okabe enter into a fiery pairing of Alpha egos.More characters join the time team until there’s quite an ensemble, including a very odd girl who talks through texts, and an online contact who may be from the (or at least ) future.
Maybe time-travel isn’t around the next corner; perhaps the next corner has uprooted itself and is visiting the present.But one of the group will make Okabe’s world a nightmare, taking the self-styled mad scientist to the brink of madness.Much of ’s reputation comes from how it changes through its 24-part length.
For much of its first half, it’s a character-led comedy, a compelling mystery, approaching science-fiction more like books than most movies.It’s about people doing experiments in dowdy surroundings, with dull-seeming results, until something goes quietly right and the world changes.One precedent is the 2004 live-action indie film , but is far less austere.
Its blend of humor and science-fiction is light years from the viciousness of .The anime sends bits of screwball and romantic comedy coalescing irreverently around intriguing questions and theories that someone’s bothered to think out.It’s closer to Connie Willis’ wonderful 1997 time-travel comedy novel, “To Say Nothing of the Dog.” The premise of sending through time echoes Gregory Benford’s 1980 novel “Timescape.” Okabe wades deeper into his experiments, only dimly aware deep he’s getting.
Can he change the past, without changing himself? Is there any way to send through time? There are more mysteries.Is anyone else working on time travel? Is there anything in the ravings of a bulletin-board dweller named John Titor, who claims to be an actual time-traveler? Titor, by the way, is based on a “real” online personage, while the show also brings in CERN (“misspelled” in familiar anime style as SERN), home to the Large Hadron Collider.CERN plays a similar role in to Area 51 in other SF yarns.
The mix’n’matching of conspiracy theories has echoes of the 1998 anime series .Those two anime share a proclivity for blank white skies and subdued colors and interiors to suggest insulated, highly subjective viewpoints.By the end of ’s first half, I was thoroughly intrigued but not fully sold.
“The cute girlfriend-from-childhood [Mayumi] is from anime central casting; the geek humor is often crass and sexist,” I complained in a magazine review.I also thought the series fell short as “proper” science-fiction.“Okabe is woefully dim about the possible effects of his experiments.
Has this guy never read Ray Bradbury’s ‘A Sound of Thunder’?” I griped.Looking back, perhaps that was unfair.It’s easy to forget Okabe is meant to be only 18, and a comically immature 18-year-old at that.
He exemplifies a Japanese archetype, a , an adolescent fantasist inventing his own world where he’s the tragic hero.The year after , Kyoto Animation used the idea for all-out comedy in its 2012 series The idea also underpins Shunji Iwai’s delightful rotoscoped film, in 2015.There’s nothing gendered about ; the fantasists in both latter titles are female.
Tipping Point I’ll minimize details about how develops, though that’s why it’s so famous.Like or , there’s a change in the story midway through.It’s also like and , testing the hero’s ego and self-image to the breaking point, torturing him with his fakeness.
Given Okabe was a performance from the start, it’s especially effective here.Briefly, something terrible happens and Okabe can’t it happening, no matter how often he tries.Soon Okabe is undone, all his boldness melting as time stops obeying him and sends monstrous killers to destroy his life, over and over.
Now able to leap through time, Okabe desperately redoes events.He repeatedly wipes his friends’ actions and memories, and becoming terribly, hellishly alone, seeing and doing dreadful things.Eventually he must plead with his friends to make great, painful sacrifices to put things right.
But what price must pay? Effectively ’s second half is a new version of the show, but it keeps faith with the first.It doesn’t discard the characters it’s set up; it cares about them more and makes you care more too.It doesn’t discard the plot but starts to reverse it ingeniously.
Having led Okabe to the middle of a maze by an easy path, it challenges him to get out again by a far bloodier, harder route.It’s gripping, sometimes brilliantly realized in bravura storyboarding – the end of part 12 is breathtaking - though neither it nor the plot convolutions obstruct the character drama.Mercifully, it’s not dark.
The show even finds a way to do a “comedy” episode where Okabe must go on his first-ever date, though that still has a heart-rending core (and it’ll be many viewers’ favorite episode).The plot ideas are often familiar, which doesn’t stop you caring as s characters endure brain-bending dilemmas and exquisite agonies.Of course they’re milked for all they’re worth – a central strand will remind any fan of “The City on The Edge of Forever.” At times I exclaimed, “Oh, come !” as the knife is twisted that extra bit in a anime way.
But nearly all ’s characters are vividly resolute, refusing to be victims, taking moral decisions in the knowledge of what they’ll cost.Ultimately, the series is like most good anime; it celebrates friendship and people at their best.Many time-travel stories keep their supporting cast ignorant that they have someone in their midst who’s rewriting their life stories.
In the non-travelers what’s being done to them, and keep their courage and values even as the universe transforms round their heads.You could subject to a flow-chart dissection, finding all the cheats and flubs in its logic, but it’d be a soulless exercise.Apart from the obvious retort – logic fails are part of the time-travel genre! – what’s important is the show’s emotional course, with Okabe and his friends being tested, sometimes tortured, and finally ennobled.
The anime’s paradoxes drive the characters, never overshadowing them.On the way we get answers to everything from why Mayuri calls herself Okabe’s “hostage,” to the question of whoJohn Titor.More surprising is how the show becomes heartrendingly romantic without cloying.
One magic voice-over monologue, blending love, Relativity and masterful storyboarding, deserves to make any “Best Anime Quotes.” Not all viewers will like who ends up with whom, and you can laugh at the contrivances, like the harem trope of Okabe being simultaneously supported by his angelic best female friend by the girl he really loves, and how Okabe remains remarkably short-sighted whenever the plot needs him to be.But the series still builds brilliantly, pulling off its resolution with a panache to make any director proud, including a startlingly painful, flesh-tearing climax.No, no, the fingers! In fact, had two credited directors.
One was Hiroshi Hamasaki, whose other director credits range from the horrifically disturbing (2007) to the teen timeslip series (2016).The other director was Takuya Sato, who’d later direct the intriguing, gay-themed portal fantasy (2021).The series was animated by White Fox, which would make another superb time-bending show, As for ’s insulated look, the Art Director was Koji Eto, who’d later move to the ufotable studio, rack up multiple credits on and become Art Director on the blockbuster .
One more significant name is Jukki Handa, the lead writer, who’s an industry mainstay on franchises as diverse as and the now-returning ice-dancing series .Handa adapted not from a manga or a book series, but from a Visual Novel game for PCs and consoles.(The game’s title sequence for the PlayStation 3 and PS Vita is above.) It was made by a pair of game developers, 5pb.
(now renamed Mages) and Nitroplus.In a Visual Novel, the player works through a multi-choice branching storyline, driven by voices and static illustrations.However, if your choices lead to a bad end, you can try again like a time-traveler.
The characters in the game were voiced by the same Japanese actors as in the anime version, including Mamoru Miyano (Light in ) as Okabe.Related media had several anime follow-ups, none remotely as significant as the original, though I liked them.The first was an “extra” episode of released to video, and designated Episode 25.
Unfortunately, it’s not on Crunchyroll and other streamers as of writing, though it’s included on some home editions of the series.A sequel feature film followed in 2013, heftily named .This also doesn’t seem available on American streamers at present, though home editions are available.
(For British readers, Prime Video offers the English dub.) To be clear, this is a new story with new animation, and I enjoyed it as a deft spin on the show’s characters and ideas.I reviewed the film for , though my write-up has huge spoilers for the original series.2018 saw the kind-of sequel series , which imagines what if the climax in the last episodes of the original had resolved differently.
Viewers were prepped for this by a brilliant marketing trick.The original was repeated on Japanese TV in 2015, but this time it ended with an altered version of Episode 23, showing where events diverged to set up the new series.The modified episode was designated “23β” – again it’s not on streamers, but it’s on at least some home editions.
In any case, viewers of the original would have no trouble picking up the changed history which underlies , which is available on Crunchyroll.Again the series was animated by White Fox, with Hanada as lead writer, working from a sequel Visual Novel.All the voice cast returned.
The director was different (Kenichi Kawamura), but perhaps more significantly the Art Director changed too, with Takeshi Kodaka replacing Koji Eto.The art style of is far less distinctive than its predecessor, only drawing attention to the dubiously revised designs (ridiculously buxom girls) and largely bland animation (with occasional lovely moments).I won’t spoil the story.
On the one hand, it’s a patently inferior sequel.The comedy is often tiresome.There are many new mysteries, but they feel disjointed in a series that’s often slack, lumpy and arbitrary, especially in the middle episodes where the first had ignited so vividly.
On the other hand, I found easily worthwhile.It’s still a pleasure to see the loveable characters once more, largely as they were, though Okabe is very different, haunted by things no-one else perceives, like the luckless hero of the recent .One strand about a loved one recreated by AI has some of the pathos of the “Be Right Back” episode of the British live-action anthology .
A different lovers’ reunion in an alternate reality is devastatingly good.Thank heaven, the show catches fire in its later episodes, which come close to the original.Threads and characters we feared were forgotten are brought back, even as the show leaps into preposterously epic territory.
Some viewers may complain the series gets more like than but the character work is often marvelous, with very surprising players getting their chance to shine.As with the original, the rousing ending may not be logically watertight, but it makes sense, and it certainly makes sense.If you loved , I’d also suggest trying two comparable shows, though neither has time travel.
One is the 2013 series , on Crunchyroll.As the semi-colon suggests, it’s loose-linked to , based on another Visual Novel in the same franchise.Adapted to anime by Production I.G, it has another eccentric club of youngsters, working together on another hare-brained project.
The main setting is the (real) Japanese island of Tanegashima, where the club builds an anime-style giant robot.The series stirs in a cute-girl “ghost,” radio waves, lost anime episodes and world conspiracies.There are many problems with , as I’d call it, from obnoxiously wacky early episodes to a finale that’s incoherent by even anime’s standards.
Yet I enjoyed it nonetheless.“Even as the plot turns to doo-doo,” I wrote in my review, “the last episodes still resonate; with the strengths of island communities where little can be big, with the positive force of healthy fantasy in battle with wacko death-cult worldviews… And the emotional arcs of the characters we care for end tearfully and well, which is good enough.” The other show I’d suggest is on Netflix.The 2021 series never really worked as an animated Godzilla, but it’s much better as a -esque celebration of teen misfit prodigies, where preposterous plot complexities are geek gags in themselves.
is the kind of show where a girl genius who’s full of gauche charm pores over the scribbles of a vanished mad scientist, while she and her AI robot companion talk earnestly about super calculators which might theoretically exist, and which might reverse time and destroy reality.For fans, there’s one word for this: home.Andrew Osmond is a British author and journalist, specialising in animation and fantasy media.
His email is [email protected].
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