Say it in Red | Episode 51: Steins;Gate

Say It In Red

Readers, Friends, Members of the Scientific Community! You, astute as you are, may recall a moment in the distant past in which Sara and Runa adamantly proclaimed that they would never cover Steins;Gate on the podcast - This memory which some of you may hold is LIVING PROOF of the phenomena which we will henceforth discuss in today's episode. You see, that was an alternate, parallel timeline in which we did not discuss Steins;Gate! Thanks to miracles no smaller than the manipulation of the flow of time itself, and also Sara's carefully curated Steins;Gate Abridged playlist, we have arrived at the present day, present timeline.
This month, Sara and Runa discuss the ins and outs, befores and afters, and the even the erstwhiles of the timeline hopping narrative of Steins;Gate (2009). As part of the Science Adventure series it shares some references to a previous Say it in Red subject: Chaos;Head Noah. In both games you can see characters grounded in the culture and various subcultures of specific regions of Tokyo (Shibuya for Chaos;Head and Akihabara in Steins;Gate) along with characters who engage with internet subcultures and message boards like 4Chan. Where Chaos;Head focused on the protagonist's dysfunction and delusions having an impact on reality itself, Steins;Gate focuses on a small group of university students who inadvertently create not one but two different forms of time travel. The first allows them to send text messages to people in the past, altering the conditions of reality in the present. The second allows them to send their own consciousness back through time to a previous date. Both of these methods rely on a microwave connected to a cell phone receiver.
As the club dabbles (and then fully plunges) into time travel and time alteration, our Protagonist Rintaro Okabe realizes that his dear childhood friend Mayuri seems doomed, perhaps even destined, to die no matter how they try to change the course of history. Throughout all of this, the genius girl who Rintaro is definitely not fond of and intimidated by, Kurisu Makise, is improving their time travel devices and discussing the theories, implications, and repercussions of their meddling with Time. In between all of this, they also find time to flirt while revealing themselves to each be nerds who spend a lot of time arguing about conspiracy theories on 4chan. In the end, however, Rintaro Okabe faces a profound dilemma, one that will force him to undo all of his work and truly consider the potential, and futility, of time travel.
For this episode, we followed a Steins;Gate Abridged playlist which Sara constructed - this playlist cuts out portions of the game, including sections which include significant and prolonged transphobia. We don't discuss that material in detail, but we do reference it as part of our discussions.
As always, if you enjoy our show please consider rating us and leaving a review wherever you listen to podcasts! Our patreon (at patreon.com/sayitinred) also hosts a growing number of bonus episodes, released around the second week of each month. Our most recent episodes include a reflection on the a full overview of Touhou and its many girls, an exploration of Fantasy Romance webcomics and manwha tropes, and most recently: a lengthy expedition into the House of Leaves.
CORRECTIONS:
Runa sometimes does not notice when she mispeaks before an episode goes out. During this episode, when she meant to reference the creators of the Science Adventure series, or the specific writing for Science Adventure games, she sometimes attributed things to Nitroplus instead. To clarify, while Nitroplus was involved with these games, it's more accurate to attribute these things to the core creative staff specific to each game rather than Nitroplus as a whole.
Content Warnings for this episode:
00:51:30 to 53:00 - Discussion of a character route th