You Can (Not) Undo (Steins;Gate)

 A Commission for Hunter O’Connell

A lot of conversations I've had involve awkwardly standing
and hoping the other person would speak first.

You ever watch something and realize very quickly that you watched it too late.

This isn’t just me bemoaning the fact that it took me roughly five years to actually watch Steins;Gate, between the time I was commissioned to watch it and when I actually started the damn show. But rather, it’s the sort of show that I would’ve absolutely loved if I watched it back when it came out in 2011, when I was sixteen years old.

 

It’s a good show, don’t get me wrong. The plot is well structured, the character work is charming (if problematically so), and the animation works for what the show is going for. But it’s also not a show for me. There are a number of reasons for this.

 

The most obvious being the gender shit. One of the supporting characters, Urushibara, is very flagrantly a trans woman, such that it’s a major plot point that Urushibara uses time travel to speed up her gender affirmation via ensuring that she was AFAB. There are many works of fiction I love that have problematic relations with trans people (the Morrison/Chase Doom Patrol being an obvious example). But where those works had moments of transcendence and/or were experienced at a point in time where I could overlook the flaw, Steins;Gate is a well-made show that doesn’t transcend in ways that appeal to me now. And, well, they don’t involve plotlines wherein the crux of saving the universe is forcing someone to detransition.

 

The other obvious aspect being the show’s approach sexuality. More specifically, there’s a scene midway through the show where the main character, Okarin, puts himself into a position where it looks like he’s trying to rape an antagonistic figure, Moeka. There is also a running gag that runs out its welcome a bit too quickly in which another supporting character, Daru, asks the various female characters to repeat what they just said in tones of voices that highlight their sexual undercurrent.

 

There’s a degree to which this is to be expected from both an otaku and tech bro landscape. Indeed “Mad science losers try to make their mad science actually work” is a pretty good description of Urbit. And considering the show’s extremely deep state approach to the semi-fictional SERN, the heroic actions of a bunch of conspiracy minded tech nerds has some implications it didn’t in 2011.

 

But, if I’m being honest with myself, I just wasn’t grabbed by the show. There are moments that I liked, scenes where the character dynamics charmed me. I liked the card game that Okarin loses because he only had to play the game. I liked the adversarial romance between Okarin and Kurisu. Mayushii is a delight. And I do rather like the ending, bar the OVA which felt a bit too complete to fully work for me. But for most of the show, I kept asking myself if I could be doing something else.

 

Sorry it took so long to write, and I only had so little to say.