「循環座標のアルタイル」 (Junkan Zahyou no Arutairu)
“Altair of the Cyclic Coordinate: Time-leap Machine”

It’s always interesting to speculate when a series announces a delay mid-stream. That’s exactly what’s happened with Steins;Gate 0, which will be pushing back Episode 20 until September 5. It’s clearly nothing pre-planned or related to a preemption, as a repeat of this week’s ep is airing in its place. Production issues would always be the first suspect, but while the production values for “0” have been slightly uneven generally, I haven’t noticed them getting any worse. In any event, we’ll be waiting for two weeks for the next episode, and they’ve left us with quite a cliffhanger under those circumstances.

The good news is- well, there’s a couple chunks of it, really. First off there were no real clunkers this week (though Okarin being able to sneak up to the roof of Radio Kaikan was a bit silly), and hopefully we can put the ugliness of that whole rooftop shootout behind us. Second, we finally got an episode that really looked and sounded like Steins;Gate. True, if one scratched beneath the surface just a little there were some off notes here, but generally things seemed to be on a more familiar footing.

As S;G goes, nothing could be more familiar ground than a mention of SERN. They haven’t been strictly relevant this time around very much, but that changes now that the imperative is the completion of the Time Leap Machine ASAP. We’re back in serious beat the clock mode – though Okabe’s little trip to the Radio building did cast doubt on the idea that Mayuri and Suzuha died when that missile struck. Still, Okabe isn’t relying on that thread of hope – he commits to completing the machine at last, which means he fills in the missing pieces in Daru and Maho’s knowledge of how to do that.

With the help of a kawaii little Swiss black hole and an ugly 42″ CRT, that machine does get finished despite Maho’s continuing self-doubt, and despite that doubt Okarin subjects himself to being the guinea pig. He knows all this works in theory of course, but it’s still a brave leap in more ways than one. He ends up getting back to the roof just moments before Leskinen’s shock troops arrive, and Suzuha and Mayuri actually convince him to let them leap this time – but events repeat, and the machine is struck by a missile just when making the time jump once again. Okarin even injures the same leg that was shot by Suzuha.

Is the machine being destroyed a convergence point, as Rintarou theorizes? It’s certainly possible, but with all his safe choices having been taken off the table, he’s fully committed to risking everything once again. Whether “Project Arclight” has survived or not, in Steins;Gate it always falls on Okabe to be the one to save the day (a whole bunch of days, in fact), and there’s no reason to think it’ll be any different this time around. We’ll just have to wait a little longer than expected to find out.

4 Comments

  1. While I’ve been pretty tolerant of the show and giving it the benefit of the doubt, the past couple of episodes really strained what I was willing to put up with, so I’m glad we got down to bare tacks, so to speak. I liked Daru’s cry of outrage at Okabe’s selfishness and hypocrisy in deciding if the machine should be completed or not. To be fair to him, he’s the one that has to handle the burden of watching people getting hurt, maimed, or killed, getting injured, and having pick himself up to be ready to go through it all again until he gets the desired timeline. Draining probably doesn’t even being to describe it. We also confirmed what we all most likely knew that Reyes is the one in the skin suit. What I didn’t know was that she was there the whole time (probably murdered off screen the first time around) and that she was running counter to Leskinen. Very interested to see if she can be bargained with , or if her death is also a convergence point once she’s on the roof. (will laugh if everything hinges on saving Reyes and she was the true heroine of the 0 route.) All in all, I am curious to see how this pans out in the coming handful of episodes.

    The Walker
  2. If the destruction of the time machine, while it is taking off with the same two onboard every time is convergence than anything no matter how stupid happening on the roof is explained by convergence. If you were ok with convergence in the original you have to remind yourself of that and accept it now. Rintarou getting off the roof is just like the first season, it happens basically by magic there was no logical way he kept escaping to find a still intact time leap machine in the first season.
    I was not a fan of convergence first season and am not that much of a fan of it now but still loved the first season. But I love Star Wars even though infantry tactics there are pre-machine gun and horrible.
    I do not know if there was any delay in doing the time leap machine.

    RedRocket

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *