Steins;Gate Episode 3 Discussion

Steins Gate is mentioned for a second time, but supposedly meaning nothing. The MC is annoying without knowing his full back story, I hope his personality is explained soon. He seems to be tweeking. Seems like that satellite crashing into Earth had quite the snow ball effect.

Why would that little girl try to open the machine while it was on? I'm enjoying the pacing of this episode the most of the three so far.

The goofyness of the main character in regards to him doing a kind of pretend play in contrast to the real things that are happening more and more is becomingm a little eerie by now, but I guess that is a slow build up which is intended by the series. In any case the little hints and details about what is happening and the trickle of information is just right to maintain a good pace for this anime in my opinion. The cast has also expanded with Makise now being a member of "the lab", which is quite nice.

The idea of different worldlines is properly introduced here and I got a strong feeling that this will become more important in the future.

Seeing CERN (SERN in the anime) and *chans (@channel) being a theme is oddly nostalgic to me, seeing it now 12 years after release and talking a lot about the LHC when I was still going to school in 2010.

The cliffhanger manifesting the increasing realness of the whole time travel endeavor by revealing how a real person's death has been hidden by CERN is also a very good hook to slowly accelerate the plot.

Excited to watch the next episode already!

Hate the MC so far. I don't understand what SERN is and their importance why do they matter. Loved the All your base are belong to me reference

@xZabuzax

I’m still waiting lol. Made it to episode 7 so far and it still sucks. I won’t drop it just because of how much it’s praised and I want to have a full opinion on it.

But nothing seems to be happening they just coined the name Dmail. Moeka just joined the team. MC is still annoying af. The pacing is so slow and dragged out. (That’s saying a lot since I have seen over 1000 episodes of peak fiction: One Piece). I do like the banter between everyone except the MC.

The characters range from annoying to despicable, the pace is too slow for the main plot and we see far too much of the boring delusions and fantasies of the main character. The time travel plot itself has potential, but what it hints at has been explored much better and deeper in other stories. The straw that broke the camel's back for me was the fact they've used CERN as the "evil organization creating a dystopian future" (very thinly disguised as "SERN", though why even bother since they name their real-life colliders explicitly?). Come on, son.

EDIT: Almost forgot! A 20-ish m3 satellite falling from orbit and still nearly intact by the time it approaches the surface? Not even sort of. And regardless, a 20-ish m3 meteor reaching the surface at the speed and heat it would be after falling through the entire atmosphere? It definitely wouldn't "crash" (more like a slightly rough landing, really) on a single building and barely damaging parts the roof and top floor. It would have made a crater of at the very least the entire block around ground zero.

From 3 episodes there is no way to know how this series explores time travel. You just barely scratched the surface lmao.



And?



Keep watching

Thanks for your reply. I didn't expect to start a big discussion with my initial comment, I simply wanted to share my experience and feelings on this anime at that time. I hadn't written anything on the site before and I wasn't too clear on how to proceed. A review turned out to be a better way to do that, and I've wrote one since. I had completely forgotten about my comment in this episode-specific thread until I've checked my notifications today and saw there were multiple replies. Yours was the only constructive one that didn't insult me, and appreciate that.

Are you saying that if I make it through a few more episodes even though I've strongly disliked the series so far, the interesting elements will start to take over and it might be worth it? I tend to be cautious not to drop something too hastily, but on the flip side I don't want to go through a really bad experience for too long unless the payoff greatly outweighs the bad start. So by default I usually give a series two or three episodes to draw me in, I don't just watch the pilot. Three episodes doesn't seem that tiny to get a feel for a 24-episode series. If I've strongly disliked the first 1/8th it's a safe bet I won't like the rest either.

Having said that, I know a lot of anime series can be inconsistent or unpredictable with their pacing even when they're mostly good as a whole, even more so than western TV series. Some series are great for one season or two and then they drop off a cliff in quality and/or radically change the type of story and show they offer, others do the opposite. The latter is just harder to get into than the former. I would strongly recommend the first half of Death Note, for instance, with a clear warning that the second half might as well be another show altogether and I don't recommend it. It's a bit more of a gamble to follow everyone's recommendation to suffer for the entire first season of The Office (US) because it's supposed to become funny on season 2, though.

Is Steins Gate this type of show in a sense? Would you agree the first few episodes have poor characterization, pacing and dialogue, but you recommend I go past that because this improves at some point? (If yes, knowing around which episode would help). Or is it more a matter of taste and preferences and the elements I find off-putting at the start will remain throughout, but you don't perceive them as negatively as I do?

@LegendMaker



I don't think that the characterization and the pacing is bad at all in the first 3 episodes. The pacing is perfect for a show like this

Steins;Gate has a slow buildup up until episode 12 when there is a turning point and then you realize that every single thing that seemed to be insignificant culminated into that turning point. It's a mystery series where the mystery is unraveled slowly. The writing is not bad. You are just not supposed to understand everything from the get go, but all the pieces will fall into their places as you advance with the story