Great Visual Novel Marketing – Steins;Gate 0 Mid-Season

So I’m certain that when you Bing or Google “Cliffhanger” you get something like a definition or a link to the 1993 movie starring Sylvester Stallone. Adjacent to this should be a link to the Steins;Gate 0 anime. Just every single episode end has me wanting to go and play the visual novel to find out WHAT HAPPENS NEXT??? Seriously, even though I haven’t finished the first visual novel (but I did watch it) I’m looking at this link as I write the article and debating jumping right into it. https://store.steampowered.com/app/825630/STEINSGATE_0/ <Insert BAYOG Affiliate Link Here> But in all seriousness, this show has me on pins and needles each week and it kills me to have to wait to see what insanity is coming up next.

After @cmdrcluckcluck covered episode 2, we see Okabe toeing the line and interacting with a very accurate recreation of his love in the form of an AI, Amadeus. Mayuri of course dislikes this and the show kicks into Christmas time where a happy-go-lucky Christmas Party kicks in and the lab staff and friends invite everyone including Maho Hiyajo, who catches Mayuri running away from Okabe on the roof and catches him talking to Amadeus, then scolding him not to fall in love with an AI. Okabe then kicks into a slight PTSD/Reading Steiner and we wrap the episode with him freaking the hell out. And so begins our aforementioned trend of episodes ending on high-drama moments and we wonder what happened to cause such an episode.

We then have our dear Okabe being hit with an alternate universe world line in the middle of a war then jumping back to the rooftop with Maho. Of course with this bit of curiosity where we wonder why Reading Steiner got triggered, the show carries on and we find out that during her time travel adventures, Daru’s daughter Suzuha lost a companion back in 1998. In an attempt to find her a dozen years later, the team aims to contract out a private investigator, and who answers the posting? Good old Moeka Kiryu, the Rounder working for SERN in an alternate world line that had stormed the lab and murdered Mayuri. This mini-heart attack for Okabe is where we leave off episode four, and is stabilized a bit as Okabe rationalizes that in this world line, she should leave them alone and not come in guns blazing to kill them. The quiet and stoic Moeka is then informed of the details of Kagari Shiina and seeks to find a girl missing for 12 years. Moeka is unable to find her but finds that apparently someone else is looking for her and the episode ends with a woman looking very much like Kurisu is brought to the lab by Ruka. This woman is later identified as the missing Kagari Shiina by Suzuha after passing out upon hearing Mayuri’s “Too-to-roo.” The most recent episode has Okabe telling Moeka that they’ve found Kagari and Kagari apparently has amnesia and remembers nothing about her life. We have a beautifully funny moment with Professor Leskinen looking for “shamans” while he really means shrine maidens such as the beautiful Ruka.

The episode ends on a real cliffhanger where a masked band of gunmen storm the lab and trigger a legitimate PTSD moment in poor Okabe. The varying callbacks to Steins;Gate and other world lines have me really enjoying the show as I try to recount what happened before and am just really entertained week by week as the show manages to tow a line between comedy and tragedy. I’m honestly just confused about a number of things that I’m chomping at the bit to find out about, such as if Kagari is Kurisu, or Kurisu and Okabe’s kid in the future, or not at all related to Kurisu and the show is just trolling the life out of us. I know Marc is eagerly watching this show and so am I, to the point I’m about to buy the damn visual novel even though I won’t have the time to play it. How about you? Enjoying the show and keeping up or are you one of the poor sods still wondering why Kurisu’s dead? Let me know below and check out some of our other articles here!