Steins;Gate:Part Two
Damn you, Stein's;Gate Part 2! Imagine getting up from your bed or couch, looking over your desk for your cell. Time after time this anime had me reaching for my cell. Arggh!!Steins;Gate you are a never-ending prankster who keeps getting me, every turn of the clock. As every little pulsing beat nudges at my psyche I delve more into madness. I'm already angry at you for leaving me on a cliffhanger about a certain young girl, Doo-ta-doo, Mayuri!
Thankfully you pay off Steins:Gate, where so many other animes leave questions, because they think it's cool (it's bad writing) , you solidly give and ending. Getting there however is a long a mysterious filled path. Oh, I liked it, in fact I loved your story and characters. I really have hope for Robtics:Notes from the same people who created you that Funimation already has the rights to.
So let's start off where we were last in the series. The girl who goes Doo-ta-doo like a spawning game character, Mayuri, childhood friend of the mad scientist Okabe has just been gun down by agents of CERN, yeah those guys. Freak out everybody! Just like you shouldn't be getting plutonium from terrorists as Back To The Future tells us, you should know when you brag about really inventing time travel, things go bad.
When bad thing happen you get a great story. No matter how crushing it might it be to our almost thespian speaking Okabe. Okabe of course sends a D-Mail, a text message back in the past via his microwave, to stop poor Mayuri from dying. Mayuri dies. Mayuri dies again and again, almost as though fate now has aligned for her to take a hit. This takes its toll on Okabe. After so many deaths he confesses he can't change it to Kurisu, she figures out how he can, but at a cost. If you watched Part 1 you know other members of his time travel club got to use the time travel text messages to change their lives. Those texts must be erased so the current time line changes enough so Mayuri may live. This means going back and changing each of those messages.
Going through this text killing arc we find out a lot more about the members of the time travel team. There's a lot of shocking moments as revelations about each member who was affected by the d-mail has to lose what they gained by changing time. Don't be to sad as Daru, resident Hacker and Otaku says things only a filthy voice-over artist could think of. I've give credit to the reversion of this story from Funimation, but I have to believe that Daru's voice actor got to come up with some of pervesions he said on his own. There's also a sitcom like date to look forward to an even some Team Rocket like bad guys that had me facing laughter even though a young girls life is on the line.
A switch of who dies happens getting Mayuri off the hook, but this results in Kasuri taking the fall. After all this time we finally find out how she was murdered. All the way back from episode one and the first time traveling text message.
The kicker and my favorite episode of the series was when the main cast went Los Angeles! Yes, the really camet to LA through LAX and of course Okabe was arrested shortly after claiming to be a mad scientist. A video game battle at Staples Center with Daru and Feris, the reason the gang went to LA, led to some more local love scenes. Kasiru shows up in a maid outfit in the LA Convention Center! If you've ever attended AX you'd laugh your head off seeing her and Okabe in the cafeteria section. I hope Funimation has a screening of this episode inside of AX this year. It be so meta! I know the crowd with laugh.
This seems like the best anime to get lost in this year with a great dub cast and story. It's a perfect drama series involving time travel and still has moments that will make you laugh.
