You know it just wouldn’t be Steins;Gate if someone didn’t loose it. In fact, I’m pretty surprised at how well everyone’s been keeping it together so far. However, now that Kagari has regained some of her childhood memories, she seems adamant to regress right back to said childhood. And why not, she’s earned her breakdown. She deserves a little rest from sanity…
As far as delusions go, Kagari’s sudden arrested or even backwards development is harmless enough. It’s even a little cute and it’s bringing out the best in everyone that’s rallying all their compassion to care for the suddenly earnest 22 year old child. Even Such is acting the part of the bickering bug sister and loosening up just a touch. That is until she realizes that there are some differences in her memories and Kagari’s.
It was so long ago and Kagari was a traumatized little girl at the time. She could easily just be misremembering things. But in Steins;Gate 0 , it’s dangerous to disregard these little anomalies.
Once again dear friends we’ve been foolishly operating on a lot of assumptions. At least I have… I sort of took it for granted that the Kagari we saw in last episodes end tag flashback was the same Kagari we know now, that that entire timeline is the one we are currently following. I also just figured Kagari had been hanging out on this timeline for the past 12 years…biding her *time*. But it’s not like the show ever confirmed that. She could have been zipping back and forth everywhen for all we really know.
This isn’t the first time Steins;Gate 0 has been highlighting inconsistencies in people’s recollections either. After what seemed like reading Steiner (I said seemed, we haven’t figured out the changes yet) Amadeus and Okabe didn’t have the same version of the pas week. Okabe’s memories of Kurisu also don’t quite line up with Maho’s timeline. Arguably, Okabe may not be the most reliable source of information but neither he nor Mayuri remember singing that song as children. More assumptions here… We are counting on Reading Steiner activating every time the timeline adjusts but why? Do we know for a fact that it will always affect Okabe in a noticeable way? What if he’s sleeping? How many timelines have we been seeing so far this season. At least two but maybe more, no?
The discrepancies are slowly piling up and there has to be an explanation behind it all. Did you know that a synonym for discrepancy is “divergence”? Just sayin…
One of the things I’ve always loved about Steins;Gate, is how it uses memories as currency. These fleeting abstract little treasures take on such a deep meaning. Okabe’s only real distinction is that he can hold onto his memories, his crime is failing to protect his friends’ memories. These become almost tangible. Forgotten pasts that never existed, aborted futures no one will know about. Memories are stolen, erased, replaced and no it seems potentially taken by force. What’s to say they couldn’t have been implanted?
There’s a Japanese movie I love called After Life. The basic premise is that after you die, you have to chose one memory and it’s the only thing you “take” with you to the next place. I always cherished that idea. The concept that your entire life boils down to one memory or that really, as long as you have one good/interesting/happy moment to remember, then you’ve won. It’s the only accomplishment that has any true meaning. Memories are the greatest treasure we can have.
So when Steins;Gate mistreats memories, carelessly trades them for magic beans or jumbles them all together in one big pile, making it difficult to tell one from the other, it takes that same notion to grim new heights.
You know, I was sure I had already told you guys all this. The currency bit, the parallels to After Life, but when I tried to find the post again on my blog, it was nowhere to be seen. Maybe I dreamt it? Memories man…worthless!
If there’s one thing I know for sure from this fantastic episode, is that clones have names that start with a “K”. Also, OF COURSE Moeka drives like a maniac. Somehow, this made perfect sense to me. Almost like I already knew it but had forgotten…
I took these caps on the Mac. Can you tell the difference?
