Okabe-san, you’re a scientist. You should realize by now that the only consistent feature in Mayuri’s multiple deaths is, well, you.

Although it has been a while since I really blogged Steins;Gate, I have been trying to keep up with the show’s weekly offerings (there’s a pun here *wink*). There are a couple reasons why the anime hasn’t engaged me. First, and I think this is the most important reason, I don’t have an emotional connection with the show. The characters don’t grip me by any means. Okabe’s a goofball surrounded by an unlikely cast of hot anime babes these guys aren’t exactly to my taste. That’s not to say the story can’t still be interesting in spite of it all, but only the science fiction remains if the characters are unappealing. In Steins;Gate’s case, that would be time traveling, conspiracy theorizing and all that jazz. These all sound interesting on their own, but this then leads right into my second point: I just knew I could wait until shit really went down to start paying attention.

This seems to be the case for a lot of science fiction stories: they spend much of their time setting the stage and getting viewers acclimated to the premise. Didn’t we, after all, have to wait until the third episode before the characters on the show concluded that the microwave was a time machine? Then we experimented with the microwave — we experimented a lot. We even turned a trap into a girl. Great, that’s neat… wake me up when the show starts.

My detractors will surely object at this point. To them, these slow-burning episodes provide us with invaluable character development… or something — y’know, the same characters I don’t relate to? Some will say that the slow build-up will make the payoff in the second half of the season so much sweeter. While there’s some logic to that, a great finish doesn’t mean the foreplay has to be lame.

So anyway, shit did go down last week — finally — when Mayuri got shot, and they liked it so much, shit got to go down twice more. Okabe takes advantage of some confusion and chaos from Suzuha’s entrance to leap back in time. Armed with his knowledge of Moeka and SERN’s attack, Okabe tells his friends all about… nothing. Which is really damn puzzling because he knows damn well that Suzuha is this ass-kicking lady, but he especially doesn’t enlist her help. Okaaaay, I guess this lanky scientist will save Mayuri alon-

Oh. Somehow, Okabe manages to escape his capturers again… I dunno, magically. The anime just cuts to yet another time leap. This time, surely someone of Okabe’s intelligence will get it right. But again, he goes about his mission alone. While he does get to Mayuri sooner this time, what happens next is, frankly, kinda ridiculous. Okabe takes her to the subway where they await boarding the next train. This just means Nae has to show up outta nowhere to ruin things. Somehow, somehow, Nae manages to trip and fall into Mayuri with enough force to launch her into the air (horizontally, I must add) and right into the path of a train.

Meanwhile, Okabe has the reaction time of a tree sloth. He just stands there slack-jawed, not so much as even sticking an arm out to grab his falling friend. Oh, I don’t expect that he catch her in time, but damn, do something.

Ultimately, I take issue with all this Mayuri murdering. I hope the third time’s the charm and she just stays down. Mm, good ol’ fashioned heartlessness. But really, I never understood her presence in this anime. We have scientists investigating time-traveling, mysterious femme fatales, a shady organization and… a childhood friend in high school who cosplays? Who also works at a maid cafe? Who refers to herself as Mayushii?

It’s as if the creators asked themselves, “How can we make a character’s death sad and tragic with the least amount of effort possible? Oh, I know, let’s make a girl that is just so moe that when we kill her, the audience will be sad no matter what!”

It’s, like, fate!