As implied last week, Okabe will try to undo all the d-mails. Like the title of this post suggests, this won’t guarantee Mayuri’s survival, but what has he got to lose? Okabe is essentially given infinite lives in a twisted video game; he can do whatever he wants for as many times as he wants. There doesn’t seem to be any drawbacks to our hero’s constant jumps through time except for maybe his own sanity. Essentially, don’t rage quit, man. The anime has eerily become reminiscent of “Groundhog Day.”

Nyan nyan bleh
It is only natural to revisit Feyris-nyan if Okabe’s going to undo all the d-mails. Hey, at least we’re getting through the lamest storyline first, right? Well, that’s what I thought at first, but Feyris used her d-mail to save her father’s life. Okabe is essentially asking Feyris to choose between a friend and her father and that’s a heavy decision. I’ll have to admit that this mini-story arc could have used an extra episode to really capture the tricky dilemma.

Feyris sends a new text to her father, telling him not to come home.

Unfortunately, the adaptation has a schedule to keep and Feyris makes up her mind all too easily. According to Feyris, her father dying is what “truly happened,” so she agrees to undo her original d-mail. What does “truly happened” mean though? Does the original timeline somehow carry extra weight? This would have been an interesting concept to explore had time permitted, but the anime is moving on and so will we. Let’s see how Okabe will manage to convince a former trap to undo a sex change.

Ghost memories
At Okabe’s persistent behest, even Feyris couldn’t help but experience flashes of her old life, visions and hearings of a world she should have long forgotten. So what’s going on? We think Okabe can retain his memories due to some “reading Steiner” ability, but everyone else seems to have some rudimentary talent in this particular area.

One of Feyris’s visions of the old Akihabara.

In fact, the old memories are starting to interfere with Feyris’s current conception of reality. I guess life in “Steins;Gate” is like pressing down hard with a pencil. You can use an eraser all you want, but an imprint remains for anyone willing to dig deep enough.

“Y-your brain’s a valuable sample, okay?”
Okabe and Kurisu’s exchange at the start of the anime felt so organic and natural. These two are becoming close friends over the current ordeal so it makes sense for Kurisu to have a genuine human concern for Okabe’s safety. Why, then, did the anime have to ruin a good thing by making Kurisu all flustered and embarrassed over a simple utterance of “Take care?”

It’s like the anime slammed the breaks on conventional storytelling just to tell its audience, “Don’t be scared, guys — Kurisu is just being a typical tsundere!” C’mon, can’t we just drop this shit? Can’t we just have our characters express complex human emotions to one another? I guess not — I guess pre-defined tropes and behavioral patterns must always dictate how someone like Kurisu acts.