Chapter 171 - A Masterpiece
On the second attempt, Kōren boarded the time machine with Suzuha and returned to that very day once again.
The first thing they did was go to the gashapon machine and pull out the limited-edition metal Upa before Shiina, in this world line, could get it. That way, when her turn came, Shiina would only draw a plastic Upa.
Later, after she dropped that plastic Upa, Makise's father would pick it up and place it together with Makise's research paper. And because there would be no metal object among the documents, the airport security alarm would not be triggered during the plane fire, meaning Makise's paper would no longer be preserved by chance.
As long as that paper burned away, the time machine would never be created in the future.
And if the time machine was never created, the world war waiting ahead could be prevented.
The story continued to move forward.
The Kōren who had crossed countless cycles returned to that time and met Makise again. Before leaving, he gave her only one sentence.
"I will save you."
Everything looked exactly the same as what had happened in the first episode.
There was only one difference.
A tiny, almost invisible difference.
And yet that tiny difference would completely alter the direction of the world.
When they reached the room where Makise was supposed to be attacked, the Kōren who had endured the loops hid inside once more.
The stun gun was ready.
The fake blood prop was ready.
Yuna felt her heart tighten.
Would it work?
Would Makise truly be saved this time?
Or…
Would she still die?
Then, inside the anime, an accident happened.
The blood prop the protagonist had brought with him had been purchased too long ago. It had clotted and become unusable.
And at that exact moment, the conflict between Makise and her father erupted.
When his own daughter accused him of trying to steal her paper, the doctor lost all reason.
Kōren looked down at his own hands and made a decision.
"Stop!"
He rushed out and stopped Makise's father.
More than that, he deliberately provoked him. He faced the man holding the short knife with no defense at all, as though he were intentionally giving him an opening.
Then came the next scene.
Yuna 's eyes widened.
Faced with the attack, Kōren did not dodge.
He did not even try to protect himself.
He simply allowed the blade to pierce into his body.
Blood spilled across the floor.
After the burst of violence, Makise's father finally snapped back to his senses. Then, overcome by panic, he fled with Makise's paper in hand, like a man who had committed a crime and no longer knew how to turn back.
So that was it…
Yuna instantly understood the protagonist's intention.
If the fake blood had failed because fate had created an accident to interfere with his plan, then there was still another way to recreate the image of Makise lying in a pool of blood.
If fake blood would not work, he would use real blood.
Makise absolutely could not be injured. Under the convergence of fate, any wound, any crisis, any danger that reached her would most likely evolve into the result of her death.
So the pool of blood in that room had to come from someone else.
And that someone was Kōren.
Makise, terrified after seeing Kōren stabbed by her own father while trying to save her, picked up the phone and began calling an ambulance.
It was at that moment that Kōren raised the stun gun in his hand and knocked Makise unconscious.
Then, with his own fingers, he tore open the wound in his body even further, forcing the bleeding to worsen, making the pool of blood spread wider across the floor.
"Ah…"
The trembling in the seiyuu's voice made Yuna 's whole body go cold.
Did this scene really need to be this realistic?
How much must that have hurt?
Shaking, Kōren moved Makise's unconscious body and placed her inside the blood he himself had spilled.
At that moment, from the surface alone, the scene looked identical to the image from the first episode.
Makise, stabbed and collapsed in a pool of blood.
But the difference was that, in the first episode, Makise had truly died.
In episode twenty-four, Makise had only been stunned and laid down in the blood.
In reality, she was alive.
A numbing current seemed to race across Yuna 's entire body.
Her mouth fell open.
The solution seemed simple.
But without the reminder from the future Kōren, who could possibly have thought of doing this?
Deceiving his "past self" was only meant to ensure the existence of the "self who now wanted to save Makise." And only if that "self who wanted to save Makise" existed could she survive. Only then could the world be guided toward the Steins;Gate world line, the one where she too could live.
Hidden in the shadows with Suzuha, the Kōren who had crossed the loops watched the rookie Kōren of that point in time push open the door to the room.
That was where the dream had begun.
The rookie Kōren saw Makise lying in a pool of blood, and just like in the first episode, he fled on instinct, hollow-eyed and shattered, as if his soul had been torn away.
The background music became gentle and sorrowful.
Watching the anime, Yuna and countless anime fans across Japan felt an indescribable emotion rise inside them.
In the anime, the looped Kōren secretly watched his inexperienced self. His gaze became soft, yet firm.
Then his inner monologue sounded.
Good luck. What begins now will be the longest and most important three weeks of your life.
It was advice offered silently by the future self to the past self.
The looped Kōren knew better than anyone how cruel all of this would be for his inexperienced self.
If he could, he would never want to go through any of it. He would never want to watch Shiina, the person he treasured most, die before his eyes hundreds of times. He would never want to fall in love with a girl only to let her die in the past because of his own choice.
But if he wanted to save them both, then this was the despair he had to cross.
Yuna 's eyes reddened.
She remembered every part of the story she had watched over the past half year.
How could anyone call that three weeks?
It had been hundreds of three weeks.
Witnessing Shiina's death again and again. Falling in love with Makise across countless loops. Parting from Makise. And now, finally saving Makise, guiding the world line into Steins;Gate.
After that, no one would remember any of it.
Everyone would simply live on peacefully, as they always had.
The future would no longer be a world war that killed 5.7 billion people. Nor would it be the desperate utopia ruled by SERN, where half the global population died, including Shiina, Makise, and Hashida.
Damn it.
How could KantokuSora make a story like this feel so romantic?
On the rooftop in the anime, the looped Kōren and Suzuha activated the time machine for the return trip.
At that moment, the world line shifted violently.
It left the Beta world line, where Makise would die, and jumped to the Steins;Gate world line, where neither Makise nor Shiina would die.
With the world line changed, in the Steins;Gate reality where the time machine was never invented, Suzuha would never come to this era either.
So after sending Kōren back to his own point in time, she and the time machine dissolved into nothingness along with the shift of the world line.
In the end, everyone forgot those long three weeks.
Only Kōren remembered how great a sacrifice he had paid to recover this ordinary world.
The final part of the episode showed a surging crowd. A lonely world where no one remembered what had once happened.
Amid the flow of people, Kōren brushed past the red-haired girl.
"I finally found you."
Makise's eyes widened.
"We meet again, Christina."
There was tenderness in Kōren's eyes.
"How many times do I have to tell you? My name is Makise, not Christina!" Makise snapped back immediately, flustered and irritated.
But almost at once, she realized something was wrong.
How many times?
Since when?
She had clearly only met him for the second time. So why did the name Christina feel so strangely familiar?
The moment Yuna saw that, her tears broke free.
Those were the ordinary little exchanges the two of you shared in the Alpha world line.
All of this was the choice of Steins;Gate.
After that final line, a sentence that lingered endlessly in the mind, episode twenty-four of Steins;Gate came to an end.
Yuna leaned back against her chair, empty inside, quietly savoring those twenty-four clean, precise episodes with no wasted movement at all.
After countless loops, he had finally saved her.
Compared with the resets in Re:Zero, this left an even deeper, more unforgettable emotion carved into the heart.
There was also that unique satisfaction of having to think through the plot, connect the clues, follow every detail, and finally watch the answer unfold with absolute clarity.
Two words surfaced in Yuna 's heart.
"A masterpiece."
And then came another question.
If episode twenty-four had already brought the story to this point, then what about episode twenty-five?
What kind of story would episode twenty-five tell?
At that moment, on the forums, every anime fan who had just finished watching episode twenty-four of Steins;Gate had completely lost control.
"Kōren is a real man. Holy hell."
"I'm crying so hard. He did all of that, but the assistant doesn't remember any of it."
"Doesn't remember at all? I'm not so sure. In the Alpha world line, the assistant clearly said she could dream about key details from other world lines. It wasn't very clear, but she did have impressions. Like at the end of episode twenty-four, the moment she hears the name Christina, she reacts immediately. That proves the Makise from the Beta line still has some déjà vu-like memories."
"So does that mean episode twenty-five might explore that side of things?"
"Most likely. The main plot is already finished, and the Steins;Gate world line has already been reached. Can't they just give us one episode of everyday life?"
"Exactly. We want slice of life. We want Kōren and Makise together."
"Even after finishing this anime, I'm still confused about one thing. The protagonist gets to live peacefully in the Steins;Gate line, but what about the assistant in the other lines? Doesn't she still die?"
"Huh? You watched this far and still don't get it? Steins;Gate isn't a multiverse. The protagonist isn't traveling between parallel worlds. There is only one world, the one observed by Kōren, the one where he actually lives. The other world lines, as long as Kōren doesn't use the time machine to make them reality, are only possibilities. Fantasies that don't exist. Makise survived in the Steins;Gate world line. That is the final fact. As for the Alpha and Beta world lines, after the protagonist abandoned them through the time machine, they became nothing more than possibilities. Illusions, not reality."
"So does that mean all the suffering the protagonist experienced was fake?"
"For the protagonist, those were real experiences from his life. But for Makise and Shiina, those possibilities may be no more than dreams. And only because the two of them stayed close to him, and because they're sensitive people, did some dreamlike residue of memory remain. Someone like Hashida didn't retain anything at all."
"After watching this anime, I also started thinking about something. We often feel déjà vu in certain scenes, like we've seen them before. And sometimes there are people, celebrities even, who we remember as having died, but when we search them up, they're actually still alive. Do you think it's possible that someone in this world changed the world line, and the butterfly effect caused them not to die, but our residual memories weren't fully corrected?"
"I've had that kind of experience too. But as for the answer, I don't know. All I can say is that the more you think about it, the scarier it gets. Only someone like Kōren, who possesses memories from observing every world line, could give an accurate answer."
"It's over. Just thinking that Steins;Gate only has one episode left hurts. When it ends, what am I supposed to watch next season?"
"Watch AD season two. Didn't you see that these past few days, whenever KantokuSora promoted Steins;Gate on his account, he also promoted that anime? He even said it's another great work that doesn't lose to Re:Zero or Steins;Gate."
"…"
"If any other Kantokusaid that, I'd think they were bragging. But since it's KantokuSora saying it, I'm starting to believe him."
"Right now, I just hope KantokuSora stops making new works for a while and fills in Steins;Gate's gaps first. What exactly is going on with that Kōren from more than ten years in the future? How did he know he could deceive the world line and save Makise? Based on my years of watching anime, this work still has a lot of details that haven't been explained. There were also plenty of small foreshadowing moments buried in the early episodes. I'm guessing this anime will definitely get a second season."
"…"
"Agreed. I support that. I want Steins;Gate part two."
"Great. After Natsume Yuujinchou and Re:Zero, KantokuSora has created yet another masterpiece that everyone wants a sequel to."
"With KantokuSora's creative drive, who knows whether we'll live long enough to see all these sequels. Sigh."
Discussions about Steins;Gate continued without stopping throughout the entire night.
By morning, five of the top ten trending topics on NatsuYume were related to Steins;Gate.
Episode twenty-four had given every Steins;Gate fan in Japan's anime scene a massive sense of reassurance.
The word "masterpiece" no longer needed anyone to promote it. Those who had watched and understood this anime already had their own conclusion in their hearts.
The fact that its rating rose overnight from 9.6 to 9.8 said everything.
Now, everyone's eyes were fixed on Nanpō Alliance TV.
They all wanted to know what the viewership rating for episode twenty-four of Steins;Gate had been.
And whether it had broken the ten-year record set by Re:Zero the previous year.