Posts with the “steins;gate” tag

An open letter to (anime) database owners

Dear database owner,

I’m not a huge fan of the open letter format - its use for pithy snark has long since diluted whatever potency it once had - so I’ll get right to the point: I want access to your data.

Not in a creepy stalker way, I don’t want to know your three sizes and nor do I want whatever user data you choose to collect. No, I’m talking about the data you have on anime and its minutiae - characters, staff, companies and all the tidbits in between. Whether you call it a database, an encyclopaedia, a list, a planet or otherwise, I’m interested.

But why?

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Fight the future

Steins;Gate is a story of a broken, haunted man. It's not about time-travel as any summary of the plot would imply, that's just a vehicle for asking the question at its heart: how far would you go to save the ones you love? This isn't some tag-line stolen from the latest silver-screen offering from Hollywood but a measure of what is perhaps one of the most potently affecting and consistently brilliant series of recent memory.

he alone understands what transpired while everyone else is left only with echoes and phantoms

Eleven episodes in and you may be unconvinced as events have progressed in a solid if humdrum fashion. Lanky protagonist Rintarou is at first intensely difficult to like with his moronic fixation on being a "mad scientist" and frequent soliloquies about a shadowy "Organisation" stalking him from the shadows. Megalomania, check. But as he begins to gather females ("lab assistants") quicker than a trainer does Pokemon the banter between him, teen prodigy Makise, eternal do-gooder Mayuri and rotund hacker Taru begins to take on an endearing, familial tone.

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