In late May, the twentieth episode of Steins;Gate aired.
In that episode, Okabe finally managed to erase the influence of the most troublesome message of all: the e-mail Moeka had sent in the past, back when she had walked the path of betrayal. With that, the worldline finally returned to its original state.
But there was one detail.
A detail the audience had always known, yet had nearly set aside after following the anime for more than half a year.
Why had the Alpha worldline been born in the first place?
It had all begun with Okabe's first message to Hashida, the one saying that Makise had been stabbed. By pure accident, that message fulfilled the conditions necessary to become a D-Mail and was sent one week into the past.
That single message was intercepted by SERN's global network, an organization that had been researching time machines for years. From that moment on, SERN turned its attention to Okabe, seized the technology of time travel, and, over the following two decades, built a dictatorship that crushed the future and killed countless people.
Suzuha, who lived in that devastated future, wanted to save the world. That was why she boarded the time machine left behind by her father, Hashida, a man she had never even met, and traveled to the present. But the machine malfunctioned and crashed into a building, preventing the important seminar on time-travel theory, which a certain professor had been about to hold, from taking place.
Because the seminar never happened, Makise, who should have attended it, never went there either.
And in the Alpha worldline, because of that, she did not die.
So, if Okabe used the IBN 5100 to erase the data of that first intercepted message from SERN's system, what would happen?
Suzuha would never travel to that era in a time machine.
The seminar would take place as scheduled.
And Makise, the girl who had helped Okabe through ten, twenty, thirty loops of despair, would die right at the beginning.
The twentieth episode left the audience facing a choice so cruel, so difficult, that it seemed impossible to solve.
If the protagonist chose the Alpha worldline, Mayuri Shiina would die.
If he used the IBN 5100 to cross into the Beta worldline, Makise would die.
The moment the episode aired, its ratings shot up to 5.68%.
And inside Sora's system space, the emotional points began rising at an absurd speed as well.
As for the comment section of Sora's creator account, which had already gathered seventeen million fans, the number of posts also exploded.
To save Mayuri Shiina, the fans had endured watching Ruka, that adorable feminine-looking boy, give up on the dream of "becoming a girl and, as a girl, falling in love with Okabe."
They had endured watching Faris, for the sake of saving her dearest friend, accept that her father, who should already have died within the flow of history, would return to his original fate.
They had endured watching Moeka, isolated and withdrawn, be brainwashed and controlled by SERN; and, in a certain worldline, be abandoned by the higher-ups of the organization connected to the CRT shop, shot, and left with a miserable fate that completely shattered her mind.
But now…
What kind of shitty development was this?
After torturing the fans for two whole months.
After making everyone follow the story as the protagonist suffered through countless hardships, finally found the IBN 5100, and finally gained the chance to return from the Alpha worldline to the Beta worldline and save Mayuri Shiina…
Sora was now telling them that either Mayuri Shiina died in the Alpha worldline, or Makise died in the Beta worldline?
Who wrote a script like that?
Sora, you old bastard. Were you some kind of emotional pervert?
"I can't take this anymore. This guy is definitely sick in the head."
"Old Kamakawa, tell me where you live. I want to send you some local specialties."
"Damn it, after this episode aired, I just froze. What the hell was that?"
"I already have to deal with my girlfriend asking me every day who I'd save if she and my mom both fell into the water. Now I have to watch an anime protagonist face a life-or-death version of the same choice?"
"Do you guys think there's any chance he can save both of them?"
"Heh. If that happens, Kantoku Kamakawa will be slapping himself in the face. The convergence of worldlines is supposed to be unsolvable by nature. If there were a solution, why would he need to move from the Alpha worldline to the Beta worldline in the first place?"
"No, no. There has to be another way. Just like Re:Zero. In the Sanctuary Arc, it also looked like a choice between Rem and Emilia, but Kantoku Kamakawa used five Returns by Death to reach a perfect ending. I don't believe the story he built in Steins;Gate will end like this. At its core, even if the process in Kantoku Kamakawa's works is painful, the ending is still beautiful."
"Yeah. I believe in him."
"All we can do is believe in him. There are still five episodes left. With that much runtime, there's no way the protagonist just returns to the Beta worldline and does nothing."
"Please, stop hurting us, Kantoku Kamakawa."
The twentieth episode of Steins;Gate closed with a 5.63% rating.
The ratings that kept rising with every episode, together with the fans' resentment that deepened episode by episode, pushed the anime, in just one short month, into the very eye of the storm of Japan's anime industry.
The situation gave many Japanese media outlets a familiar feeling.
It was just like the most desperate period of Re:Zero's Sanctuary Arc, when countless fans had begun venting online about Sora, mixing complaints, mockery, and outright insults.
But in the end, what had happened?
Through a series of almost miraculous actions by the protagonist, the plot of Re:Zero had not only moved toward a grand happy ending, but also pushed its ratings past the 6% mark.
Could it be that, this season, Sora intended to use Steins;Gate to recreate the miracle Re:Zero had achieved the previous year?
A 6% rating.
Could there really be an anime Kantoku capable of reaching such a result two years in a row?
The Southern Alliance TV network did not know exactly what expectations Sora had for Steins;Gate's performance.
But from the broadcaster's side, once an opportunity appeared, there was no chance they would let it slip away.
Sora was too busy with work and had no time to participate in the station's various promotional events.
But the broadcaster could act on its own.
Advertisements for Steins;Gate began appearing everywhere, and it did not stop there.
Several variety shows suddenly received segments and elements related to Steins;Gate.
Even some members of the anime's production team were invited onto television programs.
In the previous cour, Steins;Gate had been labeled by Japanese media as the shame of Sora's career as an animation Kantoku.
Now, in this cour, it had become yet another milestone in his career.
The posters for the anime The Demon of Time, which only a few weeks earlier had still been plastered across Japan's major otaku shopping streets and anime convention venues, were quickly replaced by character posters from Steins;Gate.
Makise, the red-haired young scientist, also became one of the most frequently seen characters among cosplayers at major conventions.
Under that wave of public attention, the twenty-first episode of Steins;Gate soon aired.
The plot of that episode focused on portraying Okabe's inner struggle.
He was not merely a superficial acquaintance who had known Makise for one week.
In the Alpha worldline, she was a precious friend who had gone through cycle after cycle with him.
Makise may have forgotten.
But he had not.
He could never forget the help that red-haired girl had given him in every loop, in every world, through every desperate attempt.
To help him, to allow him to save Mayuri Shiina, Makise had stopped SERN's agents again and again. In more than one worldline, she had even sacrificed her own life for it.
Just like the viewers sitting in front of their televisions, Okabe no longer knew where the road ahead was.
He also did not know whom he should choose between Mayuri Shiina and Makise.
And, even more cruelly, he did not know whom he should allow to disappear.
Time.
The world.
The possibilities of the future.
They were cruel things.
What the audience could not understand, Sora could not understand either.
After hesitating, wandering in circles, and wasting time, Okabe merely reached that night once more.
Once more, he reached Mayuri Shiina's death.
Then, after another time leap, when he finally told Makise the whole truth, his heart had already cracked from within.
And yet, the one who gently healed him was still Mayuri Shiina.
The rise in ratings did not stop.
The episode closed at 5.71%.
Across Japan, many anime fans had already begun placing the title of masterpiece on Steins;Gate.
In the Blu-ray market, every volume from the first through the fourth, which had been released so far, was completely sold out and out of stock.
Preorders for figures of Makise, Mayuri Shiina, Suzuha, and the other characters hit their upper limits almost immediately.
Now, everyone in the entire animation industry was looking at Yume Animation.
Every professional in the television industry, every anime fan, had their eyes fixed on Sora.
Since the second cour had begun airing, the popularity of that anime had grown over two months until it reached a critical point.
Everyone was waiting to see how the protagonist would resolve the final arc of the story.
The tension of the plot, the atmosphere, the emotional weight… everything had been built up to this point.
In the end, would this be a masterpiece?
Or would it collapse in its final moments, leaving behind only a massive narrative disaster?
Everything depended on the performance of the final four episodes.
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