Contrary to the popular belief, the Steins;Gate movie is canon (video)

Oh damn this is news to me. I thought the movie was always canon

Same. And I don't understand why most people think it's not canon.

I always assumed that this was cannon.

No, the way the movie changes the rules of timeline alteration is indeed inconsistent with previous depictions. If simply "not being able to recognize the current timeline as the real world" was enough of an inconsistency to make Okabe disappear, then this would have happened in the Beta timeline (Steins;Gate 0), given that Beta-timeline Okabe had experienced everything that the movie Okabe had, but was also so incapable of coping with losing Kurisu that he had to rely on drugs and an AI companion to achieve some level of minimal stability. Yet Beta-timeline Okabe managed to live 15 years without disappearing, a fact that is in direct conflict with the concept that the movie is centered around.

And we know Steins;Gate 0 is canon to Steins;Gate, because it explains the most fundamental plot twist in the game, which is already foreshadowed in the beginning of the first game / the first episode of the anime. So if Steins;Gate and Steins;Gate 0 are considered canon, then the movie is not canon. If the movie is considered canon, then Steins;Gate and Steins;Gate 0 are not canon.

@VVayfarer

Read SciADV. The movie is canon. Nothing what you said makes any sense by the way.

In the Beta worldline Okabe recognizes it as the real world. He doesn't have flashbacks where he thinks he is on a different worldline. This was by the way the point of 0, that Okabe literally accepted that he cannot save Kurisu. And then when he returned to his old self and started working on finding Steins Gate, yet again, he doesn't have the same problem. He has no time for PTSD bs like "oh maybe I'm not in the Beta worldline", like he does in the movie.

Also, by the way, in Episode 23 beta, he also disappears for a brief moment

@SciADV_Maniac

He doesn't have any flashbacks where he thinks he is on a different worldline... because that concept was invented in the movie. The hallucinations, and the idea that they alone could affect the world line, were a movie-original element. Nothing of the sort is touched upon in either of the main games. Okabe does have flashbacks to Alpha timeline events throughout Steins;Gate 0, e.g. when he sees Kiryu Moeka, so if this disappearance mechanism was actually a thing, we would expect it to have activated several times throughout the 15 years Okabe lived in the Beta timeline.

The point of S;G 0 is not that Okabe has accepted everything. It's the exact opposite: Okabe trying to convince himself that he simply has to live with the hand he has been dealt. He does this because he doesn't want to go through the cycle of suffering he experienced in the Alpha-timeline, especially given that he believes it would not never work anyway. But in reality he could never accept the result, hence the drugs, hence his infatuation with Amadeus, and hence, ultimately, Operation Skuld. Evidently Skuld would never have manifested if Okabe had actually accepted the worldline as his permanent reality.

Episode 23 Beta isn't fully canon (the ending scene, for instance, never happens in the story as depicted, neither in the Steins;Gate 0 game nor in the anime). I also don't remember any scene where he would disappear and reappear; I think you're referring to the part where he was lying down, and in the next moment, we see that he is gone, and his labcoat on the floor, but this scene could be interpreted as him simply having left to meet Mayuri. Either way he never disappears in Steins;Gate or Steins;Gate 0.

The games are very consistent in their depiction of Reading Steiner and timeline alteration. Namely, timelines can only be altered by physical world-changing events, to the extent that even physical actions are unlikely to make a difference (small changes will simply be eliminated via automatic minor adjustments made by the world). Never mind simply rejecting reality in one's mind; if that was enough to alter the timeline, surely crazy people who believe dreams are visions of alternative realities would be disappearing left and right, and Okabe would presumably have noticed this.

And Reading Steiner is consistently depicted as a skill that only activates when a timeline has been severely altered, and it purely functions as a way for people like Okabe to maintain memories of previous timelines. I.e., Reading Steiner never activates unless somebody uses a time machine. There is not a single instance that would contradict this point in either of the main games.

I remember Chaos;Child alluding to Kurisu. But Steins;Gate is a self-contained series; there's no indication that any plot mechanics from other SciADV series would have had a relevant impact on any of the events at any point. And it would be poor writing if they did; given that nothing in the Steins;Gate story (nor even the movie, for that matter) gives any indication that the player/viewer would need knowledge of other series to understand what's happening.

And the way the movie changes the depiction of Reading Steiner does appear to indicate that poor writing was indeed a factor. The consistency of how Reading Steiner is depicted as a plot mechanic is exactly what makes the Gehenna (Valley of Hinnom) sequence in S;G 0 so excellent----exactly because the player understands immediately what has happened. The scene is perfect because it's completely out of the blue (especially given the stark contrast to everything that precedes it) and given that it seems conceptually unbelievable (it seems far too early for that type of development) yet simultaneously it is impossible to deny because the game literally shows you Reading Steiner activating and gives you the new divergence value, which never, ever happens in the story without the concomitant activation of a time machine. But I remember watching one of my favorite LPers completely miss the point, thinking that it was some sort of a dream sequence, apparently because he had watched the movie before playing S;G 0. In effect, watching the movie first can effectively ruin what would otherwise possibly be the most epic scene in Steins;Gate as a whole.

So not only is the movie not canon, but it is poorly integrated with the rest of the story. As such, it seems abundantly clear that it wasn't originally a part of the Steins;Gate story, and was instead conceived after the script of S;G 0 had been largely finalized, as a fanservice episode. This would explain why the writers saw no problem with pulling new mechanics out of thin air with little to no explanation (in the movie or in the games) and why the story displays little to no regard for intra-series consistency.

@VVayfarer too lazy to read it all but, you know SciADV is a thing, Steins;Gate isn't a self-contained series at all...
For Episode 23 Beta's thing, you know the Steins;Gate anime (not even talking about 0) has already different events from its original visual novel, so doesn't that make it non-canon then ?
And a little tip before I left: the movie released after the beginning of the Epigraph Trilogy that later turned into Steins;Gate 0 (which is why you can see the names of Maho Hiyajō and Alexis Leskinen on some scientific papers in the movie).

Steins;Gate 0 merely exist because the launch of C;C was not good, sales weren't great. Hence they created a cashgrab quickly by turning already existing material into a VN - a pretty low budget VN, actually, it has glaring production issues compared to the rest of the series.



https://www.kirikiribasara.com/2022/12/05/shikura-stream-highlights-new-sciadv-titles-anonymous-code-insights/

"The Steins;Gate sequel film, Load Region of Déjà Vu, was a story Shikura really wanted to make."

And oh boy, you are so wrong about many things (including the self contained mechanics of Steins;Gate), I will come back later to refute all of your points

So the article says, but I followed the original link and I couldn't find the source. The video is gone. So we have no context regarding what he meant, and whether he thought the movie ended up matching his expectations.

Not to mention that Shikura wasn't the main writer of the scenario. That would be Hayashi Naotaka (with Vio Shimokura). And if Shikura was content with the state of the movie at its release, then we can already infer that he wasn't one to be particularly concerned with internal plot consistency.

@VVayfarer Bruh, Shikura to SciADV is like George Lucas to the original SW movies 💀

The movie is consistent with the previously laid down SciADV mechanics.

The japanese summary of the stream is linked in the article, but it was a nice try

@SciADV_Maniac

Shikura came up with the idea, but Hayashi and Shimokura did the bulk of the actual writing, including working out the plot mechanics. Which is the core of the canon, and exactly the reason why the movie is largely not considered as such. If you google 'シュタゲ　シナリオライター' in Japanese, you'll find that Hayashi is typically given most of the credit.

Again, the issue is that the movie isn't internally consistent with the rest of the Steins;Gate series. If it was called SciADV The Movie − Load Region of Déjà Vu then there would be no problem, but that's not what it's called. To reiterate: everything in Steins;Gate is explained in Steins;Gate or Steins;Gate 0; everything in Steins;Gate 0 is explained in Steins;Gate 0 or Steins;Gate; yet the main plot devices of the Steins;Gate movie are only explained in the movie and are never touched upon in the rest of the series.

The Japanese summary says exactly one thing about the movie: "STEINS;GATE 負荷領域のデジャヴはどうしても作りたかった作品". That's literally it. So again, no context. Refer to the above.

Except, the very first game in the series, which came out 5 years before the movie and even before Steins;Gate, Chaos;Head features

So "hallucinations" could cause worldline divergence, a long before Steins;Gate was even a thing.



Except, that's not how it works. In the Steins Gate worldline, Okabe spends significantly more time in that desynchronized state when he can't process the fact, that he isn't in the Alpha or the Beta worldline anymore.

Anonymous;Code:



Nothing sort of happens in 0, he has one or 2 flashbacks to Alpha and that's it. His PTSD comes from killing Kurisu, which happened in the worldline where he is at the moment.



I don't have the direct quote right now, but he did say something similar about the Beta worldline: "this isn't a wasted worldline, but a worldline we need. It's part of the journey to Steins Gate. We cannot get there at once, but through countless failed pasts and futures"

This means that he accepted that these worldlines are indeed his temporary reality, and they are necessary to go through to find Steins Gate. And it turned out it really needs hundreds of iterations to reach that worldline.



Who decided that?



In the very same scene we see that world becomes monochrome, which lines up with how

Anonymous;Code/Occultic;Nine/Steins;Gate: Variant Space Octet





Nobody ever claimed that. Also Okabe's case is a little bit different than an average guy who just went crazy. Okabe became like this due to interfering too much with the predetermined state of the world, while someone who just went crazy in the literal sense of the world, that wad already part of the predetermined future.



This is just simply untrue and I can give you at least 3 examples when it activated without using any form of time travel:
- when Okabe deletes the first D-Mail from Echelon
- when they are removing Kurisu's memories from Kagari in 0
- when Okabe meets Amadeus in the "Soviet Worldline" in 0



Oh, there are plenty of mechanics in S;G and 0 that wouldn't work without certain SciADV lore and mechanics. I'll come back to this point later



It's not "other series". It's the same series. Steins;Gate is merely a 2nd part of SciADV. Like the Iron Man movies are part of MCU.



The movie did not change the depiction of Reading Steiner. There is not a single time when RS activates in it, as far is I remember. So I am really confused here what do you mean.




You surely cannot propose this as an argument against the movies' canonicity, that your favourite let's player misunderstood something in 0. I also fail to see what is this having to do with the movie. What happens in the movie is completely unrelated to this sequence of the game.



I think we already debunked this.



Explain then the following stuff solely based on Steins;Gate and Steins;Gate 0:
- Why is it possible to digitize human memories?
- How is it possible that despite Kurisu designed the time leap machine to just send back memory data in time, it actually sends back the consciousness of the time leaper?
- How is it possible that Amadeus (a program, not a human being) experiences Reading Steiner?
- How is it possible that Okabe's digitized memories literally had lived their own life on a hard drive, separately from the physical Okabe?



Explain this from Chaos;Head Noah then, you can only use knowledge derived from the Chaos; games





Already debunked.



Somehow, it has direct ties and shares various lore elements with other entries in the series... Octet, Noah, Anonymous;Code, Occultic;Nine...



Shikura is the creator of SciADV, and the main man behind the franchise. He was the one who pitched the concept of the movie to White Fox. Hayashi Naotaka is also the guy who wrote most of the scenarios in the franchise. So I really wonder what makes you think that the main creators of the franchise doesn't actually understand their own franchise... A franchise that has a deep planning from the very beginning, by the way, where the latest entry reflects on stuff that was hinted already 13 years prior to its release.