If there’s one thing that’s annoying about time travel stories, it’s people fussing about some contrived “paradox” theory or other. A close second is people fussing about the butterfly effect. Stein’s;Gate has had its share of butterfly-fretting, but in its thirteenth installment we finally get to one of my favorite time-travel trope, the Groundhog Day scenario. In the classic Bill Murray film, the main character is stuck in a time loop, repeating the same day over and over again for reasons unknown. Haruhi Suzumiya no Yuutsu had a similar plotline with the Endless Summer arc. Higurashi no Naku Koro ni revolved heavily around a time loop. There have been dozens of video game scenarios that are simply so difficult that the player has to re-try over and over again in a manner reminiscent of Groundhog Day, and I’m not just talking about Donkey Kong Country here.

Time travel tropes are sticky business, but Stein’s;Gate is handling it admirably so far. I certainly feel a bit liberated in regards to posting pictures that look like spoilers now, that’s for sure (a character can only die so many times before it loses its dramatic kick).

Previously I gave a conditional endorsement of Stein’s Gate based on an assumption that everything would derail after a half-dozen episodes or so. Twelve episodes in, we are finally at crossroads of sorts. This show is either just about to faceplant into a steaming pile of failure or soar into greatness. I stand corrected. This series has remained awesome for at least twice as long as anticipated.

Tune in next week to find out how Hououin Kyouma uses seemingly-ordinary kitchen appliances to challenge murderers, turncoats, international conspiracies, and fate itself!

Hey! You, there! Remember Chaos;Head? Me neither. Not very well, at least. You see, it had a really good start with a mysterious-but-cool premise, nice presentation, passable character design, and I was initially quite excited to see where it was all going. Then everything fell apart. By the time I found out what was actually going on I was seriously disappointed and the show ground down into an inevitably lackluster ending.

Stein’s Gate just started up this past week, and is based on a visual novel by the same team that brought us Chaos;Head. Again we’ve got a mysterious premise: our protagonist, an under-funded mad scientist, goes to attend a lecture on time travel. A satellite falls from the sky. Some woman he knows from the academic world ends up getting stabbed. Upon returning to his lab, the mad scientist discovers that the lecture he attended had never happened, that he shouldn’t have witnessed the satellite crash, and maybe he’s a little more crazy than he thought he was. Or maybe there’s some time travel happening, after all.

Oh, and some bananas are put through a microwave. This is very important to the protagonist’s research, you see.

I’m generally opposed to time travel fiction. It encourages some of the worst narrative excesses and discussion of the topic nearly always involves ridiculous notions of the supposedly-necessary consequences of paradox and alternate timelines. Fie on all that nonsense.

One episode in, the main characters appear to be the aforementioned mad scientist, his absent-minded female assistant, and a stereotypical overweight computer geek. Their adversary appears to be the paranoia of their own leader, who believes The Organization is moving against them, attempting to stifle their important scientific work that will overthrow the social order of the world. A little more slapstick and we would see shades of Excel Saga.

Give it a shot. I fully expect this to be awesome for at least five episodes.