English Dub Review: Steins;Gate 0 “Pandora of Provable Existence -Forbidden Cubicle-“

Oh, poor Maho, will Okabe ever reciprocate your love?

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Our episode this week picks up with Maho reminiscing on her past with Makise Kurisu. Back in the present, she’s pulled an all-nighter trying to bring Amadeus back to life, and has destroyed her workspace with a hurricane of computer nerd clutter: empty ramen cups, 2-liter soda bottles, you name it. To bring order back to her room, Nae comes to town, putting on a drill sergeant cap and adopting the persona of “Sergeant Clean” to whip them all into shape. While the room gets cleaned, Maho returns Amadeus to Okabe, who, despite his reservation, decides to continue testing the program.

Later that night, Maho is invited to a sleepover with Moeka and Rumiho. The three have a great time fooling around, and Maho learns that Moeka is writing a novel. That night, Maho can’t fall asleep, haunted by memories of the past.

The next day, Okabe, Maho, and Amadeus have a fun day out on the town together. Maho’s crush on Okabe continues to grow, and the two eventually return to the place Kurisu died. After Okabe suffers from a quick vomit, the two have a heart-to-heart on the stairs, where Maho reveals that she has Kurisu’s laptop with all her data on it. Learning this, Okabe’s eyes go wild as he reveals the truth to Maho: that laptop is the trigger to starting the time travel-induced World War 3.

Our Take:

This episode gives us something a little different from the normal Okabe centered structure it has worked with so far. This week focuses on Maho, giving us deeper insight into her thoughts, feelings, and past with Amadeus. Not to say that Okabe has grown tiring, but this is a refreshing change of pace for the series. Maho has always felt a little undeveloped to me so its a solid move to give us more time with her. Furthermore, learning more about who she echoes the same kind of character exploration the first series had, one of the main pillars that made that series so strong in the first place.

I am absolutely adoring Nae as her “Sergeant Clean” persona. Not a lot of Steins;Gate 0’s comedy has really hit the mark for me so far, but Sergeant Clean is exactly the kind of cute quirkiness that was the trademark of the original. These moments of cute character levity are valuable in such a dark story. The humanity of our band of heroes needs to shine through, providing a strong contrast to the miserable circumstances they are forced to endure. It’s good that Steins;Gate understands this, and its one of the reasons why when it works, it really works. This commendation also covers the joyous little banters between Maho, Amadeus, and Okabe during their trip out together. Their back-and-forth is funny and cute, all the while elevating the romantic tension between Okabe and Maho. Not to mention, I can always appreciate a good nerd culture reference, which has been strangely absent from the show thus far.

Thematically, the episode does an excellent job of paralleling the story of Mozart and Salieri to Maho and Kurisu. Their clash of ambition mirrors Maho’s romantic tensions with Okabe as well as the camaraderie that Maho felt with Kurisu driving her forward today. The reveal of Maho’s possession of Kurisu’s laptop is a solid flourish that puts a nice stamp on the end of the episode, bringing together the plot threads at play into a nice little knot. Shit is about to get real, and this episode wants you to know it.

Okabe not being such a sad sack is doing wonders for the story as a whole. The show seems to have moved beyond its melancholy phase, delivering us an episode that is fun to watch and emotionally significant. I’m not certain what will become of Okabe and Maho next week, but I await with baited breath to find out.