Turning Point

I thought the anime Steins;Gate was interesting and everyone I know who has seen it says it was very good so I decided to give it a try. I just watched the first episode and to put it honestly: I am not at all a science-person but holy crap I love this anime. Anyways, on to my review:

The first episode opens up with a monologue by our main character (who we don't know the name of yet). I thought this was a pretty interesting monologue:

 "Consider, can the universe be justifiably called infinite? Doubtful. It may not have a discernible end, but it had a beginning; and its component parts definitely have a limited cause of illogical shelf life. Splitting hairs or not; if history tells us anything it's that scientists make very poor poets: we're all just a ship of fools chasing phantoms, heedless (?) of what really underwrites natural law."

After that I didn't understand what was happening, his friend who we also don't know the name of yet). calls him out by what seems like the main character's nickname, Okurin. (pictured above)

The friend who calls him "Okurin"

The camera cuts to the two have arrived at a building and Okurin seems to be talking on his cell phone to someone but we don't know who though. It seems that the two are going to infiltrate a building of sorts. When they get into the building Okurin says that "This place is a mortuary, organization stink is all over this."; we don't know what the organization is that he is talking about so let's just keep watching to see where exactly the two have infiltrated. Okurin points to where they are (cause it says so on the sign); the sign reads "Dr. Nakabachi's Successful Time Machine Development Press Conference". Okurin hears a crash on the roof so being curious, he goes to check on that issue: when he does there seems to be two arms telling him not to come any closer when he peers out the doorway, he has a puzzled look on his face and goes back inside. The camera cuts to Okurin and his friend getting her something from what appears to be a vending machine. Okurin did not want to come here in the first place because he says "is anything not an emergency?". It appears as though Okurin's friend wants her to buy something for her that is like a Pokemon; Okurin manages to get a metal one of those things called Oopas (sp?), which are supposedly rare amongst the Oopas: so because of that, she is excited about that. After this occurs, Okurin attends Dr. Nakabachi's press conference, held on the 8th floor lecture hall as the woman on the PA said). He reads on the handouts about Nakabachi's time machine development when, he finds something wrong, "The Professional vectors of time travel...." (think he said that). Okurin is outraged at how wrong the Doctor is in comparison to another sctentist, John Titor; who has developed a "correct" theory on time-travel. For his outburst, he is taken outside of the lecture hall by a mysterious red-headed girl. in the hallway, Okurin meets the "published" Makise Kurisu, who thinks Okurin is crazy because he called to someone on his cellphone but it wasn't on. After they talk more, Okurin runs from Makise and then his friend who we now know as Mayuri, finds him at the top of the stairs. Okurin and Mayuri talk about finding Mayuri's metal Oopa, that it can sell for 10,000 yen on ebay: Okurin's reaction to this is that he doesn't care that this Oopa is her friend, he just wants the money for "glorious experiments", but Mayuri refuses his desire to get the money for experiments. Okurin hears someone scream and goes to check out why someone screamed. Okurin arrives on the 8th floor to find out exactly where the scream came from, when he arrives in the room he finds out someone was murdered, this someone is none other than Makise Kurisu. (Dun dun duuuuuun, now this has turned into a murder mystery). We now cut to the "Future Gadget Laboratory", and are introduced to the members "Houhouhin Kyouma" aka Okurin), Mayuri Shiina (aka Mayushii), and Hashira Itaru. They are all addressed as: Member 001-003 respectively. Kyouma watches the news story about the crash that happened earlier and retraces his steps before it happened. Kyouma asks Itaru if it was true that he went to the lecture earlier, Itaru replies with "no dude it was cancelled". Kyouma swears it happened at 12 on the dot. Later, Kyouma tells Itaru that he is going to conduct a field test of "Future Gadget #8", which has no real name yet. Turns out Future Gadget #8 is a microwave that apparently nukes whatever is in there; it is also used to test out Kyouma's Steins;Gate hypothesis. When Itaru and Kyouma go back to the college, Kyouma tells Itaru about Makise's murder, Itaru tells him it happened last week, Kyouma verifies this on his own phone and it is true. Makise is definitely alive.