About Steins;Gate
Steins;Gate began as a visual novel, a story-driven video game, developed by 5pb. and Nitroplus and released in Japan for the Xbox 360 in October 2009. It was the second game in the Science Adventure series, after Chaos;Head, and its makers built it around the idea of '99% science and 1% fantasy'. The studio White Fox adapted it as a TV anime directed by Hiroshi Hamasaki and Takuya Satō and written by Jukki Hanada, with music by Takeshi Abo and Jun Murakami: 24 episodes, broadcast in Japan between April and September 2011. Funimation released it in North America with an English dub in 2012, and Crunchyroll now holds the licence there.
The story is set in Akihabara, Tokyo, in the summer of 2010. Rintaro Okabe, an 18-year-old university student, calls himself a mad scientist, goes by the alias Hououin Kyouma and runs what he calls the Future Gadget Laboratory from a rented room above a CRT television shop. Its other members are his childhood friend Mayuri Shiina and the hacker Itaru 'Daru' Hashida. At a talk on time travel, Okabe finds Kurisu Makise, a gifted 18-year-old neuroscience researcher, apparently dead, and then meets her alive and well. Meanwhile the lab's half-finished gadget, a microwave oven worked by a mobile phone, turns out to send text messages into the past. The friends call them D-Mails and start experimenting, and Okabe finds that he alone remembers how things were before each change, an ability he names Reading Steiner.
Changing the past moves the world onto a different 'world line', and the changes do not stay small. SERN, a research organisation modelled on the real CERN, is already experimenting with time travel, and the lab's discoveries draw its attention. Reviewers have pointed out that the series spends much of its first half as a comedy about a group of eccentric friends before it turns into a thriller. It is widely ranked among the best anime ever made, and Okabe was named best male character at the 2011 Newtype Anime Awards. A sequel series, Steins;Gate 0, followed in 2018. Based on a 2015 game of the same name, it is set in an alternative world line in which Okabe fails to save Kurisu.
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What the Steins;Gate Quiz Tests
Our Steins;Gate quiz covers the 24 episodes of the 2011 TV anime. It does not ask about the game's other routes and endings, the manga or the film. Easy levels cover the premise and the people: Akihabara, Okabe's alter ego, the phone-controlled microwave and its D-Mails, Reading Steiner, the lab members' jobs and nicknames, and the companies behind the series. The middle levels follow the story in order up to episode 20: the hunt for an IBN 5100, the first experiments with D-Mails and what they change, the Time Leap Machine, the raid on the lab, Suzuha's secret and the Divergence Meter. The hard levels move into the final episodes and the fine print: Okabe's sign-off, his university, the anime's opening theme, the identity of FB, the divergence value of the Steins Gate world line, Kurisu's father and the Metal Upa. Two hard questions are about the sequel, Steins;Gate 0.
Key Characters
Rintaro Okabe is a lead who performs. There is the lab coat, the maniacal laugh, the reports to an imaginary 'Organization' on a phone that turns out to be switched off, and the alter ego Hououin Kyouma. The series slowly shows why. Years earlier he invented the act to pull his childhood friend Mayuri out of her grief, declaring her his 'hostage', and once the story turns serious he drops it. Kurisu Makise, a neuroscientist whose research was published while she was still a teenager, is his opposite: sceptical, sarcastic and fed up with his nicknames for her, 'Christina' among them, but unable to resist an experiment worth doing. Mayuri greets everyone with 'Tutturu!', sews cosplay costumes, works at a maid café and is more perceptive than she looks. Daru is a gifted hacker and a devoted otaku. Around them are Suzuha Amane, the cheerful part-timer in the TV shop downstairs, who loves her bicycle and is searching for her father; Moeka Kiryu, who would rather text than talk; Ruka Urushibara, gentle and shy, whose family looks after a shrine; Faris NyanNyan, the most popular maid in Akihabara; and Yugo Tennouji, the gruff landlord Okabe calls 'Mr. Braun' because of his devotion to CRT televisions.
Available Quizzes
Steins;Gate Trivia
50 hand-crafted questions across 5 categories. 10 levels of increasing difficulty.
Which Steins;Gate Character Are You?
Answer 10 questions to discover which member of the Future Gadget Lab matches your personality!
Random Mix
Questions from all 40 anime including Steins;Gate. The ultimate challenge.
Characters
Rintaro Okabe
Kurisu Makise
Mayuri Shiina
Itaru "Daru" Hashida
Suzuha Amane
Steins;Gate Fun Facts
- The story's John Titor is named after a real internet legend. Between 1998 and 2001, someone using the names TimeTravel_0 and John Titor posted on internet forums claiming to be an American soldier who had travelled back in time from the year 2036. Nobody has ever publicly admitted to writing the posts.
- The IBN 5100, the old computer the lab goes looking for, is a thinly disguised IBM 5100, one of the first portable computers, which IBM announced in September 1975. The real John Titor posts mentioned the IBM 5100 repeatedly.
- D-Mail is short for 'DeLorean Mail', after the time-travelling DeLorean car in Back to the Future.
- According to the game's development team, the title has no particular meaning. It was coined from the German word Stein, 'stone', with a nod to Albert Einstein.
- Chiyomaru Shikura, who led the game's planning, chose Akihabara because it is an easy place to buy hardware parts, which makes it a natural home for people who like to invent and tinker. In October 2011 a promotional model of the crashed time machine was mounted on the real Radio Kaikan building there.
- Kanako Itō sings the anime's opening theme, 'Hacking to the Gate'. When Steins;Gate 0 was adapted in 2018, she wrote its opening, 'Fátima', as a lyrical continuation of it.
Steins;Gate Quiz — Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes of Steins;Gate are there?
The 2011 TV series has 24 episodes, broadcast in Japan from April to September 2011. There is also an extra episode, 'Egoistic Poriomania', numbered 25, which came with the last Japanese Blu-ray and DVD volume in February 2012, and an alternative version of episode 23, known as 23β, made for a rebroadcast in December 2015. The sequel series, Steins;Gate 0 (2018), has 23 episodes plus one more released on home video.
Is Steins;Gate finished?
Yes. The 24-episode anime tells a complete story with a definite ending. White Fox followed it with a film, Steins;Gate: The Movie − Load Region of Déjà Vu (2013), set a year after the series, and with the sequel series Steins;Gate 0 (2018). The original game has since been remade twice: as Steins;Gate Elite in 2018, using footage from the anime, and as Steins;Gate RE:BOOT, released on Steam in August 2026.
What order should I watch Steins;Gate in?
Start with the 24 episodes of the 2011 series. Two follow-ups branch off from it in different directions. The film Load Region of Déjà Vu (2013) is set a year after the series' ending. Steins;Gate 0 (2018) is set in an alternative world line in which Okabe fails to save Kurisu; it branches off at episode 23, and the alternative episode 23β, made in 2015, leads into it. The extra episode 'Egoistic Poriomania', set two months after the series, is optional.
Where can I watch Steins;Gate?
In North America the series is licensed by Crunchyroll; it was first released there by Funimation, which also made the English dub. Madman Entertainment holds it in Australia and Manga Entertainment in the UK, and Steins;Gate 0 is licensed by the same companies. Availability differs by country and changes over time, so check your local services.
What is Steins;Gate about?
It follows Rintaro Okabe, a university student in Akihabara who calls himself a mad scientist, and the friends who gather at his makeshift Future Gadget Laboratory. Their phone-controlled microwave turns out to send text messages into the past, and the messages rewrite the present in ways only Okabe can remember. What starts as a comedy about a group of eccentric friends becomes a tense thriller about cause and effect, the cost of changing the past and how far Okabe will go to protect the people he cares about.
