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Steins:Gate plot holes and inconsistencies? [Spoilerific]

It could be that I missed some explanation or detail, or it could very well be an inconsistency/plothole.

There's no such thing as a perfect time travel story. By its very nature, they're already a "plothole" because they create an infinite loop to a third party observer to those involved.

It's impossible to change the events of the past without affecting the events of the future, which is where the "plothole" lies because the current time of events is the future.

Yet, screenwriters never consider this for some reason.

#1:
The satellite, not the microwave, sent the first d-mail.

#2:
The IBN wasn't used to hack the servers, but instead, older files stored on those servers. It was the only machine to read them. The "hack" was an issue because the IBN didn't have the necessary components to network in.

The data deletion had nothing to do with the past, as far as I remember.

#3:
Time travel logic. Accept it.

#4:
Okay, this is probably going to come out of nowhere, but I personally didn't see the story told from Okarin's point of view, but of Suzuha. Remember, all these events started when the time machine crashed, and it's of my belief she restored the timelines by making Okarin believe he was the one doing it.

From the offset, Suzuha was on a mission, and she seemed very content when her mission was completed, leaving the rest of the current timeline to unfold itself by "resetting" itself, though at this point, it didn't matter.

I suspect this story isn't over, but again, that's just my take on it.

Thus, I didn't take the "ending" to be one.

#3
A possible solution. First, if Makise's death is quantum fixed in the beta world line (or not, see #4), then she will be stabbed regardless of Okarin's actions. So in the first episode, she is stabbed by her father, and the second time around by Okarin. Who stabs her is not important, only that she is stabbed. Now, when Okarin travels back the first time, he travels to a world a few decimal points away. In this world he stabs her, and it has no effect on the future. When he travels the second time, he travels to a different world only a few decimals away -- but not the same one he when back in time to, so there is no second Okarin.

One of the main things I didn't understand was how the first DMAIL triggered the world line change. When Okabe sent his email telling Daru that Mikase was stabbed, how did this change the world line? The other DMAILs had an important message that somehow altered the past. However, in this case, this DMAIL had no relevance to anything. I don't understand how it can alter the past in a way such that Mikase is still alive. How did the first DMAIL essentially change anything if the contents were practically irrelevant?

That is why at the end, all they have to do is hack SERN and destroy the data. By doing that, SERN fails in their time travel experiments. Because of this, SERN never creates a dystopia, but SERN also fails to complete whatever experiments they did that altered the past. So the World Line goes back to how it was, and Makise is once again stabbed.

I've read a lot of science fiction, and it all runs together, but this is how I see the Steins;Gate world. Time paradoxes are prevented by an effect similar to things like Copenhagen interpretation and wavefunction collapse. Basically, observing certain events causes the wavefuction to collapse, and the quantum probabilities become fixed. For example, seeing Mayushii's death collapsed the waveform, and the probability of her death was then fixed in the alpha world line, which is why Okarin couldn't reverse it without moving world lines.

#2
Okay, this one confused me too, but I believe the aptly named Mad_Scientist is correct here. And it was necessary from a plot perspective: Everyone else sacrificed something very important to them to save Mayushii, so Okarin had to too.

#3
A possible solution. First, if Makise's death is quantum fixed in the beta world line (or not, see #4), then she will be stabbed regardless of Okarin's actions. So in the first episode, she is stabbed by her father, and the second time around by Okarin. Who stabs her is not important, only that she is stabbed. Now, when Okarin travels back the first time, he travels to a world a few decimal points away. In this world he stabs her, and it has no effect on the future. When he travels the second time, he travels to a different world only a few decimals away -- but not the same one he when back in time to, so there is no second Okarin.

#4 This is how I saw it. Future Okarin was quite literally the future of Okarin, the Okarin that did all the time travel. He had full knowledge of all that had transpired in the alpha world line. This is how he knew about those "Longest three weeks". Okarin's memory of event's constant and linear throughout the story, even if time is not. So when Okarin returns to the beta time line, he spends years trying to build a time machine, succeeds, and sends Suzuha back to save Christina, and prevent WW3. But he can't just save her, because her death is quantum fixed -- except it is not! What is quantum fixed is his younger self seeing the body! So by faking her death, he save her without moving back to the alpha world line and having to sacrifice Mayushii.

And as for #5, I just chalked it up to the stunning incompetence of the Japanese Bureaucracy.

Melanchthon wrote:

I've read a lot of science fiction, and it all runs together, but this is how I see the Steins;Gate world. Time paradoxes are prevented by an effect similar to things like Copenhagen interpretation and wavefunction collapse. Basically, observing certain events causes the wavefuction to collapse, and the quantum probabilities become fixed. For example, seeing Mayushii's death collapsed the waveform, and the probability of her death was then fixed in the alpha world line, which is why Okarin couldn't reverse it without moving world lines. #2 Okay, this one confused me too, but I believe the aptly named Mad_Scientist is correct here. And it was necessary from a plot perspective: Everyone else sacrificed something very important to them to save Mayushii, so Okarin had to too. #3 A possible solution. First, if Makise's death is quantum fixed in the beta world line (or not, see #4), then she will be stabbed regardless of Okarin's actions. So in the first episode, she is stabbed by her father, and the second time around by Okarin. Who stabs her is not important, only that she is stabbed. Now, when Okarin travels back the first time, he travels to a world a few decimal points away. In this world he stabs her, and it has no effect on the future. When he travels the second time, he travels to a different world only a few decimals away -- but not the same one he when back in time to, so there is no second Okarin. #4 This is how I saw it. Future Okarin was quite literally the future of Okarin, the Okarin that did all the time travel. He had full knowledge of all that had transpired in the alpha world line. This is how he knew about those "Longest three weeks". Okarin's memory of event's constant and linear throughout the story, even if time is not. So when Okarin returns to the beta time line, he spends years trying to build a time machine, succeeds, and sends Suzuha back to save Christina, and prevent WW3. But he can't just save her, because her death is quantum fixed -- except it is not! What is quantum fixed is his younger self seeing the body! So by faking her death, he save her without moving back to the alpha world line and having to sacrifice Mayushii. And as for #5, I just chalked it up to the stunning incompetence of the Japanese Bureaucracy.

Just wondering why no one replied to this message. Maybe when some scientific and technical terms are used to explain the events, people with questions never seem to reply to these comments. I think this shows that some of you guys haven't done your homework enough.

As this is a time travel anime, maintaining an active mind throughout the series is a must to fully comprehend the series in its entirety. I didn't find much fault in it, which you guys call as plotholes. Much of the arguments I see here against very good explanations by Mad_Scientist are based on personal views on what defines a time travel science and the concept behind it (or personal interpretations of ideas by others). Basically, what I see here is a situation of not accepting other's explanation to maintain a constructive discussion revolving the presented explanations to come to a conclusion but rather, rebutting the explanations because it doesn't fit into your own logic, while failing to present a viable explanation yourself.

Besides, another point I would like to make is have any of you here who found plotholes in the anime have even bothered to read the VN in the first place? I'm taking an example from Tsukihime by Type-Moon. Many found that there are numerous plotholes within the anime, while a majority consensus was that the VN was much more satisfactory product than its anime counterpart. The reason for this is that in an anime, the amount of materials which can be inserted is limited, whereas the VN has everything in it. Those who only watched the anime will come up with all these 'plotholes', and thus, explanations will become as exhaustive as the case where a teacher tries to teach a student about trigonometry in detail, whereas the student have only read the condensed, digest version of the topic. This will obviously result in a confused student who didn't get all the answers presented, because the student did not do his homework and have the pre-requisite knowledge to understand the explanations presented.

So, read the VN first, try to get the needed information, and then try to resume the discussion. After all, an exchange of ideas between two parties will result in no constructive progress if one party have insufficient knowledge about the topic.