At this moment, the fan group chat was flooded with more and more people asking questions.
"Did anyone understand what's going on? What is this show even trying to tell us?"
"Nope. Maybe it's just a slow burn? I'm guessing it'll make sense in ten minutes or so. A lot of shows use half an episode just to set up the premise. It's only been what, like fifteen minutes? Gotta be patient."
"Oh, I'm patient, alright. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the production so far—acting's fine, quality's decent. But I just… don't get it! I was starting to wonder if I was just too dumb to follow, but seeing everyone else confused makes me feel a bit better."
"That girl who kept mumbling nonsense hasn't really had any story yet. And that girl named Makise—I thought she was the female lead, but she was only on screen for two minutes before she died? Is this a murder mystery? Like the cops think Okabe killed her, and then he has to prove his innocence or something?"
"Hmm… could be. Guess we'll have to keep watching. But some shots are just weird. Like, when Okabe sends a text, why the dramatic close-up? And why is the whole street suddenly empty?"
At this point, the group chat was mostly full of confused commentary and light-hearted complaints.
But ten minutes later, those simple questions started multiplying.
After the scene where Makise is seen lying in a pool of blood, Okabe sends a message to his close friend Hashida Itaru. But then, in a strange twist, the show reveals that Itaru received that message before Okabe ever sent it.
It was almost like… Okabe from the future had sent a message back in time to his best friend Itaru.
What the hell?
If this were Jing Yu's past life, where audiences were used to time-travel-heavy dramas, people might've caught on quickly.
But in this world, while time travel wasn't completely unheard of, there were barely any classics in the genre. So this kind of setup was completely unfamiliar to most viewers—they had no frame of reference to help them understand what was going on.
Next, we dive into Okabe's day-to-day life.
He's a college student with a bit of a chuuni streak, and he's got a cute childhood friend named Mayuri, and a chubby otaku buddy Itaru. The three of them often talk about "saving the world" and "scientific breakthroughs"… but in the eyes of most viewers, they're just a trio of delusional geeks.
Then, something truly shocking happens: Makise, who was supposed to be dead, suddenly reappears in front of Okabe.
And the show continues with more of Okabe's everyday antics…
It's very obvious that Ruka, the adorable and ever-devoted human companion, has a major crush on Okabe. Unfortunately… he's a guy.
Their "research base" is just the upstairs floor of an appliance shop—a hangout for the trio of geeks.
We're also introduced to the shop's manager, Mr. Braun, the part-timer warrior Suzuha Amane, the cross-dressing maid café girl Faris NyanNyan, and Kiryu Moe, a mysterious girl obsessed with hunting down retro computers.
All of these characters get their screen time, and just like that, thirty minutes fly by.
Finally, the plot kicks into gear.
The protagonists start researching the bizarre phenomenon of microwaving bananas. Yep—five minutes of plot dedicated to experimenting with bananas in a microwave.
But of course, this wasn't your ordinary banana-microwaving session. They were using electromagnetic signals from a phone to interfere with the microwave during the process. The result? A banana transformed into a strange, jelly-like substance.
At this point, the Steins;Gate viewers were losing it:
"What the hell am I even watching?"
"Forty minutes in and I still have no idea what's going on. Is this really by Jing Yu?"
"I could turn on any random channel and probably find something more coherent than this!"
"Forget the plot for a second—why the heck is Makise alive again? And why is Okabe suddenly obsessed with microwaving bananas? Does combining a microwave and a phone make bananas taste better or something??"
"Wait… what's happening now? The banana just disappeared? Where'd it go? What's this plot even supposed to be?!"
"How did the banana in the microwave suddenly revert to its original, unbroken form? But now it's green and gelatinous…"
"Wow. Makise's got guts—she just showed up out of nowhere and had the nerve to eat the green banana jelly?!"
Turns out, putting a banana in Okabe's homemade hybrid microwave-phone device somehow caused it to reappear a few minutes earlier in time, altered and structurally deformed.
And Makise—yes, the same genius scientist girl who died in the first episode—ends up working with the group to study the phenomenon.
Then the show just keeps getting crazier and harder to follow.
Episode one ends—no ending theme, just a hard cut straight into episode two.
It's like the show was terrified people would switch channels, so it didn't even give them a chance to leave.
And now the plot delves into the theory behind time machines.
They recover an old computer, which lets them decrypt secret files from a mysterious and dangerous organization called "SERN."
Within those files are messages from someone claiming to be a time traveler from the future—someone who wants to change the future to prevent the SERN from dominating the world via time travel.
At this point, Ming Xiao's brain just completely short-circuited.
By now, the show has featured time travel, resurrection, text messages sent to the past, time machines, alternate futures, parallel worlds, and… phone-microwave hybrids.
(Okay, maybe not the phone-microwave—Ming Xiao considered that one a trash prop that didn't deserve to be lumped in with the other big ideas.)
All these high-concept sci-fi elements were being tossed in together—but mashed up like this, Ming Xiao had zero clue what the show was actually trying to say.
Still, by the end of episode two, two new members had joined the protagonists' research group: Makise and the aloof, melancholic older girl Kiryu Moeka.
After a series of increasingly absurd plot developments, the team begins to suspect that their phone-microwave combo might really be able to send text messages into the past. So they decide to test it.
And at the very end of episode two—bam. The impossible happens. They successfully sent a message back in time.
Cue the ending theme.
Ming Xiao lets out a long, exhausted breath.
Two. Long. Hours.
What the hell did he just watch?
The craziest part? Despite how ridiculous everything was… he couldn't help but feel intrigued. They actually pulled it off—the banana-microwave-phone thing really sent a message into the past.
Next week—
"Can it actually get more ridiculous than this?" Ming Xiao chuckled to himself, half exasperated, half curious.
It's supposed to be a mystery drama, but honestly? There wasn't a whole lot of suspense.
But comedy?
Oh, it was definitely funny.