El Psy Congroo!

Salvation and sacrifice.

Jiang Yu couldn’t help but laugh—he had actually heard those two words from Eriri’s mouth. With just a bit of background and the character settings of the protagonists, could one nearly discern the very core of a work? Perhaps this was only to be expected from Eriri. Drawing on the impressions his predecessor had left him about Eriri, along with his own observations in recent days, Jiang Yu realized that apart from his incurable passion for the two-dimensional world, Eriri possessed an uncanny intuition for quickly grasping the intended message of any work he encountered.

Simply put, Eriri had an ineffable instinct toward these works, and, combined with his impressive eloquence and practical skills, he had become the much-admired blogger known as TAKI.

Yet in Jiang Yu’s view, the core of this particular story should also include growth—witnessing Hououin Kyouma’s transformation from boy to man, from adolescent delusion to maturity. But what struck the deepest chord in the game was this: if maturity demanded abandoning his fantasies and submitting to fate, then Kyouma would choose to challenge fate once more.

In Mayuri Shiina’s route, Kyouma, who had already sacrificed so many precious things, was ultimately forced to give up the one he cherished most—to fulfill a utopia he cared nothing for, to restore the world to its proper course, and to become, in a reality without Kurisu Makise, the only one who remembered her. With nothing left to lose, he still spoke with his signature dramatic flair, forcing a smile as he declared the world’s reset.

Gentle, strong, patient, mature—all the words that could be used to praise a true man were, at this moment, not excessive for Kyouma, who had endured so much.

So, when the Kyouma of fifteen years later, from the world line where Kurisu Makise had died, finally appeared, the maturity, the charisma, and the unyielding childishness—all the traits of both boy and man—were perfectly interwoven and fully displayed.

The final mission, titled “The Goddess Who Governs the Future,” made the emergence of a perfect world line, Steins;Gate, possible. Whether it was the desolation under SERN’s rule or the devastation of a third world war, none of it really mattered to Kyouma. All he wanted was to save the one he loved.

At this thought, Jiang Yu found himself lost. After experiencing so many works of anime, comics, and games, there were plenty of unforgettable heroines, but only a handful of truly memorable male protagonists.

If asked which male protagonist had left the deepest impression on Jiang Yu, perhaps the first to come to mind would be the “Big Teacher,” and then Kyouma. But if asked which male protagonist he admired most in all of anime, comics, and games, there was no doubt: written as Rintarou Okabe, read as Hououin Kyouma.

After acquiring the ability to time travel, Kyouma leapt again and again across timelines to save his beloved Mayuri. Yet with every change, everyone but him would lose the memories they’d had before. Hashida, Kurisu, Mayuri—all those close to Kyouma would regard the events he remembered as things that never happened. He existed apart from the rest of humanity, unable to remain a detached observer. Time and again, he intervened, tried to change, to reverse, to resist—and each time, the result was the same.

Whether it was the convergence of world lines or the law of causality, every journey through time, every reset, left Kyouma anxious and uneasy.

“Perhaps we’ve already done something irreparable,” Kyouma said. In a world where no one remembered what had already happened, he bore that anxiety and torment alone. Gradually, anxiety and torment turned into a deep-seated fear, as Kyouma walked further and further down a road he could no longer tell was right or wrong.

With every reset, he carefully observed every tiny change, alone and fearful.

Shakespeare once said, tragedy is tearing beautiful things apart for all to see.

For Kyouma, who valued his friends above all, the thing he feared most was losing them—or more precisely, losing the versions of them in his own memory.

“Does every change to the past twist the world a little more, making everyone different from how they once were?”

With this worry and the crushing mental burden it brought, Kyouma began his endless, futile cycles of crossing and redemption, repeating a fate he was powerless to change.

Watching those he cherished die before him again and again, Kyouma’s spirit was on the verge of collapse. But he never gave up. Even when he considered ending the absurd loop with his own life, still he persevered to the end.

What was most chilling was that after failing again and again, after coming to understand the theory of world line convergence, Kyouma was forced to make a final decision.

He had to revoke all the D-mails, restoring the world line to its original state—a world line without SERN’s rule, a world where Mayuri would not die. But on that world line, Kurisu Makise would die.

In Mayuri’s ending, Kyouma cried out, nearly crazed: “The moment of victory has arrived! I, who bow to no conspiracy, have seen my conviction through to the end—at last, I have won this final holy war! For this victory, to all my comrades who fought by my side, I thank you! The world that now arrives is my ideal world; all of it is the choice of Steins;Gate! EL PSY CONGROO—the world is about to be rewritten!”

After letting go of everything, after losing everything, Kyouma finally saved Mayuri from her fated death.

And then? Did you think it ended there? Kurisu’s death led to her research on the time machine being spread to the world by her father. The arms race over time machines began, igniting the Third World War.

Torn between two impossibilities, Kyouma began searching for the truly perfect world line: one where both Mayuri and Kurisu survived, and where the world was neither consumed by war nor ruled by despair.

So, once again, Kyouma began his endless cycle of crossing and fruitless redemption.

Finally, with a hint from his future self, Kyouma succeeded in reaching the perfect “Steins;Gate” world line. How many failures, how many moments of hysteria, how many methods he tried along the way—perhaps only he knew.

In every world line, Kyouma bore alone the despair of a reality that changed endlessly yet remained essentially the same, and endured the pain of sacrificing his friends’ memories to alter fate.

He witnessed everything with his own eyes, destroyed everything with his own hands, endured everything alone, and in the end, remembered everything alone in the torrent of time—forever the solitary observer.

And perhaps “the lonely observer” is the most fitting label for Hououin Kyouma.

In an industry where each new anime brings a popular heroine and the male leads are all but invisible, when you encounter a protagonist like this, what reason could you have not to love him?