Steins;Gate: The Movie - Load Region of Déjà Vu

Steins;Gate: The Movie - Load Region of Déjà Vu (劇場版 シュタインズ・ゲート 負荷領域のデジャヴ) is an animated film based on the visual novel Steins;Gate. The film opened in at least 30 theaters across Japan on April 20, 2013 and earned 199,445,318 yen (US$2,013,799) by its second weekend. Film-goers between May 11 and the 24th were given one of two new short novels as side stories to the movie. Novelized and manga versions of the film itself have also been released.

Funimation licensed the movie in 2014 and released the English subbed/dubbed version on DVD/BD on March 28, 2017.

Plot
The film takes place in August 2011, one year after the events of the visual novel and the anime series. After his painstaking journey across multiple world lines due to the invention of D-Mail, Rintaro Okabe has tricked the universe and the Attractor Field convergence itself into falsely believing Kurisu Makise was murdered, effectively creating a new world line he calls Steins Gate; here, the deaths of both Mayuri Shiina and Kurisu Makise are prevented while a peaceful future for humanity has also been provided, simultaneously averting World War III as well as a SERN-propelled dystopia.

On August 3, Kurisu arrives in Japan for a press conference and reunites with all the members of the Future Gadget Lab. However, after she and Okabe meet in the lab, Okabe begins to have intense side effects from his past time-leaping, increasingly seeing lengthier durations of visions of some of his previous experiences on other world lines, and even hallucinations of a world line he never time-leaped to. The next day on August 4, a mysterious visitor shows up at Kurisu's hotel room, telling her to remember three things: a cell phone, a microwave oven, and SERN. Later that day, as Kurisu is talking to Okabe at a laundromat about how her own instances of déjà vu may be similar to Okabe's 'Reading Steiner' ability to retain memories from other world lines, Okabe suddenly disappears in front of Kurisu. Furthermore, no one else seems to remember Okabe ever existed, with Kurisu herself barely retaining a faint memory of the original Future Gadget Lab founder.

A week later on August 11th, as Kurisu finds a fork that Okabe had given her and remembers the words the stranger left her, she learns Itaru "Daru" Hashida had for some reason hacked into SERN, suddenly giving her the urge to use it to build a time leap machine. Using the machine, Kurisu leaps back to the night of August 3, when she observes Okabe disappearing from and reappearing into existence, with everyone's memories of him changing accordingly. She is then contacted by the visitor from before, revealed to be Suzuha Amane, who came from the future using a time machine that the future Kurisu built.

She explains to both Kurisu and Okabe that Okabe's strong memories of previously visited world lines are overloading his Reading Steiner, causing him to involuntarily time-leap on his own between the unstable Steins Gate world line and the "R" world line, the only other world line on which neither Mayuri nor Kurisu die and which has a divergence difference of .000001% from Steins Gate. Suzuha states the only way to save him from vanishing completely from Steins Gate is for Kurisu to use a time machine to travel to the past and alter his memory in the Steins Gate world line to cement his sense of reality there. Okabe ostensibly refuses, as he emphatically feels neither time machines nor time leap machines should exist, and does not want Kurisu to go through the same suffering he experienced, saying he would prefer her and Mayuri to continue living in peace even if it meant he would cease to exist. She insists on trying to save him, but Okabe equally urges Kurisu to forget him, leaving her with a kiss.

The next day, Kurisu runs to the lab to confess her love to Okabe and insist to him that she will not be able to forget him (just like at the end of Episode 22, when Kurisu tried to unsuccessfully confess to him right as he broke the 1% divergence barrier). However, he disappears again right in front of Kurisu at the lab before she can tell him her feelings; Kurisu then breaks down in tears and almost uses her Time Leap Machine a second time before grudgingly accepting his warning and deciding to try to forget him. Later, on August 13, as the Future Gadget Lab gets word that it might have to close up, Kurisu is once again approached by Suzuha, who tells her that she is not being honest with her own feelings, and eventually convinces Kurisu to go with her in her time machine.

Suzuha declares that, to keep Okabe on the Steins Gate world line, he must be implanted with a powerful memory that helps distinguish it from other world lines. The two travel back to June 30, 2005, where Kurisu attempts to talk with the young Okabe, only to result in him getting into a car accident instead, leaving her too afraid to attempt another trip to the past. Back in the Okabe-less present, Kurisu discovers that Mayuri and the others also possess faint memories of Okabe when she learns that they would like to try to keep the lab open; their memories are further awakened when she does an imitation of his persona, Hououin Kyouma. Encouraged by everyone's feelings, Kurisu returns to the past, this time succeeding in her mission by implanting the concept of Hououin Kyouma into Okabe's mind (which led him to take on his 'mad scientist' persona to emotionally protect Mayuri), and giving him his first kiss. With these experiences cementing his memory on the correct world line, Kurisu manages to bring Okabe back from the R world line into Steins Gate: a transition which is signified when a busy crowd materializes around them during their final conversation at the end of the movie.

This section contains spoilers for Anonymous;Code
In the movie, Load and Beyond the Load regions are important plot elements and occur many times: Rintaro Okabe seems to be moved outside the Load Region, and after that, the world considers his existence to be vacant, as seen in everyone's memories and the vacant place 001 of the Lab Members. After Kurisu Makise came back from the past with Suzuha Amane after using a time machine to implement a strong memory into Okabe when he was a kid into order to maintain his existence by kissing him and telling him about Hououin Kyouma's personality, we can see Okabe in an area where, as if time has stopped, everything is frozen.

Cast & Crew
The cast of Steins;Gate is returning for the movie:
 * Mamoru Miyano as Rintaro Okabe
 * Kana Hanazawa as Mayuri Shiina
 * Tomokazu Seki as Itaru Hashida
 * Asami Imai as Kurisu Makise
 * Saori Goto as Moeka Kiryu
 * Yu Kobayashi as Luka Urushibara
 * Halko Momoi as Faris NyanNyan
 * Yukari Tamura as Suzuha Amane
 * Yuki Amane (Mentioned)

Trivia

 * Names of Maho Hiyajo and Alexis Leskinen appear on some papers that Kurisu Makise is studying.

Development
Kanji Wakabayashi directed the film with supervisor Tarou Deji and chief directors Takuya Satō and Hiroshi Hamasaki. Tatsuya Matsubara and Naotaka Hayashi supervised the story scenario, and Jukki Hanada wrote the screenplay.

Kyuuta Sakai once again adapted huke's original character designs for anime and oversaw the animation process at WHITE FOX.

Adaptations

 * Drama CD: A Posteriori Existence (Prequel)
 * Manga
 * Light Novel

Tie-in audio dramas
A special drama CD featuring Hashida Suzuha, Makise Kurisu, Hashida Itaru and Hashida Yuki, entitled 『現存在のアポステリオリ』(Gen sonzai no aposuteriori - A Posteriori Existence/A Posteriori Dasein). It tells the story of Kurisu and Suzuha in the years after Okabe's disappearance, as Kurisu builds a time machine and Suzuha decides to time travel for Kurisu's sake.

The Amazon Limited Edition includes a second special drama CD featuring Makise Kurisu, Mayuri Shiina, and Okabe Rintaro, entitled 『隠晦曲折（いんかいきょくせつ）のシンフォニア』(Steins;Gate「隠晦曲折のシンフォニア」inkaikyokusetsu no shinfonia - Symphonia of Meanderings Hidden in Ambiguity) One week before Kurisu's trip to Japan in 2011, she and Okabe are coincidentally shopping for gifts for each other at the same time, when they both end up calling Mayuri for advice.

Both types of bundles also include a bundle of drama CD's originally distributed with Comptiq and Comp Ace magazines, including the movie special drama CD from May, 2013.

These drama CDs are meant to be lighthearted comedy.
 * 1) Steins;Gate Comptiq Original Drama CD, July 2011. Okabe helps Kurisu to conduct an experiment where he projects himself into one of Daru's galgames, only to find out things didn't pan out exactly as expected...
 * 2) Steins;Gate Comptiq Original Drama CD, October 2011.
 * 3) Steins;Gate Comp Ace Original Drama CD, November 2011.
 * 4) Theater version Steins;Gate Fuka Ryōiki no Déjà vu Audio Drama: Inevitable Blushing Gossip, Comptiq May 2013, (コンプティーク2013年5月号付録「劇場版 STEINS;GATE 負荷領域のデジャヴ オーディオドラマ 赤面必至のゴシップ」), featuring Makise Kurisu, Faris, Hashida Itaru, and Moeka Kiryu. The day after Kurisu's arrival in Japan in 2011, Faris and Kurisu grill Daru for answers about his new online "girl friend", Yuki Amane. Moeka reveals that Okabe had her snoop for information on Daru's budding friendship. As she proceeds to tell Faris and Kurisu the details, Daru diverts the conversation to talking about Kurisu's own relationship with Okabe.

Those who reserved their copies of the movie early received a bonus gift of the drama CD 『意材言外のフラクタル』(I-zai gengai no furakutaru - Fractal of Unexpressed Thought Material), featuring Yuugo Tennouji, Moeka Kiryu, Nae Tennouji, and Mayuri Shiina. Set before the film, Nae is a first year middle school student when one day she spots her father and Moeka shopping together in Ueno and becomes suspicious about their relationship.