The Butterfly Effect – Steins;Gate
Steins;Gate is a weird but absolutely fantastic anime and, at first, seems like a slice-of-life anime about a really wacky guy who calls himself a mad scientist. As the plot moves forward, you soon realize that the anime is really about time travel and the effects it can have on individual lives.
Although time travel is explained and explored in multiple ways in popular culture, Steins;Gate is all about the butterfly effect, which is explained by one of the main characters, Kurisu Makise.
Basically, in Steins;Gate, when Okabe time travels, he creates different world lines (basically just parallel universes). Since time travel is done by sending information to the past, whatever direct information that is sent is usually what is changed in the new world line, usually.
Steins;Gate is a much more personal story about how using time travel affects individuals, with Okabe eventually trying to undo some of the positive changes he made to the world for some of his friends, because they negatively affect other people in his life that he cares deeply for.
If you compare the show from the first episode to the last, it becomes very emotional and serious, compared to the more whimsical start it has. If a butterfly flaps its wings, it can indeed create a hurricane somewhere else.
