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The quiet, incredibly brilliant, dangerously sharp and quite positively insane genius Meister/Scythe Technician of Shibusen. To say that Stein’s crazy is putting it way too lightly. There’s insanity, and then there’s Insanity. Stein’s the latter and then some. The crux of it, however, lies in the fact that he’s a genius, capable of absorbing information from his surroundings at a phenomenal rate, observing everything down to the most minute detail and making connections that few would be able to draw after just a cursory glance and one or two pointed questions. A man like that would naturally seek out an order to things, and would, by extension, greatly value control in all things, most especially himself. On the other hand, however, it could also mean that he’s simply too intelligent for his own good.

It’s that balance between an insatiable thirst for knowledge and a need to stay in control that defines Stein. When logic is everything and desire is high, morals become useless constructs, ethics turn into matters of semantics and emotions are rendered remote, inaccessible. If Shibusen had not found him early on and partnered him up with Spirit Albarn, there is little doubt that Stein would be one of those crazy serial killers lurking around in the background of things, performing bizarre experiments on anyone he can get his hands on, be it human, kishin egg or witch. His time at the school managed to humanize him, to an extent – it wasn’t perfect, and could not completely penetrate to the core of his being, but it at least kept him from going completely over the edge… for a while, anyway.