RErideD and my problems with Time Travel

RErideD is far from the most interesting show to talk about this season. Everything about this show is average. The characters are average because it’s not like they aren’t developed in anyway, but their development only happens when it must happen. The story line of finding a girl who ran away while also trying to stop the apocalyptic world they live in from happening isn’t done in a creative way either. The visuals are kind of eh as well. What I am saying is that everything about the show is boring and functional which means RErideD doesn’t have its personality. I think that boring is the worst thing that an anime series can be to me. The most interesting thing about it is that Yoshitoshi Abe is involved, yet you can’t even tell anything about that. The time travel aspect is also kind of lame, because it at least gives me something to talk about.

RErideD’s time travel is left kind of unexplained. Apparently, there is a theory that Derrida came up with back when he was a college student that he uses to time travel, but everyone in the show knows about it for it be explained. It’s called the trout theory. The thing is that in show, there is no reason for anyone to talk about it in anyway. Literally everyone and their mother has read Derrida’s theory and I mean everyone. Even small kid characters that act like kids will suddenly about talk about and critique Derrida’s theory in their cute little kid voices which is so off putting for me. Anyway, when it comes to time travel, he just does it. He focuses his mind on one time in his life he wished he changed and then he is there long enough to change one thing. I wonder when the nazis are going to win world war two. (I’m sorry, I had to throw in a Godwin’s law joke somewhere). Point is, if you are going to throw an explanation of how the time travel works or at least hint at it then COULD YOU TELL US HOW IT WORKS? At least a small hint please. If you don’t want to, then please let it be magic. Doing the half way route doesn’t work well for anything. There is a strong lack of an audience surrogate character which would have helped this show quite a bit.

Then there is my own issue where people don’t understand how to use it effectively. This is where I start moving away from RErideD because I don’t think it has this problem. Derrida at least knows how to use time travel in the show. I mean, at least he explained to himself how to do it. No, I am talking about Dragon Ball Super where nobody knows how to use Trunk’s time machine effectively. EVEN BULMA the genius can’t think of better methods of using it. The arc in which this happens involves our protagonist crew (Goku, Trunks, and Vegeta) moving back and forth in time a few times. They always appear back in Trunk’s apocalyptic future with the exact amount of time it takes our crew to get ready for it. So if they spend a day to get a ready for the trip back after returning for the future, then they jump to the future a day later then they left. Goku and the gang could have trained for a few years and then come back a few minutes later after they left to catch the crisis that was happening in the future off guard. Perfect strategy based on how Dragon Ball Super makes time travel. Oh well what can we really expect from a show with a bunch of knuckle heads that only want to fight. No, that is not a bad thing for a Dragon Ball show at all.

Moving along with some other problems I usually have with time travel in media in general, it’s the over use of it. I will state that Derrida doesn’t have that much issue because there are massive consequences for using time travel a lot. The more he travels back to the past to change it, the less opportunities to change it later on. It has been explained to him that he can only take a trip to all destinations once. That means he needs to put more thought into how he does it or else the world will end. No, my problems happen with series like Doctor Who sometimes. From what I’ve seen, there has been a habit of using time travel to show off how clever the writing is. You know, that whole “wibbly wobby, timey wimey” thing? Having one-time element conveniently connect to another one or have inconsequential loops that get resolved at convenient times for the plot kind of things. I realize that time travel has the capability of easily being confusing, but the whole making it confusing to make the narrative look smarter than it actually is doesn’t work for me at all. I’ve been turned off from Doctor Who for a while until the latest season because of Moffet and his self-indulgent writing style.

My favorite kind of time travel usage in medium is the limited variety. I can only describe it as “I am a person from the future and I am stuck here” narratives. That may sound boring, but there are so many interesting ways this concept can be brought up. One of my favorite science fiction series that has done this recently was Continuum. A much lesser known science fiction to be sure, but it is a story about a cop from the future whose travels back in time to make sure the corporately controlled future happens by taking down terrorists from the future. I love the morally complexity of the series and how people are sacrificing themselves by traveling to the past to never return to their present and how morally grey areas are explored. RErideD has moderately limited time travel so it works well enough for the story it’s telling. I just wish it was more interesting.

I guess I can say that I do like time travel but within various caveats. That’s a me thing because I’ve been a science fiction television fan longer then I’ve been a fan of anime. I grew up watching science fiction thanks to my dad being a complete nerd and taking me on this journey, so I have a lot of strong opinions about it. It’s also why I try to find a lot of non-mainstream or more original science fiction television series when I can. Time Travel series are on that list. RErideD is a part of that list even if it’s kind of mediocre. There are still some interesting ideas in that show that bring me back to it. You may have noticed that I didn’t say anything about Steins;Gate on here. I do have a lot of opinions about that show, but I don’t feel like talking about it a lot on this blog because I am not interested in saying what people people consider controversial opinions about popular anime for views. That’s a similar reason on why I don’t talk about SAO either. If you do feel interested in how I feel about these shows, please dm on Twitter.

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