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Galilei Donna (TV).


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Blood-
Bargain Hunter



Joined: 07 Mar 2009
Posts: 23665
PostPosted: Mon Dec 09, 2013 7:20 am Reply with quote
No. No-no-NO-nooooooooooooooooo!!! Please, please tell me that I didn't just watch writers - in 2013 - once again use spoiler[a time travel gambit while ignoring time paradox.]

*slams head into brick wall*

Unbelievable. So the only way that Hozuki is able to spoiler[travel back in time is because of a device that Galileo made, but he was only able to make it because Hozuki was able to travel back in time.]

Lovely. Rolling Eyes
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phia_one



Joined: 15 Jan 2012
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Location: Pennsylvania
PostPosted: Tue Dec 10, 2013 9:45 pm Reply with quote
I have a theory as to how spoiler[the time traveling goldfish device was made. It obviously is tied with that giant storm cloud. I'm guessing Galileo somehow harnessed the energy from the cloud. Think about it, why was there a telescope included with the last sketch? Because with the present state of the planet, it's cloudy most of the time. The telescope might be a way in order to find the cloud.]
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ikillchicken



Joined: 12 Feb 2007
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 11, 2013 2:05 am Reply with quote
Blood- wrote:
No. No-no-NO-nooooooooooooooooo!!! Please, please tell me that I didn't just watch writers - in 2013 - once again use spoiler[a time travel gambit while ignoring time paradox.]

*slams head into brick wall*

Unbelievable. So the only way that Hozuki is able to spoiler[travel back in time is because of a device that Galileo made, but he was only able to make it because Hozuki was able to travel back in time.]

Lovely. Rolling Eyes


Blood, I'm glad you brought this up (although you probably won't be in a minute). The way I see it, what the show is in fact suggesting is that time and causality as we know it are an illusion.

See, traditionally, we view events as a progression through time. Prior events cause subsequent events which in turn cause even more events after that. The universe is, in effect, like a tower with the future built on top of the past where the existence of later events rests on the existence of the prior events that support them (through causation). Now, as you observed, such a view of reality is incoherent with the kind of paradox we see here. Hozuki only spoiler[goes back in time because of the Tesaro but the Tesaro is only made because of Hozuki going back in time. Under our standard model of past events causing future events there appears to be no reason the Tesaro ought to exist at all then. Galileo would just never meet Hozuki in the first place and thus never created the Tesaro and thus Hozuki would never go back in time to inspire the creation of the Tesaro.] Even if that loop is causally explained once in place, there simply doesn't seem to be any cause for that loop to come into existence initially.

But, what if we reevaluate our understanding causality? We tend to take causality for granted. But in actuality, it is not something we can directly perceive. For instance, when I drop a book I don't see it being caused to fall. I just see it fall. All we can really directly perceive is the mere constant conjunction and proximity of events. From that we infer causality on the basis of priority. When A happens and B always follows (barring any other mutual explanation) we conclude that A caused B because A was the prior event. It came first. However, priory is also a rather dubious concept. Like causality, we tend to take it for granted. Because we as humans can perceive the past through the process of memory, we view it as fixed, already having happened, a starting point for time. And the future in turn, which we can't perceive, we see as being the result, caused by those fixed past events, and returning to my tower example, being built up on top of the past. Thus, we see time as having a directionality. It "starts" at the past and moves toward the future. However, it may well be that this is untrue. In actuality, there's no clear reason to assume that time has such a directional flow. Certainly, events exist at different points in time. But it may well be that time is just another dimension. Neither end of that spectrum is "start" or the "finish". Just as objects in space may exist at different points without one end being objectively "prior" in some way, so it may be for objects across different points in time.

All that being the case, there really can't be said to be any such thing as causation. Of course, that's not to say there is no relationships between events across time. Events are still evidently linked somehow given their constant conjunction and proximity. But it is not the case that one happens "first" and that in turn causes the subsequent future event. Of course, the question that raises is: Why does this chain exist at all then? And that's certainly not clear. Although no more so than how anything can exist in a causal universe. After all, if everything has a prior cause, what started that wave of events? What was the first cause? And why did that first cause exist if not because, as with everything else in the universe, it was caused by a prior event? At least here, in this new non-causal universe, we can more easily say it is simply a brute fact. Just something that is. To ask why is a mistake. The idea that all things demand a reason for being is an outdated concept from or old causal universe.

Anyway, this certainly resolves our biggest problem with the Hozuki paradox. We no longer need to wonder what caused it to come about. Like the rest of this non-causal universe, it simply exists. The events with Hozuki are only abnormal in that the chain of connection exists in an odd little circle that is out of order temporally. The connections themselves however are all sufficiently explained and match up with what we see to be the constant conjunctions of our universe. Meaning there's really no problem.

So...yeah. Hozuki's paradox makes perfect sense. The show is just demanding that we rethink out assumptions about the inherent causality of the universe and directionality of time.

....

....

Well, either that or writers are just dumb and mistake making no sense for being "deep". Probably the first one though. Yeah. I'm 90% sure.
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Galap
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 11, 2013 2:20 am Reply with quote
I'm with you on this one ikillchicken.

So, the apparant 'paradox' is that she would have 'already' have had to have 'gone back' to show him the tesoro for it to be there in the future, but that's an assumption on how things work, an assumption that going back in time will change the course of history as opposed to merely being part of the cause of your present-- part of your history.

To me, the second option is more elegant because it needs less assumptions, but both can be made to work in science fiction.

The event is its own cause. She is a part of her own history because she is: because she want back in time. The loop is not caused, but inherent. Reality is not caused, but inherent.
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dtm42



Joined: 05 Feb 2008
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 11, 2013 3:22 am Reply with quote
One of the best Doctor Who episodes (if not the best) in the revival - "Blink" - had a similar scenario. Sally Sparrow knew how to defeat the Weeping Angels because The Doctor told her, but he only knew what to tell her because of documents that she gave him a year after it all went down. Therefore the information of how to defeat the Weeping Angels had no origin, because both got it from the other. Impossible? Yes . . . if you believe that time is like a river which can only flow one way. But if you look at the universe like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey, impossible things become possible.
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Blood-
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 11, 2013 6:37 am Reply with quote
@ ikc - your post confirms a growing suspicion of mine. Namely, that ikillchicken, mild-mannered, Vancouver-based college student is IN FACT...

...world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking. Wink

Was it Einstein who first conclusively proved that time is relative? I'm not sure myself because I am a scientific and mathematical nincompoop. I accept that the human perception of time may in fact be a species-specific mental construct that helps us navigate through "reality." However, I personally have never experienced my "reality" in a way that suggests the Time Tower (or Time River which I prefer as a metaphor since rivers flow and Towers do not ... or if they do flow it means they are in very deep shit) model is false. Nor have I heard or read any account of anybody else's experience that credibly or persuasively suggests to me that the model is false.

Therefore, I calculate all my actions based on the model being true. I know slapping a co-worker's ass in what we call "yesterday" will definitely have a consequence in what we call "today."

In short: GD's writers are hacks (something I knew before their disastrous foray into spoiler[time travel]).
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danilo07



Joined: 25 Dec 2011
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 11, 2013 9:47 am Reply with quote
Physical bodies appear without a cause very often.Alpha,beta and gamma particle that are emitted in a radioactive decay,appear spontaneously without a cause.
However I still consider the paradox in this show to be stupid.Steins Gate got it right,if you were to go back in past and change it ,that would create an alternative timeline that is unrelated to the original.Timeline in this show is pretty linear,so Bloods critique is pretty valid.
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phia_one



Joined: 15 Jan 2012
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Location: Pennsylvania
PostPosted: Wed Dec 11, 2013 2:12 pm Reply with quote
Blood wrote:
In short: GD's writers are hacks (something I knew before their disastrous foray into spoiler[time travel]).


Aside from the spoiler[time travel (which who knows, they may be able to salvage it somehow)l], I'd say that the GD writers have been competent with the limited amount of episodes. It honestly could've been much worse. Most complaints about the writing I've seen on this forum are complaints about coincidences, like spoiler[Hazuki getting sick when in fact she was showing symptoms the previous episode]. I'll admit that there are a few, but most of the other 'coincidences' in fact had some build up or foreshadowing. Limited, certainly, but still there. That, and if the viewer stopped and thought about it, some of the coincidences can have at least some form of explanation such as spoiler[why the sisters, Roberto, and the pirates were at the hospital.]
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Blood-
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 11, 2013 2:58 pm Reply with quote
phia_one - my complaints about the show's writing go way beyond what you've identified. There's been dropped threads (i.e. the parents), there's been gratuitous, let's introduce some characters so we can kill them off quickly for cheap emotional effect and awkward situations of all sorts. This is not a show that has impressed with its sure writing hand.
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ikillchicken



Joined: 12 Feb 2007
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PostPosted: Wed Dec 11, 2013 8:12 pm Reply with quote
Galap wrote:
The event is its own cause. She is a part of her own history because she is: because she want back in time. The loop is not caused, but inherent. Reality is not caused, but inherent.


Yes, I think that second part is the key. It definitely feels a little wishy washy if the show is telling us that just this event loop alone was un-caused. That seems to give it an unjustified grandeur and wander into the category of "fate" or something. But if this is a symptom of all reality it seems much more reasonable.

Blood- wrote:
@ ikc - your post confirms a growing suspicion of mine. Namely, that ikillchicken, mild-mannered, Vancouver-based college student is IN FACT...

...world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking. Wink


Come now Blood, that's just silly. I'm obviously not mild-mannered.

Quote:
I accept that the human perception of time may in fact be a species-specific mental construct that helps us navigate through "reality." However, I personally have never experienced my "reality" in a way that suggests the Time Tower (or Time River which I prefer as a metaphor since rivers flow and Towers do not ... or if they do flow it means they are in very deep shit) model is false. Nor have I heard or read any account of anybody else's experience that credibly or persuasively suggests to me that the model is false.


I think that's certainly fair. I don't think there's any particularly strong evidence that this river model must be false. Just that it isn't necessarily true either. Our belief that it is is largely built on assumption that stems from our human perceptions.

Quote:
Therefore, I calculate all my actions based on the model being true. I know slapping a co-worker's ass in what we call "yesterday" will definitely have a consequence in what we call "today."


Well, I think that makes sense. As humans we can never really escape our own perspective. It's a little mind boggling to think about and difficult to express in language which is itself heavily rooted in said human perspective. But ultimately, we can't disregard the practical fact that we do seem able to achieve (at least from our perspective) a particular result at a "later" point in time by acting a certain way now. So no matter what, it seems like we should continue to operate in making decisions as if we can cause the future.

Quote:
In short: GD's writers are hacks


Probably, yeah. I don't actually think that most writers who pull out this paradox have really thought it through and feel it is justified for the reasons I posted. But this is my way of trying to give them the benefit of the doubt and improve my enjoyment of the show as best I can.
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Stark700



Joined: 30 Jan 2012
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PostPosted: Thu Dec 12, 2013 7:48 pm Reply with quote
I think I said this on another board but I bet the Wright Brothers would be quite happy to see what our characters accomplished in the latest episode :3
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Treeborn



Joined: 30 Mar 2013
Posts: 729
PostPosted: Fri Dec 13, 2013 12:18 am Reply with quote
So were my friends and I the only ones that were shouting spoiler["Just kiss him, dammit!!!"] at the screen during the scene where Hozuki spoiler[returned to the past]? Lol
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DuskyPredator



Joined: 10 Mar 2009
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 13, 2013 1:34 am Reply with quote
Episode 10

I noticed that both of them had the same coloured eyes.

I feel like poking some more holes. How did Galileo get spoiler[Japanese candy], and why? Wouldn't Houzuki's half Japanese appearance put him on guard? How could a flying machine be made so early on? Although maybe there is the reveal that the why the series' technology feels like a mix of old and new is because it is spoiler[an alternate timeline where Galileo created a flying machine so early on, and did research into finding a source of fuel].

Therefore the series world only exists because of the events of the series?
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shiranehito



Joined: 27 Dec 2011
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PostPosted: Fri Dec 13, 2013 5:02 am Reply with quote
DuskyPredator wrote:
Episode 10
How did Galileo get spoiler[Japanese candy], and why?


Now, I must present you the harsh reality of spoiler[lost in translation]. Actually the so-called spoiler[Japanese candy] is spoiler[konpeito, a type of candy which is now considered as Japanese sweets, but actually originated from Europe, Portuguese exactly. Though I think now it's extinct anywhere but Japan. But I think perhaps it was a common type of candy in Europe around that time (or at least like that in this anime universe)]
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ikillchicken



Joined: 12 Feb 2007
Posts: 7272
Location: Vancouver
PostPosted: Fri Dec 13, 2013 8:17 am Reply with quote
Wait. Wait. Wait. Did he seriously spoiler[build a plane in the freakin' 1500s that could fly so high that he could see the curvature of the earth!? I'm just trying to make sure I didn't misunderstand something here. Because that might just be the most insane thing in this show yet. And another thing: Did Hozuki seriously give NO thought to the fact that she was about to get hit by a missile before going back in time? I mean, what did she expect to happen? If not for the pirates (who she had no knowledge of) she would have jumped back in time and then been immediately blown up before she could do anything.] Uuuuuuuuuuuggggggg.
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