MithraPride

I gotta talk about this anime since I've just got round to finally watching it.

Translates as "Summer Storm" is the story of swords and souls eternally retold... wait that's Soul Calibur. It centres around a coffee shop (Ark) and the employees but here's the kicker, two of them are time travelling ghosts (Arashi & Kaja), although they're ghosts they still have a physical form. Sounds a bit kooky and not sure if it's explained as to why they're there or can time travel but the story is they were killed in an air raid during WW2. For them to time travel they need to form a "connection" with a special person, Arashi forms a connection with a 13yr old boy (main character) called Hajime who's rather brash. Kaja says she can only form a connection with a girl, and much to her surprise she accidentally forms a connection with a boy called Jun. Who'd have thought the character who looks and sounds like a girl is actually a girl, that has never been done before So turns out that Jun has been dressing up as a boy (same age as Hajime) because she was wearing men's clothes due to being a model and first met the employees of Ark in said clothes and thus they all assumed she was a boy. She decides it'd be too troublesome to tell them otherwise and just tries to keep it a secret but obviously Kaja now knows and says she'll help Jun keep her secret.

If it's not obvious this is a very funny anime, so if you don't like comedies you probably won't like this but if you love off the wall humour you should love this one. It's basically the funny adventures of the employees (plus a few others), which does involve time travel among other things.

Hajime's always telling Jun that "You're man..." and there's one episode where they somehow switch bodies leading to a lot of laughs. For some reason Hajime notices Jun has no balls but doesn't seem to notice the lack of penis Plus any comment about her chest obviously doesn't go down well, he mentions how he (as Jun) has bigger breasts and starts groping "himself" so Jun immediately jumps him to stop him from groping her body, he thinks she's offended by the remark so says she's completely flat and thus gets more of a beating

One episode the master (Sayaka, also con artist) notices the milk has gone off so she tells them to travel back in time to when the milk wasn't off. Kaja tries to explain to them that it doesn't work that way but they're too dense to understand

There is a second season but no one really seemed to pick it up for fansubbing but I'm currently looking into that. Doesn't seem like it has been licensed yet either

There's also some references to Maria Holic and Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, I wonder if they're all done by the same studio

Time travel is explained such that history cannot be changed and thus if you did time travel to the past your actions would have already had an outcome on the current present (if that makes sense). For instance if I saved someone from dying in the past their family wouldn't suddenly pop into existence, they'd already have existed since the past technically wasn't changed it was always like that.

They introduce a funny time paradox about the spoiled milk carton; if you take the spoiled milk carton back in time to a point when it wasn't spoiled and swapped it with itself, what happens?

That's an old one.

There seems to be one carton but there are actually two.

The milk carton travels at the standard rate of 60 seconds / minuet into its rapidly spoiling future. At some time after the lacto bacteria run wild a scientist picks the carton up and says "spoiled and I want fresh milk." So he hops into his handy time machine and heads into the past, preferably before the pull date on his carton. (See what happens when gas goes over $4 / gallon?)

He arrives in the past. Now we have the original carton, call it C1, before pull date or lacto bacteria invasion AND the later version complete with spoiled milk and ~ two more weeks of existence than its earlier form. This one we can call C1 +N, N being the passage of time and bacteria growth. The mere passage of time is quite enough to differentiate the cartons. He swaps them and heads back to his present where a bowl of cereal is waiting for him and the milk.

But, you may ask, what about that carton looped back into its past? Well its full of spoiled milk. Which our scientist has already (or has yet to) discover(ed). Leading him to take a time trip rather than a grocery store run.

C1 has been replaced by C1 +N which will age into C1 +2N or perhaps C1 +N +n, I am not really sure and there is a difference. Somewhere. Or perhaps sometime.

The only real paradox is in the bacteria count difference (if any) between C1 +N and C1 +2N.

For extra credit, which anime character is painted on the side of the time machine? And does it have any relation to kid on the milk carton?

There's only ever one carton of milk in the fridge, we're assuming a "what if" scenario if you were to take the the spoiled milk carton and replace it with a past version of itself, having an extra carton is a different problem entirely

They did take a carton back in time but I don't think they replaced it with itself. I'll probably have to watch the episode again to see what was going on

There is no time machine, they simple travel back in time by holding hands.

Sugami wrote:There is no time machine, they simple travel back in time by holding hands.

Neat trick. And I meant in my example.

As to the paradox. The passage of time changes things. You are not quite the same now as when you started reading this sentence. Hundreds, probably thousands of cells have died and been replaced. Your hair and nails grew teensy tiny amounts. Your circulatory system circulated somewhat.

There appears to be only one milk carton. In the absence of time travel there remains just one. Loop it back and there are two. One in your hand and one in the fridge. The one in your hand is a temporal descendant of the one in the fridge. But it isn't the same.

Did I ever mention that I am a life long Sci-Fi reader?

Well, yeah, sorta... it's the same carton but from two different points in time. Problem is the method in which time travel works... you're not changing time each time you time travel, you're just interacting with time but you can't change history because it has already happened...

So working under the assumption that you were successful that means the milk carton that you are planning on sending back in time has already been sent back in time already. So if you were to send it back in time again as you plan to then won't the carton be stuck in an infinite time loop? There's the more pressing matter of if you took the past carton and drank it before it became spoiled, then how does it become spoiled for you to take back in time in the first place?

Okay, I think I know what you were saying now. Basically the act of time travel turns one milk carton into two...

They smart up and send food back in time for instant pickling by hiding it somewhere where no one would find it and then take it out of it's hiding place as soon as they get back. I try not to think about what would happen if it had failed

Here's another time paradox; Hajime says he shared a special moment with Natsu, Natsu has no idea what this special moment was so she time travels (whilst Hajime is sleeping) to find out what it was. She finds past Hajime to ask him about it but in the process creates the special moment that present Hajime had told her about. I can't really explain this one but it sounds very paradox-y

Think it was in Time Splitters 3 where a future version of you pops out of a time portal and gives you a key to open a door. Later in the game you became the future you (obviously) and give the key to past you. So here's my question, where did the key come from? If you look at the time-line it just pops into existence around the time future you gives it to present you and disappears from existence at the time present you gives it to past you, it actually has no beginning it's just stuck in a constant time loop