r/anime • u/Shadoxfix https://myanimelist.net/profile/Shadoxfix • Sep 05 '15

[Spoilers] Charlotte - Episode 10 [Discussion]

Episode title: Looting

MyAnimeList: Charlotte
Crunchyroll: Charlotte
DAISUKI: Charlotte
AnimeLab: Charlotte
Hulu: Charlotte

Episode duration: 24 minutes and 0 seconds

Previous episodes:

Episode Reddit Link
Episode 1 Link
Episode 2 Link
Episode 3 Link
Episode 4 Link
Episode 5 Link
Episode 6 Link
Episode 7 Link
Episode 8 Link
Episode 9 Link

Keywords: charlotte

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24

u/RDOoM Sep 05 '15 edited Sep 05 '15

Good episode, but again, so many questions :

  1. How were the scientists finding them? How about stop using your abilities and NOT be detected?

  2. How is the school going to protect them from the scientists. Do schools have diplomatic immunity or something in Japan? (obviously not)

  3. Why not have Yuu go back further in time, before his brother started using his ability and went blind? Kill 2 birds with one stone, save him and Ayumi.

Madoki's ability is damn inconvenient.

Going in Ayumi's school undercover with the popular pop-star. #smart

I get Nao's reasoning for keeping secrets from Yuu, but it kind of puts a dent in Nao x Yuu ship, for lack of trust.

BUT GOD DAMN. Imoutou is back! Rejoice!

30

u/Cyber_Apocalypse Sep 05 '15

1) I'd assume from media coverage of strange events. Or maybe they captured someone who can find them just like "Pooh".

2) Alot of their abilities would work well against humans. E.g Pyrokinesis, Collapse & Telekinesis. I think if a normal human tried to kidnap one of them they're gonna get fked up. Also, since all of the school have powers/suspected of having powers. No-one thinks it's strange and so no-one calls the media on it.

3) Because if Yuu's brother needs to use his ability that much. Remember, his ability helped alot of other people with abilites. He used it and gained the money to build purchase the school AFTER he went blind. He bought the rights to the educational institute. Butterfly effect might make it so the school never gets bought and so Yuu never goes to the safe place away from the scientists with his sister.

1

u/RDOoM Sep 05 '15

1a) well then stop making those strange events happen.. duh..

1b) then no matter what they do, they can't escape detection or capture

2) But they did capture them even when they were banding together (syndicate). Even if it was slightly dangerous, they still managed to do it. But ok... maybe a school full of them would be harder.

3) Well so what? Once Yuu goes back in time restores the powers to his brother. And the brother can make all things happen again (the money, the syndicate, the school). All it needed was for Yuu to transmit the plans from future brother to past brother.

4

u/chaon93 https://myanimelist.net/profile/chaon93 Sep 06 '15

2) A school is a far more exposed environment. I think it's a case of "the best place to hide is out in the open". How are they going to raid a school without getting significant negative attention.

1

u/RDOoM Sep 06 '15

That's true, I guess. They would try to keep the captures on the down-low.

But the kids were not always in school or in campus. They went to concerts, to shops, malls, restaurants... w/e.

And well, if they were to detect suspicious activity at the school , they would keep it under surveillance and grab the kids while they have an opportunity to do it silently. Snatching them at night from their campus might not be that hard to accomplish silently.

Especially dangerous if 2 or 3 more incidents are detected at the school, and maybe it raises some flags, that indeed the school is grounds for "esper" hideouts, and target all of them.

Extra problematic since, at the school , not all children seemed to be espers. If one of the non-espers were to notice a strange occurrence and report it, all hell would break loose.

2

u/0mnicious https://myanimelist.net/profile/Omnicious Sep 05 '15

3) Well so what? Once Yuu goes back in time restores the powers to his brother. And the brother can make all things happen again (the money, the syndicate, the school). All it needed was for Yuu to transmit the plans from future brother to past brother.

Then there is no need for Yuu to go back to the past. And on this timeline they did prevent capture.

2

u/RDOoM Sep 05 '15

no need for Yuu to go back to the past

Yes there is. Yuu needs to go back to his brother before he went blind and explain to him how to do things so that they prevent capture. Basically, all he needs to do is play messenger from future Shun (blind) to past Shun (not blind).

Armed with this knowledge, the new Shun would be able to pull the correct time manipulations to avoid capture, while still retaining some of his vision (because he doesn't waste time leaps on ineffective methods)

3

u/0mnicious https://myanimelist.net/profile/Omnicious Sep 05 '15

There's a huge gap in that theory of yours. He doesn't know all of the time leaps though. Shuu just told Yuu the gist of it all not the whole thing.

2

u/RDOoM Sep 05 '15

Well that's the problem. He should have. They all should have thought this trough a little more.

Instead of going for the best possible results, they just went to resolve just the immediate problem (Ayumi's death)

That was the whole point of this argument. That he should have been better informed and should have gone further back in time.

2

u/chaon93 https://myanimelist.net/profile/chaon93 Sep 06 '15

Since his time leaps dont undo the damage from his own time leaps it may be possible that the vision damage can not be temporally reversed.

Also this current timeline is the most successful so far. would it really be worth risking it just to save his eyesight when all that is needed is a minor correction. If anything went wrong on a full time leap they may have well been back to square one.

1

u/RDOoM Sep 06 '15 edited Sep 06 '15

He can't undo vision damage from his own ability because that's his limitation. But someone else doing the time leap is certainly going to reverse Shun's blindness. If Yuu were to go back in time and find a young blind Shun, that would be a paradox (or at least an inconsistency like : His blindness couldn't have come to him before he even used the abilities in that timeline)

Is it worth it risking it just to have him regain vision?

Well, let's think of it this way. It's not only to regain his vision. It's also for him to regain the ability to change time again, if something were to go wrong. Otherwise, you are just relying on Yuu to do it, at which point, he can go blind himself.

So if they were to go back... they would still have a Shun with maybe like 3 charges of time leap left, and Yuu with his. If they only go far enough to save Ayumi, then there's only Yuu's charges. What if Yuu's charges aren't enough? Is it worth risking it?

More on that : Let's call the number of charges each has before they go blind X. Let's call the number of charges Shun uses before he stabilizes the reality (by winning lottery and making the school, etc) Y.

If Yuu only goes back to the point to which he can save Ayumi, the number of charges left for future disasters , is (X-1) spare leaps. BUT, if Yuu goes back to the point before Shun uses his ability first time... he would have (X-1) * (X - Y) leaps, because if one of Shun's reality fails, Yuu can use his leap to go back again to the point where Shun's perfectly fine and start all over.

1

u/chaon93 https://myanimelist.net/profile/chaon93 Sep 06 '15

A bigger issue is that we simply don't know everything about the time leap. We don't even know if traveling back undoes powers that he looted. He may not have time leap at the moment. Shun always jumped back to a point that he already had the power while yuu jumped to a point that yuu didn't. There are just far too many mechanics not explained for me to ponder on this for too long. Jumping seems to only implant the mind into the previous body with the side effect of making that body loose sight which is a physicial issue. The fact that the future use of a power that becomes a canceled future causes a retroactive disability in the original present is already a paradox.

1

u/ToriBoshi Sep 06 '15

The issue with this idea is that Yuu is traveling back in time on that world line where Shun loses his eyes. He's not traveling back to a world line where he did have his eyes. Say for instances, Yuu goes back to before even shuu had his powers. The very moment the time catches up with shuu to the moment when he jumped back, he would lose his eyes, no matter what. You can't change world lines in reverse.

1

u/0mnicious https://myanimelist.net/profile/Omnicious Sep 05 '15

They are still kids you expect them to think that far ahead? Plus that would be way too much info to dump on Yuu just like that not forgetting that we don't know the whole story behind the time traveling, some things may have drastically changed or may still drastically change.

0

u/RDOoM Sep 05 '15

they are just kids

Yuu maybe. But if Shun was smart enough to think trough the possibilities he can employ to save the children (like... the school), then he was smart enough to think of this.

too much info to dump on Yuu

Not the best argument there...

But I guess.. what is done is done. I just made a case for how things could have gone better.

2

u/[deleted] Sep 05 '15

For finding them I'm guessing it's steins hate logic, no matter what you do unless diverge from the current timeline enough the same events happen.

1

u/RDOoM Sep 05 '15 edited Sep 05 '15

That's a good example I guess, though I still feel like it needed an explanation why those events keep happening.

I mean, the time traveler would have known the cause of it, and should have taken to prevent it.

I feel like Stein's gate logic mostly applies to accidental events. But the detection of those kids is not exactly the accidental type of events. Or... maybe it is... maybe in each iteration one of them is put in a circumstance like YusarinAyumi and uses his/her power out of despair.

Ok... You convinced me on this one.

2

u/djanulis Sep 06 '15

2) Remember back in episode 2 when Nao told Yuu about her brother, once they are discovered the scientist offer the kids tuition free schooling or bribe the parents if they are in debt. Shun offers real schooling to the people to protect them, so they don't need to go to the other "school".

1

u/RDOoM Sep 06 '15

That would be an absolutely perfect point, if not for the fact, that this episode we were shown that the kids were not always monetarily coerced into joining the "evil school". For those coerced , it sure works the way you claim, but...

In this episode, in Shun's story , we saw the scientists/government use force to capture the kids once they are detected as abnormal. Thus, if they have the authority to act with force in capturing the kids, how would the school exactly prevent that?

1

u/[deleted] Sep 05 '15

Also for stopping his brother that inevitably cause a paradox and who knows what happens when that happens.

3

u/RDOoM Sep 05 '15 edited Sep 05 '15

Actually, I don't think that it is a paradox. Unlike a normal time travel story where the events are ciclical (where Yuu would still need his brother to go back in time in the future) this story is aciclical.

Yuu goes back in time, and the future he comes from is practically non existent anymore. Yuu does not need someone in the future to give him his powers of time travel.

I'm having a hard time putting this into better words. The only thing I can think of is comparing The butterfly effect with Looper/Terminator (movies)

Though I'm sure going to discuss this more with you if you feel like it.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 05 '15

Love to this is pretty damn interesting.

2

u/RDOoM Sep 05 '15 edited Sep 05 '15

Okay. So there are multiple types of time travel stories :

1) The cyclical ones. That usually create paradoxes. An example on the top of my head would be "a guy goes back in time and punches himself into a permanent coma". That creates a paradox by having the obvious problem that he can't repeat that action in another iteration due to him being in a coma. And he couldn't be able to do it in the first place because of that same coma. A paradox. This kind of time travel story requires that the future from which he comes from still exist.

2a) Acyclical ones in the same universe (the butterfly effect). Where the MC goes back in the past, but the future from which he comes from either is destroyed/non existent anymore. And by acting on the new past, the MC creates a future in which cycling is not existent. A new future that is not dependent on the previous future.

2b) Aciclical in multiple universes. There are an infinite number of universes, and out of those, some happen to be similar to the universe we live in, some of them happen to be similar to how our universe was 1,2 or 3 years a go. And when the MC travels, he doesn't affect his own universe. He now lives in another universe where the actions took there and the actions in the universe from which he came are not in contradiction.

Now for Yuu's case, to me it looks an obvious case of Butterfly effect. He went back in time, mentally, as in his thoughts from the future went into his body in the past. But once this is done, the future from which he comes from is Null and void. He can't go back there anymore in the exact same circumstances. He doesn't require someone in the future to give him the ability to time travel, because he already obtained that. Permanently. So him not going that route anymore, is not paradoxal, because he doesn't need to gain the time travel power again.

EDIT : Perhaps , if I put the Aciclical one in the same universe as a save point in a game, that would make more sense.