Quote:
Originally Posted by Iaevuous
Except hasn't that explanation of the time stream been called out for, you know, appearing to be bunk?
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Plenty of people have objected to it because of how people from the future have seemed to influence the past even though the film analogy seems like it would prohibit such things, but I don't think it has been refuted. I recall Nagato saying something about how the time travelers' knowledge of time travel was incomplete, but unless there's more to it that I remember it doesn't refute this particular theory of time. I suspect the problems people have with Mikuru's explanation come from the analogy she used.
Let's see what happens when we drop the film analogy and think about what we know of time travel in Haruhi and what it requires. Time travelers are from the future; this requires that the future exists in some manner that can be reached without fully experiencing the intervening time. Time travelers have traveled to the past; this requires that the past exists in some form that can be reached even after we are finished experiencing it. Thus the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously and it is our perception of events that moves. How it moves, I do not know, but that isn't important right now.
To imagine the form a universe in which this is true would take, visualize an object, any object will do. Visualize the object in empty space and designate left and right as "past" and "future." Now imagine a chain of that object extending to the left leading to that object's creation and one to the right extending to its destruction. Congratulations, you have just imagined the 4D shape of an object. Extend this to the whole universe.
So in
Endless Eight Haruhi has cut out a two-week segment of the universe and attached its ends together. There is no moving everything back because she has altered the 4D shapes of everything in the universe. The characters don't perceive this because they aren't capable of seeing 4D shapes without moving through time.
Ugh, I'm not sure if I was able to explain that adequately. Language sure is an inconvenient way of transmitting information.
Anyone got a better explanation?