[Akashin]

Originally Posted by Sol Falling

I don't necessarily see anything wrong with pseudo-science, or understand why any explanation involving it must be unsatisfactory. For a story to provide a pseudo-scientific attempt is probably better than to have no attempt at all.

Not really. The explanations you and others are providing actually seem like much more involved and complicated stretches of 'real life human understanding' from my perspective. My explanation for the Grief Seed issue is very simple: they contain (emotional) energy. We know that Kyuubey wants that, so (maybe?) that's why he's collecting them.

As I've been telling you and Kazu-kun, unfortunately, there is no actual dialogue from Kyuubey which indicates what you are saying. Kyuubey does want energy, yes; but nowhere does he say he explicitly wants MGs to turn into witches. Energy is released during a MG -> witch transformation, true; but nowhere is it mentioned that it is that exact moment when Kyuubey collects that energy.

While in the most technical sense you're right, I'd say it's some pretty hard nitpicking to say that he does not strongly (if not absolutely) infer that the energy released during transformation is what he collects. Saying it's his job to collect "that energy" leaves the meaning relatively clear, whether or not he directly says he collects energy at that exact moment. In fact, its entirely possible you're right so say he collects some energy by consuming Grief Seeds (there's nothing said in-series to suggest this is not the case, but then, there's nothing saying he does either), but it still pretty much goes without saying that the explosion of energy (illogical as that may be) is what he is after.

Originally Posted by Sol Falling

You know, it seems to me that Gen's actual reason for saying this might be to prevent people from reading too far into the time-travel aspect of the story. I think we all know very well here how attached some people can get to their speculations about a story. Time travel in particular is something which can inspire people to make up endless theories and predictions over. I think, by saying he hasn't thought too much about it, what Gen is really doing is gently letting those people know not to expect too much out of that part of the story. It's not so much that Gen himself has absolutely zero idea how the time travelling is supposed to work or has no intention in how it should be read in the story. Moreso him letting people know that the significant aspects of Homura's time travelling might only be what's immediately obvious--that Homura is stuck in a time loop; that her only way out of it is by protecting Madoka.

If I had to go with my gut, I'd say that the time travelling mechanism Gen actually believes in might well be simply the simplest--Homura going back and just waking up as part of the same timeline. The problem is, confirming even just this might make speculators jump to further, unsupportable conclusions, so it might be easier for Gen to just say he's got no idea as a method for managing expectations.

Along the same lines, I might be hesitant to use this comment to jump to similar conclusions that Gen is using the other 'entropy' concepts completely frivolously. Yes, he probably knows what entropy is; it's just not all that important to the story.

=/ It's this part of debating with you that gets dull and boring, because too often there's absolutely nothing you say that I disagree with. There's still a small point to be made in the fact that, if it's really as you say, he shouldn't have said anything about her time travel powers at all, but if it was said via an interview as Kazu-kun states then odds are somebody else asked him. So while saying that he doesn't understand it feels a bit stupid, I won't argue that keeping it simple and unexplained is more sensible.