UlasanAnime.com – After careful consideration of various narrative constraints, I find myself increasingly agreeing with the assumptions and conclusions presented by Darkmirage in his discussion on infinite energy through time travel. This analysis will delve into spoilers for Puella Magi Madoka Magica.
This topic touches upon persistent paradoxes that require reconciliation within models of time travel to achieve logical consistency. In this context, the precise physics involved becomes less critical than the underlying principles.
Time travel itself can be compatible with the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The arrow of time naturally progresses forward, and traveling to the future is an experience everyone undergoes. One form of time travel can simply be perceived as moving into the future at a rate faster than others.
The reverse scenario, traveling to the past, can also be conceptualized through a mechanism where the net total entropy remains a positive value. This then shifts the focus to the conservation of mass-energy and, as always, the linearity of states.
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There are valid reasons to posit that a typical “Groundhog Day” mechanism implies a singular, linear progression of cause and effect. In such a model, an event at a specific time propagates consequences regardless of any subsequent “reset.” However, Homura’s resets in Madoka Magica appear to be more fluid. She seems capable of resetting at will, even if Madoka survives the critical eve or the primary witch is defeated. More significantly, it does not appear that Kyubey retains memories of Homura across these resets.
What does this imply? It suggests that Yuki Nagato from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya is still a more advanced entity than Kyubey. It also leaves us uncertain about what exactly is transferred back in time. It’s possible that nothing “physical” is carried back, and we cannot definitively comment on this until we gain further understanding of soul gems and the nature of souls.
TL;DR: The “Big Reveal” episode offers very little, if any, new information regarding the xenophysics of Madoka that wasn’t already implicitly understood.
My evolving perspective stems from the idea that if Kyubey’s race possesses the capability to create a system allowing travel to the past with such informational transfer, they would likely have developed methods to pass this information back, thereby reducing entropy at an earlier stage of their civilization. In essence, while Homura is driven by her unwavering hope and love, there’s no inherent barrier preventing an entire race from pursuing similar goals. Fortunately, it’s difficult to extract any established elements from the Madoka Magica setting and argue for a mechanism that bypasses the inherent mystery of the soul gem. Until this aspect is clarified, we remain in the dark. The common explanation of “a wizard did it” might apply to the time-traveling mechanism itself, but perhaps wizards are drawn to cute, white, ear-sporting mascot animals, and that’s the underlying motivation.
