Predictions and Observations:
Special Edition -- Bonds Beyond Time

I'd like to open this special edition post by making clear my heartfelt appreciation for this event. I had so much fun, I met so many fellow fans, and for a single day I was truly in my element, among my own, and all the useless stuff I know so well and spend my time on became useful. I got such profound pride and love of my canon out of this experience, and I want to thank everyone before I go a word further. I want to thank those who originally wrote, produced, and enjoyed it in Japan, whom I hope every day have made it out of all the disaster there safely. I want to thank 4Kids and associates for putting this all together for us to enjoy dubbed into the English canon. I want to thank the superb voice actors, especially our leading four in the movie, for all of their great performances and hard work; it's always a pleasure to hear them rock the theatrical craft. I want to thank my fellow fans, who have made it clear that our canon is still going strong even after ten years, even after most people I mention it to don't know what I'm talking about. I don't even remember the words that showed on the screen at the end of the closing credits, because I was even more moved by the resounding cheer that always answered them. Thank you, everyone, for a wonderful ten years-- only seven of which I've actually been part of all this for-- and here's to a bright future!

So we begin with a ten-minute recap of the entire, at the point of this movie, nine seasons of YGO so far. Not a bad attempt, but could've been done better. Definitely not easy. You ever tried explaining all of YGO in a nutshell, 'cause I sure have. One of its charms is its depth, which makes it difficult to fit into such a nutshell. Honestly, I don't know what I would have done differently, besides the fact that the borrowed footage was handy but a roundabout way of making a point. I'd say not nearly so important as who these guys beat and what their most spectacular duels were, is what dueling means to them and how much they love it, what they fight for. What's important to them. What the world around them is like and where they and their cards fit into it. But a lot can be illustrated through the right moments of a duel. Overall it seemed a bit rushed, like they wanted to bring us up to speed but didn't want to work too hard on it. But like I said, *very difficult*. I don't envy whoever had to try and figure out how to pull off this part.

If I were to attempt to rewrite it, I would focus on what enters the arena when these guys do, so to speak; with Yusei, they got that aspect down pretty well: "He inspired people to believe that there was a brighter future in store for all." Talking about Jaden and Yugi, I'd mention something about how Jaden always brought out the best in his opponent-- "leave it to Jaden to pep-talk the bad guy"-- and how Yugi restored a sense of honor and true heart to something that *was* just a game and one most people cheated at by the time he made the scene. I firmly believe Yugi's role in Duelist Kingdom may have singlehandedly saved the future of the game... but that's another story.

One other part of the prologue bit caught my attention: the description of Yusei's era as a dueling "renaissance"-- their word, not mine. Professor Banner once taught in a class at Duel Academy that dueling philosophy experienced its "second renaissance" with the invention of virtual dueling-- holographic technology, he probably means, the invention of the duel disk. That's Yugi's era. How has the building of the Daedalus Bridge sparked a similar "renaissance" in New Domino now? We're probably so close to the beginning we don't see it yet, so let's keep an eye out for the rebirth of the very best of the old, and society's perhaps improving on it and developing something new.

So we begin the movie proper in Jaden's timeline, with Jaden fleeing from scary dragons somewhere in Europe. Apparently in the original Japanese the city is identified as Venice; in the dubbed version, it's never mentioned. Somethin' about people hangin' out in Italy once they're no longer main characters... Alister, Valon, possibly Vivian... never mind. Judging from Jaden's appearance, it would appear that this happens after Jaden graduated, but not by much. I think he might even have grown up a bit. Gosh, it's great to see him again, and this movie represents the only dubbed material that contains Jaden after he fused with Yubel and the Supreme King and all that jazz.

We learn a bit about Jaden's timeline and what's happening in it. For one, I'd love to hear more about how Paradox wrested Jesse's and Syrus' dragons from them-- 'cause if Jaden's got alien eyes we're after GX's last 25, and if that's the case, Syrus inherited the Cyber Legacy and all that and Cyber End Dragon is *his* monster, not his brother's. Still among the scariest dragons in Jaden's time period. Probably means Sy's been taking some names; right on.

Now we start our adventure in Yusei's time period with some nightmares about Zero Reverse. Here I'm remembering that when Yusei fell into the Reactor, the ghosts there showed him what it was like to live through it, what they saw, what happened. Or so I think. That would explain how Yusei's nightmares are so vivid when he was all of about one year old. Or maybe it's his imagination. It would also draw a direct connection to a plotline we never really saw resolved, and make this movie its resolution; Professor Fudo saved him from those things and insisted that he had more to do. We never really went anywhere with that, at least not as directly as we perhaps do here. I don't remember much of the movie footage, but one thing I'm remembering about the Zero Reverse sequence that I want to take a closer look at when we get DVD's, is the new footage regarding Zero Reverse that we see in BBT and nowhere else.

Why's Yusei sleeping on the couch? My guesses: because this takes place while they're still moving in at Zora's, or because Yusei's been having nightmares and maybe he sleeps easier with his runner close-by.

So from the looks of it, neither Crow, Jack, nor Yusei is seeing Stardust get captured and asking, 'Paradox wouldn't happen to be affiliated with infinity symbols in any way...?' This is before the beginning of Season 2. However, when Stardust gets captured at the beginning of Season 2, it really floors Yusei; therefore, it was happening for the first time, twice. There's a continuity issue, for starters. *Or*, it floors Yusei in the TV series *because* this is in the background; the last time Stardust got randomly captured by a crazy duelist on the road, there were rifts in the space-time continuum and stuff, Zero Reverse 2: Revenge of the Antigravity Ashes in 3D. I'm still guessing, regardless of that point, that this is happening for Yusei sometime between Seasons 1 and 2, in those intervening six months. Which is why I said Yusei, Jack, and Crow may still be moving in at Zora's place, hence Yusei's sleeping on the couch in the garage.

"Compromised". Nice euphemism, Crow.

We get a pretty nice snapshot of the guys' dynamic during this time period, very well done here. Some characters got a bit flattened in this movie (Pegasus, 'fraid I'm talkin' to you), but Jack and Crow definitely made the transition to the silver screen look good.

One of the best, guaranteed laughs in every theater-- the line, "Doesn't look so *tough* to me. 'Course how *could* you, with *that* dated haircut." One of the most iconic features of our show for fans and the uninitiated alike, is Yugi's impossible hair; I think we were laughing at ourselves when we laughed at this line, certainly. I also think that, with close examination in this movie of what one era's characters may think outdated or old-fashioned, we can gain some insight about what sets the different periods in duel history apart, how much time between them, how they developed, and so forth.

One of 5Ds' most important pieces in any plotline is what ties it back to the past. We get a lot of backstory in 5D's, a lot of painful memories of betrayals, disasters, heartbreak, and devastating mistakes. I think I'm correct in saying that, for the plot of the movie overall to scan properly in the 5D's genre, for it to seem true to this series as well as to the other two, it was necessary to tie it back to Zero Reverse. Narratively, I think that's why it is. There's also a lot of metaphorical parallels inherent just in the appearance of the world falling apart around us, and also perhaps in Paradox's warning that progress isn't all it's cracked up to be. Goodwin said of the original Reactor project that "to create a better future, we had to take risks in the past," (ep#30) and these were risks that, we soon learned, Professor Fudo wouldn't take, insisting that they couldn't "knowingly put the city in danger in the name of progress!" (ep#57) Zero Reverse fittingly represents a struggle toward and against inevitability; when it was initially explained to us, Roman insisted that Zero Reverse was an inevitable dictum of destiny, which intended a showdown between Signers and Dark Signers to occur, and Yusei's response was definitely one of angry rebellion against that sense of inevitable tragedy, the idea that some horrible things are just meant to be and can't be stopped, even if they already happened. This movie definitely tests the notion that things that already happened can't be changed, and the future is inevitable. More on all that later.

So why were the twins randomly looking up duel history online? Doing homework maybe? Miss Bartlett, I think you may have just saved the world by assigning the twins a research project over the weekend...

Wow, that's why we love Yusei right there-- he doesn't even care what the Crimson Dragon's planning to do with him, as long as it's something that'll give him any chance to save the city.

Let's talk about inter-series chronology. Yusei says that Jaden's a 'tough kid', which would suggest that Yusei's older than Jaden by a significant amount. But the chronology evidence says otherwise; assuming that Duel Academy's students are generally high-school-age-- fourteen to eighteen-- which we can't really but it's bound to be close, Jaden would be eighteen or nineteen now, because this takes place not long after he graduated. Yusei would also be eighteen or nineteen, because we get all our 5D's chronology from Zero Reverse. At this point in both of their timelines, wouldn't Yusei and Jaden be the same age, eighteen or so? By that unlikely pattern, could we even possibly conclude that this is also when Yugi's eighteen, which, by most reckoning (we have even less good chronology to go on in his time period; now if they'd only told us *Kaiba's* age right now...), would place this anywhere from maybe Pyramid to not long before the Final Duel? However, Yugi's interaction with the rest of his time period would seem to suggest earlier; where are Joey, Tristan, and Tea, and why isn't the crowd way more excited about him being at this thing than they are about Pegasus? Could it be that this is pre-Duelist-Kingdom? Since Yugi has a duel disk and knows post-Battle-City rules (advance-summoning, no one-turn delay on fusion monsters, everything but the synchros), I'd say not a chance, but that's a real frustrating mixed message right there. If I had free access to visuals, which I will when the DVD comes out, I'd check to see if Pegasus still has the Millennium Eye; that might break the chronological stalemate in Yugi's time. I didn't see it when I went to the theater, but I wasn't looking. More later also on an alternate theory for this related to all the time traveling.

Banner says Yusei has "a gift that connects him to the world of Duel Monster spirits", even though Luna's the Signer who talks to duel spirits, not Yusei. What might this perhaps tell us about what we don't yet know regarding the powers of the Signers-- does Yusei have to potential for developing the ability to talk to spirits, or the potential to develop Akiza's telekinetic powers by the same token?

Um, no offense or anything, but we trust an academic like Jaden to know what history used to be like? Then again, any schools in the Satellite at all are probably-accidental hearsay. Okay, I concede it, they know their duel history anyway somehow or none of this makes sense.

Pegasus' not-fully-interpreted incarnation in Pyramid was better. They flattened him. Wah. Scowl. Okay, I'm over it. Good fun though.

Why did Paradox intervene in Yugi's era now? What was about to happen, that wouldn't have happened if Pegasus had died? To determine that, we'd have to figure out when in Yugi's era this is happening, which, as I mentioned, is a bit of a thorny question. Yugi's disappearing easily in a dueling world crowd suggests earlier, while his competence with a duel disk and post-Battle-City rules, and how well and consciously Yugi and Yami work together, suggests later. Well, we know that it's within a few years of Duelist Kingdom and Battle City, 'cause Yugi's got the Millennium Puzzle. Still, it seems to me that, by any time after Battle City, all of Duel Monsters wouldn't have gone down with Pegasus; it had too many other champions by that point who would have kept it alive, like Yugi, Kaiba, and Joey. Perhaps that's why Paradox took Blue-Eyes and Red-Eyes also. Perhaps the reason 'why now' was because this was a point at which Industrial Illusions was weak-- possibly roundabout Battle City when we never saw much of Pegasus-- which could explain why Pegasus was seeking publicity at a tournament as tiny as this one. If all of Industrial Illusions went under-- and its popular president dying at a moment when it's faltering could do just that-- in an era before Industrial Illusions collaborated more in the cardmaking with KaibaCorp, which is something we saw happening in GX, that *could* possibly cause all of Duel Monsters to collapse eventually because no more cards would get made or created.

We're seeing plenty of hints toward things that would've been happening behind the scenes and off-camera in this movie, that would be fun to know about. Why Joey, Tea, and Tristan weren't at the tournament too. Why killing Pegasus just now would have destroyed the entire game along with him. How Paradox knew that. How Paradox took Red-Eyes from Joey, Blue-Eyes from Kaiba, Rainbow Dragon from Jesse, and Cyber End Dragon from either Zane or Syrus (post-graduation, probably Syrus). Why the twins happened to be looking up duel history at that moment. Why Yusei was sleeping on the couch. What Jaden was doing in Europe and how he tracked down Paradox in the first place. How Pharaoh (the cat, not the spirit) managed to catch a ride on Yusei's runner and time-travel back to Yugi's time with Jaden and Yusei, or whether he even *did*. And I'm probably just getting warmed up on these.

What does each of these guys bring to the team? How well do their decks and styles mesh, even though they haven't prepared at all strategically? I see Jaden pulling off some really nice combos combining his cards with Yusei's or with Yugi's-- the fusion-summon of Neos Knight, the De-Fusion so Yusei could use Junk Gardna's effect, and Flute of Summoning Kuriboh come to mind. Remember that one of his trademarks is Polymerization, and he was the duelist who wielded Superpolymerization, a card capable of combining, not just any two cards on the field, but two spirits. He's also the middle of the three, more conversant with Yusei's time and mindset than Yugi is and more conversant with Yugi's time and mindset than Yusei is. Now, on to Yusei, who, true to form and his own strongest card, Stardust, is very giving in this duel; his opening play is a card that sacrifices now to allow his teammates to gain later, "Reincarnation of Hope". Despite how much it hurts to say it, he tells Yugi to destroy Stardust if it'll help them win. Yusei was the one whose powers and daring and determination allowed him and Jaden to join Yugi in the past, who really carries the heart and emotional narrative of the movie, who at last proclaims that "the light will always overcome the dark". And finally, Yugi never disappoints. True to his magicians, he creates a miracle and restores Stardust Dragon to Yusei, just when Yusei had told him to destroy it if that's their only hope. Yusei was starting to get worried about their losing by Stardust's claw; not so with Yugi, who understands even better by now that if you deal with the things more important than winning, the winning will take care of itself. Yami, with his five thousand years experience dueling, is a source of wisdom to these younger champions, just as he is to Yugi and Joey. And Kaiba, for that matter.

What good has come from Duel Monsters in this world, socially, and how could it have all gone bad? Okay, this is where I talk about the social aspect of Duel Monsters. One of the things I love most about this show is that people duel the way they live. In Duelist Kingdom, I think the game as it was, was on the wane. It wasn't a true test of skill because the champions were cheaters and thugs, and their games rang hollow. Soon, I think, game fans would've moved onto some other fad. Yugi saved the game by treating it like it mattered; he accepted no substitutes for real dueling and trounced anyone who hadn't the courage to play the game with honor. Yugi reinvented the game, and in response to that, Kaiba reinvented it more with the Battle City rules that soon became the standard (with a few minor alterations) and with the invention of duel disks that broke down the barrier between duelist and duel. This must be why Banner called Duelist Kingdom and Battle City the "second renaissance" of Duel Monsters-- the game entered a radically different context and its appeal widened dramatically. I think I can say without fear of contradiction, in this audience at least, that Yugi was able to accomplish things that no other contemporary could because of the genuine passion, skill, and heart he brought to the game, and his legacy has become what every duelist dreams to measure up to. Who could ask for a better role model, especially in the dueling world? As a result, even in Yusei's time, most serious duelists play with honor and subscribe to high standards of fair play. I think that, in a lot of ways, we've found it's the case that with people who are willing to duel full-out, a lot of things become possible. True dueling bridged the divide between the City and the Satellite, between Slifer and Obelisk, between past and future.

Now, we already know all of this, but I'm reiterating it now because Paradox tells us something incredible: that despite all this, the future is doomed and he believes that Duel Monsters was what doomed it. Things seemed to be headed in a pretty nice direction when last we looked at the future, aside from all the rampant WRGP sabotage and hijinks. Supposing that Paradox's mask didn't *completely* skew what he saw, how could it have happened, and will it happen still? I believe that, to a certain extent, this question pertains directly to the causal nature of time travel, or to put it another way, destiny and determinism. And more on all *that* later. For now, suppose for the sake of the rest of this paragraph that something in the past demonstrably caused Paradox's era to be as he described, and had he averted that event or changed that trend, things would have played out differently. Suppose that there is one timeline and it is the same one that contains Yugi, Jaden, and Yusei, as they are in their individual series and as they are in this movie. What happened? I'm thinking of a similar question: how did New Domino get away with isolating itself from the Satellite for as long as it did? If Zero Reverse was within the lifetime of anyone we know from YGO, GX, or both, how did it happen on their watch? I mean, we never hear about what Yugi or Jaden did with the rest of his life, probably no more world-saving or we might've heard about it, but you would've found them wherever things looked darkest because they live for fighting the duels that matter and anywhere else would've been a crushing bore. We've seen these guys save the world when it looked absolutely beyond hope; nuclear proliferation, civil rights, any social issue you could name is no match for these guys if they choose to take it on, and all of them have a real passion for helping people. So, I found myself wondering how things got so bad in New Domino, and it seems to me, to a certain extent, these things go in cycles, there's a certain Hegel-ness to them. It was the having something worth fighting for that made Yusei great. Therefore, Paradox's time may just have been ripe ground for a new hero to rise. Kinda gotta wonder how it ever got that way in the first place, but the pattern seems to be that it sure doesn't stay that way.

"So I took to wearing a mask, and it was through this filter..." Well, there's your problem right there, Paradox. Take off the darn mask. Masks in this canon are never a good thing.

Check out how the three duelists initially notice the Malefic thing-- Yusei asks the other two about it, Jaden notices how easy the Malefic strategy let him summon something powerful, and Yugi went straight for the fathoms-deep card symbolism.

The Malefic World field spell reminds me of "Future Visions"' appearance in "Digging Deeper II-III", Carly v. Sayer. It also seems to me that the faceless tall buildings with lots of windows recall Yugi's and Yusei's different Domino Cities and Jaden's field spell Skyscraper equally, designating this space as where those three spheres combine. A neutral space, somewhat out of space and time, that encompasses all of it.

Yusei starts the duel with that dramatic speech. Yeah, I know everyone, if we've heard one Yu-Gi-Oh! pep talk we've heard 'em all, and Paradox even made that point, but consider this: Yusei has never dueled alongside these guys before, and he's known them for maybe ten minutes, depending extraordinarily on which clock you use to time that. Here, he addresses that, doesn't step around it, and declares that something's possible anyway-- that they can team up and win, that they have a common intention here and all of them are playing this like all they love depends on it. He asks them, straight-out and out loud, to "fight as one". That's a lot more powerful than it seems.

I noticed that Yusei got to play second here-- that's where he's strongest. Note, though, that he starts out with strong defense, not offense; he's off his game. Typically when he plays first, he throws defense that'll stick around for at least one more turn until he can synchro-summon next round, and when he plays second he'll go on the offensive right away with Speed Warrior or an early synchro-summon.

Miracle's Wake again? This is the third time we've seen Yusei play Miracle's Wake (technically first actually because the other two happen after this time period in Yusei's era), and coming from Yusei, a repeated trap is rare. Yusei must really like Miracle's Wake.

Look at all those facedowns from Jaden. Since when does Jaden out-facedown Yusei? Nobody out-facedowns Yusei. Usually Yusei's the major trap-user in any duel; not so here at all.

Jaden remarks that it would've been rude to let Yugi start his turn alone on the field without a monster out there with him. I'm considering the tag-dueling etiquette we've seen develop so far. You don't use someone else's monster for a fusion, tribute, or synchro summon without asking first (which Jaden did when he fusion-summoned Neos Knight, and which we also saw the Paradox Brothers do in Tag Team Trial [GXep#10-11] for one); you don't use someone else's card effect without permission (Yugi didn't use Reincarnation of Hope until Yusei gave him the go-ahead, for instance); and you don't let the next person start his turn without a monster already in play if you can help it. Tag-duelists can't always know what their teammates are planning, but pseudo-decorum like this helps them look out for each other in a general sense even without knowing each other's strategies. I wonder if we'll see more tag-dueling custom and more specifically cohesive tag-dueling strategies once we get past the WRGP Prelims?

Now, one big question bound to be on everyone's mind in this movie: what's with Yusei's apologizing and getting down on himself? Of these three, for starters, Yusei's definitely going to be the downer; hands down. I think from a narrative standpoint the writers had to make that clear as something that sets the three duelists apart. In addition, Yusei would, in theory based on the chronology I've managed to figure out in this movie, be the most amateur of these three when it comes to saving the world. He only has one apocalypse to his name; Jaden and Yugi each have two or three at this point. Remember when Yugi got down on himself over that warehouse fire before Battle City (YGep#52), or when Jaden had a crisis of confidence early in his sophomore year after that run-in with Aster and the Light of Distraction, I mean Dysfunction, I mean Defection, I mean Destruction (making fun of the Society of Loonies never gets old, I tell ya!). Yusei's just at that point in his world-saving education. He's not as seasoned at it as the other two, so he's bound to lose confidence a bit more easily. By the time he's done this a couple more times, he'll be long past that stage. In addition, the emotional journey of this movie is predominantly Yusei's. He's the one with the nightmares, who looks at crumbling buildings and sees his deepest fears coming true. Paradox's assertion that the future is doomed hits Yusei the hardest, because the one thing he has always clung to is hope for the future; in the Signers' darkest moment against the Dark Signers, Yusei kept going by promising-- with no basis whatsoever-- that they could save everyone. The idea of a future that is doomed to fall terrifies Yusei deeply, because it also represents his strongest rock to cling to crumbling away. Also fair to say that losing your best card and having it used against you shakes anyone up, and Yusei was also going through that.

Paradox gets his dragons from Yugi and Jaden's biggest rivals, and typically dragons are for rivals not the main hero; Yusei breaks this pattern with Stardust, which I've expressed some surprise over before, and his *own* dragon is the one stolen from his time period. It occurs to me that Stardust gets used against Yusei a lot-- first Jack, then Machine Emperors, now this. Just an interesting observation, really.

Check out how the background music went totally quiet right before Yugi's turn. As the King of Games, he has a lot to live up to in that moment right there. If he can't turn this around, no one can. This is it. Gotta love that moment.

"According to the history books, that card is Yugi's ace." I *so* want to read a New Domino history book. Imagine all this in a history book like the gigantic tome on my desk next to my keyboard that I really ought to be reading right now for class tomorrow. That Yugi's era is in the history books by Yusei's time suggests a time delay of a few decades at least; there's a time lag in consensus about history, the most recent stuff is still controversial. For instance, right now in the real world, I'd say all of our history books start turning into current events after the fifties or sixties.

With Paradox Dragon's power-down, Stardust cancels out Dark Magician exactly, point for point, and same goes for Neos 'cause they all have 2500. Yusei's being parted from his 'ace' hurts all three of them-- and when they're together on the same side, they're far stronger than any single one of them would be alone, which we see with the Spiral Force cards at the end.

I noticed with the "if one goes, they all go" effect, if all those monsters happened to be in defense mode, Red Dragon Archfiend would do the same thing. Kinda fitting, since Yusei's center stage here.

The 5D's group picture was so, so sweet. Goosebumps. I want to look at it closer. I didn't see who all was in it.

"The light will always overcome the dark"? No, no, we want them in balance! Yusei, go a few more rounds with Iliaster and you'll get what I mean. Jaden, you fought the Society of Losers-- I mean Loonies, I mean Light-- tell 'im we do *not* want the light to always prevail. Yugi, where's the best place to go for some fries and ketchup in Domino these days? You've got all afternoon before the big sunset scene...

I wonder; it would seem to me that, having managed to travel back in time once, wouldn't Yusei try to get it to happen again, to prevent Zero Reverse? To prove that there was no tragic disaster that couldn't be averted somehow, with enough will, just like he averted the destruction here by going back in time with Jaden and Yugi? Contrary to that notion, Yusei ends the movie arc with a sense of peace around Zero Reverse that he'd lacked before; following this adventure, the nightmares have stopped and he no longer wishes he could change the past. How has he reached that point by the end of the movie? Well, in a certain sense, there's the notion that Yusei's time was his to save, but he couldn't save Jaden's time or Yugi's without their help; Zero Reverse is beyond Yusei's grasp, and for him it's history, not future. What I'm saying is, Yusei went to the past, but he fought for the future; Jaden fought for the future of those and that which he cared about, and so did Yugi, and it's fallacious to think of this as changing the past instead of defending the future. But now we're getting into my next topic...

So now here's the huge novel at the end where I talk about the nature of time travel, destiny, determinism, chronology, and all that. This is probably going to take a while, so get comfy. Wow, Wikipedia has quite an article on time travel theory. I looked it up for fun, to help me write this part by giving me some structure and vocabulary, but I'm really impressed. Check it out sometime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel. I'll be referring to it as I write this.

First, an outline:
I. About Theoretical and Fictional Time Travel
II. The Questions
III. The Theories, and how may would answer the questions differently
III. Other Time Travel Discussions

About Theoretical and Fictional Time Travel
For starters, according to the Wiki article, most time travel theories run into issues of causation, causal loops known as predestination paradoxes, like the Grandfather Paradox: if you went back in time and killed your own grandfather before he had any kids (like your parents), would it then follow that you cease to exist because you were never born? Moreover, wouldn't that then mean that you never went back in time, never killed your grandfather, and thus *were* born, which means you went back in time, and killed him? I've already been through these sorts of loops with YGO several times: if we won the ancient battle, there would have been no need for Atem to seal himself away within the Millennium Puzzle, and therefore nothing in the whole series would ever have happened, including our going back to the ancient past and defeating Bakura, making it the case that everything *did* happen, and so on. Similarly, if Paradox *had* succeeded, he would've caused a resulting future in which none of this, including his going back in time, ever happened, therefore meaning it did. I've been through these a million bazillion times, believe me; now I'm going to talk about what else I got.

Another note about the properties of all this, before we get into it, is that we generally assume causality: if *this* happens, then *that* will happen as a result of *this*. Causality can't ever possibly be proven, it's just a useful assumption. We observe and perceive situations in which *that* generally follows the occurrence of *this*, but assumption of any causal relationship is an instance of the "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" fallacy-- if I do a funky rain dance and a few moments later it starts raining, does that mean I control the weather, or just that I happened to start dancing at just the right time? However, in order for conversations about time travel to make any sense or be relevant or meaningful, we must assume that cause and effect actually works.

The Questions
Why does the time period we see in Yugi's era not seem to fit into our current understanding of his chronology?
Did Paradox's actions alter the fate of the future era in which he lived?
What would have happened if Paradox had won?
Was it even possible for Paradox to have won?
Why did Paradox bother capturing Neos, and why did he single out Stardust from Yusei's era, instead of, say, Archfiend?
Why did Neos return to Jaden?
What would have happened if Yusei had tried to, say, stop Zero Reverse the same way?
How did the events of this movie alter the existing timeline?
Why did New Domino experience crumbling during the duel?

The Theories

First theory: simple cause-and-effect. Anyone who travels to the past will affect everything that happens after that, in significant ways, and should they return to the point in the future from which they departed, it will not be the same. This presupposes that any given event or circumstance in the future has an antecedent cause in the past that causes it to happen. In other words, "Life is a long series of chain reactions" and if you change one link of the chain, you change the rest of 'em too. We're seeing that this isn't the case here, not remotely. If it were, there would be any number of unpredictable repercussions just from people from the future having been in the past that would not have been part of the timeline before the time-traveling started. For instance, now Yugi knows what a synchro-summon is, and that alters his body of knowledge, where he's coming from, all that jazz, which in turn affects his surroundings and the people in them. Moreover, if all subsequent events after the point at which the past was altered, are also altered by the changing of the past, then any effects that the changing past may have on the future will be instantly, uniformly, and irreversibly felt. In other words, as soon as it is the case that Stardust Dragon blasted half of Europe, it will have *always* been the case that Stardust Dragon blasted half of Europe, and nobody will remember it having been any different because the events in the past when they learned their duel history were affected at the same time and there will have been nothing pertaining to that event that will not have been simultaneously altered. This would also mean that every subsequent event up to and beyond the time traveler's departure would be altered, which would very likely cause the time traveler to never have left in the first place. Causal loop.

The second theory I'm exploring is that, because these events took place in the past after all, they already happened, and thus their having already occurred in the past predestines their antecedent causes to happen in the future. In other words, because this duel happened in Yugi's era, Jaden and Yusei were destined to travel back in time and cause it to happen the way it did, and could not have done otherwise because the effect of that cause already happened and doing otherwise would have created an effect without a cause, something that "just happened". This also means that there is only one timeline and any changes made to the past, even if they have yet to occur, are already being felt as though they were always there. Therefore, it is impossible to alter a point in the past such that one's more recent past, present, or future will be different then it would already have been, and there is only the illusion of control. Therefore, Paradox, Yusei, and Jaden were destined to travel back in time, could not have done otherwise, the duel could not have resolved otherwise, and thus, despite the possibility of multiple variations, the end result is always the same and is already factored into the future Jaden, Yusei, and Paradox experience. Therefore, it would have been impossible for Paradox to win the duel, and that could've been predicted by the very existence of New Domino as Yusei knows it. Now, I said variations; no one ever said this was Paradox's first attempt, in theory there could have been infinite and we'd never know, but no combination of actions taken on anyone's part could have resulted in Paradox succeeding in assassinating Pegasus, or in his winning the duel. This also explains why it would have been impossible for Yusei to attempt to stop Zero Reverse; if he had stopped it, it would've already been stopped. However, the problem with this one is that it runs into causal loops, just like the other one. For instance, if Yusei had stopped Zero Reverse, we would be living in a future in which Zero Reverse had never happened, which would mean Yusei would never seek to stop Zero Reverse because he'd never know.

A third theory available is multiple timelines, of course. From any single point, supposing no predestination, there are an infinite number of possible futures. This incorporates the chain-effect theory; change one link and you change them all, so you end up with myriad branching chains, and the multiple-timeline theory dictates that the past isn't changing, all that's changing is which path you took and which of those possible futures you experience. The future you sought to change by traveling to the past still exists, you just aren't living in it anymore because you caused your own subjective future to proceed differently by doing something else that causes you to take one path instead of another. Were that the case, we would never know, but Jaden would be returning to a Duel Academy, and Yusei to a New Domino City, that technically weren't the exact same ones as the ones they left before traveling to the past, because they altered which strand of history plays out, but neither they nor anyone else would ever know because it looks just like the old one; but in the old one, the world *did* crumble away, because the events of the past changed the future in that long series of chain reactions.

However, I propose a model that slightly differs from any theory yet given, specific to the YGO canon, because all of these previous theories would not support one key aspect of YGO-canon time travel: the time delay. The existing theories all state that any change to the past will be reflected completely by the subsequent more recent past, present, and future, and if the past has been altered from the way it previously was, we'd never know because any single present moment only has one past. Here we have the Signers and Jaden noticing that the past has changed, and knowing that the past has changed from what it previously was, meaning the consequences of the past having changed have only begun to reach them-- to the point that they read about it, but not to the point that they never know the past used to be different. That means the entire chain doesn't alter immediately as soon as one link does, it goes gradually but not from past to present because the Signers can read about things changing in the past before experiencing the effects of the past changing in the form of forgetting it ever used to be another way. This also provides explanation for Weevil and Rex's hurricanes during the final battle of the Ancient Past, because the causation delay has changes in the past affecting the future without causing it to either be the same (if we win) or cease to exist (if we lose) the moment we leave the present, the way it would be in any other time travel theory. This similarly explains the Signers' witnessing New Domino City continuing to decay during the time Yusei was off dueling in the past. Moreover, it also provides a plausible way to avoid the causation paradox that hamstrings most time-travel theories, the Grandfather Paradox, the causal loop; because any changes made in the past will not affect the time period from which the time traveler departs until it's too late and they've already left, therefore time travel no longer has the chance of negating its own causation. In the case of the Grandfather Paradox, it's a bit awkward but not overly so: you go back in time and kill your own grandfather, but the effects of that event don't affect your father or mother until you're already born, and won't catch up with you, probably, until you get back and can no longer choose not to go. Therefore you will cease to exist and it will be permanent, and therefore create no paradox or loop, because the ceasing to exist won't cause the time travel to not happen in the first place.

I think I've got a theory as to why we don't recognize the point at which we arrive in Yugi's timeline. This would also explain Capsule Monsters, I guess, which also defies space and time within the four years or so Yugi spends with the Millennium Puzzle. Consider this. In Season 5, we go back and change the past, then return to the future. We know that our characters still remember the events of the rest of the series (Joey reminisces a lot in "The Final Journey", for one), but we have no proof at all that the more recent past that comes before the future they return to-- that is to say, the other four seasons-- was the same one we watched, only that nothing in it negates the causality of our being where and what we are in the last five episodes. In other words, it's entirely possible, theoretically speaking, that Battle City never happened as of when the past was altered, as long as whatever happened instead fits with what we have now. Crazy, huh? But, when Battle City *was* happening, safe to say that it *did* happen; it wasn't some mirage or false history. However, *during* Battle City, our concept of the Ancient Past was different; the Millennium Necklace (and Puzzle, and Rod) showed us visions that don't remotely resemble the Ancient Past we traveled back in time and experienced. I'm saying that *was* the past then, but is no *longer* past as of the Final duel; it's possible that the events of Capsule Monsters and Bonds Beyond Time are impossible to fit into the corresponding series chronology *before* the Ancient Past was altered, but are part of the alternate timeline, if you like, created when the Ancient Past *was* altered. Therefore, they didn't exist until after they would have occurred in time, unless we rewrite the series twice or more. And this is why an R manga could still be proved canon with the rest of it, but believe me, this actually could permit just about anything in the way of what's canon. Except Pyramid of Light. That *did* happen after Battle City, and unless it *wasn't* before Waking the Dragons (Season 4), and Waking the Dragons also says it's right after Battle City, either Kaiba and Alister misspeak when they say this is Kaiba's first rematch with Pegasus since Duelist Kingdom, or Alister doesn't know about Pyramid and Kaiba doesn't bother to enlighten him but knows after that that he's a fake, which doesn't seem to be the case. Pyramid has its own problems, let's just leave it at that for now.

So Paradox hopped through Jaden's time and was planning on picking up CED, RD, and *Neos* before hopping on back to Yugi's time? Why Neos? I thought, between CED, RD, BEWD, REBD, and Stardust, he was focusing on dragons? It's possible that Paradox attacked Jaden because he knew it would be possible for an individual like Jaden to throw a wrench in the works if not declawed by the loss of his best monster? Is that also why Paradox went after Yusei and Stardust specifically, as opposed to, say, Archfiend? If that's the case, then perhaps we didn't create any time paradoxes by the second time travel theory above because if Paradox hadn't attacked Yusei and Jaden first, they would've stopped him because they were at full power, and when he *did* attack them first, as we see in the movie, he also failed. In other words, regardless of whether Paradox went after Yusei and Jaden first, his plan was going to fail, therefore the effects of it were temporary and only altered the future within the limited scope in which they played out.

So, Jaden's Neos card vanished like Stardust did, then reappeared when they got to Yugi's timeline. I'm pretty sure that's telling us something important about the nature of time travel. What it *isn't* telling us, is: when Jaden goes back in time to before Neos was captured, Neos returns because in Yugi's time it hadn't been taken yet. We know it isn't that, because the same rule would apply to Stardust, and clearly didn't. Unless of course the rule only applied before the monster was summoned and used by Paradox. Among my guesses is that Neos' return, the most recent effect of the damage undone, shows that by going back in time to meet up with Yugi, they are already putting things back to normal in the future.

They never told us whether Yugi's Domino City eventually evolved into Yusei's New Domino, or if New Domino is a separate city altogether! Pout. Sadface. Okay, I'm over it.

One thing I'll want to really study when I have the movie visuals available to pause is changes in dueling, fashion, customs, etc. through time. Jack calls Yugi's hairstyle 'outdated', for starters. Paradox's waist-down cape actually *is* a New Domino fashion; Jack wore one at the WRGP Gala (ep#73-74). Another thing I want to study is the movie's use of all three series' distinctive visual and musical styles, and how they were blended, mixed, and matched.

Does this mean that there *won't be* another duelist of equal stature to these three between Yusei's era and Paradox's, whenever in the far-flung future that is? What about this 'Zexel' I keep hearing about? (I hope they dub it. I hope they dub it. Because I hope, I will wait to watch it.)

Gotta include this in the post. The following seemed to be universal highlights of the movie, the moments that both crowds I watched in always laughed or called out at:
"Doesn't look so tough to *me*, I guess how *could* you with *that* dated haircut."
"Synchro-*what*?"
"And it probably *ate it*, too!"
Pharaoh the cat isn't neutered; get over it, people.
"Good news, Mister Pegasus, the storm clouds are clearing."
"It *certainly* must be a dream come true for you all to be so close to me!"

All right, that's all I've got to say about Bonds Beyond Time for now, folks! No word on when it's coming out in mainstream theaters, or on DVD; further updates will be announced in my post... Thanks for reading! -Clio

READ A TRANSCRIPT OF YU-GI-OH! THE MOVIE 3D: BONDS BEYOND TIME

Special Thanks also to the movie website, http://www.yugiohmovie3d.com/ for the navigation bar graphics.