“If only I had a time machine.” That is probably a quote you have heard someone say several times in your life. Most of us wish we could alter time and redo our pasts for a better future but in the recent series Tokyo Revengers, for once, we find ourselves thinking…maybe time travel isn’t as cool as it sounds. Our once wannabe delinquent Taekmichi Hanagaki ends up back in his youth and learns just how much his past school days sucked. Takemichi has a goal of saving his future ex-girlfriend and her brother from dying but, can he endure the pains of being beaten up by thugs and future mafia leaders? A better question, could you survive your past in order to change your future situation?
Endure the Fighting
Our high school lives—while fun occasionally—tended to have us being bullied and getting into schoolyard brawls. These fights were quite tough and more often than not left us groaning with mild scrapes and bruises. Then there were times we missed obvious opportunities with the opposite sex that could have ended in romantic moments in our lives! As much as we’d love to go back and redo our love lives—like in series akin to Orange—would we want to deal with bullies? This is a tough call…get a romance going and/or deal with a jock just waiting for lunch break…
Those Sad Moments
The youth we once had was filled with some great moments but it also was plagued with some darker times. Venturing back in time and reliving some of these darker days would be quite challenging. Imagine unleashing the power of Steins; Gate and having to endure death like Okabe does over and over again to find the correct future. What’s worse, imagine dying yourself like Subaru from Re:Zero to hopefully make the correct choice after a hundred retries. Our pasts weren’t all sunshine and rainbows which means those dark days wouldn’t be fun to relive regardless of us changing the future for the better.
Erase the Past
In Erased, our male lead Satoru Fujinuma, goes back in time to stop a death that reverbs through into the future and affects his life later on. Satoru jumps back in time and is successful in preventing said death but alters his future in a truly large—and not entirely pleasant—way. Think for a moment. Could you rewind time, save a life, but in the process alter your own timeline with that person’s life being spared but yours being damaged? That’s a true sacrifice and not many could be that heroic.
SCHOOL! AGAIN!?
We mentioned schoolyard brawls, sad moments, and ultimate sacrifices but we didn’t mention the absolutely worst element of reliving the past through time travel…school! ReLife is the best example of this where our older Arata Kaizaki swallows a pill that lets him de-age and go back through school. While he gets to experience a new version of school with an older and wiser mind he still needs to endure tests and studying which no one truly loves. If we time travel, we pray to all the anime gods listening that they allow us to skip high school and just avoid those school days altogether…
Final Thoughts
In our minds, time travel seems like a great way to play our lives like a visual novel and make new choices that alter our futures. But in reality, time travel seems like a lot of work and a whole lot of headache. Yes, we’d love to explore the past and fix what mistakes we did but doing so seems a bit too complicated in retrospect.
Here’s a question for you readers out there. Would you endure time travel and the trials/tribulations that come with it? Comment below with your answers as we’d love to hear your opinions! For even more thought-provoking articles keep stuck to our time traveling hive here at Honey’s Anime!
Author: Aaron
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