You’d think with reviewing every episode of Plunderer over on Anime News Network, I would have had my fill talking about it. But if there’s one thing I love, it’s time travel in fiction and the rules surrounding it.
In Plunderer, the time travel plot appears rather suddenly. Instead of having our heroes learn about the secret past of their world via flashback or verbal exposition, they are physically transported back through time. There they are tasked with changing the future–to prevent Licht from becoming the mass murderer he became during the final war. In the end, they don’t succeed in any major fashion–but that’s not because time can’t be changed or any similar time travel rule.
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Simply put, Nana has the ability to transport herself or others backwards or forwards in time. Eventually, the time traveler will automatically return to near their time of origin. She can only do this a set number of times–as dictated by the star number on her cheek (with it being 57 before meeting with Jail as a child and 2 after our heroes’ jaunt through time).
During the war, she uses this ability to leap forward in time, see the enemy army’s strategy, and then leap back. In this way, Schmerman’s army is able to keep the upper hand throughout the war–always dispatching Licht and the other Aces to where they are needed the most.
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Herein lies the most important fact of time travel in Plunderer: the timeline can be changed. In fact, even something as insubstantial as a person’s state of mind can change the future. When meeting with Jail as a child, Nana tells him there is a time limit for their meeting. If he leaves her room before a certain time, he will be able to escape. If not, he will die. However, Jail misses this deadline to prove a point and is still able to make it out alive through sheer willpower and quick thinking alone.
It’s also important to point out that the events we see in Plunderer are not part of a predestination paradox–i.e., in the original timeline, Jail, Hina, Pele, and Lynn were not Licht and Sonohara’s classmates. This is obvious when you remember that Nana, Licht, and Sonohara most certainly did not recognize them upon their first meetings in the anime.
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Moreover, watching the time travel arc you can see that, even with our four heroes removed, events would basically play out the same way with only minor variations. This implies that time is somewhat resistant to change as long as the changes made are not too drastic.
That said, while the new history largely plays out the way it did in our heroes’ original timeline, there are still some significant changes–though mostly on a personal level.
Nana, grew up largely isolated in the original timeline with Licht as her only occasional companion. However, in the new timeline, she remembers her first meeting with Jail, where he defied fate to offer her a chance to escape with him. But more than this, he promised her that he would stay by her side in the future–giving her the knowledge that no matter how lonely she may be growing up, at the end of the road she won’t be. This leaves a lasting impression on her–even hundreds of years later.
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Hina, likewise, makes a similar impression on Licht. She promises him that his sins are not unforgivable–that he can come back from all the bad that is going to happen. And even if he thinks he should suffer alone for his crimes, she’ll follow him to the ends of the earth and give him a new purpose in life by giving him a family.
Or to put it another way, in the new timeline, both Nana and Licht have had an ember of hope to hold on to during their long, 300-year lives.
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And these are just some of the implications from the time travel we witness. Alex, commander of the armed forces, now met his adopted son centuries ahead of time and knew he would become a time traveler with the potential to change the past. Likewise, there is always the question of how Schmerman will react to the continued existence of the four students he thought long dead.
All in all, the time travel system in Plunderer is a solid one. Not only is it internally consistent but it is also used to teach us about the series’ tragic world all while giving it a measure of hope for the future. And I can’t wait to see how it continues to affect things going forward.
Plunderer can be seen on Funimation and Wakanim (EU).
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