I have been reading all the posts everywhere re JIN 2 and making my own opinions also. I have yet to watch the series 2. I have one thing that is bothering me regarding the time slip...

If Jin went BACK into the past...then he would not affect the future. It made me think that if there was a time machine it would go back and then leave the present altogether. The present would then not have happened...if that makes any sense. So when Jin returned he would return to the same time that he left. Not six years at all. This has bothered me and I don't know if I have made clear what I have been thinking regarding the time situation.

Any thoughts??

Hi brad2. GREAT question. Maybe the present and the past are two parallel worlds that go through time at the same time (sounds confusing). BUT...if Jin aged by 6 years in the past and then goes back to the future at the same time he left, he would be 6 years younger, right? In other words, he'd have lived 6 extra years in his life (hey, not fair) OR...he'd go back to the future LOOKING 6 YEARS OLDER...(like me after a party) Wonder what his patients would say when they'd see him....

Anyhoo....the ONE question that kept nipping at my butt watching Jin was, NO WAY they're gonna let this guy get away changing history like that. He's gonna go back to the future like nothing happened. Logic, right? Einstein, you with me? WHICH MEANS....(drum roll) all the people he saved in the past will actually have to die of HORRIBLE deaths....
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brad2 wrote:

I have been reading all the posts everywhere re JIN 2 and making my own opinions also. I have yet to watch the series 2. I have one thing that is bothering me regarding the time slip... If Jin went BACK into the past...then he would not affect the future. It made me think that if there was a time machine it would go back and then leave the present altogether. The present would then not have happened...if that makes any sense. So when Jin returned he would return to the same time that he left. Not six years at all. This has bothered me and I don't know if I have made clear what I have been thinking regarding the time situation. Any thoughts??

I'm guessing buymethisdress hasn't watched JIN 2 either.

So you're asking if he returns to the same point he left, or if six years will have passed in the present as well? You ask this in a weird way. The present still happens whether he's there or not. That's like asking "if a tree falls in the forest and no one's around to hear it, does it still make a sound?" Yes, it does. But what we're talking about here is the much more theoretical issue of time travel. What you want to know is, if he lives six years the past, will he "skip" six years of the present? To answer this, I will have to spoil you, if you haven't been totally spoiled already.

Here's the simple answer which should allow to figure it out yourself:

Click on button to reveal/hide spoiler:

Remember the man Jin operated on in the first episode of season 1? That wasn't Sakamoto Ryoma. If you didn't already figure it out, that was Jin himself. Or rather, a version of Jin.

To go into more detail, requires more spoilers! Read on if you want the full explanation.

Click on button to reveal/hide spoiler:

They explain this in the last episode of JIN 2. Yes, he went back in time, but by going into the past he created a parallel world and it was there that he lived and changed things. When he returned it was to the present of that parallel world and not the world he left from, so he could see the changes he made. Those changes were: Miki was born but with slightly different ancestors and she never became a doctor thus she never met Jin (why the photo never returns), penicillin is recorded to have been first made in Japan, and Japan established medical insurance back in the 19th century (this is a minor part of the plot of season 2). As I said, the man Jin operated on in the first episode of season 1 was actually another version of himself, from a parallel world, which I guess replaced him in Jin's original world. When our Jin returned he actually watched another Jin go through the time slip, confirming his suspicions. But thanks to the corrective power of time, which is what Jin thinks gave him the headaches, erases Miki's photo, and so on, no one remembers Jin's existence in the past. After the second Jin leaves, in the present no one remembers there being 2 of Jin at one point. This is how the show gets away with all this history-changing. So basically, Jin is involved in a potentially infinite creation of parallel worlds, each changed ever so slightly until... who knows? But no one will ever know, and perhaps even Jin himself will one day forget he ever slipped back to the Edo period. And everything is balanced out by the universe itself, which erases the memory of Jin's time slip but not the changes he made, so everything balances out and order is maintained.

@buymethisdress: I doubt anyone would notice he'd aged, because he wouldn't have aged significantly. Six years isn't really that long of a time. Plus, most people would attribute rapid ageing to stress or illness, because that's logical.

To answer your question, read the second spoiler. Put simply, it's magic. He does change the past and thus effects the present, but magically he's the only one who remembers doing any of it.

This wiki article should help you guys understand:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_paradox#Parallel_universes.2Falternate_timelines

I'm a huge science fiction fan so I'm used to this kind of stuff.

The other name for "corrective power of time" is Jin drama magic. It's the easy way out from all your troubles.

Thanks for enlightening us, Susan! LOVED reading your spoilers. (I love to be spoiled) Can't wait to watch Jin2. I'm still waiting for the DVD (can't watch dramas on a computer....got to be sitting comfy on my couch with the lights down and my feet up....)
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BuyMeThisDress wrote:

Thanks for enlightening us, Susan! LOVED reading your spoilers. (I love to be spoiled) Can't wait to watch Jin2. I'm still waiting for the DVD (can't watch dramas on a computer....got to be sitting comfy on my couch with the lights down and my feet up....)

Someone else who loves spoilers! YAY! Glad you enjoyed them. Hope everything was clear enough, though when you get to watching JIN 2 it will all make sense.

Time is such an elusive idea anyway. Rudy Vallee used to sing 'My time is Your time' but that's not so. My time is different to your time even if we are in the same room. Or at least my estimations and feelings at one moment are totally different to yours or anyone else.

Once saw years ago, a TV SciFi show about time travel. People in the future were taking special vacation trips with guides to the very distant past. Before there were people there was a beautiful planet with forests to walk through and it was very inviting. Travellers were warned to stay on the pathway and not walk on anything that moved no matter how small. This was stressed, and people went in single file through the woods. One women was not careful and stepped off and trod on a beautiful butterfly on a flower low on the ground. Everyone alarmed and the guide was frantic. He made everyone stand still and turn carefully and head back to their travelling time machine. Said machine no longer there.
She had changed thousands of years of evolution by killing that butterfly.
Sadly I can't remember any more of that story so leave it with you to dream about and decide what happened.

I agree with that.

Time travel has been portrayed many different ways in science fiction and fantasy. "The Butterfly Effect" (also the name of an American movie) is a popular time travel theory in sci fi, which basically is that any one thing you change in the past, no matter how small, can have grave consequences in the future (it's almost always consequences in sci fi, not benefits). JIN uses the same theory over the course of the show, but what was interesting is that Jin himself can feel and see when a change he's about to make will have very bad consequences for himself.

All this talk of time travel has me wanting to write a story about it myself.

Watched the second part of Jin 2 (part 1B, according to utbhollywood.com) on broadcast TV and I'm already getting a little tired of all the crying and sentimentality... They seem to be laying it on pretty thick.

Has anyone else watched or is watching Jin 2?

The novelty of season one has completely disappeared... Things seem to be plodding.

BMW.
Yes I have started JIN 2 and I am rather bored with the first two episodes. It really is slow and moves without making me feel interested or excited as the JIN 1 did. I also find it difficult with some scenes to see what is going on. The prison the Doctor ws in was so dark that I could not make out who was there or what they were doing. I hate when they do that..

I wonder if Nokase is now out of the picture for good? Somehow I think she will pop up again. I hope we won't see any approach to a 'bromance' between Dr. and Sakamoto. He knows that Sakamoto will die so he will get very upset and want to save him and from things written on another forum it gets weepy and so forth. This is not my idea of Sakamoto anyway in this drama.

Interesting to see Princess Kazunomia again. I wondered how old she would have been then. She was sixteen when she arrived to marry the shogun. I am just guessing she may have been around twenty. I did not know she had beri beri. No mention of it anywhere else..at least not at this time. I think maybe later she did have it. The shogun had beri beri at this time. Should have given him some of those donuts (minus the arsenic!)

I'll keep watching to see what happens.

^ I'll keep watching as well, but my expectations have dropped considerably.

Watched Episode 3 today... Another crisis of the week... Yawn.

And the ranting and raving by Ryoma is getting tiresome as well.

In other words, same ol', same ol'....

Agree with your last post. This drama is going to be long and I hope it will get more relaxed as far as Ryoma is concerned.. but much livelier as far as the drama is concerned. I also think Jin is being rather too emotional about the why and wherefore of his descent back into the Edo period. Osawa is one of my favourite actors but not this time. Why did the director make him so hysterical about the fate of Ryoma? It's inevitable and he knows that he can't change it.

It also has too much violence in it IMO... The battle scenes shot in slow motion with blood spurting out was just too much... The sequel was supposed to be a movie but general outcry forced the producer to reconsider and make this series instead so the writers probably had rush and fill every episode with something highly emotional... But yeah, Ryoma-nausea hit me after a while... The only thing that really worked for me was the last episode... I read a lot of different possible endings on the net and I thought the one they used here was the best...
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BuyMeThisDress wrote:

It also has too much violence in it IMO... The battle scenes shot in slow motion with blood spurting out was just too much...

Just as gory are the operation scenes... Like in the first season, a bit too excessive.

Quote:

But yeah, Ryoma-nausea hit me after a while...

Yup... He's gone over-the-top one too many times to the point of being a caricature.

The worst thing is that this drama No. 2 is just not interesting. I could accept the violent scenes by not looking, but the story each week has not engaged me very much. It seems to be a weekly chapter with no thread going through for the general theme. I'm no longer fascinated by Jin being whisked back into Edo days from Modern times. Surely that must be the fault of the writers.

brad2 wrote:

Surely that must be the fault of the writers.

Or the fact that they milked the premise to death in season one.

Done with Episode 8.

As it has been for the entire series, including season one, the surgery scenes are excessively gory, IMO... And episode 8's C-section was excruciating.

Less is more, folks.

and totally disgusted with the last episode. It was not just gory it was un-ending. The only reason for such display was that the writers don't know what to write next.
Are they writing a fantastic time jump story of a doctor or are they trying to do some historical bakafu tale using a modern man transported. It does not hold together at all.

I think the director has the wrong idea about Osawa's performance. He has turned him into a very weak man who gets almost hysterical whenever he thinks about what is going to happen as he knows it from his history books. I could understand if this happened in the first of the series when all was very new and scary for him in Edo. Now however, he has had time(it would seem) to get acclimatised and know the people and still he wants to change everything and knows it is impossible.
I don't think he will be a very good doctor if he ever gets back to his modern time. Memories will haunt him and make him uncertain of his work as a doctor.