latry_zacry

One example that stuck out to me was the miracle used by Joker and Spade in episode 4. I like how the miracle used (heat transfer and a vacuum) was not only done to preserve the ice statue of Odin, but to also save the people who were trapped in the fire. I feel like other animes would try to more or less brute force their way out of that situation, so this was a nice spin on that. I also remember watching this when I was younger and still thought that it was impossible how the statue didn't melt (probably because I couldn't understand Silver Heart's explanation or missed it entirely ^^'). Years later, and I actually got to learn about this stuff in school. Neat!

The electromagnet miracles are also interesting ones for me to think about. I think this may have been the only miracle to be shown twice(?), but it is utilized differently each time. I like how the electromagnet isn't obvious at first in episode 5 until Silver Heart uses a simpler example to draw that connection. Showing beforehand how Professor Clover and Doubt were covered in metal at the time was also a nice set-up to how they would later be immobilized by the magnet. As for the second time, seeing it used by Joker in episode 24 was a really nice parallel. While it also immobilized Agent Clover, watching how the static electricity generated by the magnet managed to pull in the nearby WATERFALL to destroy the Treasure of Pandora was pretty hype.

So for this theory/calendar to work we're gonna have to lay down some ground rules

1. Season 2 episode 11 takes place on the 15th of June, 2015

Not much to say here really. We see in s2ep11 that the date exactly 50 years in the past was the 15th of June, 1965 (funnily enough, if you go look up a 1965 calendar, it will tell you that the 15th of June was actually a Tuesday, not Monday). So we can safely assume that the season 2 finale takes place mid June of 2015. This is pretty handy, and we'll be using this date to expand our calendar into both past and future, but more importantly, this canonical date brings up the second and perhaps most important fact of the KJ universe concerning this theory:

2. The KJ universe does not share a moon phase calendar with ours, and I'm kinda annoyed about it

Fun fact, the 16th of June 2015 was actually a new moon day, so the exact opposite of what was going on lunar-ly when Joker and Shadow decided to Melt A Guy With Acid! Annoyingly, this means I can't just overlay the episodes over a real life calendar and call it a day.... unless I uh, swap the new and full moon dates around?

... Which is exactly what I'm gonna be doing, because hey, as long as the 29 day time gap remains the same, it doesnt really matter if we're counting by full or new moons. As the wonderful @purpleponder had concluded from my observations:

3. Aside from some exceptions, assume back-to-back full moon episodes actually take place a month apart

Kinda self-explanatory. You could technically argue that multiple episodes could've happened within the span of the same few days, assuming the moon's phase change wasn't dramatic enough to notice the moon isn't actually full for some episodes, but this would directly contradict the same line from earlier

That is, it's unusual for Joker to steal so many treasures in quick succession. So aside from special cases (see: season finales and the Princess Paprika episode, and also rule 4 below), assume that if two or more full moon episodes happen in a row, there's an at least one month timegap between them

And 4. Flashback episodes are weird and I don't know what's happening in them

Of the like 5 or so flashback episodes we get in the series, two of them explicitly take place during a full moon (Joker and Roko's origin episodes). While the audience does see a story take place on screen, in reality joker isn't really doing anything in the present day as the flashback happens. This implies either A. There's a two month gap between episodes 4 and 6 or B. Ep5 happens shortly after ep4 or shortly before ep6. Same can be applied to ep11. I've decided to assume it's case B for the sake of a shorter timeline, but A is just as possible.

With some rules laid down so we at least know how to begin digesting the timeline, all we really gotta do now is count the moon appearances and go from there. Easy, right?

..... Right?

Part 1: I am shocked by how vague the season 1 timeline is

So in this mess that I call an excel sheet, green means a confirmed full moon appearance in episode, red means an explicit non-full moon appearance, and grey means there's no way of telling cause the night sky wasn't seen (or wasn't seen clearly) in the episode. As you can see, there is uh, quite a bit of shenaniganary already showing up

The most obvious outliers are the two red cells with new(?) moon on them. These uh, well, for episode 7 only the ending part of the episode takes place at night, where no moon is shown. It's unknown in this case whether it's a new moon or if the moon is just out of frame. For episode 8 the same thing happens. Unless I missed a part, no moon is present in ep8 even though a good chunk of it takes place at night. In this case you'd think a quick check to ep9 would solve it, since they take place back-to-back of each other, but no: ep9 takes place during the day, so there's no way to tell the phase of the moon either.

We also have the pretty sizable amount of other episodes that take place during daytime (and that one idol episode that happened indoors I guess), where you definitely can't tell the phase of the moon cause, y'know, big sun in the sky. Once again it's unclear if these episodes take place a month apart from the last episode or just a week or two apart. For the sake of arguing the anime didn't take that long to occur, I'm assuming it's the latter situation for all these vague days.

So with the help of our handy moon phase calendar, and a few assumptions to cut down the timeline, we can at least begin building backwards starting from June 15th, 2015....

... In which we end up with an estimation that KJ began somewhere around the 29th of May, 2014. Huh, neat!

Anyways, what about season 3 and 4? Surely it's just as easy to build the timeline forwards using the season 2 finale, right?

.... Sigh.

Part 2: The s2 to s3 timeskip invokes many emotions within me, but today those emotions are violence

So, that inter-season timeskip huh.

While definitely just a meta joke on how season 3 aired so much later than season 2's finale, there are a few other details that show up throughout s3 and 4 that imply a pretty large amount of time has passed since s2. To name a few, Shadow becomes an actual thief and fully moves into his and Rose's castle, Hachi and Joker seemed to have grown a lot more closer since s2 (notably, Hachi begins acting a lot more casual around Joker), and perhaps most obvious of them all, do you know just how big of a number 999 is????? Joker, where are you getting these treasures from.

Anyways, this means that if we are to assume a vague, rather large timeskip had occurred between seasons, there's no way to accurately estimate when season 3 started. For all we know, it could've goddamn years!

So now we approach another decision into this mess of a timeline: either ignore the timeskip implications and continue counting forwards by 29-ish days, or find a new time marker in season 3 and 4 to start counting from. Unfortunately, as far as I know, there are no canonical dates that were dropped within those two seasons. So sadly we might have to push aside the big timeskip and....

wait holy shit.

Part 3: This was significantly more astronomy than I expected to be doing for this shitpost

So fun fact about the southern cross: while it is visible to the southern hemisphere all year round, some parts of the northern hemisphere can actually see it at certain times of the year! I was originally using this fact as a joke in the discord server, by highlighting episodes where the southern cross was visible from the northern hemisphere, because why in the goddamn would Kaitou Joker have accurate constellations anyways. And just to show those southern cross appearances wouldn't have worked in real life, I looked up the times where Crux was visible from the north. But uh.

Well fuck me

Part 4: At what point does this timeline construction go from funny to concerning

While yesterday 12am me was in hysterics and probably also going insane, today me had finally gotten up and picked up wherever they left it off at. This included the tough choice of deciding whether there was only a month's worth of time between season 2 and 3 or a whole ass year. But at this point in time they both seem equally possible and I got too lazy to consider the options. So here's a calendar for both ways:

some final notes before I throw this excel sheet into the grave where it belongs:

Due to traveling/time zone shenanigans, it's a solid 50/50 whether s3ep11 takes place on the same day as the season finale. It might've taken place a day before it to be accurate. But then again, this is more of an estimation than an actual concrete timeline so I'm not that bothered by it

Interestingly, s1ep3 is the only instance of a non-full moon appearing in the present time. The only other time we see this was the crescent moon in the Edo period episode, though for obvious reasons it doesn't count in this calendar

If we follow the first calendar (assuming there was only a one-month timeskip between s2 and 3), s3ep8 takes place on Joker's birthday. Nothing says birthday like tearing up another place for treasure I guess

Overall, the entirety of KJ could've taken place within about 2 and a half years going by the lowest estimation, and up to 3 and a half if we assume a longer time gap between s2 and 3. You could also add a few more months into the mix assuming the unaccounted for episodes also took place within their own month, which would push the timeline up to around 4 years.