I haven't been keeping up with Hit's Time Skip tomfoolery, but now that I'm hearing about the frustrastration it causes, I'm curious.
Presuming it has so inconsistent/self-contradictory/poorly designed as to be indecipherable:
What are the ways it could function, why could each of those be the way, & why do they each fail as a means?
There’s three separate main abilities that Time Skip
has to accomplish for the plot to function as we see happen in the Anime.
Time Stop, Time Travel (Skip), and Temporal Storage.
The first one is pretty self explanatory. Plenty of characters, WoG, Hit himself, and visual showings very clearly illustrate that Time Skip is a Time Stop. However, this is directly contradictory to the explanation of his powers we get from Vados and regurgitated by Whis. According to them, Hit is using minor Time Travel and Temporal Storage. And they physically cannot be wrong, otherwise other moments don’t make sense due the abilities it grants. (Goku V Hit 2, Tides of Time as used in the ToP, etc.) However, they also can’t be right due to most PROMINENTLY Hit V Jiren, in which Vados explains by
using Time Skip on solely Jiren he has stopped him in Time. This is an INTEGRAL plot moment.
Time Skip/Travel. This seems fairly obvious at first—Hit travels into the future by .Blank-Seconds. This makes total sense in the surface level, and is the basis of several moments. How Goku is able to fight Hit in combat is based on taking the counterattacking actions to punish Hit for moving as predicted within that Skipped frame of time. Like if imagine if King Crimson was tangible, and when going for a predictable strike from behind he got decked in the schnoz because I turned around and hit before/in the midst of the two moments. However, this runs counter to everything we see, hear, and is explained by Hit and others. It’s also undeniable at specific instances he has stopped time. And the time stopping also physically can’t be wrong, because certain plot reliant moments don’t make sense if it doesn’t operate this way. (Goku V Hit 1, Hit’s Assassination, Hit V Jiren).
Lastly is Temporal Storage (AKA Tides of Time). According to Whis and Vados, when Hit “skips” Time, he is able to store and keep it for his own personal use for his own dimension. This dimension manifests as a controllable Parallel World, that layers/grafts onto our own (seemingly), and grants Hit incredible capacity. This explanation is the reason why he has specific plot relevant abilities—Phasing, energy doppelgängers, illusions, intangible attacks, etc. So it PHYSICALLY cannot be wrong. However, it’s also contradictory, since—Again—Hit’s power must also be Tims Stop. Furthermore, while we’ve tried to logic out the ability, you can’t. Attempting to explain that Hit uses the Dimension for Time Skip in itself is incorrect, because it’s the reverse—Hit Skips time independent of the dimension, and then stores it. It also runs contradictory to explicit dialogue, where Hit says he never learned past basic Time Skip because he never needed to. And, again, they NEED to be correct for the plot to function (Goku V Hit 2, Hit V Dyspo, Hit V Jiren).
Furthermore, how it even relates to Time Skip is contradictory. When introduced, the Times of Time is wholly separated from Time Skip. Goku calls out how it’s different, Hit does, and Vados only ever claims that Time Skip is just a tangential means of creating that Dimension. It’s supposed to be its own thing. However, in the Tournament of Power, the Tides of Time is
consistently called Time Skip. By Hit, Dyspo, Jiren—Even the Whis explanation is moments after Jiren literally calls it Time Skip, clearly trying to make what Hit is doing make sense to the audience.
These explanations all run either contradictory, create plot holes, and inconsistencies. More impressively, Time Skip is inconsistent even in singular use cases. For example, at one point Hit uses Time Skip as a Time
Skip, which allows Goku to move and react to being throttled. However, it also acts as a Time
Stop, as Hit was able to take DOZENS of actions to beat on Goku. However, it acts as a
Skip in this moment because Hit
specifically notes it is identical to his previous attack, but longer, (that attack being a Skip) but it’s also a
Stop because Goku also doesn’t show any visible physical alteration (he’s in his stance as if it never happened), as if it was truly a mid-Za Warudo barrage.
Etc. Etc. It literally just doesn’t line up in any way because too many cooks were in the kitchen. You can get a much deeper read into all the gritty details over the three threads, though.
