I say this as someone who has a 165 IQ and was able to follow what was going on in 2001 when I saw it on TV in grade school, WHAT THE FUCK WAS GOING ON IN TENAT?!
It was a story written by someone who thought they were really smart and tried to do a time travel plot with an "in reverse" hunt for a literal Mcguffin, the villain is far off into the future when civilization is wrecked by shit that doesn't matter, and needs physical device called the Algorithm for reasons that don't matter because the future version of the Protag has already won before anything has occured, and the events of the story are essentially the "ending" to this time traveling feud, at the end when they split up the devise, that is the literal checkmate, but now the Protag has to work backwards (what is chronologically forward) to insure the events play out the same, which they will, because everything is deterministic, and everyone knows it.
which is why its retarded, nothing in the past can be changed, time travel doesn't matter because its all deterministic, the villain would know this, and since he doesn't have the Mcguffin at the start of his hunt for it (since its in the past) he will never get it, but the writers are too retarded to factor this OBVIOUS FUCKING POINT IN.
Mind you, Attack on Titan has this same plot structure in the last half, except the fact everything is deterministic is used to brutally break Eren's will so that he will do the events (that he will always do) so that Ymir will be free, as she has manipulated for 2000 years before Eren was ever even born, which he also knows, he simply can do nothing but the plan, because, as Ymir already knows, its the one outcome that Eren gets anything out of, which he also knows.