Recap / Animator vs. Animation – Animation vs. Math

Uploaded Jun 24, 2023

Summary

Second Coming wakes up in a mysterious dark plane with nothing for miles in every direction. Except for a number 1, which floats down to him from the sky. After playing around with addition and subtraction, he finds a curious number e^iπ (known as Euler's Identity). Euler's Identity flees by multiplying itself by i, leaving Second Coming alone to experiment with math again. He discovers multiplication, division, exponents, and square roots; by finding the square root of -1, he discovers i, and uses it to summon Euler's Identity once more. It flees, and when attempting to get more math objects to chase it, Second Coming discovers algebra, calculating graphs, sine waves, cosines, before accidentally creating Euler's Identity once more.

This time though, they get into a prolonged scuffle. This fight lasts much longer, and ultimately ends with Second Coming following Euler's Identity into the realm of imaginary numbers. As it begins to fall apart, Second Coming brings it back to the world of real numbers, then begs it to help him leave the math dimension. After some deliberation, Euler's Identity puts Second Coming into a sphere, before sending him off to parts unknown.

Tropes:

• Anthropomorphic Personification: Euler's Identity, which represents the mathmatical concept of... well, Euler's Identity. Here, it's depicted as intelligent and self-aware, initially hostile to Second Coming, growling like a dog at him, but deciding to help him out when he begs for it.
• Anthropomorphic Typography: Euler's Identity, who appears to be one of the only sentient pieces of math in its dimension alongside Zeta, Delta, Phi and Aleph, who appear at the end of the episode.
• Dramatic Gun Cock: When Second Coming first assembles a function ( =𝑓(•) ), he pumps the 𝑓 as if it were a shotgun. This is used to indicate to the viewer that it will be used like a gun.
• Easily Forgiven: Euler's Identity surprisingly has no hard feelings for Second Coming causing a big ruckus, as once it learns that all his attempts to get to it were in the service of asking for a way out, it complies no problem. It even gives a happy little wave to him as he leaves. It probably helps that all the damage to the world that Euler's Identity inhabits seems to go away no problem and with no lasting consequences.
• Human Cannonball: After his Wave-Motion Gun finishes off Euler's math-mecha and he looks to duck back into the i-dimension once more, the Second Coming launches himself to catch up with him.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": When the Second Coming manages to grab a lemniscate (∞) from one of the Euler configurations and plug it into his cannon function, the entire army of Euler's Identity freezes. One shot wipes out half the army; the other half reacts with this trope.
• Me's a Crowd: Euler's Identity duplicates itself in its later fights with the Second Coming, first as more e's, and secondly as both e's and gunner-drones.
• Mundane Made Awesome: This video turns math concepts into weapons of mass destruction. For example, at one point, Euler's Identity factorizes itself to create a Humongous Mecha with an integral symbol for a giant melee weapon.
• Oddball in the Series: The entire premise of this episode completely deviates from the entire franchise with The Second Coming waking up in an unknown dimension with his friends absent unlike other episodes where it always takes place in Alan's computer and TSC's friends would fight alongside him. It's also the first standalone adventure where the opponent is not from pop-culture. The ending is left ambiguous only showing The Second Coming leaving through a mysterious portal presumably returning back home.
• Shield Bash: After Euler's Identity first transforms into a flying gunner-drone to attack the Second Coming, he grabs a graphform to use as a shield, and applies a "x8" to it to telescope it out to pound Euler.
• Shown Their Work: The video references a number of actual math concepts. This video provides written analysis on many of the ideas referenced in it.
  • The world of imaginary numbers can only be reached by multiplying something by the imaginary number i (or, square root of -1). Naturally, Second Coming first stops Euler's Identity by multiplying it by i a second time; sqrt(-1) x sqrt(-1) equals -1, which isn't an imaginary number anymore.
  • Second Coming bashes Euler's Identity by multiplying his shield (a graphform of 2πr²) by 8. That's the equation for the volume of a cylinder, h*2πr², where h is the length of a cylinder.
  • At the end, the gigantic N-shaped symbol represents Aleph. Aleph is the cardinality of infinitely large sets,^note for the uninitiated to set theory: "cardinality" refers to the number of objects in a set. The English alphabet has a cardinality of 26, for example, and as such, it is not colored white; instead it is filled in with the image of a graph, to represent Aleph's infiniteness and inclusion of all numbers.
• Speed Shoes: At one point while giving chase, the Second Coming applies a multiplication sign to his legs, letting him catch up to Euler's Identity.
• Wave-Motion Gun: Second Coming creates one by creating sine and cosine waves from within a graph. This produces a massive sine wave that then shoots an immense laser beam, and that's before he multiplies the radius tenfold.

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