Xiao Ran spoke with Minerva X for several hours. From her, he learned about Mazinger ZERO's circumstances in many other dimensions, as well as what had happened to Kouji Kabuto and those around him.
Kouji Kabuto's personality was broadly similar across different worlds, but some versions had developed toward two extremes. There was the crazed Kouji who willingly became a component of Mazinger ZERO, the heroic Kouji who had saved the world from the brink of disaster time and again through his own strength, and the timid, weak-willed Kouji as well.
Besides Kouji, Doctor Juzo, who had created Minerva X, came in many varieties too. Minerva had encountered quite a few who fit the role of mad scientist. Doctor Hell, whom Xiao Ran had already dealt with, also had many different incarnations: one was a good man who killed Juzo in order to prevent Mazinger ZERO from appearing; another had traveled back countless years and become Hades of the Mycenaean Gods, leaving him utterly miserable. Sayaka had many versions as well. In Xiao Ran's view, the most distinctive was probably the one dressed in something even more revealing and provocative than a bikini.
In short, all those stories boiled down to hundreds upon hundreds of ways for Earth to be destroyed, and hundreds upon hundreds of ways for Kouji Kabuto to die. Not a single one of those worlds had reached a good ending.
But after hearing so much, Xiao Ran realized that Minerva X's dimensional travel did not seem to be the simple kind of crossing between entirely different worlds. Rather, it was based on time reversal, entering different temporal flows within the same world. Though it was also called world-hopping and dimensional travel, it was fundamentally different from simply punching a hole between two worlds and passing through.