Resuming from the convenience store shopping and onwards on to the sightseeing trip into Tokyo, Re:Creators does a massive info dump and theory, courtesy of the gluttonous caster-type Meteora Österreich. I wasn’t all too invested in how these heroes came into Souta’s world but information splitting off and colliding with each other between all the various realities provides a reasonable explanation on the mechanics behind Gunpuku no Himegimi’s plans. The first meeting between the creator and creation was far more enticing than the first half as the ogling and awkward revelation devolves in an another explosive fight.
I really like Magical Slayer Mamaika style as she completely shift the modern color tone into a ultra cheery mode whenever she does her magical girl thing. Of course, the stereotypical mahou shoujo tropes of Mamaika doesn’t survive first contact with the real world as the petty and colorful attacks actually does harmful damage to everyone and everything. I sense a touch of Madoka Magica’s conflicting darkness as her idealistic world comes crashing down and she struggles to comes to terms with the dissonance between her fictional and creator’s world in front of Selestia. Mamaika can’t accept someone who refuses her ideals and the only way she know how solve such a problem is to blast them with the power of love, which cleanly resolves any issues in her world but ends up being destructive attack in the Souta’s world. I suspect the other new character ,Yuuya Mirokuji, who looks and acts like something out of Kekkai Sensen (Blood Battlefront Blockade), doesn’t have the same inner conflict as he seems like the kind of guy who enjoys a good fight.
Especially when it comes to putting stuck up magical girls in their pace.
Speaking about the spat between Selestia and Mamaika, the amount of collateral damage probably comes close to tens of millions of dollars done to the building and streets. Between epic highway chases and Meteora’s missile strikes, tons of people have seen these fights go down and the government could not just ignore this. If I don’t see them intervening, I’ll just chalk it up to anime being anime .
The opening credits are ok with its sliding panels of characters in their own original world and then alongside with their promotion material with each a short clip showing off their power. It could have used more battle scenes with characters fighting against each other and I found it to be a bit dull overall. The ED is something you wouldn’t find out of place in the PIXIV website with its fun fanart-like slides of everyone having a good time shopping, forlicking on the beach and ironically posing with their cosplays imitations. Overall, Re:Creators continues with its strong performance with its ambitious setting despite its main character falling neatly into self-insert category. With nine other crazy characters to contend with, all descended from the imaginative minds of the Japanese entertainment industry, I’m perfectly fine with this as long as the conflicts between creators and creations keep rolling in.
I just love the scenes leading up to Selejia meeting her Creator. The look she gives him in her email and in person. XDDDDDD I think he winds up joining the main cast too. And he looks like a realistic rendition of a person you’d expect from the industry. Someone out of Shirobako. Doing this as a job but with his own interests, desires and prejudices thrown in. Never expecting his work to come alive to diss him. XDXDXD Where would they go from here? Has anybody seen “Stranger than Fiction”?
About Mamika, I get that this show may want us to make a comparison between her and Madoka Magica but I can’t make that leap. She’s too much of an airhead, with difficulty remembering names and way too slow to realizing the damage her attacks are causing. She looks like she came out of a gag show and I question how bad her world could be if a trigger happy girl like her, who is that quick to resort to magical attacks, is the main character. Then again, she’s super popular, to the point where out-of-genre people are aware of her existence and kids flock around her. You’d think that her character would be up to a certain standard. Again, how bad could her world be? Well, there is a certain dark weight to her “Slayer” name. Well, if there ever was anyone who wished for a beatdown dream match between a magical girl and a fantasy swordswoman….? Wish fulfillment for the win?
If they do more such creator-creation interactions, this could really come out awesome, but this guy might be the “token creator”, just as there is a “token consumer”. Hope not.
I don’t see Madoka anything referenced here. Probably the much lighter-hearted, extremely sweet kiddie stories. Maybe Tokyo Myu Myu and lighter? Just think about her activation “Magical Heart Sweets-maker”. The “slayer” name might have been a try to include Madoka, but that’s way too much of a reach. No matter how she’s named, the activation pretty much set what her world must be like.
The contrast between the worlds’ colliding, though, looks about the same as what the creator/self-insert of “Sleeping with the Girls” names “grit scale”. Earth is a 9 (Berserk would be 10?), Seletia’s world is probably 8 or 9, and the magical girl’s world is 3 if not lower. Though, they don’t seem to bring their grit level with them. That would have been so much more interesting. Imagine the magical girl getting almost zero damage from attacks on her while everyone else being damaged by hers just as shown in the episode.
I really felt sorry for the magical girl. I mean we have the dubious benefit of being the wellspring of all the worlds (if we are not stories ourselves), thus we have seen from the real nasty to the super utopian. But in her world? Thing how truly terrifying , Lovecraftian level alien, that fighting game character is for her world. And it could be worse. She might be dealing with classical western literature characters. Dostoyevsky creations :p
This looks like it will be an exceptional series. The idea is really solid, and the executions seems to be spot on. They really know how to get you pumped up.