Re:Creator’s greatest flaw flares up again as it spends yet another episode standing around in a room capping off Sota’s tale of guilt and formulating a plan to cage in Altair for a final showdown. This show is fascinating with its thought-provoking ideas and unique premise but I just wish it didn’t take so long in getting to the actiony bits. The conclusion to Setsuna’s story dragged on into its ugly conclusion and it could all been explained in the previous episode. His acceptance of responsibility could have started off the episode instead. It doesn’t help that the plan to defeat was just a bunch of talking heads in a room. I did like the fanmade Youtube videos of Altair and if they would have some more animated graphs and charts, it would have made it more easier and fun to understand.
The most interesting part of the episode was certainly Alice coming to the long overdue realization that Altair, not Meteora, was the one who killed off Mamaika. Those who were frustrated at her unrelenting zeal to save her own fantasy world got to finally see some substantial growth to her character. With Mamika out of the picture, having Alice taking on her role as the cliche archetypes turned into enlightened creation is the next logical narrative step. I’m glad to see that Sota’s words go further than being a delaying tactic by planting that doubt into her mind. The conversation between Alice and her creator was a really fitting end in that the hero the one who can make the decisions where the writer can only makes the ends meet. I don’t think that same argument is going to work for Blitz though. His motivation for following Altair might be that he is tired of living after the death of her daughter and finding out that his whole world is just someone’s fictional creation is enough to have him wish for the world’s destruction. With his creator being one of the main architects of this new plan to ensnare Altair, meeting her is going to explosive to say the least.
With Charon in the picture now, things are going to start to complicating very fast as this is the first time two creations have come from the same franchise. Selesia will have the benefit of an entire cour worth of character development along with her creator which could turn this into Prodigal Son situation where the father has to deal with two very different offsprings.
I think I don’t like this show at all. The fights are okay, but just okay. They are not good enough to be a pull by themselves.
It spends a ton of time on talking, which is fine in itself, but even with so much talking, I don’t think the characters are developed at all. And I don’t really find the discussions to be thought provoking either.
Which all leads me to… I don’t really care about any of those characters and hence I don’t have any motivation to watch this show any more.
I wouldn’t put the characters at fault. I think given the opportunity they can have some great interactions. As far as I see it, this series biggest flaws come down to two characters. Sota and Meteora.
Sota’s a problem because he’s a faceless plank that contributes nothing to the plot other than his connection to Setsuna. In actuality he has no real reason to still be involved with all and should have been removed from it the minute the government got involved. Also seeing as he is involved then why the hell isn’t he under surveillance? Two creations contacted him and the government was completely clueless about it.
Meteora is a problem because she’s god’s exposition device. Too many time has she thrown out a “Theroy” and it’s just accepted at face value. She says creations fighting threatens to end the world, everyone believes it despite no evidence whatsoever. She says they gotta go smash Bros to beat Altair, everyone believes it despite no evidence whatsoever. What’s more she’s being used to just lay out the rules and powers in the most intrusive way possible.
Here’s a way we could have explained Altair’s power. During the fight last episode have her fighting about a bit, cut to a fan making the video of her copying people, cut back to the fight, cut back to video getting uploaded, cut back to Altair fighting with her realising something, cut to video on site with views going up, cut to Altair using her new copy power to duplicate the Mecha. There you go, Altair’s power perfectly explained in about thirty seconds.
Guess this is the problem when Mangaka write anime. They are still thinking in terms of manga and disregard the benefits of animated presentation.
I don’t disagree in general. (and btw, a montage of Altair’s powers changing and fan videos getting uploaded, maybe view counts going up, would be really cool, but they sort of did that with Selesia’s temporary upgrade)
But… How are the characters not the problem? You agree that Sota and Meteora are bad and those are the characters that had the most air time.
The only character that had any sort of decent development was Mamika. She had a bit of an arc. But then she died.
Selesia is bland, typical anime heroine and there’s not much else to her and she hasn’t changed much. Aliceteria is a headstrong, determined, justice oriented heroine and that’s about it (but maybe we’re about to see some development?).
The gun dude?… He is umm.. He has a gun. And he shoots things! And the other guy is naive and has a mecha.
I’m also surprised how little we’ve been shown from the anime those characters are supposedly from. We’ve been told lots of things, but we’ve seen little of it. I was totally expecting we’d get an episode where that government official would binge watch all the anime the characters are from in order to gather information and we would get glimpses of all the different anime.
I mean, okay, to be fair, for the amount we’ve been shown the cast, the characterizations are not terrible. And they’re supposed to be archetypes, so it makes sense. The problem is the characters that hog all the air time are Sota and Meteora, and they are easily the least interesting characters, and there has been little time to properly develop anyone else.
I mean the only saving grace would be if the series manages to pull off something cool with the anime crossover extravaganza they are planning to do to upgrade themselves. There’s possibility to do a really creative action set piece if they do it right.
But I don’t have much faith in the series to pull something great off from what I’ve seen so far.
I will have to disagree with you both. C’est la vie. I feel that for me the exposition has not been too much. I do like Meteora, and Sota’s behavior is not that weird for me.Sure there are things that they could had done better. But still for me this is one of the few shows I pine for in the week. So they are doing something right.
I agree. Sota being useless is because he’s the audience’s avatar into this story. This show is meant for teens and young adults, perhaps budding creators or creator wannabes and he’s meant to be helpless as your average teenager would be if thrown into a situation like this, with no powers, not a lot of wisdom, experience, etc. and getting caught up in events way over his head. I like that they’re looking at neglected youngsters getting involved in social media, cyberbullying and it’s potentially tragic consequences and steps to deal with the aftermath. And I actually liked how seriously and carefully they’re taking it. If anything, I wish they’d taken a closer look at Sota’s determination to take responsibility at the end. I know that’s the step we’d all want Sota to take but it’s really hard, especially if you just don’t have the will or support.
Meteora being an exposition tool, I agree with Aidan here. There is a certain unnaturalness to it. Theory without proof presented but it fits the facts and the audience is supposed to just take it as fact. Convenient to further the plot faster but there’s this need to suspend your disbelief. It runs opposite to what people should actually do when presented with ideas and theories in real life. They must be questioned and tested critically, rather than just accepted like spoon fed fact. Otherwise, you’ll be easily fooled into accepting scam, fake news and propaganda. If anything, I’m wondering if the show is setting us up with all these theories taken as fact, only to throw a curve ball later on.
That said, I can’t think of a reasonable way to explain the complex mechanics of what’s going on in a more acceptable way without wasting a lot more time. The switch back and forth thing is a bit weird for me. Sorry, Aidan. It makes more sense for Altair to have been monitoring fanworks by herself and experimented with making those new moves work in the way that they did. Honestly, I don’t really like this plot point because it feels like opening a can of worms. If fanworks like this work for Altair, they should work for all creations. Altair is a VERY obscure doujin work, with no real material out there other than a single PV. Compared to every other character with multiple types of media like anime, manga, novels, even food products. These guys have a lot more coverage and a wider fanbase. Their respective fanworks should be too much to catalogue and all of it should stick somehow. I think there’s something else going on that the audience isn’t aware of yet. Altair is special. Maybe Sota too. Sota isn’t an official creator yet he got thrown into Selesia’s world. There was that weird message on his tablet too. The other creator with a similar experience would be the Super Robot Boy’s creator. Maybe he has some yet unrevealed link to..something. Setsuna? Is she the common denominator? Shrug.
What complex mechanics though? For all the time they spent talking about it, what we know is:
1. The world may be destroyed if they clash a lot (maybe?). We don’t know how that actually works.
2. The creations get powers based on public perception. (maybe?)
3. The creations that popped into our world our based on things Sota likes (maaaybe? it has been slightly implied).
And… that’s about it?
It seems pretty hard to follow to me. As you say, the “maybes” have it.
I mean, I need to make sense of how someone uploading a doujin video of Altair playing a violin and making duplicates of mini critters somehow means she can now create a duplicate of a giant super robot to fight the original. Also make a swordswoman’s sword turn into a flower. Do you get how that works? Cos I don’t, even after the exposition. Also why it only works on Altair. Argued elsewhere that other creations with a lot more exposure and development and time on air should have even more and varied powers. So does this rule only apply to Altair?
Why is Altair the only creation that can travel between worlds? She claims that she’s the one who is summoning these characters to the real world. Is it true or is she making a false claim to demand allegiance? She made Selesia’s giant robot disappear for example. Does that mean she can make Rui’s robot disappear too? But she goes to the trouble of summoning a copy of Rui’s robot to fight it. Cos the bigger the ruckus, the bigger the distortion, the greater the chance that Altair’s plans come to fruition? Is everybody dancing in the palm of Altair’s hand?
Mamika’s powers are supposed to be harmless magical effects but have violent effects in reality. Apparently there’s some translation from the magical girl world to the real world. Does this only affect Mamika? Or are other characters’ powers affected by some kind of translation issues?
Mamika gets stabbed multiple times but still manages to fly away and exist for some time before bleeding out, apparently dying and disintegrating into pixels. Selesia meanwhile gets a lance the size of a grapefruit shoved through her chest but manages to recover with hospital treatment. She also gets a temporary version overwrite from a tweet that gets massive(?) follows but reverts soon afterwards. So what can we expect in future from these known cases?
There’s this big plan about making a crossover event between different character stories but I’m not sure why that’s a good idea. It seems to me like they’re playing into Altair’s hands by making the conflict between the different characters easier to believe and be accepted as reality.
Also, about who likes the creations that Altair summons, is it Sota or Setsuna? I’m thinking Setsuna. But you could be right. Sota and Altair meeting face to face should be interesting and revealing? Could Sota be Altair’s co-creator? Could he be the anchor holding Altair to reality? Could Altair’s personality be a product of Sota’s trauma and insecurity rather than Setsuna’s dying thoughts?
I’m not sure whether tuning out all the exposition and just focusing on the fights would make this show much better than say Kobayashi’s Maid Dragon. I mean there are a few awesome fight scenes there too. Also, Chuuniibyou, etc. And you don’t really need to watch a little magical girl getting stabbed multiple times and bleed out, apparently with nothing to show for the effort, except to reinforce the jaded notion that innocent idealism is a stupid idea that won’t end well in reality. The world would be such a better place without idiotic dreamers, right? >.>
No I don’t think it would have beena better seris if it focused on the fights.
But for a series that is focused on exposition, we still know very little about how things work. And since that is the focus, everything else suffers.
I was actually hoping, after the initial episodes, the characters would get together and try and figure out the rules for sure. They sort of tried to do it a little, but that kept getting interrupted by random things, or they accept a random Meteora theory and stop trying things.
The most interesting part of the episode was certainly Alice coming to the long overdue realization that Altair, not Meteora, was the one who killed off Mamaika.
Hm. Really? I’m not sure if Alice has made the connection to Altair yet. If that were the case, she’d be attacking Altair head on and would probably meet the same fate as Mamika. I suspect she’s off to confront either Meteora or, more likely, Magane. Still, as long as she’s a lone wolf, I feel like she’s going to wind up like Mamika somehow. 🙁 Still, I love that Sota’s words got through to her. Honestly, that was the best argument you could make to get her to change her mind. It didn’t stop her from attacking Meteora, which was a big disappointment for me, but at least it got her to stop hating the “real world” or why her world was created so tragic.
With Charon in the picture now, things are going to start to complicating very fast as this is the first time two creations have come from the same franchise.
I hate the really creepy music that came with this scene. Like we should really dread Charon’s appearance. He’s probably looking for Selesia but there’s no telling what Altair has filled his head with. My current worse case scenario is that he’s been manipulated into trying to kill Matsubara. All the heartwarming bonding he and Selesia have been having kind of made me worried that they’re setting him up for a dramatic death, like Lockon Stratos. Plus he’s the guy who powered up Selesia. So I get the feeling Altair would want to get rid of him if she could. Course finale cliffhanger?
I’m really going to miss Saekano and Eromanga-sensei. Funniest shows this season and surprisingly good. Re: Creators is really good but…a little stressful? That cheery ED it has is a lie. There hasn’t been a joke in this show since Rui dumped Selesia for being too old.
And since that is the focus, everything else suffers.
Well, the mechanics is one thing. But there’s also the characters themselves, both creations and creators that are very interesting. Their individual motivations, desires and dynamics between them. I find everyone fascinating and representative of various genres of storytelling. Heroes, villains, cliched anime archetypes, etc. So there’s a lot there to color in. Rui remains quite underdeveloped, along with Blitz Talker.
Blitz I am particularly fascinated with because he’s a tragic father figure. I got this distinct feeling the first time I saw him and found him so stoically loyal towards Altair’s goal. Assuming he’s a protagonist type, the easiest reason why he’d want to destroy the world would be revenge for the death of his daughter. Then, his creator is introduced. Young woman around the age of Blitz’s daughter. Wheels are turning in my head about how she could be someone who lost her own father tragically in the real world and decided to invent a father figure in her own work. What would happen if these two were to meet? Would they recognize each other on sight? Whose side would Blitz’s creator take if she saw Blitz as a father figure and shared his hatred for respective worlds that took away their loved ones? Or would they find comfort and solace with each other? Or could it become tragic? Blitz shooting his creator dead in anger only to recognize her too late?
Rui still has too little detail. But I think one of the new creations that will show up may have to do with him.
Charon…will he become a main cast member? Something like Alice? Confused and taken in by Altair’s machinations? Will he switch sides later? Or is he a plot device? Slays Matsubara for creating their chaotic world. Or maybe Selesia kills him to save Matsubara? Or to avenge him? Oh, the drama! I can just see next week’s cliffhanger. Just kidding. Killing off Matsubara would seriously suck. Introducing his twin brother, who is Matsubara’s hikikomori ghost writer, would suck even harder. Hands off Marine too. Uwah. The thought of having to change Selesia’s key art because her main key illustrator got killed off…uwah.
Really. The potential directions this premise could go.
I’m really hoping Mamika comes back somehow. Maybe Altair summons a reset version of her, before she meets anyone. I think Rui would be weak to her.
And then Magane. What’s she up to? What is her interest in Sota? Is she looking for a new creator and seeing potential in Sota? She’s an easy character to villain-block but she’s also voiced by Maaya Sakamoto. I keep drawing comparisons to her and Jeanne D’Arc Alter from Fate Grand Order. And then there’s Yuuya, who is coincidentally(????) voiced by Kenichi Suzumura, Maaya Sakamoto’s real life husband. Where could they go with this????? A romance between two villains from two different story worlds??? Even though they’re kind of enemies right now?
I was actually hoping, after the initial episodes, the characters would get together and try and figure out the rules for sure.
I think we may see this near the end. A collaboration between creators (including the fans) and creations. Like an ultimate homage to each of the archetypes and the genres they represent, and to the medium as a whole. I hope so. Expectations too high?
I don’t know, I feel like you’re putting more effort in characterizations than the actual show itself (especially the stuff about Blitz, who is very underused in the series).
By the way, I’m not trying to convince you that the show is bad and that you shouldn’t like it, firstly because I don’t do that (any more) and secondly because I don’t really dislike the show. I just find it kinda meh. I constantly feel like it’s building up to something, and that something never comes, and in the meantime I don’t find enough stuff to like.
Mm….I’m honestly at a loss at how to respond. It’s not effort. This show just…captures my imagination. I’m actually trying to hold back but gawd I just want to talk about it. Sorry if I’m just textwalling here. And I think characterization is an important part of any work of fiction to draw in the audience. So I’d like to say this story succeeded with me. The first episode just blew me away. Selesia’s debut was…perfect for me? Her character design screams Elly Van Houten, one of my favorite video game characters from one of my favorite game sagas that never got really completed. Also Shion Uzuki and Cecilia Fairchild. Tough at first but just gets stunned speechless when Sota goes fanboy on her. Skewering a window to open it. So cool! Her learning how to drive, etc. Gosh, I want to meet my favorite game heroine in real life like that. The OP, amazing music cued to an amazing sequence. I love every character there, even the “villains”, who I hope don’t stay that way. And the ED. Yes, going to Comiket and seeing the real characters comparing themselves and interacting with their cosplayers. I wish I was one of the cosplayers or the people taking photos. Well, now the story has become something of a battle royale. Characters are at risk of death and exiting the stage permanently. Dramatic, engaging but, well, if they drop to the level of traumatic then this becomes a watch-once-and-never-go-near-it-again shows. You’ll remember it forever but with mixed feelings. Like Muv-Luv Alternative, Walking Dead and probably stuff like Attack on Titan. Which I wouldn’t go near even with a 10-foot pole.
they accept a random Meteora theory and stop trying things.
Also wanted to add. I think there’s a lot going on in the background. Eg. Early on, I assumed that Alice was as belligerent as she is because she’s been ignorant about the real world but recently it’s been revealed that she actually read up on the background of Blitz Talker. So things are happening in the background. We just don’t get to see it.
Speaking of that, I think we can assume that she’s read up on her own works at least as well. What would have been her reaction? At say stuff that happens offstage from her point of view? Would there be parts she would like or actually be happy with? Also, is she reading up on real world news? Ancient and Modern History?
Well, a weakness of the story to be sure but…this isn’t a 500 episode epic so, I guess there’s just no time to fill in the blanks to this degree.
About the pace of buildup and reveals, I think it’s there. It’s just maybe paced for people who may not have anticipated some of the things happening. The creators of this show may also be fine tuning things based on viewer response. And I highly doubt we’re in the loop there, so to speak.
Meow kinda expresses some of my feelings for this show. I get the negatives. I really do. But there is something (a big part the music of course) that keeps me glued to it and waiting rapaciously for the next episode to come out. I am not kidding when I say it has been a long time since an anime did that to me.
You’re Greek, right?
Yes, among other things.
So…episode 13 is the best intermission episode I’ve ever seen. Don’t miss it. Lots of new information. Also awesome Meteora fanservice. Not talking about the awkward pool table scene. ^^; Meteora is awesome enough as she is.
I’m kinda wondering if we’ll see intermissions run by other characters with their personal bias kinda coloring everything in revealing ways.
Yes meow. Thanks for telling me to watch it. It really was a charming and smart way to do it.