As speculated last week, Sota and Magane comes in save the day and provide the ending twist to the climax of the Elimination Chamber Festival but not before a barrage of powers being thrown at Altair in an attempt to end her.
Not even taking a moment to mourn the loss of Selesia, our embattled creations uselessly throw themselves against an overpowered opponent who can literally undo plot points. Altair seems to have adopted Shunma’s philosophy of not completely wiping out creations for the entertainment of the story even though it would be tactically effective. It’s all part of the plan to have the birdcage gain enough acceptance although I don’t believe that having Selesia getting herself deleted was supposed happen. The surprise appearance of Charon threw a wrench into plans and costed the government side a creation and her super fighting robot. Aside from that speed bump, the trump card of Sirius is a fun concept in defeating Altair by having a copycat consume her. I like the simplified crude design of Sirius as the show even acknowledge her as a throwaway character of a plot device. Of course, that wouldn’t be enough to take her down with two more episodes to go as it doesn’t provide a good ending to the antagonist and is unsatisfactory to the main plot. Even the explanation of how Altair subvert their perfect plan is meta as she isn’t tied down to one creator because we, the audience, all feed into her backstory and powers because she never had a original backstory to begin with. While the creations have their own unique character, Altair is creator is us, the audience, a fourth wall breaking idea that has been executed here.
How does one stop a creation with the power of literally thousands of creators behind her OP abilities? By going back to the opening scene where Setsuna decided to be turned into human paste. Getting there is the probably ending point for the odd relationship between Sota and Magane seeing that she’s already at the airport about to get on a plane to go abroad and murderously troll more people. If you recall, the whole mess with Sota started out with Magane deducing the massive amount of guilt associated with Setsuna’s suicide which led to a huge creation fight. It come full circle for those two to be connected back to Setsuna abit through a different process and have a constructive outcome.
Audience acceptance has been huge part of Re:Creators as it powers the existences and abilities of its characters. The way show bypasses that fundamental basis for the final twist before the climax was really clever as the reverse causality power that Magane passed onto Sota had all the hallmarks of good foreshadowing and built up.The audience doesn’t accept this Meteroa’s Hail Mary but the audience does accept the power of reverse causality so the result is that the audience will accept Sota’s character. It’s really meta if you think about it. Now that Re:Creators has gone back to square one, we can get the core of the conflict with Altair and her angst towards the world. Though, this Setsuna is only a copy of her real creator and there is no power that is able to bring back the real dead people unless the show pulls that card out of its ass. Re:Creators will most likely have Altair comes to an understanding and go back into her world with a happy ending with Setsuna but there always room for a surprise.
They threw everything against an enemy who was deeply tied to her mission. However, what Sota showed us is what happens if the mission turned against her.
Altair was given an opportunity whether or not it was all an illusion; the chance to save her mother. Would she take it? We’ll soon find out.
Looking forward to the warp-up. This show had it ups and downs but it has been solid. The facial reactions of Altair in this episode were excellent.