Fridge / Re:CREATORS

Fridge Horror

• We know when a work of fiction is created, it creates an alternate dimension. Try to imagine the antagonists and monsters from horror movies/manga/videogames/books(etc) such as super-villains, supernatural serial-killers, Kaiju, eldritch horrors, and other nightmares coming to our reality by chance. Monstrosities such as The Dark Presence, Pennywise, Yoshikage Kira, Joker, Thanos or Tomie (just to mention a few) unleashed on a unknowing population...
  • Then again, there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to what creations are brought to reality (Yuuya is a villain from his source material, whereas Rui is the main character), so odds are that if one of the monstrosities you mentioned was somehow unleashed on an unknowing population, a character such as Alucard, Raiden, Velvet Crowe or L could be brought in and lay down the smack-down on them.
  • Three words: The Chaos Gods, they already destroyed one setting and are on the process of overruning the other one, any piece of horror, misery, debauchery, perversion, corruption, disease, excess and malediction you may find in any other setting they have taken it and turned up to the eleven. And the worst part? The man who ensured the destruction of the old Warhammer Fantasy Battle setting, Archaon, has some uncanny personality traits akin to Altair.
  • The Great Old Ones, SCPs, and Crossed too. They turned their universes into hellholes from which salvation is impossible.
  • Then again, virtually anything coming from any of Games Workshop intellectual property (Nagash, the Tyranids, the C'tan, The Dark Eldar, the Skaven) would be enough to make all other monsters and villains look like little kitties in comparison.
• Speaking of alternate dimensions, this makes Meteora being nearly killed a couple times throughout the series much, MUCH worse, compared to the other Creations: Due to her Creator dying prior to Altair bringing her to the "real world", she's more of an independent, solitary being compared to the rest of the Creations. For Meteora, there is no Creator left alive at the end of the series to continue creating her.
• Alisteria's background. While other characters have varying amounts of darkness in them, Alisteria is from a dark fantasy manga which can be grim dark to the maximum and usually not very good towards anyone in it. Imagine Guts or Sigmar arriving to our world and how he will react to it.
  • Want to make it worse? Try bringing Captain Martin Walker from Spec Ops: The Line to reality and see what he reacts when he realizes he's a PLAYER CHARACTER in a video game which makes you feel like a hero. Or bring any horror movie or story protagonist and let them watch the movie or work they originated from, coming to the realization of how their fates won't change no matter how many times they replay the tapes or turn the pages such as David, Jane, Harvey Dent and John Trent.
  • Or even bring a hero from a Crapsack World who believes that they can save the world, then show them all the Dramatic Irony right in their face, such as people secretly working with the enemy or information that was purposefully withheld. Add to the kicker, show Nier on what are The Shades and the Shadowlord is thoughtlessly killing. Then ask what he feels on it.
    • This ends up becoming Ascended Fridge Horror, as Charon and Aliceteria can pretty much be one conclusion of a hero going through this reveal.
  • Well perhaps Sigmar or Roboute Guilliman may be ok, still, one wonders what any of them would do to Games Workshop staff when they discover all the crap they have thrown at their respective peoples, if Games Workshop is lucky they may go Alice's way, but then again, just check the description about what they are up against to.
  • Imagine you're a Rule 34 game character. Their only existence is to become a toy for the players and be forced to do deviant acts for the thrills.
• Trying bringing somebody out of a Crapsack World and make them Go Mad from the Revelation because there are better worlds than this. Worlds such as Westeros, Midgard, Rapture, Oceania, the world, the Wasteland, the world of Attack on Titan, the world of Dark Souls, Yharnam, Remnant and other worlds similar to it.
• The very idea of Rage Against the Author. Like Alisteria and Altair examples, Alicteria relizes her Crapsack World she lives in is just for entertainment of the gods and Altair going full-on Omnicidal Maniac after realizing her Creator took her own life. Now imagine Captain Martin Walker aiming a gun at Walt Williams, Kratos mass-murdering everyone, every character made by Marvel and DC going mad, Winston raging at Orwell's grave for forcing him to live in Oceania, Rick Sanchez murdering his show's writers for turning him into a nihilist, the survivors of every zombie story ever taking their Creators to town for making their lives Hell, the Doctor doing to the BBC what they did to the Family of Blood, the characters of Arcane having choice words to Riot for turning what was a relatively lighthearted property Darker and Edgier, the characters of Happy Wheels putting Let's Players through their torment, Miloš and Saki Yoshida being rightfully pissed off to Hell, and other horrible, vicious, brutal, monstrous, abominable things that the Creations would do if they realized.
  • You think that's bad? Try bringing out a character from a series where Rage Against the Author is a gag. Imagine Deadpool slaughtering the Marvel staff for a dorky arc or some character from a newspaper comic regularly harassing the author for petty reasons as they usually do, only to learn there's no Snap Back for them to do it all over again the next day.
• Consider a Metafictional piece, where all the little details of how your world works is laid bare for the cast to see. If it's one of the silly ones, maybe the character realizing the silliness behind being an Intrepid Fictioneer as a fictional character themselves won't be so bad. But heaven help you if you played it for drama: Monika freaks out over realizing the rest of her cast is programmed? All the hacking and manipulating of the game files to talk to you, only to ask you to kill her to protect the rest of the cast's happiness? Imagine her realizing that she was programmed to feel that, too.
• Altair's entire existence. A doujin character seemingly born from a single music video, maybe a few artworks by Setsuna (not counting all the content made by other authors as these are Secondary Creations of a Secondary Creation)... All other Creations have powers, personalities, friends, enemies, families, jobs, in-story roles, memories and backgrounds, but does Altair even have anything to define herself except her chara-design and powers (most of said powers coming from other authors, not her original Creator ) If she does not, then she is effectively "hollow" and with Setsuna's death, won't ever gain a story, personality, acquaintances, role... at least not one bestowed by her original Creator that could be considered "canon". So this orphaned character enters our world, becomes a "real person" like the other Creations, realizes how empty and purposeless she is and that it won't ever change as the only person who could have "completed" her is already dead, driven to suicide by her peers. No wonder she snapped, though trying to destroy the world is obviously waaaaaaaay too much.
• Why did Altair say that Celesia's death was key to revolutionizing the world in episode 10? Episode 11 provides the answer right there: a picture of Celesia was Favorited and commented on by Setsuna, which was Sota's very first interaction with her when he replied. Everything Altair is doing goes back to Sota. She hates him because of what happened to Setsuna, and Celesia is a character that Sota loves. That is how driven by revenge Altair is against Sota: she wants to destroy the character he loves the most, and trigger the "revolution of the world".
  • Alternatively, Altair could've also been talking about Meteora's death as well. When Altair told Aliceteria to "Behead her", it first shows Meteora being held by Sota. Sure, Selesia had an initial connection to Sota, but Meteora has had several emotional moments with Sota since coming to the world. Meteora has truly been the closest to Sota. Even more so than Selesia. And as broken as Aliceteria looked, if anything, she would've had more reason to kill Meteora than Selesia anyway.
• Altair can obtain vast power thanks to the multiple canons by multiple Creators and the sheer variety of stories featuring her due to her single origin as a OC from a music video. Consider folktales and mythology, and how many variations exist on those tales. Now imagine power-hungry characters like Slenderman who has multiple canons and interpretations and what they'd do to the real world if brought over and being similarly able to draw on all those stories for power like Altair did.
  • Adding on to the 'mythology' part. To this matter, the world of Re:CREATORS relies on a combination of Clap Your Hands If You Believe, God Needs Prayer Badly and The World as Myth. Now imagine mythological and religious terrors like Apep (The devouring snake in Egyptian Mythology), Wendigo (Cannibal creature in Native American mythology), Kali (Murderous goddess who nearly went on a rampage until her husband dropped on her feet to stop in Hinduism, Satan (The Devil in Christianity), Demiurge (Gnostic deity who believes he is God), Grim Reaper, Susanoo, Jorgumandr, Pontianak (A vampiric Malay ghost) and worst of all, the Maltheistic God coming to our world and turning it into a Cosmic Horror Story a la Shin Megami Tensei or American Gods if you want something lighter.
• The final episode shows every Creation going back to their worlds, minus Meteora... and Magane. Meaning that there's still a psychotic killer out there in the real world. And even if she should somehow lose her powers, she most likely still has lots of money (or can obtain it by cheating and swindling people), allowing her to do pretty much whatever she wants.
  • Not to mention no addressing of the Hound's whereabouts.
• Altair's powers actually become terrifying when you realized they're made by other people. What sort of stories have they made with her that involved her causing "the plot to disappear" or eradicate plot twists?
  • If you think of it in a lighter tone, some powers could have just come from gag comics based on her since all fanon is canon. Altair actually being her hat seems like a common gag to write, so it doesn't seem out of the ordinary that similar gags (like Altair destroying a notorious fanfic's universe or a disgruntled fan using Altair as a tool to fix plots) could be augmented into her moveset.
• Consider how Sota had to use Magane to allow Creation Setsuna to be accepted as reality. Without her around, who knows what sort of world-ending rampage Altair would have enacted on the world for not accepting her? For that matter, how angry would Altair have gotten at Creation Setsuna's existence without Magane's influence, possibly deciding her as a mere imitation?
  • At that point, they basically has nothing more to lose. Would you: a: get eliminated with the current reality, or b: get eliminated after trying to tame Altair? Either way, if the plan failed they had nothing else to fall back on.
• If the theory about the Setsuna who appears at the end being actually the real person, and not a creation made to resemble her is true, this means that she was resurrected from the dead, only to be trapped in Altair's personal universe immediately after. For all eternity.
• A bit of Fridge Horror that really stings, especially since this happens in real life, is that the entire conflict started because Setsuna became a victim of cancel culture, and if Souta is to be believed, it's a case where the cancellation is based on false accusations.
  • Building onto this, the people who accused Setsuna of plagiarism sound much older than her and Souta... In other words, a bunch of adults drove a girl to kill herself.

Fridge Brilliance

• Aliceteria's consistent malice and disbelief towards Meteora when she tries to talk to her can come off as Alice being Lawful Stupid(which isn't entirely wrong), until you realize that Meteora's way of talking and facial expressions also comes off as blunt and mean. From episode 2 and on, it's established that Meteora being dull to human emotions means she comes off as blunt and not subtle to the point of being snarky and even condescending, whether on purpose or not.
• Its stated in universe that Mamika's powers come from believing in yourself and what you're doing. So in episode two when Mamika is unsure of her ideals and beliefs. Her Magical Splash Flare amounts to about the same force as a car bomb going off. When Mamika rediscovers her resolve in episode 8, not clinging to her old ideals from her show because they're comfortable but because she thinks they are truly worth fighting and dying for, Her power skyrockets and turns her Magical Splash Flare into a Fantastic Nuke.
• The Creations are foils to each other:
  • Celesia and Aliceteria are both warriors from fantasy worlds that are pretty bleak. However, whereas Celesia as an idealistic outlook on her Creator, Aliceteria has only harsh words for hers.
  • Meteora and Mamika are both magical girls and are both the voice of reason for the group. However, Meteora is wiser than the naive Mamika.
  • Meteora is also a foil to Altair AND Magane. The fact that she parallels and foils both of the antagonists, on more levels than any other Creation deserves mention here.
    • In the case of Altair, 1)both their Creators died prior to them entering the "Land of the Gods", and even have opposite reactions upon dealing with their Creators' deaths: Altair wants to destroy the world because Setsuna died in despair, whereas Meteora wants to save it because she concludes that her Creator created her world with love and care. 2)Compared to the other Creations, both Meteora and Altair have the most vague involvement in their stories(Meteora is an NPC in the last world of her game, Altair is original character art based off from a game as well), whereas every other Creation is either MAIN protagonists, antagonists, or rivals/sidekicks. 3)On a deeper note, Altair knows Sota in the beginning, while Meteora becomes the closest to Sota in the end. 4)Finally, a subtle one, but both Meteora's and Altair's emotional shortcomings are subtly pivotal to how the story progresses: Altair fools Creations because she can hide her true intentions, whereas Meteora accidentally comes off as blunt and mean, hindering her interactions with Aliceteria and even Sota. It might be more than coincidence that Altair brought her first, out of everyone.
    • As for Magane, 1)both Meteora and Magane are big on speaking extensively(Magane to twist her lies, Meteora to explain things as truthfully and openly as possible). 2)Meteora connects with Sota, while Magane manipulates him. 3)Also, notice how Magane is very energetic when she talks, but Meteora is stoic? 4)Finally, Magane was able to deduce Sota's secret through verbal and body language, whereas Meteora knew he was hiding something but failed to coax it out of him through their friendship, almost at the cost of her life.
    • Oh, and who gets the best ending out of all the Creations? Altair gets her happy ending with her Creator Setsuna, Magane gets to stay in the real world and enjoy humanity, and Meteora gets to stay in the real world and connect with Sota.
  • Yuuya and Magane are both troublemakers, antagonists of their respective stories looking for fun. However, Yuuya's fun lies in fighting whereas Magane's fun lies in manipulation. Also, Yuuya is a Well-Intentioned Extremist while Magane is a psychopathic serial killer
  • Rui and Blitz are both from sci-fi genres that delve heavily into robotics, Mecha and Cyberpunk. However, Rui is a young boy struggling over romantic love while Blitz is more focused on familial love.
  • Sho and Hikayu are both standard protagonists in the most popular genres of their demographic, Fighting and Romance. Likewise, they embody those very aspects, Syo's background showing him grieving for his lost sister and friend while Hikayu is kissing a boy.
  • Charon and Sirius are both the trump cards for Altair and Meteroa respectively.
  • Erina and Setsuna are both called in to calm down someone who is out to avenge their deaths.
• Yuuya repeatedly falling into Magane's trap might initially seem like him holding the Idiot Ball, but it makes a good deal of sense. Being The Rival from a Shōnen story, Yuuya effectively has a crippling weakness against Magane: he's Hot-Blooded and boastful in battle. Sure, becoming real allows characters to grow beyond their writing, but these characteristics are so ubiquitous in his genre they might as well be carved into his soul.
• Meteora talking in length for scenes on end seems rather odd and out of place... Then you remember she's an NPC from a JRPG, which has a heavier emphasis on lengthy cutscenes. It also foreshadows her becoming the in-universe Creator of a work called Re:Creators. She's narrating their story because she will one day write it down for posterity.
• Layers is said to be the Military Uniform Princess' theme. Notice how whenever it plays, it's usually during a massive fight. Massive fights, coincidentally, are what she wants.
• Aliceteria's My God, What Have I Done? moment after stabbing Celesia makes a lot of sense if Celesia's and Meteora's relationship is seen as comparable to Aliceteria's and Mamika's: Aliceteria would likely see Celesia fighting to defend Meteora as no different than what she herself would do for Mamika, and when Aliceteria stabs Celesia, she likely concludes that she herself is now guilty of everything she was just accusing Meteora of. For an honor-bound knight like Aliceteria, realizing that she is no better than the supposed villain she is fighting has to be a very sobering moment.
  • Aliceteria has the same moment when she hits Meteora, after Meteora moves Sota out of the way. Besides having probably the same revelation as she had with Selesia, it's also subtly implied that deep down she knows Meteora isn't the one who killed Mamika(to the point of trying to silence Sota as he proves Meteora's innocence), and she just might have killed the protagonists' version of Mamika to keep up her false pride as a knight.
• While Nishio's behavior towards Hikayu might come across as disturbing and unsettling, let's not forget that he likely designed her to be the exact sort of girl he would want to be with in reality. Therefore, her coming to life in the real world was practically a dream come true for him. And let's be honest, who's to say there aren't H-Game creators out there who designed the heroines for their games with the same mindset as him and who won't behave the same way as him were they to be in his shoes?
• Nishio seems pretty confident that he can simply create and put out a fandisk to give Hikayu whatever powers he wants without running into the issue of having the audience reject it due to implausibility. Contrast that with the other Creators, who encounter creative differences in trying to cross their stories with each other in an organic manner and have to modulate the powers they give their Creations, lest the audience refuse to accept these changes. And even if the crossover is put together, none of the other Creators are even certain their efforts will rein in Altair. While such fandisks usually contain sequels or after stories to the plot in games like the ones Hikayu features in, it's not uncommon for them to be AlternateUniverses to the setting in the main game, some of which do feature the protagonists with superpowers that they do not possess in their original settings. Nishio is likely banking on this trend to empower Hikayu, given that the audience of games such as hers have a history of simply rolling with and accepting whatever content is included in fandisks without thinking too hard about disconnects between said fandisk content and the original source games (partly because of their Alternate Universe nature). As a result, Hikayu could be the heroes' ace in the hole, given that she: a) could theoretically be given whatever powers the Creators see fit without worrying about audience rejection, and b) because the audience will likely accept changes to her powers (or lack thereof) without issue, there's no need to coordinate her story with those of the other Creations. Taking all this into consideration, there might thus be a very good reason why Altair has labeled Hikayu as the "Empress" when examining the current state of alliances between Creations.
• Mamika's Sacrificial Lion status isn't so shocking when you realize that modern day magical girl anime like Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Magical Girl Raising Project or even oldschool series like Cutey Honey, Sailor Moon and the infamous ending to Magical Princess Minky Momo are dark and edgy stories where death is common and the cast is killed off regularly. Mamika's death is merely the show playing into another trope of the genre.
• Outside of Mamika, the people MUP recruited have a similar mindset to her: angry at the world and gods that put them in that situation and wanting revenge. And likewise, their departure from her side reflects them finding peace with the situation, sometimes literally.
  • Alicetaria hates the world that she's in, as it is cruel to her and predictably has a similar reaction when she materialized. She later has history repeat itself with Mamika dying and soon realizes Altair is to blame for that. Couple that with realizing what Souta told her and she decides to stop her.
  • Blitz had to put down his own daughter so he too has some suffering and even views Altair as a substitute daughter. Once he gets his daughter back, he finds just how kind his Creator is and joins to stop Altair.
  • Charon experienced betrayal, much like how Altair indirectly experienced betrayal via Souta.
  • Sho also experienced betrayal, but seeks revenge against the traitor, much like Altair's own quest for revenge. However, once it turns out that the supposed traitor didn't actually kill his sister and friend, he's chill.
• There's a reason why there are few Creations who are the main characters. Remember how the prime rule is that the popular characters end up being the ones summoned? Well...
  • It also explains why there's more females than males summoned.
• Why, of all people, does Mamika never interact with her Creator? The series presents the relationship between Creator and Creation as parent-child, and kid's show characters, especially Kodomomuke characters like Mamika, are famous for their parents never being around to know what's going on with their children. Plus, she and her little girl mahou shoujo ilk are typically made by committee; the metaphor fits even more then, as it would be analogous to having a collective of salaryman fathers who're always too busy to check on their kid.
• While it may seem bizarre that the audience watching the Elimination Chamber Festival would root for Altair, a formerly low profile character with no canon to speak of, over many popular characters with a sizeable presence in the public conscious, consider the fact that Altair as a character is essentially a blank slate that anyone can create material for with an equal degree of acceptance, meaning no one person's interpretation of her supersedes anyone else's. Contrast that with the other Creations, whose canons are law and will always be more "valid" than any derivative works featuring them. That difference alone means that Altair can be a character that anyone can claim ownership of simply by producing material for her. Now, think about how you would react if you were told that "your character" would participate in a fight against several established characters. Who will you root for to win? Chances are good that you'd support "your character", regardless of what her actual chances in the fight are. Considering the high profile nature of the Elimination Chamber Festival, there's a good chance that at least a sizeable portion of the audience has created material for Altair or knows someone that did, and thus, would naturally want to support "their character". Of course, the caveat is that in this case, said support has actual life-or-death consequences for the other Creations involved in the fight.
  • Alternatively and/or additionally, the other Creations ganging up against Altair might have done them more harm than good, as them having a numerical advantage over Altair might have made her seem like an underdog to the audience and thus galvanized them into further supporting her, perhaps to invoke the Underdogs Never Lose trope. Perhaps not being aware of her vast Reality Warping powers, the audience might also be intrigued in seeing how a solo fighter like Altair could win out amidst such seemingly overwhelming odds (the other Creations fighting her) and thus be inclined to support her.
• To the viewers, the Elimination Chamber Festival looks like a genuine battle to the death, with characters trying and failing to get the upper hand by invoking Altair's Berserk Buttons. But consider it from the in-universe audience's perspective — the show slowly shapes up to be a tribute to the late Setsuna Shimazaki. She loved all the works featured in the special, and likely would have loved to see them interact together. She created Altair, and would have been overjoyed to know how much her character has been loved and all the fanwork that gets made for her. Sirius is one of the last characters she was creating before her death, and her design basically gets used in a Mythology Gag in the special. Setsuna herself shows up in the last leg of the special so she can talk to Altair. Of course the audience would root for Altair; in a Setsuna tribute, it would make sense for her character to have some kind of happy ending.
• Aside from the act being good use of utilizing a blank slate, Altair's easy control of Sirius makes sense in a way; as Sirius has heavy design influences from Altair and she was the last thing Setsuna was working on, it looks like she may have been a retooled version of her to be used in a completely original project the same way the cast of Evillious Chronicles used to merely be Vocaloids playing them. This connection should give Altair some degree of control over Sirius, since effectively, they share the same "blood", so to speak.
• For a show that claims that fans can influence the world of a story, the series itself certainly seems written according to what the writers thought the Fandom would think as it moves along. Our Audience Surrogate seems like he's hiding something under his nice exterior to the audience. Boy howdy is he hiding something. He starts fading out of focus when the audience starts looking at someone else. The Fandom feels something really bad is going to happen to the sole idealistic kid's show character. The girl bites it hard in the first quarter. The Military Princess' antics are interesting to the audience, so she starts getting more and more focus. So much focus, in fact, that they probably won't mind when Sota's side stays on the losing team during the last leg. Even the in-universe audience wants her to come out on top, and she outright hijacks the final battle to show off more of her character. She handily dodges the "clichéd" ways she could be defeated (the teammate trying to get her to stop is given a very grisly Shut Up, Kirk! moment, the new, ultra-powerful foil is absorbed, etc.), and the heroes' side regularly has to keep thinking of ways to get a fair fight. And to top it all off, all she really needed was a hug from her creator, as many fans rooting for sympathetic villains would tend to think. The fact that Magane and Altair are able to get happy endings seems to be inspired by the fact that fans will still want them to find some pleasure in life instead of what they would consider unfair repercussions, and Meteora being able to stay in the real world with Sota is due to wanting the most popular of the Creations to stay behind instead of getting her memories erased.
• The doctors comment that Creations heal amazingly quickly. This doesn't have to be the case, but characters recovering in unrealistic timeframes is so common in works of fiction that virtually all Creations will have a built-in Healing Factor.
• The fact that Meteora ends up being the main protagonist Creation, deserves special mention here. In most series, the trope of "main heroine" tends to go to the most attractive, emotional, positive trope fulfilling character. Selesia is even the first character to appear and interact with Sota. Based on how the story progresses for most of the series, anyone who watches anime based on said tropes would certainly pick Selesia as the main heroine. But anyone paying closer attention to the series later comes to realize that:
  • Meteora displays a lot of emotion throughout the series despite being "dull to human emotions", she has many cute and endearing moments, she grows the closest to Sota, she is the best foil to both of the two "antagonists"(Magane and Altair), gets to live in the real world with Sota, and is the only one Sota truly opens up to in the end. Oh, did I forget to mention that it's revealed in episode 5 that Meteora is actually the first one Altair brought to the real world?
  • And the title of the world/game she comes from, "AVALKEN of Reminisce"? The definition of "reminisce" is: to indulge in enjoyable recollection of past events. Meteora later emotionally helps Sota steel his resolve and come forth with the truth about his tragic history with Setsuna, and later Sota creates(with Magane's help) a version of Setsuna based on his enjoyable recollection of past events and memories of her.
• The ending has Setsuna be revived as a sort of goddess, living peacefully with fellow goddess and creation Altair in another world, cut off from Souta's. At first this may seem sad at best and weird at worst, but then you remember one of the pivotal myths Altair is named for: the tale of a cowherd and weaver goddess who are separated by a barrier that prevents the two from reuniting, mirroring the situation Souta had when seeing Setsuna again.
• Altair's powers almost all resolve around quickly resolving conflict. Given that her origins revolve around her Creator getting bullied to suicide and her group being made of people who were forced to endure conflict, it makes sense that her powerset gives her a toolkit to nullify any and all conflict.
• Why do Meteora and Magane choose to stay in the real world? Because their Creators are dead. Barring a different author picking up a sequel to their game/manga, it's literally the only way their story can continue.

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