Reviews Anime / Re Creators

Just Awful.

What do you get when you put together an intriguing premise, extremely long scenes of exposition, plot threads introduced only to be dropped only a few minutes later, a genuine Mary Sue as a villain and gorgeous animation? You get Re:Creators.

I started this show after seeing some of those awesome fight scenes without context on the tube and boy I was invested. At first, things seemed great but then I noticed that a lot of episodes were passing by with very little happening except someone (usually Meteora) talking for a while. I stayed interested throughout, so I can't say the show is boring. It just never lives up to it's hype. It doesn't help that the concept of a massive crossover anime doesn't really work when the cast is all Expies of much more popular shows. I can't shake the feeling RC would've worked much better if at least some of these stories really existed to provide context and emotional weight.

The characters vary wildly in terms of interest factor. I was a big fan of the creations who sided with Altair, such as Aliceteria and Mamika. It helped that they had actual motivations aside from the old "Get home without destroying the world" the good guys were going for. I also liked Magane, if anyone deserves an actual spinoff from this show it's her. I'd like to see what kind of grimdark mystery novel came up with that demonic witch.

Creators are almost all awful. A lot of them felt like they were stand-ins for actual people and this whole show was just a vehicle for them to brag about their work. Among them though, Sota is easily the worst. A mix of The Generic Guy and Designated Hero considering he had a direct involvement in Setsuna's suicide. He doesn't feel like an actual character most of the time, he's just there to have some ship teasing that really doesn't go anywhere.

As I said before, a lot of things come up and never go anywhere. Like that powerup Selesia got after her big fight with Alice. You'd think they'd try and work that into the final arc, but you'd be wrong. Hell the episode before that was mostly Magane talking about her master plan that is immediately foiled because Sota doesn't cooperate.

You can tell the writers had some serious trouble coming up with a plot that can't be solved by the in-universe writers just giving their characters new powers, so they came up with the "acceptance" factor. Which doesn't make any sense because plenty of unpopular decisions in any medium of fiction stay despite being unpopular. Also, is it not weird that it was never explained how these manga, LN and video game characters came to life one day? Apparently it's one of Altair's powers but that just raises further questions. Like how did she realize that she can move freely between universes and no other character did?

I can go on, but to make a long story short it's sad how good RC could've been. I often wish things could've been different.

2/5