Meet your maker.
What They Say:
People have created many stories.Joy, sadness, anger, deep emotion.Stories stir up emotion and captivate.However, those emotions are nothing more than the feelings of a spectator.What if the characters in the stories had their own will. In their eyes, are we, the creators of the stories, like gods?Revolution for our world.Punishment for the land of the gods.Re:CREATORS.Everyone becomes a Creator.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Remember Aldnoah.Zero? Ah, how I wanted that show to be so great. Its lineup of creators was top-tier, and together they could only make a masterpiece, right? As it turns out, not so much, although a good amount of fault can easily be placed on the fact that the series was promoted as being written by Gen Urobuchi when in fact it was almost entirely written by someone who would indicate a major hole in that lineup had it been made clear from the beginning. So when nearly the exact same lineup announces a new series, I can’t help but be wary. That all-important role of writer is the only real change here, not only having nothing to do with Urobuchi but bringing along someone completely new, the same Rei Hiroe you may know as the creator of the Black Lagoon manga, with director and studio founder Ei Aoki sharing that role with him. I don’t love Black Lagoon as much as some of the projects everyone else in the main staff (and Urobuchi) has worked on, but as we get a few episodes into this series, it does appear that these two are the real writers, and not someone that nobody would get excited about.
So does that mean it will be better? Writing is so important that going from (reportedly) Urobuchi to someone only known for Black Lagoon (which, ironically, Urobuchi wrote the light novels of), who hasn’t written in the anime medium before, and someone who is a great director but not generally a writer takes out a good amount of the potential excitement even before considering anything else, so the chances of it being as good as I had hoped Aldnoah.Zero could be initially were already shot from the beginning. Moreover, Aldnoah.Zero did seem like it would be a lot better than it ended up being earlier on. It took a big dive with the finale of the first season, again for the second season, and one final blow for the series finale. But again, all of that was due to the writing; the other elements remained as strong throughout. So on the matter of having disappointing downward turns, I do have more confidence in at least Hiroe to keep things consistent, even if that means never especially amazing.
All of this talk about creators is the kind of thing you find in my reviews, especially in situations similar to Aldnoah.Zero, as this is, but as the title of this new project implies, it’s actually rather relevant on a meta level this time. The show is indeed about creators, and even about creators of all the same things these people are: anime, manga, light novels, and visual novels. The creators and their creations are fictional within the world of the show, but everything is basically the same as the real Japan and those industries, until some of the most prominent characters within them show up in that world. This isn’t an idea that hasn’t been done before, but the show’s focus on “creators” (perhaps because of how much experience its entire main staff has had in so many different areas throughout this world of otaku media) makes it more about the interactions between these characters and their would-be gods than most have done in the past.
If you could meet your god, their creation of you was never intended to create a real world, their method of creation is as simple as writing or drawing, and they had no objection to changing you upon realizing you were a real person, of course, you’d try to get that to happen. We could all use some change in our respective realities, all the truer for those whose worlds are embroiled in the kind of conflicts you have to have for a compelling and successful story in anime or a related medium. As the characters try to cope with being transported to such a foreign world and the realization that they were cartoons thought up by some weak humans in that world to sell products, they also seek out not only the answer to get home but how to get their creators to change their world into something that they’d be happier to go back to. And of course, there’s the matter of the mysterious villain who seems to be behind all this and what her intention is.
While much of the show so far has been a strange mix of flashy action and standing around talking about how all this nonsense must work (led by the designated exposition character, who clearly served the same role in her own story), the ideas around how such a scenario could work does show some original thought and creativity. In particular, the revelation that the only way things can actually change in any of these worlds is for the new development to be released as a canon part of the story. This makes perfect sense and fits with the concept of completely fictional characters materializing in the real world in the first place: only with sufficient cultural impact do these made-up worlds get created in some alternate universes, and only by the same measure can they be modified.
Most of the other aspects of the production are as favorable as one would hope for. In particular, Aoki’s direction and Sawano’s music are above-average as usual. Aoki was definitely better off at ufotable than his own studio TROYCA, but at least he’s still showing that he’s a strong director, and apparently not a bad writer, either. Sawano is splitting duty between this and the new season of Attack on Titan, but as that already has an established soundtrack, most of his time seems to be spent here, allowing for some nice new tracks, especially those that he includes vocals on, as is generally the case in series he works on.
In Summary:
So far, Re:Creators is somewhere in between Aldnoah.Zero at its best and at its worst. This puts it in watchable territory but leaves little hope that it will become especially more impressive than that. All aspects outside of writing are very good, so there’s nothing to worry about there. The writing itself leaves a bit to be desired so far, but may still have the potential to at least become a series that made better use of a premise that is as ridiculous as it is fascinating to think about.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Anime Strike
Review Equipment:
Roku 3, Sceptre X425BV-FHD 42″ Class LCD HDTV.
