Cute, fluffy and murderous
(This review contains
spoilers!)
Last week I praised the first episode
of Re:Creators for not only being a
new and creative reversal on the exhausted “dude gets trapped in a fantasy
world” formula, but for also giving us fun characters and a very compelling
plot. This week continued what the first episode started, furthering the
mystery while also introducing more lost creations.
Picking up where we left off, the main
character guy is still hanging out with Selestia (the red hair one) and Meteora
(the white hair one) in his room. They’re still uncertain as to why they’re
stuck in this world, so main character guy decides to show them around town
while Meteora figures out who that mysterious woman from last week was.
Speaking of main character guy, he’s definitely
the weakest part of the show thus far. All he’s done so far is react to what
the magical characters are doing, and while his reactions to their
fish-out-of-water behaviour are entertaining, I never feel like I’d rather be
spending time with him instead of the girls. I think a little extra development
on his end last week would’ve gone a long way, especially considering there was
a lot of wasted time in the first episode trying to make a point about all the
different types of media and characters we consume on a daily basis.
Back to the episode, the scenes with
Selestia and Meteora exploring the local area and what normal human life is
like is very entertaining. In fact, while a lot of these scenes are narrated by
Meteora explaining her hypothesis as to how they’ve been sent here, I had a
hard time focusing on what she was saying because the physical comedy in this
scene was actually really funny. I kind of wish they’d done the comedy and
explanation separately because it was hard to focus on one over the other.
The biggest part of this episode is
that more characters from different worlds are starting to be introduced. One
thing I’d like to mention is that I love how no two characters originate from
the same world. It’d be kind of boring to have a bunch of characters with the
same rules and magic all at once, so having a large variety of characters with
unique powers and different backgrounds make things way more interesting.
The next character introduced is,
hilariously, the lead from a stereotypical cutesy magical girl anime. The
writers lampoon every magical girl trope under the sun in just a few minutes,
including the overabundance of crying, cutesy reactions and of course the
ubiquitous transformation sequence, and they hit a complete bullseye with all
their jokes. They perfectly captured the essence of what makes these characters
entertaining in their native environment, and having one out in the real world
is just plain fun to watch. Even if the plot goes completely off the rails in
the next few weeks, I’d still have to give this show props for being an awesome
parody/love letter to anime traditions in the same vein as Kill la Kill.
They also took a more Madoka-esque look at the magical girl
towards the end of the episode. Selestia challenges magical girl to a duel, and
magical girl accidentally destroys a building. She’s shocked at what her powers
can do in the real world, even stating that “there was never blood” where she
came from. It’s actually a really heartbreaking scene, even as someone who’s
seen way too many dark magical girl stuff and coming from a character who’s had
less than ten minutes of screentime up to this point.
The episode ends on a huge
cliffhanger, introducing another hilarious anime stereotype: the edgy rival
dude with a huge weapon and a sinister looking familiar. After seeing how
perfectly this show handled magical girl tropes, I can’t wait to see how they
poke fun at this guy.
Re:Creators
has quickly become my favourite of the three new anime I chose to watch
this season, and for good reason. It juggles being both an anime with an actual
story to tell and a hilarious parody at the same time, and manages to balance
both perfectly. This episode especially showed how excellent it can be at physical
humour, even if it’s at the cost of some crucial information. The main lead also
needs a bit more development in the next few weeks, as the intro makes it look
like we have a lot more characters to go through, and he’s definitely more
important story-wise than they are. Nonetheless I’m glad this episode proved
this show wasn’t a one-hit wonder and I’m so excited to see the rest.
FINAL SCORE
8/10
Great
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