Magical Splash Nuke
(This review contains
spoilers!)
We’re nearing the halfway point in Re:Creators, which means we’ve arrived
at the point where I’m honestly starting to feel sorry for the people who
dropped this show. The mystery surrounding Altair’s creator furthered this
week, and the best character on the show got a pivotal, albeit maybe final,
scene that turned out to be one of the show’s best.
It’s become blatantly obvious that
Sota (I think the main character guy joke’s run its course by this point) has
something to do with the creator of our villain, and this week the characters
all but confirmed what happened to her using some wordplay. She was friends
with Sota, but after her work with Altair took off, Sota continued to flounder
as an artist. Their friendship broke off, and three months ago she died
somehow. Altair is doing all this insanity to get revenge on the world that
took her god from her, which includes destroying the other creations that have
come in.
I like that Altair finally got some
major screentime again this week as more developments came out about her,
because she’s mostly acted as an endgame boss while the hero creations fight
her flunkies. She’s definitely shaping up to be a cool baddie, and the
connection with Sota will be really interesting to explore in the weeks to
come.
I have noticed another small issue
with the show lately that I feel is worth bringing up however: the uneven
distribution of the main characters. Some of the creations get ludicrous
amounts of screentime compared to others. Despite being the first character
seen in the intro and the one at the center of much of the advertising for Re:Creators, Selesia doesn’t enjoy
nearly the same amount of screentime that Meteora gets. She only had one or two
lines this week compared to Meteora getting a huge scene one on one with Sota.
Similarly, despite being introduced as a major player a few weeks back, the
mech suit guy’s still done absolutely nothing. He doesn’t contribute to the
conversations, nor does he participate in the fight scenes. Right now he just
feels like he’s there just because they wanted to get all the introductions out
of the way early on.
Speaking of characters, I probably
should talk about Mamika and the ending. Mamika and her relationship with Alice
has easily been the best part of Re:Creators
thus far. The microexpressions you see on her face when interacting with
the others is honestly second to none. You really can see complex emotions like
doubt and confusion on this anime girl’s face, and it’s insane.
Early in the episode it was blatant
that her character was about to go into a rough patch, as she had a
conversation with Alice about how she wanted her to know how much she liked her
and how she believed this world truly was worth saving.
Uh oh.
As is the magical girl’s lot in life
since Madoka Magica hit it big,
everything then proceeded to go horribly wrong for poor Mamika. Upon
confronting Altair about her master plan, she was quickly turned into mahou
shojou shish kabob. But before Altair could deliver the finishing blow, Mamika
finally cast the much-hyped Magical Splash Flare spell, destroying everything
in a one mile radius with a pink explosion.
As far as I can see, there are two
ways they can go with this since we didn’t actually see if she died or not. The
more obvious choice and the one I think they’ll be going with is they kill off
Mamika, arguably the best character with the most development, and set up a
story not unlike Magical Girl Raising
Project going forth where the creations are picked off one by one. The
other option is have Mamika survive, keeping their secret weapon character in
play, and have her join Sota’s side, leading to a rift in her relationship with
Alice. I personally think that she’s a goner (her scene early on in the episode
made it laughably obvious), and if that’s the case, I’ll really miss her.
Despite the character screentime issue,
this episode was easily the best we’ve seen from Re:Creators so far. Mamika’s scenes were excellently animated and
directed, being extremely emotional and providing what looks to be a satisfying
end to her character arc. Outside of that, I also enjoyed the further
worldbuilding and giving Sota more of a role in things going on. I just wished
his interactions weren’t limited to just Selesia, Meteora and Makagami. Overall,
this episode alone really made all the exposition we had to get through worth seeing.
If you dropped this anime, I highly recommend picking it up again.
FINAL SCORE
10/10
Legendary
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