Re:Creators

Re: Creators is an awful but in the same time a unique series in a sense that it directly tells the viewers the reasons for its existence: the fact that hundreds of thousands of people can spend their time on and, most importantly, breathlessly enjoy and pay money for an ugly badly-written constantly fourth-wall breaking horribly directed nobody-on-the-staff-list-ever-cared pissing-on-the-other-shows pack of completely unrelated action scenes.

When making an anime from some source material (manga/light novel), writers usually have trouble packing all the events in a video format. This is one of the reasons why so much shows are filled with exposition, scenes of characters thinking and ... other "better off reading it" elements. But for these types of shows, this is mostly forgivable. However, if an anime-original content is also a bunch of "characters talking and narrating, doing essentially nothing for a few episodes straight" it should probably be noted that writers never even cared. The calamity of nothingness is especially noticeable in the beginning of the second part of the show; these episodes are just characters talking around without any emotion.

But even such a show can be, at some level, enjoyable. Not the case with this one. The moment you realize the true depth of never-even-cared storywriting is somewhere at the end of the series. The interactions happening among the characters become to be much like this: "Your plan failed! Ahahaha!" or "I'll definitely bring you down!" or "You've been deceived. I am the good guy" - "Oh, ok". And the problem is not the content of the phrases. The problem is that the characters' interactions are narrowed down to this. And, as a result, the composition of the show essentially becomes an emotionless logbook of who did what.

To be fair, the first half of the show looks a bit decent. Disregarding the fact that the first half of the second episode is already a pile of shameless exposition the things happening generally raise a certain level of emotion and tend to follow some logic. That is probably the reason why a certain someone declared this to be a "classic anime in the making". And I should probably mention that a lot of people like the music. I generally enjoyed it. However, in my opinion it is really generic to the point where I can swear I've heard ED 2 (especially 0:09-0:22) somewhere before. But I'm no expert in music so I'll leave it at that.

It should be noted the show is not redeemed by these few good things I've just mentioned. To add to the point, this show also contains the usual trope that half of bad stuff wouldn't have happened if the characters just kept doing something very simple. Which they obviously don't do cause logic means no plot.

Overall, Re: Creators is an overhyped quick cash grab made by people who never cared.

Probably my 4th review, and boy did this anime become a let down quickly. Don't get me wrong, the premise is a great idea, but the execution is poor with Re: Creators. Episode 1 is promising, but from there it falls into cliche valley.

What began it's descent from a really, really good anime, which I saw a different review suggestion this could be a classic--which I find a joke--is I think the second episode which provided us a theory as to why everything is happening.

This theory was poorly placed because the characters from the anime worlds were just introduced and with no evidence supporting the ... theory, yet with all logical reasoning behind it, I couldn't accept it. A few episodes later we do get that evidence but it's already ruined my immersion.

Another aspect where it falls short is the random introductions, and the sudden stops in fights when the fights are possibly the best parts of the anime, paired with the music, it's all but flawless, but they are stopped for no reason other then the theory which provide the reason but to avoid spoilers I won't get into it.

If the theory came about correctly, after evidence was provided, I could accept it, but there's more that plagues this anime. And it could be personal preferences but that's for you to decide.

The main character--I don't know if it's a culture thing, but he is weak. Sota later hides stuff, and it feels like a plot point drawing out, but there is no reason other then his own pride or something that he's hiding the information when it's need. That's why I say it's a plot point, just something to drag the plot on. It's not suspenseful if that is what they are trying for, it's just poor writing.

Going along with that, the characters are also pretty sub par, and paired with the rather great dialogue, it's ironic that they want to try to have a good story, but are unable to.

Overall, it's a nice anime to watch, but not a good one, and nowhere near a classic. I'll give it credit where it's good but if a story is bad, it's not going to be good. Art is great, Sound is fantastic, the rest, poor. See it as you'd like but know that I find this series lacking.

Update Note: Began episode 9 and it just made a mess of itself. No point for me to continue to watch it and I probably should have dropped it long before now.

Decided to drop it after a terrible build up to a fight in episode 6 between these 3 characters that I realised I couldn't care less about if I tried. That and the long ass build up was too cringey to stomach the entire show after experiencing.

The characters in general are the main reason for this show being a massive disappointment, which it was as it had some potential as an initial idea. They all seemed to have no real development or anything interesting about them, especially after listening to their long boring and tedious conversations. Each character seemed like they could be the interesting ... one that I'd finally care about, but no they never were.

The story and plot is also very boring and tedious. Nothing really flowed, and the initial idea seems good until you realise what a shit job they have done with those ideas. Characters motivations made no sense and the whole thing seemed to move at the pace of a disabled snail.

The art and the fight scenes were okay, but nothing special, and as such weren't anything to write home about or increase my opinion about the show in any way.

Overall, I just felt the characters and plot were too boring and uninteresting to make me even vaguely wish to keep on watching from this point. Don't get why this one has high ratings, but I would never recommend it.

“We can’t introduce a new character this late into the story, the audience won’t accept an ending like that” ~ Character in Re:Creators two minutes after the show itself does exactly this for their climactic battle scene of the final ‘arc’ of the ‘story.’

I can’t recall any other time where the series I was watching is actively aware of what’s wrong with itself to a degree that they say not to do the terrible ideas they themselves are doing at the same time, as if this somehow justifies them. (it’s meta commentary on storytelling guys, it’s deep!)

This Modern Classic example of how not to ... write an original anime is brought to you by a staff who really should have been able to pull off an interesting, engaging series, yet it utterly fails on so many basic levels it feels like they either didn’t care at all or passed off most of the work to some underpaid interns.

I don’t know what it is about original animation projects, they have all the freedom to be whatever they want and they almost always come out as cliched, stupid messes of a show that aren’t worth watching. That is, if the show came out in the 2010s. Sure there are good original shows sometimes, but most of them end up being like this, or Comet Lucifer. What’s that, you don’t remember Comet Lucifer? Good. I certainly hope this show will go the way of that trainwreck, but a passionate fanbase has already decided to declare this a modern classic anime, one of their favorites.

And why wouldn’t it be your favorite anime? It broke new ground! By digging itself deeper and deeper into the ground with every episode’s downward spiral from mediocre beginning to mind numbingly idiotic finale! We start with a decent idea for a show, fictional characters come to life and have to deal with the reality of being characters from a story, interacting with their writers along the way.

And then they all have a bunch of dumb fight scenes for no reason cause that idea above requires actual writing to pull off. It’s far, far easier to write a dumb fight scene then it is to write a decent dialog scene. Not that Re:Classic didn’t try to write dialog, in fact, there’s so much you might forget it was an action show!

“Did I just contradict myself there?”, you might ask, but no, I wouldn’t write blatantly conflicting pieces of information so close together, I’m not the writer of Re:Creators. The dialog in Re:Creators tries very hard to be smart, but at the end all it amounts to is glue between more stupid, badly animated fight scenes. Characters will switch sides of the conflict on the drop of a hat, generally with a dialog that looks like this: “The information you had was wrong, you’re the villain here!” “Whoa you’re right, I guess I’m a good guy again it’s not like I just shot somebody in cold blood two minutes ago, forget that!”

The characters of this show are all so stupid, if any of them actually stopped and questioned their own actions the plot would end in like two episodes. The plot that is a ton of fight scenes that lead up to a LITERAL deus ex machina ending, people like those right? Oh wait, those have been an overused cliché since ancient greece!

I clapped when I saw the zero foreshadowing devinatart OC show up and wins the fight for the heroes cause the writer’s wrote themselves into a corner! It broke new ground!

Why is this show even remotely popular?

In what universe does a character go from NOW I’VE LOST IT, I KNOW I CAN KILL to “We’re best friends forever now” because of a single conversation, they didn’t even go through a redemption arc, they’re just heroes now.

One of the biggest complaints about Sword Art Online is that it’s filled with Cafe Scenes, where characters explain the plot to each other in boring dry dialog. Well, innovator it is, Re:Creators deftly deconstructs this tired trope by having not only cafe scenes, but family restaurant scenes, sushi bar scenes, fast food restaurant scenes, you name it and they’ve probably eaten it while explaining the paper thin plot to Sota, the audience self insert character who adds nothing but gets to hang around the cool kids anyways.

Sota is a dumb nerd who watches anime and reads light novels and wears glasses, just like YOU, the viewer, can’t you relate to his struggles?? As he stands in the background and occasionally asks questions.

Is this even a review, is there any structure to what’s happening here? And this is where I blow your minds when I reveal that this lack of structure is actually a clever deconstruction of poorly constructed reviews! Marvel at how I stick it to genre conventions by doing exactly what you’d expect but then saying I did it, how original!

I can understand the appeal of Recreators on a basic level, the premise is interesting and could have lead to a great show. However, the strength of the concept is meaningless without the execution, something recreators itself seems aware of despite delivering an incredibly trite, poorly made series that coasts due to it’s premise and character designs, which are just similar enough to real characters that people can project their like of that character onto them so you don’t have to write or design a real character, it’s brilliant!

Oh yeah, the show has bad production values outside of writing too. The animation is cheap at best and atrocious at worst. The music is Sawano’s weakest so far. Now Sawano gets a lot of hate, but I’m not one of them really, I’ve liked several osts of his, including some in series I don’t particularly like or enjoy, like Aldnoah Zero. But this show literally has three songs in it’s ost, it’s so weak and it really undermines the scenes when the only vocal insert track plays Every. Single. Episode.

I have nothing more to say about this, I rambled on enough, the end.

Don’t watch it.

I've dropped it

To summarize it: it is an anime with nice visuals, that is ruined by a very badly written story. It is possible to figure out the rough idea of what is going on in the first 5 minutes of the first episode, and slightly adjust information in the second.

Detailed breakdown below:

Story: 2/10
The story writing is exceptionally poor, and the main issue is that the story writer did not have a good idea about presenting new events. So, when the story needs to introduce you to some sort of idea, characters sit down in a circle and talk for 15 minutes. Sometimes they ... invent "theories" out of the blue, and everybody instantly believes those and treats them as granted. Everything between fights is incredibly dull, and characters - all of them - act almost in the same fashion. Once again, we have "spineless male protagonist in glasses", and even though this is not a harem, this kind of character is incredibly annoying. There's ONE surprisingly well done character of a magical girl, but she doesn't get enough screen time.

Also, dramatic and tragic scenes are handled in surprisingly poor and tasteless fashion.

In general - huge number of dull scenes, or scenes where somebody explains something for a very long time, plus interactions between characters are incredibly awkward.

Art: 6/10:
The art is actually fairly good and characters have decent design. There some noticeable instances of CG use, and characters could use a bit more detail, but overall it is decent.

Sound: 5/10:
Thoroughly mediocre soundtrack, that sometimes gets annoying. The anime features annoying "jester-type" villain and when that one was talking on several occasions I've felt disconnect between words and character. This doesn't happen often in anime, but happened in this case.

Characters: 3/10:

There's amazingly well done a character of a naive magical girl in the series, who looks genuine in every scene she arrives, and is incredibly sympathetic. However, everybody else is pretty much a carton cutout, and either act in completely stupid way, or follows some sort of cliched role. Interactions between characters are neither believable nor interesting most of the time. "Protagonist" is unlikeable, and is a classic "shy spineless otaku school boy in glasses" (I hoped this stereotype has died, but guess not).

Enjoyment: 3/10:
This is a disappointment. The potential of the main idea was high, but poor execution and bad storywriting ultimately ruined it.

Overall: 3/10:

The best idea is to skip it. Aside from one well done character, there's little reason to watch it. If you're bored out of your mind, perhaps you you'll enjoy fights (plenty of those), but the dull character interactions and very long talking sequences are very likely to kill the fun.

Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me twice, shame on you too.

It was a mistake to have any hope for this series. Even after the impressive first episode, the director and the studio attached to this project was enough to raise some eyebrows. it's almost a curse of sorts, after Aldnoah Zero wasted the talents of the Fate/Zero director and writer (for the first few episodes anyway), Re:creators seems to follow the same formula. Only this time it's the writer for Black Lagoon. Surely by now Troyca would have learnt their lesson? Wouldn't they?

Join me, dear reader, as we examine what went wrong with ... the series. No spoilers. The anime is so forgettable I'm having a hard time recalling what happened the previous episode.

Re:Creators is a reverse Isekai, i.e. instead of the MC travelling to an alternate universe, characters from various manga/anime/LNs travel to the real world. This makes for a very interesting premise, as the first episode shows that not all is fine and dandy when anime characters enter reality. Government interventions and general panic spreads throughout Tokyo as everyone, the audience included tries to figure out the cause behind this mysterious phenomenon.

Except...well, that doesn't happen. The anime's pacing grinds to a staggering halt once you reach the 2nd episode, wherein it just becomes no different than a university lecture. Even watching the anime at 2x the speed doesn't remedy much, although it did make things more interesting. As more and more creations start entering the real world, you'd expect the real world to retaliate by going mad or something of that manner. A climax is reached as our heroes don't seem as powerful as they think they are...

And then the anime just stopped. Really. Break after break and filler episodes with no bearing on the plot and no development for any of the main characters. And then it hits you with a recap episode. An admittedly amusing recap episode. But you can tell that they wrote themselves into a corner after a while, with no idea on how to end the story satisfactorily.

Then the anime suddenly ends. Before you know it, the plot just accelerates and you're at the final episode already! Great job everyone! Time to go home.

You're left wondering why is it Sawano's catchy music gets attached to trainwrecks like these.

You're left wondering why they bothered commissioning the beautiful character designs to talented fanartists and why bother making a faux-Pixiv to display their talents.

You're left wondering why the voice talents of these amazing characters in this Battle Royale Crossover anime of your dreams gets wasted on a project like this.

You're left wondering if Nintendo made a Super Smash Bros. anime, would they hire these jokers.

And finally, you're left wondering why you bothered wasting 440 minutes of your life watching this dumpster fire when you could be doing something more productive with your life like helping a soup kitchen.


2/10

Please don't bother.

As of chapter 12 i decided to drop the series. This was far from good, instead it was disappointing. Chapter 1 was promising so i kept watching. It kept my hype until episode 6 where it dropped, plain and boring. Episode 7, 8 and 9 where the most boring of them all. Boring fights as well as boring dialogue. They talk about the same topic over 20 minutes, yet the story doesn't go on. We get to see some action scenes in all episodes, yet they don't finish them in the next one, they cut it with interruptions of some sort. I get that not ... everything should be action, indeed a good conversation is needed, but in this case, there's no progress, they are always at the same point.

There's barely to no character development, everyone is just dull, empty and boring (Asides that they are useless), i'd say that the creators have more development than everyone else. Nothing to say about the protagonist, he was boring and weak, but we can't expect anything from him. And to this point they just dragged the story for 12 episodes, because his smart-ass aka small pride was hiding something about the "main antagonist" which was pretty obvious.

The anime could've been a great one for the season, yet they ruined it. The art and sounds are nice but that's it. I do enjoy conversation in anime, if they are part of the plot. In this case, the plot was everything, but the things they talked. Dropped with no chance to re-watch. Boring and plain. I have no idea what the studio was thinking, it was such a good premise, but ended up being your typical shounen anime. I don't really understand where did all the i hype i had come from.

I don't really care if you don't agree with this, but please refrain from calling me a troll, just because i didn't like something you loved.

Story:2 (Dreadful)
Art:6 (Fair)
Sound:6 (Fair)
Character:1 (Pathetic)
Enjoyment:2 (Dreadful)
Overall:3 (Poor)

Re:creators used to be the highest rated and most hyped series of the season it aired in, after the obvious three 99% of viewers were watching (Attack on Titan s2, My Hero Academia s2, Dragon Ball Super). Gradually, the interest in the series kept dropping to the point more people were talking about garbage tier light novel adaptations (Akashic Records, Eromanga Sensei) which were nowhere near the catchy premise of Re:creators.

This is extra strange when said premise is basically Fate/Stay Night all over again. No, seriously, they are the exact same story.
A bunch of famous personalities, each one using superpowers, are brought into modern Japan, ... where they are having a battle royale, with the winner getting a reality warping wish. Most of the plot is short skirmishes, followed by ridiculously long monologues where they are infodumping rules, discuss philosophies, and have cockteasing moments regarding a bland self insert lead being surrounded by pretty chicks.

On paper, Re:creators should have been regarded as a thought provoking masterpiece, just like that porn game adaptation. And yet it wasn’t. In fact, it was being mocked for being exactly that. What happened? The answer is, Re:creators was not tapping into as many layers of pandering as Fate/Stay Night did. It followed the same formula, but didn’t have the same ingredients. And by ingredients, I mean:

1) The pretty colors
Studio Troyca was nowhere near the level of Ufotable. Without jaw dropping animation, the sakuga audience didn’t care about it, and thus found reasons not to like it. Meaning, Re:creators didn’t have the illusion of making itself seem way better than what it actually was.

2) The source material
It didn’t have one. Unlike Type Moon which had a huge fanbase of porn gamers overhyping its bullshit for over a decade, Re:creators was an original work. Nobody was blowing out of proportion what it was all about, it had no fanatic fanbase attacking anyone who dares to speak against it, and thus it was open to all forms of criticism. As it should be the case for any title.

3) The archetypes
The fighters of Re:creators were essentially representations of typical heroes and villains from well known genres. This made them monolithic, dry, predictable, and one dimensional. The heroic spirits of Fate/Stay Night were based on historical figures, which were giving off the illusion of being multilayered and with a rich backdrop story, even if we didn’t see it and it was all implied. Meaning, the fan fiction nerds didn’t care about the cast of Re:creators, because they were just bland archetypes. In Fate/Stay Night, when they were hearing characters talking about ideologies and philosophy, their imagination was having an orgasm by seeing people across history coming together to have a fight with cool superpowers. In Re:creators, when characters talked about ideologies and philosophy, they just saw a typical magical girl talking to a typical medieval knight.

4) The competition
It came out at the worst possible moment, since the other 3 shows 99% of anime fans were watching, already had everything Re:creators failed to tap into. Pretty colors, a fanbase from the source material, and characters who did not feel like bland archetypes, because of how they were fleshed out from previous seasons.

5) The pacing and the infodumps
The above reasons explain why Re:creators fell from grace, in comparison to other shows of that time. They don’t explain why as a stand-alone show it was still not a very good watch despite sounding really amazing at first; so lets clarify that as well. Most of the duration was comprised of really long and boring monologues about the concept of the show, instead of its execution. The audience was constantly being told what was going on instead of being allowed to see it. The characters were mostly sitting on a table and talking about what they will do, instead of doing something about it. It was a really big chore to get through the constant talking, and the pacing was snail-slow.

The final episodes were filled with the battle royale action we were promised, but even then it came down to everyone versus one, instead of an actual “all for themselves” type of deal. It was hollow and insignificant, since nobody was actually dying but was rather returning to his fictional world. There was nothing really at stake and all the blame was thrown at the person who initiated the whole fuss. Nothing was grey or thought-provoking as it seemed to be at first, since it demonized an individual and deified everybody else, thus losing the grey morality it was going for.

So yeah, it’s not nearly as good as it sounds and it makes sense why it was quickly dropped by most. Its concept was interesting, but the execution came down to a dull line of endless monologues and tensionless battles.

First few episodes shows promise. I didn't mind the talking at first, but after 9 episodes full of convoluted mishmash philosophical nonsense, I gave up. They use it as filler to extend time. I think this anime would have been over in 5 episodes if not for the senseless talking. It got me so frustrated I almost had a heart attack from shouting at the screen to move the stupid plot along.

The only thing I liked about the show is Mamika, and how her character is developed and killed off. I like that plot. The rest is just mishmash

Just ... like this review requirement, I will show an example of what the show is doing to fill the time it needs in order to be a full episode show. And do you know what I think about this requirement? I think this requirement is good. It makes the reviewer really invest in the show. But you know what, I could be lying. I don't really think I like this review requirement, but then again, I think it is important.

So, save yourselves the frustration and disappointment. Watch some other shows.

woah this show is straight up retarded. i held out hope for so long because i just assumed that they wouldn't be able to completely squander their really cool premise.

everything about the show is super dry and straightforward, with constant, massive exposition dumps in lieu of creative storytelling. the characters (especially Meteora) are extremely bland and just sit there vomiting exposition dumps at each other the entire time, except for the few times when they try to be funny (and fail). they just plainly announce intentions, desires, and motivations with no sense of nuance as if they were just running down a checklist of plot ... points they needed to cover. it felt like i was screaming "NO HUMAN BEING ACTUALLY TALKS LIKE THIS" out loud multiple times per episode.

all of the people on the "bad" side seemed to have very questionable motivation for being on that side. their motivations were childish at best (the gun guy) and outright braindead at worst (the knight girl). the gun guy is seriously so childish that he is incapable of just thinking for a second about the fact that the creators in the real world don't actually create media knowing that they're hurting "real" people. how about that guy that just randomly shows up in like episode 18 or 19? wasn't that great? i loved how they just randomly threw in a new character like that for no reason and then tried to pretend like the audience would care about his 30 second backstory with Selesia. his motivations were totally believable and it makes a lot of sense that he would immediately believe Altair over Selesia to the point of fighting her to the death over it. he definitely wasn't just an afterthought thrown in there so we could have an epic sacrifice!!

also, if you're gonna try to constantly throw in meta humor or jokes that poke fun at the anime industry, you should probably try being a good show first. it's simultaneously amusing and irritating to see an anime make meta jokes as it does absolutely nothing to subvert expectations and generally sucks ass all around. the recap episode in particular was dumb as fuck and made me want to stick a toothpick under my toenail and kick a wall as hard as i could.

Magane was an okay character and the only thing about this show that i genuinely liked (other than the OST) after the first two episodes or so. she even got pretty dumb as the show neared the end though, especially with that hilarious twist on episode 20 (that was preceded by an equally funny unrelated twist like 10 minutes prior).

I believe that it was near the halfway point of the show (about 10 or 11 episodes in) that I come to expect that this mediocre show would go into a downward spiral. At this point all the known pieces have been placed, and even though the characters weren’t well developed at least they had a speck of motivation going for them. However that wasn’t the case at all as there was still another dozen episodes to go through, and with each new episodes my tolerance of the show would continue to go down.

Re:C is a show about fictional characters being pulled into the real ... world, but these are no ordinary fictional characters but rather characters from the great mediums of nippon, namely anime, manga, light novels, and video games. All these characters brought into the real world by a girl named Altair who’s able to traverse fiction and reality, and is the one pulling the characters into reality. This in turn allows for the creations to meet their creators which is akin to a human meeting their god except he isn’t omnipotent, omnipresent and is basically just a human. This is also added to the fact that the creations still have their powers and are stronger than the people who created them which means they can do whatever they want including forcing their creators to change their story. This becomes the conflict as the creations are placed in two camps of those who are ok with their stories and those with Altair who want to force their creators to change their world. While this is basically the main premise at the beginning of the show, the way it all plays out is rather dull.

Chunks of this show is spent on exposition where people will continuously talk without really saying anything as they continuously talk in circles about things they’ve done, understood, and will do. Even with the small nuggets of substance they may have, it’s sandwiched between these long winded conversations. Other parts of the show are gathering other characters to join either side while having skirmishes with both sides retreating in the end. This all finally comes to the main revelation of the story as our main character reveal many things that all explain why he was dragged into the conflict. This is only the first half of the show, and it was mediocre not only for this but also the characters.

While the fictional characters were brought into the real world which is basically a reversed isekai. The way the characters are portrayed are more closely similar to the servants of fate/stay night, except instead of pseudo-/historical characters we have obvious character archetypes from different mediums. some of them are even closely similar to franchises that many viewers may know. However that’s just it, they’re archetypes, and unlike F/SN it doesn’t have the benefit of having characters with history behind them already conceived and with a trip to the wiki can reveal more about them without the author putting in the effort. Instead we get archetypes that never get fully developed or fleshed out, and their motivation as dull as a pencil after a written test. This went for both the creations and the creators as neither were complex or multi-facted to hold my interest. I could have made exceptions such as mamika but the way it all plays out has already have become a generic staple at this point. But still the show still had 9 more episodes left to fully develop them right? No no no no no, instead it’s more fighting and bullshit.
The second half is just planning for the big final battle with the stakes raised more as Altair actually wants to destroy the whole world, and then the final battle comes which is sooo lacking of excitement that i needed to gulp down a bag of sugar just to keep myself awake and focused. It’s also becomes upsetting that instead of working on characters already there and further developing them, instead more characters are thrown into the mix, and suffer if not worse from the same things the other characters have. This is evident with selsia partner from the same story as he is hinted at half-way through the show only to finally reveal himself for one episode, and then go away. It tried to show how emotional it was for selsia to fight against her former comrade, as they had so much history together, but it was only for one episode which lessened any impact and was just a vapid episode. The show just cumulates into one big dud that while trying to make a point, it doesn't know how to follow through with it.

This is a show that is built from the beginning up to the end with contrivance. It leaves behind many plot holes as it goes along that looking into the hows and whys of the show easily break it apart.

The production value for this show was shoddy at worst and decent at best. The character designs came off as bland and generic both for the way the characters dressed as well as the way they looked and emote. The only one with distinction is obviously Altair. The background is mostly a contemporary japanese city #324, so probably tokyo. Can’t say the action was great either from a narrative standpoint or an animation and directing standpoint. Especially with directing which has a lot f sequence breaking both in fights and throughout the rest of the show. The Ost for the show was good that is certain, but did it work well in the show? No. while some did stand out it was only because i found that they didn’t work with the show, and everything else was just background noise unable to convey any emotion.

I think you can tell that i don’t like this show, but it’s more than that. I loaattthhhe this show. Nothing about this show was enjoyable and i had to take pause breaks every few times each episode so that my brain wouldn’t have an aneurysm to all the things happening in this show.

Overall the show is just a mess that couldn’t be bothered to fix itself even though it had time to do so. It;s a show that wants to make a point, but couldn’t be bothered in making the characters or story interesting. And I don’t really care if the show was trying to be insightful because i couldn’t be bothered to do so because it couldn’t be bothered to try.

Mother's Basement tricked me into watching 15 episodes of this boring-ass show and I will never forgive him.

I like the concept but the show actively avoids doing anything remotely interesting, engaging, or even just entertaining with it. The only episode I enjoyed was the recap episode because it felt like it was the only time the show was actually doing anything fun and creative with its premise, when the show itself is mostly just a white bread boring action series. The direction is so flat and stale and there is absolutely zero energy to anything in this show, it's one of the most mind-numbingly boring ... things I've ever seen.

The first ED sequence shows the reverse-isekai'd characters doing slice of life stuff like going shopping, going to a water park, and other silly things like that. The second ED sequence shows the characters hanging around in the IRL anime studio and watching the anime get made. These sequences pissed me off because they just made me go "I wish the show was either of these things even a little bit because then I'd get any enjoyment out of it at all."

I've never seen a character so quickly killed by dialogue. For real, Meteora was my favourite character until she opened her mouth... and never quite managed to close it.

Just like everyone else. My god, the dialogue never ends, and there's nothing remotely interesting about it; no clever angles, variation in sentence length, or true emotion to help invest you in the characters. There are scenes that last over TEN MINUTES of the characters just discussing what's just happened, what might be happening, and what could happen in the future, all sounding bored out of their minds (even after a giant mecha just appeared in ... someone's backyard...). For an action series--this is an action show, isn't it?--everyone seems awfully static.

Carrying on this theme of monotony and drudgery, we have the characters themselves. They all have unique enough characteristics to differentiate them, but there's an undercurrent of seriousness to them all that prevents anyone from truly standing out; it's as if they were all cut from the same base model and given slightly different paint jobs. Also, does anyone have a sense of humour in this show? Literally, do they have the sense for comedy? These guys could really use a laugh now and then.

They have a lot of tropes to play with, but the magical school girl feels like one in appearance only; and while this is addressed, and could be considered a deconstruction to a degree, there's so much bland dialogue I'm hardly emotionally invested in her 'transformation'.

As a minor point that could just be subjective, the colours in this show are just as flat as everything else. Nothing quite 'pops' or draws the eye, even in battle scenes with explosions galore. Which seems odd, because anime characters are notorious for their bright and unconventional colour schemes, and the plot provides the perfect excuse to go crazy with that concept. Maybe they meant to display the characters as more realistic, leaving their respective animated worlds to come to the real one, but there's no change in animation between universes that shows this idea, which, while not solving the issue, would at least provide some justification for it.

All in all, I'm very disappointed with this show. It had an interesting plot with a lot of potential and it's just floundered through its first eight episodes with barely an impression left on me. Maybe it picks up and lives up to the potential as the series progresses, but I can't sit through another thirty minutes of exposition to find out.

I hated that character that somehow knew everything for the convenience of setting up the world, but it was so absurd that I absolutely struggled to watch the first 5 episodes. As usual, the high secret operative from the government bows down to that character's episodes long speech. As usual, highly trained soldiers and powerful guns do absolutely nothing. As usual, you have characters that would fight first instead of talking and ending confusions and misinterpretations. There was nothing logical about their actions, so I could not relate to any of the characters at all. This is basically Cliche-The Anime. If not for the visuals, ... the redeeming episode 6, and the soundtrack, I would have dropped this in episode 2.

And the insert song that plays is amazing, but you can't just keep using the same drop every single time! It was so ridiculously corny after the fourth repetition.

This series is a joke to me eyes.
From the dialogues, to the development, it makes 0 sense.

Story: 1/10
The whole story was redundant, filled with the same type of dialogue for 20 minutes straight, while dealing with the boring fights they added, that most likely would get interrupted and never continue. Episode 1 had a great premise, but it fell in its plot as soon as episode 3 started. Now i get it when we talk about it being an original series (Joke included). It feels like they just kept adding "Antagonists" to at least make a plot, while in the "ally" side everyone was ... procrastinating and being confused. The whole dialogues from this were empty with no resolution, with a lot of misleading info that could be taken as "dragging the story" for the sake of 22 episodes.

Character: 1/10
The Character Development was horrible. Dull, boring and no back story to anything. Let's just jump into the plot without introducing anyone and let's be best friends after 5 min went by!!! ... That was all i could see in this. All the time the protagonist was hiding something about his precious friend and stuff, but hopefully you already guessed, YES!, they dragged the whole plot to get a hint of it by episode 9-10 but the whole story wasn't progressing and instead going back to what it was at the beginning: Something no one knows about, almost like a first timer, you don't understand a single thing and the plot looks weird. Yeah.

Sound: 4/10
Most decent part about the show? ... The audio, music. Most of the music was created by Sawano, althought his music has been used for almost every other anime right now (Meaning that it feels generic, and if you don't understand the meaning of generic, pick up dictionary), it was a great selection for the setting of this show. The music in the anime itself was good, put in the right places. The sounds were also good, but exaggerated, lots of bass-drop and ear rape for a "real feeling of battle".

Art: 4/10
The animation was nothing from the other world, indeed the battles had great animation, but the character design is pretty much the same for everyone but with a different hair, there's a lot more for creating a character but no one stands out more than the other (Which is good and a bad thing).

The whole premise was good, i tell you, but for episode 1 and 2. Then it was just comedy to me as it was more of a slice of life, meaning they do nothing, there isn't a real story behind and you get to see the same faces all over again. For some reason, and i don't understand why, i got really hyped before this was released.

Overall: 2 (Dropped)

You might refrain from calling me a troll after reading this, this is my opinion on the show not yours, if i don't like something you like, i couldn't care less. You can make your own review explaining why you like it ^^.

I am writing this review as I am watching this show. And, it is a mess.
the characters are all over the place. You will be unable to understand their motives, desire, and philosophy,... I never had to push myself to finish a show since the character's actions were so confusing and contrived. And the end game was an ass pull out of nowhere talk no Jutsu. The protagonists are so annoying (Selisa for example, who always talks big about how righteous she is such a simp at the end game causing her teammate to lose an arm, Metorea is basically an NPC just like ... other characters), the characters have no substance, cardboard. The plot is interesting but they failed to carry it out. I would have loved it if I get to see each characters' stories not this mess of a show










fir

Re:Creators is a 2017 anime from Troyca, a studio I've never watched an anime from. Although this and Yagate Kimi ni Naru are going to change that. I don't know when I'll actually watch and review that one, but it's going to happen. 

Story:

The premise of the series gets us off to a good start. Basically, every time a writer crafts a work of fiction, they create a world. Mine are full of rainbows and women doing the majority of important things, clearly. Things take a twist when certain, popular characters start crossing over into our world. Some of them want to watch the world burn, others ... want to make their creators suffer for giving them dark worlds full of tragedy. It's up to our main protagonist, Blandon, a bunch of heroic characters and the creators to save the day. 

The biggest problem with the series is that it's all about the themes of creativity and the process of making art but the characters and worlds we see crossing over are all the most generic representations of their genres imaginable, based on what we see. To compound the problem, the twists are also very obvious. And to top it all off, the ultimate climax involves blatant deus ex machina, the ultimate tool of the trash writer. It also doesn't help that the big threat is a fanfiction OC. It would be like our world being threatened by Coldsteel the Hedgehog but less hilarious. 

And this was a premise that had potential. The idea of creations crossing over into our world and confronting their creators is great and could have been used to great effect. Even the further step of having them fight for the future of our own world could have worked really well. If the execution hadn't been shoddy at every turn. 

Characters:

Describing the characters in this is basically describing trite stereotypes. The action girl heroine. The guide character you get in some RPGs but without the personality that the good ones would infuse her with. The loving magical girl who just wants to talk things through. The dark fantasy heroine. The street tough dude. The trickster villain. The grizzled old dude. The mecha pilot, young and optimistic variety. So, a big step up from the super angsty version, at least. Nice to see that this story all about creativity couldn't be bothered when it came to its own character creation. 

The creator characters aren't any better. Their trite lack of real personality just derives from more slice of life tropes instead of the genre specific ones of the creations. 

Art:

Here's one area where I can give Troyca credit. The artwork looks pretty damn good. The backgrounds are detailed. The action sequences flow well. Some of the designs are very blatantly based off of other, better characters, (all of them may be and I just don't recognise some of them) but they don't do them badly. 

Sound:

This is another element where I can give the series credit. They got good actors. People like Minase Inori, Komatsu Mikako, Toyosaki Aki, Murakawa Rie & Hikasa Yoko. Are these their best performances? No. One of the general problems with very bland character writing that I've encountered time after time is that the acting can't really stand out much if the characters don't. But the performances are very capably done. 

Sawano Hiroyuki's soundtrack is nicely done and definitely has the wow factor. Which isn't surprising. He also did well with Shingeki no Kyojin and decently with Zombie Loan. 

Ho-yay:

There's quite a bit between the dark fantasy heroine & the magical girl. Because of course the magical girl gets les-yay. 

Areas of Improvement:

Flesh out the characters. It's all well and good to use a clichéd version as a base. But what separates a good, great or excellent series from a more middling one is that it builds off of that and turns it into something unique. Which this series couldn't be bothered with. 
Don't use a fanfiction villain. Part of the premise is that the characters operate off of acceptance from the audience. Well, when you have your main antagonist as an over-powered Mary Sue, I have trouble believing the audience would accept her. Especially when she's fighting against all the bland characters that are hugely popular for inexplicable reasons. Yeah, it might be fun to have Coldsteel or other big fanfiction characters as memes but if something official came out where Coldsteel fought Son Goku, no one would accept Coldsteel winning except Internet trolls.
Give us some compelling conversations between creators and their creations. This idea really gets under-used in this series. We get very brief snippets of creators interacting with their characters but there's no real depth to those interactions and the various philosophical points that should come up either don't or are glossed over. 

Final Thoughts:

Re:Creators isn't a bad series. It has strong fundamentals and a promising premise. Unfortunately, its lacklustre execution brings it down significantly. The weakly written characters, poorly fleshed out story, deus ex machina ending and main villain who canonically comes from fanfiction all serve to make a narrative that's pretty weak. While I'd love to see this premise handled well, I have to give it a 4/10. 

This series is the best example of wasted potential. Re:Creators destroys every moment of development and cools ideas. God! The idea is "the best fu***ng idea ever!!! But the series is only 3/4 dialogue, 3/12 focus in Met, 1/24 battle (read the premise), 1/32 character development and the rest is potential ignored.

The animation of this series is static. Vissualy looks good, but the static animation of the series breaks heavily the experience. The characters hasn't a development, specially the main creations group, because they aren't appear much in the series (Met is the focus, in a instant talk about this character).

The plot wastes time ... in dialogue without emotions and expressions, this is the worst element of the series: tell, not show. Many chapters is only infodump and monotone dialogue, making redundant the series and longly forced. The worst example of this is Meteora (that sounds like a Linkin Park disc, and not kidding): this character hasn't a development and this character takes more time in scene of all time, and only talks about info dump.

Sadly, the series ignores potential moments and replaces with boring and unrealistic situations (and this series takes in a realistic scenary!(

The music is good, but, it's me, or Hiroyuki Sawano sounds a little tired?

However, I praise the Blitz and his creator moment, because is credible and goals to be something that the fictional character (Blitz) makes.

I special criticize the role of Magane, particulary the easy twist when she helps the main character group when her actions doesn't indicates this, the chapter 13, not because is a recapitulation episode, but this chapter shows every that the series should have done in the beginning, and the chapter 16, because is sadly the only episode with main character development... In a thermal bath episode!

(I'm not a native speaker, but I'll try to write this review in communicative way)
When I watched the 1st episode of this series I felt uneasy about it, at first it was a fine anime, so I watched it till 15th episode and started 16th, at the 3rd minute of it I had enough.

Story in my opinion was fine, but it tried to hard on the least interesting aspect of it. We have two entities in it: Creators and Creations, when the creations are fine and I would like to watch more about their feelings and drama about the "Gods" world, the plot is ... mostly about the creators and how they try to help their creations.

Characters are horribly written, they all feel inhuman in some ways, they are like robots, somehow stiff in their interactions with each other,but the worst of them is MC. He isn't needed at all in the whole series, he tries to help the creations, as he is the first person to interact with them, after that he has only one big secret which he tells in the middle of the series, but in rest episodes he wasn't needed at all, as they could made any other of the characters to make his job.

If you just started watching anime you can give this a look, but for veterans I highly recommend to search for something better.

CAUTION : THIS REVIEW MIGHT CONTAIN MINOR SPOILERS


If you're hesitating to watch Re:Creators, I would advise you to give it a try. But, after a few episodes, if you're not enjoying it, you should drop it. If I say that, it's because I was trapped by this anime. I wasn't enjoying it at all, but I was telling myself : "Wait ! It's going to get better in a few episodes !". But it's not (except from 2 episodes near the end) !


STORY : 3


The main asset of this show is in its reversed concept. Usually, in anime, people from the real world end up ... in a fictional world. Here, it's exactly the opposite : manga characters are invocated in the real world. It could have been really interesting then.
However, these manga characters are stereotyped and make this show really weak.

If this was the only problem, you would say : "Well, it's not a big deal." And you would be right as many anime characters are stereotyped in other shows (and sometimes in good ones).
The problem of stereotypes doesn't concern only the characters. The situations are also stereotyped, which makes this anime too predictable.

Finally, a big issue about the story is also that it's evolving too slowly. At least,10 episodes would be sufficient to this story. It would be more lively.


ART : 4


The art is really so-so. It's a 2017 anime, but it looks like an average 2010 show.

FIGHTS : The fights are not epic at all.
Worse than that, the weapons are doing dreadful noises.


SOUND : 5


I usually like Sawano Hiroyuki work. The first opening is cool but the second one is just ok.
The endings are poor.


CHARACTER : 2


As I said before, the characters are stereotyped. ALL OF THEM !!!!

Even though, for me there are 3 interesting characters.

My favorite one dies too quickly. I'm not spoiling its name. This character may appeared as one of the most cliché, but reveals to be the first one to understand Altair (the villain).

Also, I liked Blitz and Magane which are the only ambiguous characters.


Souta and Meteora are the worst characters.

Souta is a weak main character."Why not. It's a fresh change comparing to most of shonen main characters which are powerful characters", I could say. But NO. Souta is only watching the others fight during all the anime, wondering what he could do when the answer is obvious. He's eventually trying something in the last episodes.

Meteora deserves the palm of the worst character ever in an anime.
SHE'S TALKING TOO MUCH !!!!
WARNING : SPOILER : [Basically, she's trying to explain to the others that the invocation of fictional characters in the real world has repercussions and endangers its stability.
See ? I said it in a few words. Meteora spends nearly half of each episode to say this (and I'm not exaggerating that much) ! Indeed, she's saying with complicated words what could be said easily. I can't remember who said that, but the real intelligence is to make oneself understandable to others. Meteora thinks she's intelligent as she uses complicated words...]
END OF THE SPOILER


ENJOYMENT : 3


As I already said, the story is evolving too slowly.
Only 2 episodes are good, and they're near the end...


OVERALL : 3


Even if the concept is interesting (making creations live in our world), Re:Creators has too many drawbacks like its slowness or its stereotypes which makes it a bad show.