When it comes to Re:Creators, despite its attempt to pay tribute to the industry I found the plot and characters lackluster.
The very first problem I had with the show was the main character. You know there’s an issue with a story when you ask yourself “Why is he (MC) relevant?” or “Why is he (MC) here?” The only time he becomes somewhat useful when he provides information he was withholding. Also when it comes to his backstory I can’t understand his motivations. Teenage boys are animals so if a cute, talented girl thought highly of him the main character would most likely be all over it rather than remaining a jealous cunt.
The second was that it never really took advantage of the show’s premise. The conversations between the creators and the created were supposed to be the show’s highlight but most of the time it either felt like the bare minimum to justify the character fighting for the creator’s side. The only decent conversation was between Blitz and his creator which broke down to “Why did you do those bad things to me?” “I like making you suffer because it makes me feel good” with no satisfying conclusion. The conversation that we never got to see was the true loss as Magane and her creator would have had an interesting bit of banter. I can’t wrap my head around why they would let Magane kill the creator without talking to them as her character seems to like to have fun taunting the person before killing them.
The third was the character motivations. I mentioned my problem with the main character’s motives in his backstory but what about Magane, Blitz, and Aliceteria? What made Magane decide to help out in the end? How could she love humans but kill a random for no reason earlier in the show? Maybe she wanted to keep having fun in the real world (but she lost her powers by the end anyway)? Why did Blitz fight to save the real world for the sake of his daughter then leave the real world where he could be with his daughter for the world where she’s dead? Aliceteria seems like a knight with a strong sense of justice, so why didn't she sense something was fishy when she was recruited by a shady character (even Mamika could tell something was up albeit the real world resembled her own so she had more context). Why would Aliceteria trust Magane (regarding the death of Mamika) when she’s the literal most shady character in the show?
I guess a fourth and final issue while not huge is the way Altair got the creations on her side. She told them basically that the creators wrote their lives into stories. Do the creations not have stories in their worlds? Do the creations not understand the seeming harmlessness that goes into making stories? Why would they blame the creators for writing them at all if they had this kind of context?
So basically Re: Creators fails in my book because the characters being caricatures aren’t too interesting, the characters don’t feel realistic although it’s really ironic that the characters are doubly not real I would have preferred if I could imagine that they could be people, the character’s motivations aren’t always justified (in their perspective not morally) and it did nothing with its somewhat interesting premise.
To get an idea of what would make this show good in my eyes look no further than Fate/Zero. It had more interesting characters and conversations between the characters about ideals and philosophies not to mention the fights were better (if you’re into that sorta thing).
I called Re:Creators a failure but it's better than the mediocre high school romance light novel adaptation which inherently is a 5 unless it does something interesting. So a mid-high tier 6/10 because I liked the sunglasses dude a bit not to mention it explores some ideas regarding why people enjoy media. Can't be a 7 because 7 is where I start thinking things are good. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
