ReCreators or Rec is an poor attempt at an intellectual version of the typical "random guy gets transported into a virtual world" story.
You see, the "genius" of rec is that the twist involves inverting the roles and having the supernatural characters visiting our mundane world instead of the opposite. Pretty interesting, right?
Wrong.
The reason why these story's are made is because our world is boring. Inverting the traditional roles completely defeats the point of these narratives.
Ex: Dragon maid.
This anime has the same premise so therefore suffers from the same problems of REC. But there's a fundamental difference here, the rest of the plot is completely standard.
This is basically a "fish out of water" story with the sole purpose of creating a simple but pleasant moe comedy. In other words, no one is being pretentious.
It is what it is, a simple traditional story (that you have seen plenty of times) with a slight twist to add flavor. It never tries to be anything more.
And that's where Rec falls flat on it's face.
It tries so hard to invert the formula that it forgets why the formula worked in the fist place.
It's basically amateur hour, where the writers forget the most basic story telling principles for the sake of being "different".
Here you have (inexplicably) one the most abhorrent anime tropes of all time, in the form of a protagonist that is nothing but a beta, useless, wuss of a straight male. He's everything that made you hate Shinji Ikari but worse.
He will be completely inconsequential to the plot for almost the entirety of the show.
Then you have the supernatural characters. People that enter an alien world and 5 seconds latter not only already know everything that is to know about it, but also, explain to the inhabitants of said world (and the useless protagonist), what's going to happen in the next episode.
This type of absurdity makes it almost impossible to relate to the characters. It also doesn't help that most of these characters sound, look and act completely ridiculous. This in a show with very little humor and zero sense of self awareness.
Did i forgot to mention this anime only has enough plot for 12 episodes, despite being much longer?
That the plot only moves forward more than an inch, every 5 episodes?
And that most episodes involve the "good guys" talking and staring at each other for 15 minutes straight?
That the "plot" is completely nonsensical?
That there is (literally) a moment in the anime, where:
- a stereotypical evil character gets introduced
- only to be ignored by the good guys
- despite the fact they know the character is evil
- and the fact they know this evil character has killed people
- but still ignore her/him
- and then get super surprised when this stereotypical evil character, sterotypically kills one of their friends
- and act like this was unpredictable and there was no way to prevent it.
Did i forgot to mention that?
The best part of this train wreck is to show that you can't fix a problem just by trowing money at it. You need talented people that have a freaking clue of what they're doing.
Despite the high production values and great animation that comes with it, this is a very mediocre show. And one that exemplifies why we like to hate SAO.
Because while it's too "safe" and predictable, it doesn't stop it from being super effective as an entertainment product. Something that Rec fails to be.
Story: 4
Art: 8
Sound: 5
Characters: 4
Enjoyment: 3
Overall: 5
