I have already spoken on occasion about some of the details of the series, but I never began to write in a moderately serious way my thoughts, which are not few, and I thought it was a good time to, at least, try to put a little order in my head.
On paper, Re: Creators sounds very good, too good; a series that tells you how in the world, different fictional characters leave their respective worlds to come to ours, with the infinity of possibilities that this entails, in addition to the problems caused by all the clashes between their reality and ours.
Said in this way it could not look better, and to that, we must add all those people who are behind the project, which is not unambitious, however, this is where the problems begin, or rather, where the conception problems that had from the beginning come to light.
Let's start with the most important factor in the play: the characters. A series based entirely on its cast of protagonists, on how they relate to others, with the world around them, and with their own internal conflicts about what they are, who they are, and why they are in the world, it tends to have certain problems about how they pose their universe and, above all, how they tell their story.
In fact, one of the main problems of the series is its focus, since the action is an element that predominates above all things, which is not a bad thing, but it becomes a real problem when battles, fights, and all that act of confrontation become the axis of the story, the motivation of the characters, and the reason for all the actions of the characters.
A series that is pure action is not equivalent to a bad series, far from it, but it is when you notice that you have something else to tell and even more when you notice that you want to tell that something, but you are too focused on explosions and to see who has the biggest giant robot.
The intentions of Re: Creators are there, from minute 1, if not before, because at the beginning we are introduced to what we could consider the protagonist or, at least, that character that the series uses to show us everything from within ourselves as spectators.
This is not a problem per se, but it becomes one when the focus is lost, again.
It is obvious that they try to tell us a story about inspiration, about how we can all create something, no matter how small it may be, and that something can influence others, even if we do not realize it, and all that does not take two chapters to come. down because the play seems to have no other interest than showing bigger and bigger explosions with each passing chapter as it introduces more and more characters.
At least that is the impression it gives until a certain episode arrives, one in which your perception of everything seen can change, and it surprises you because at this point you wonder if the intentions of the team behind the series really wanted you to tell that something or just wanted an excuse to design potential waifus with robots, weapons, and armor.
As I said, the core of this series are the characters, there are better ones and there are worse ones, but it is not until we are introduced to one of them that the series takes more than an uncertain course, which makes everything else .. . interesting.
Magane Chikujoin, an agent of chaos, a character that with her simple presence makes you doubt about what is going to happen now, leaves you expectant and leaves you wanting to know more about her and her world. Maybe too much.
Once she appears on the scene, she steals all the spotlight. It is that it enters the scene and that you stop caring about all the other characters because you simply want to know more about that mysterious, sadistic, cruel, charismatic, and chaotic girl.
Is this that Magane is the best character in the series? No. But it is a before and after for this one, because the direction that Re: Creators takes from its inclusion is one that you don't know where attention is going to be directed now. She is not bad, but she is not good either, she just is and that's it, she doesn't have to have a background beyond that, which she shows in each of her appearances, doing what she wants when she wants without regard, in a series where literally everything is so scripted and so stark, it couldn't be a more perfect contrast.
Although Magane is the one who gets all the attention when she appears, there is another character that many leave aside, but who, in the end, is the one who carries the weight of everyone else around her on her shoulders, the one who shows us that she is not. They need to be the strongest, the prettiest, or the one with the most dialogue to be a cornerstone in the series you belong to, and it could not be anyone but ... Kikuchihara.
Yes, neither the main group is compared to a government official who is nothing more than a secondary character, who does not even have a striking design, who does not have any special abilities, and who we only see her speaking in meeting rooms, giving orders to subordinates and answering calls.
Kikuchihara appears and knocks on the table saying: "I am here! And I am no less than you."
At this point you might think it is nonsense to say something like that, however, let's put ourselves in context.
Re: Creators has a great flaw, which is its lack of climax. Not only at the plot level, but with each episode that passes there is a void that extends during the viewing of the entire series, and it is nothing more and nothing less than the lack of climactic moments where the viewer is stunned by the magnificence of a scene. But don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about some super epic battle scene or some shocking and dramatic death, but those kinds of scenes where you feel everything that is happening, where you can't say more than "This was worth it. ".
The first time this happened to me it wasn't in a battle, it wasn't even with a leading character; The first time I thought that Re: Creators had something to prove, it was in that boardroom where Kikuchihara is explaining the Creations plan in the face of Altair's threat. There are no shots, no great dialogue, no spectacular backdrop. Everything happens in a room while a character exposes his ideas to others, that's all.
This shows that this story has ways to blow you away when it wants, the fact is, when does it really want to?
That said, let's move on to another scene of this style, not because of what happens, but because of how you feel like a spectator, and here I do allow myself to be much more obvious, denoting a death scene, but not just any death, but one that leaves teaching both to another of the main characters and to us as an audience. Mamika, Aliceteria, and Altair. It does not take more for something to increase its potential than to say that the three are involved.
For the first time, a conflict that leads to a fight feels real, it feels like it has repercussions on those who are involved in it, and for the first time, that melodramatic take is shown to us, again, demonstrating that the work can be taken in Serious herself when she wants to.
Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a perfect series, and all I already mentioned are just a few of the highlights that I was able to glean from its 22 episodes.
Outside of that, I really couldn't say that Re: Creators does things well, beyond saying that it has a nice animation or that its soundtrack is very good because those are things that seem very superficial to me. Personally, all audiovisual content that I consume, I do it for the narrative, because for me it is the most important thing. If you have nothing to tell me or you have nothing with which to make me feel something then, directly do not do it.
As a writer, storytelling is everything, and as such, I want my readers to feel the same way I do writing with every word they read. That my stories evoke emotions beyond what I could express on my own, and in that sense Re: Creators, talking about how we can create something and how we make others feel with it, could not reach as high as it aspired, at least not for me, and as much as it pains me to say it, I cannot accept that the impact of creating a story is minimized.
In the end, all those characters who present us live in their own worlds, in their own stories, but by chance they end up converging in a world like ours, but what for? To talk about a philosophical aspect and wonder what the "I" really is? To make a bunch of characters each one more different than the last one start fighting? To show what the medium of an animation series is like, the process of creation, and the reception of the public? About personal acceptance?
There are many topics that this work deals with or rather, that it tries to do, exactly like this kind of review, so I can't find a better way to talk about it than using its own methods.
To be closing, it is enjoyable, it is entertaining, but it does not go beyond that, no matter how hard I try, and it is difficult to accept that something with so much potential has been left in no man's land because it shows that there is a lot of love behind each and every one of the details of the series.
As a writer, I respect who created this universe, but I could not say that he gave everything of himself so that his feelings when creating would reach us.
I leave many things in the pipeline, but at least I was able to put a little order to the ideas that had been around in my head for weeks that I finished the series because even with all the negative that I could get, I have affection for him, world, its intentions and above all, its characters, maybe not for the right reasons, but reasons after all.
