Re:CREATORS

Episode 8

Once again, we get a mostly talking episode this week, with only a brief burst of action at the very end. However, I won't fault the episode for that approach, since these conversations contain a lot of crucial character development and one potentially huge revelation, and the action at the end has cataclysmic consequences.

But first, the simple stuff. The Creators of both Blitz and Yuya get introduced, and predictably, Yuya doesn't tolerate his creator's attitude well at all, especially after being called a cosplayer (even if we can hardly blame his Creator for the misunderstanding). It seems that Yuya's Creator and Matsuraba don't get along too well either, due to some past encounter, but that's a minor consideration next to Yuya's dramatic demonstration of rebellion; it will be interesting to see how his Creator's attitude changes after that. More details about Altair's origin as a doujin version of a character from another source also come out, though those specifics aren't as important as the confirmation that Setsuna was the creator of the video that popularized Altair as her own character. The team doesn't yet know that Setsuna committed suicide, but the government and Masaaki have proven competent enough that discovering the truth is only a matter of time.

This leads into the first of several important interpersonal encounters. Sota's meeting with Meteora implies a bombshell reveal: Sota has been reticent to bring up Setsuna and Altair because he thinks that he's directly responsible for her committing suicide. Combining this conversation with the flashback clips from a couple episodes ago suggests that Sota and Setsuna were close friends at first, but he became jealous of her talent and success relative to his own. This led to an unspecified breaking point in their relationship that may have been bad enough to drive her to drastic action. While a bad break-up or harsh rejection from a loved one leading someone to suicide is hardly unheard-of, it feels like there's still more to this story that even Sota doesn't know. Whatever that may be, I liked Meteora's reply, as she philosophizes about how the buildup of emotional filth can lead to bigger problems in an earnest effort to be Sota's friend and confidant. Hopefully this will lead to Sota eventually confiding everything to the Preserve the World team, but for now it strengthens the legitimacy of his hold-out. Revealing everything is the most sensible course of action, but strong emotions frequently get in the way of sensibility.

That's not the only good encounter of the episode, though. Mamika and Alicetaria have another valuable conversation, showing that Alicetaria doesn't hold Mamika's actions in the previous battle against her, because she respects that Mamika was acting on her own sense of honor, a quality she doesn't see in their current world. A flashback implies that Alicetaria might favor Mamika as a stand-in for someone she once failed to save, but the chemistry between the two is so welcome that Mamika's last line in their conversation rings ominous. Sota also encounters Magane advertising a maid café in costume, which leads to the beginning of a much more twisted relationship. Magane apparently eavesdropped on his conversation with Meteora too, so she's pieced together much of what Sota hasn't revealed. However, rather than using this information to endanger Sota, she seems vastly entertained by the situation, forcing her contact info on him instead. It should be interesting to see where that leads, but Magane is growing on me as a wild card in the story.

While Sota's implication of guilt is the episode's bombshell, the confrontation between Mamika and Altair at episode's end has more immediate consequences. Keeping with her conversation with Sota last episode, Mamika reaffirms that she's stepped beyond the character that written for her to become her own person, but she's decided that she likes her original identity and will carry it out by choice. This suggests that breaking free of an identity that's been defined for you to become your own person will be an underlying theme of the series, but it also complicates the issue of whether Creators can actually do anything to alter the circumstances of their Creations. The more immediate issue is that Altair doesn't remain coy about her intentions when Mamika calls her out by name, and things turn violent. We quickly find out why Mamika was reluctant to use her ultimate attack form, leaving us on one hell of a cliffhanger for next episode.

If the series' creators are trying to portray Altair's motives as incredibly self-centered, (or perhaps Creator-centered?) they're succeeding, and I wouldn't be surprised if the irony in the immaturity of Altair's reasoning vs. the relative maturity of Mamika's reasoning was intentional. Regardless of the truth behind all these reveals, this is one of the meatiest episodes to date, fully demonstrating the breadth of its quality characterizations.

Rating: A

Re:CREATORS is currently streaming on Amazon's Anime Strike.