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This Week in Anime - How Meta Does Re:Creators Get?




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AwaysAnnoyed





PostPosted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 2:01 pm Reply with quote
Re: CREATORS is such a wonderful discussion of creation and the relationship between creators, their stories and characters and the audience (as thoroughly discussed in this addition in This Week in Anime). Because Re:Creators speaks to anime tropes, creation, and the importance of the audience I think it's a must-watch. At least for anyone who has ever written something themselves, because it certainly gives a few things to think about.

Also can I just give a shout-out to the second ending? Which shows all the real life key genga, painting on computer, and characters as chibis? That was really next-level meta. Very good.
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Mad_Scientist
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 5:02 pm Reply with quote
The readers demand that Heybot discussion, unedited and in full!
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JacobC
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 19, 2017 7:18 pm Reply with quote
Mad_Scientist wrote:
The readers demand that Heybot discussion, unedited and in full!


N E X T W E E K . . .
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Woody__alien



Joined: 01 Aug 2017
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 5:48 am Reply with quote
One thing that baffled me about the ending is how the Creations were all so eager to go back to their worlds, while full knowing that from that moment on they'll become just pawns in the hands of their authors once again.
By the beginning of the show I thought that one major theme was the Creations overcoming the limitations of their fictional worlds and learning to become multi-faceted characters, but I guess that was another plot point dropped in order to facilitate the ending.
In fact, despite all of their superpowers, every one of them has more or less always been a pawn: a pawn in Altair's plot to become powerful, a pawn of the Government, a pawn of the fictional authors and a pawn of the real actual authors of this anime. That's pretty depressing when you think about it.
This is probably why I liked Magane the most in the end, because she doesn't care about that and helped the "heroes" just to get rid of Altair and go on to do whatever she wants in the real world. (though it's still weird that nobody cared about her absence either...)
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John Thacker



Joined: 28 Oct 2013
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 20, 2017 7:14 pm Reply with quote
Woody__alien wrote:
One thing that baffled me about the ending is how the Creations were all so eager to go back to their worlds, while full knowing that from that moment on they'll become just pawns in the hands of their authors once again.
By the beginning of the show I thought that one major theme was the Creations overcoming the limitations of their fictional worlds and learning to become multi-faceted characters, but I guess that was another plot point dropped in order to facilitate the ending.

I don't think that plot point was dropped, I thought that plot point was surpassed, as I mention below.
Quote:
In fact, despite all of their superpowers, every one of them has more or less always been a pawn: a pawn in Altair's plot to become powerful, a pawn of the Government, a pawn of the fictional authors and a pawn of the real actual authors of this anime. That's pretty depressing when you think about it.

Nah, it's not any more depressing than any other theodicy. Consider that the non Creations, Creators and others alike themselves were also pawns in the same ways you list: pawns in Altair's plot, pawns of the Government, pawns of the audience, and pawn of the real actual authors of the anime. The Creations, if they stayed in this world, would still have been pawns in that sense, because they would still be limited by not only all the physical rules of the world but also the bonds imposed by relationships with others. The point is that they were not any more limited in their own worlds than in the real world, because the real world itself limits them. That's even aside from neuroscientific, philosophical, or theological considerations of free will.
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This is probably why I liked Magane the most in the end, because she doesn't care about that and helped the "heroes" just to get rid of Altair and go on to do whatever she wants in the real world.

(Whatever she wants including random murder when she feels like it.) People who like Magane disturb me. Self-actualization and freedom from all connections is not the highest good nor truest liberty.

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

The more curious question to me is what the distinction is between a Creation who went back and one who perished/turned into cubes in this world, considering that their original works still existed in some sense. (The story had already touched on the possible differences between light novel and anime versions of a character.) They might well have simply gone back to their original world-- it's almost surprising that no character flirted with the idea of suicide as a method of returning.
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k2m2daryl



Joined: 24 Feb 2009
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 21, 2017 3:33 am Reply with quote
Woody__alien wrote:
(though it's still weird that nobody cared about her absence either...)


OMG I thought nobody would point this out. I'm here wondering that myself. Budget cuts or some other limit maybe? It did end on 22 episodes unlike the 24 eps of other works.

Anyway, that was a good read for a review on Re:CREATORS.
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EmperorBrandon
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 21, 2017 12:52 pm Reply with quote
k2m2daryl wrote:
Budget cuts or some other limit maybe? It did end on 22 episodes unlike the 24 eps of other works.

For what it's worth, the series was planned to be 22 episodes, as indicated in the story section of the official site, since the beginning.
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Animerican14



Joined: 19 Aug 2006
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 21, 2017 9:25 pm Reply with quote
Great commentary! Honestly find it a bit of a shame that this seems to have been overtaken in traffic size by the slightly more recent Re:Creators feature already, but that's the speed of life.

John Thacker wrote:

The more curious question to me is what the distinction is between a Creation who went back and one who perished/turned into cubes in this world, considering that their original works still existed in some sense. (The story had already touched on the possible differences between light novel and anime versions of a character.) They might well have simply gone back to their original world-- it's almost surprising that no character flirted with the idea of suicide as a method of returning.


Same question I've been having this whole time as well!
Yet no one has addressed those concerns in the review thread, either...

I've seen many lean more towards the notion that the Selesia that we all came to know and love is super-dead; the Selesia that "lives on" through Matsubara's future works will be one devoid of any memories of her time in the "Realm of the Gods." But... that doesn't seem to smoothly gel with how Matsubara and co.'s ultimately positive reacted when Meteora tried to reassure Matsubara about Selesia "continuing to live"?

This is one of several instances where I'd like to hear the word of god (heh) for further clarification the matter. In the mean time, would it be grounded head-canon to think that while Selesia did indeed "die" in this world, that she still essentially returned to the world she hearkened from (the anime version of her story)? Like, is it plausible that her 'consciousness' fused back with the character as seen in Matsubara's stories, more or less meaning that we see in the promo for Season 2 of Vogelchevalier is the same one viewers bore witness to throughout Re:Creators?
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Key
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 22, 2017 12:13 am Reply with quote
^^
That's left unclear, and I think deliberately so. If I was Hiroe or Aoki, I wouldn't ever clarify that definitively, as that's the kind of thing that is fun for fans to endlessly speculate about. I'd certainly like to think that dying in this world meant they return to their worlds with their memories intact, as that makes the advertisement for Alicetaria meeting Mamika all the more meaningful.
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DuskyPredator



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PostPosted: Fri Sep 22, 2017 12:47 am Reply with quote
Well the characters who went back kind of learned to love the part they played in their stories, along with having people they care about back home. Plus their creators I think also grew from looking at their creations, that they might be able to expand the world they came from with the details they liked about the normal world: Selesia with stories and coffee, Yuuya with some of his expanded insight (and maybe cigarettes), Rui I think in allowed to have a perspective of where things fit in and his apparent new joy of model robots, and maybe a bit of compassion for some of them but balance would presumably be kept somehow.

Regardless, I think it was that those places were their homes, even if the normal world is more expansive, those characters still wanted to go home.
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Animerican14



Joined: 19 Aug 2006
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 23, 2017 1:44 am Reply with quote
Key wrote:
^^
That's left unclear, and I think deliberately so. If I was Hiroe or Aoki, I wouldn't ever clarify that definitively, as that's the kind of thing that is fun for fans to endlessly speculate about. I'd certainly like to think that dying in this world meant they return to their worlds with their memories intact, as that makes the advertisement for Alicetaria meeting Mamika all the more meaningful.


Which I'd love to think as well!

But then there this phrasing from Meteora on the matter when talks with Matsubara at the start of episode 22 (emphasized part bolded):

"The Selesia that came to this world lost her life.
But that's only the end of one of the many possible branches.
Matsubara, the Selesia in the stories that you'll write in the future will never have the chance to meet us.
However, her willpower and thoughts will remain the same."

When I see "meet," I tend to think of 'first greetings', but I suppose it could also be seen as synonymous for 'seeing each other.'

So does Meteora's line suggest that the Selesia in Matsubara's future stories "will never have the chance to meet us (again)" or that Future!Selesia "will have never met us"? The first possibility correlates with a hope that Selesia will at least hold memories of her time here; the second possibility would deny, or at least lessen, the preservation of the "meme" (using Dawkins' meaning) that is Re:Creators' Selesia.... and imply the existence of a multiverse of split 'selves' where one version of a singular persona can 'die' while a different version lives on.

The google translated version of the text in Rei Hiroe's original script ("NAKED"), as sampled on the official website, appears to imply a tilt toward that latter possibility. So now I'm left thinking that some nuance/clarity might have been lost in translation.

But if not, if I'm missing something here, and the show really is more ambiguous regarding this existential issue than I give it credit, I'm all ears as to why, then. The only angle of 'solid ambiguity' I can think of right now though is when a couple of the creators lampshade(?) the possibility of a multiverse a bit later in episode 22.
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