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Re:CREATORS
Episode 4

by Theron Martin,

How would you rate episode 4 of
Re:CREATORS ?
Community score: 3.9

This episode only reinforces how wonderfully-imagined and well-thought-out Re:CREATORS' concept is, but the execution leaves a bit to be desired this time around.

Before getting into that, let's consider what actually happens. Meteora's expected visit to see her Creator proves fruitless for a surprising reason: her Creator has died in a motorcycle accident. It's totally understandable that this would throw her for a loop, as it would be like discovering that a long-lost parent has died before you could meet them, and her response is entirely understandable too. She plays AVALKEN of Reminisce (the game that she's from) to try and discern her Creator's heart. She decides, based on the care that her Creator put into constructing her world, that he must have loved his characters, so she resolves to protect this world at any cost. That's important, because she has reasoned that characters jumping out of stories and into this world is going to destabilize it to the point of destruction. That's probably just what Military Uniform Princess (hereafter MUP) is trying to do.

I know I've seen cases where characters jumping into another world threaten to destroy it with their abilities, but the idea that their very presence is a destabilizing influence on the natural order is an interesting new twist. Seeing Meteora take comfort in the veritable immortality she achieves by being a character in a beloved game was also an unexpectedly heartwarming moment; she really needs to smile more like that. I also loved that she addresses an issue that some viewers have brought up: characters' manifestation as regular-looking people in this world rather than the 2D characters that they are in their source material. Apparently, we don't have to just take that disparity in stride, as Meteora hypothesizes that some sort of translation took place when they world-jumped so that the elasticity of the world could accommodate them. This thorough explanation suggests that we have little need to worry about other potential issues also being addressed eventually.

Despite a total lack of action, there's a fair amount going on in the plot this week. One of the other characters from the opener – mecha pilot Rui Kanoya – gets formally introduced at the end, and yes, he brought his mecha with him. The older gun-toting guy also makes his first appearance, though he doesn't get named, as does the chubby guy seen in the closer (he's the script writer for Rui's series, so basically his Creator). That leaves just Evil School Girl to make her appearance. Alicetaria's conversation with MUP strongly indicates that MUP is just playing her, though how much she understands about what the opposing group has discovered is up in the air. (Is “this world is more sturdy than I thought” just an excuse for a failure of a Creator to change things that she expected to happen, or did she genuinely not know that it wasn't that simple?) More satisfying was the interaction between Alicetaria and Mamika afterwards. Those two already show signs of making a neat pair with their contrasting personalities and prince-and-princess-like connection, something that I hope the series continues to pursue.

The problem with all of this is not the total lack of action but rather the approach to presenting the dialogue. Whereas conversations in the third episode were more back-and-forth exchanges, this episode is exposition-heavy, and it's not always particularly smooth exposition. Not every character dumps info in this way, which makes me wonder if this is being done intentionally; Meteora's purpose in her source game is to spill exposition, after all, and we've seen before that MUP tends toward awkwardly grandiose declarations. So is the implication that even modes of communicating for Creations are locked in by how they're written? Mamika's difficulty in getting Alicetaria's name right, which is the kind of cutesy affectation you would expect from a character like her but not at all fitting for the tone of the story, also suggests this. This vast difference in character expression by their genre and type is a clever but also somewhat annoying gimmick, and it gets overused in this episode. The other possibility is that a point is trying to be made about how characters in stories are given cumbersome, unnatural-sounding dialog to spill. These possibilties aren't mutually exclusive, but regardless of which is more true, the flow of this episode is nowhere near as smooth as the previous ones.

At least we finally get to see Silesia and Meteora in far less conspicuous street clothes, which is welcome because always walking around wearing their fantasy clothing would have been too conspicuous, making them needlessly stand out in crowds and creating implausibility. Next episode, we'll get to see how the mecha and its pilot fits into the mix.

Rating: B

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


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