Hi again! As promised, I'm posting again today, this time with one of my favorite animes, Re:Creators! It's my first post here about anime, so here goes :)
Anime is one of those things that gets a bad rep a lot of the time. Some of the often-used tropes (fan service, I'm looking at you) I really don't like, and honestly I think the medium would be a lot better without them. That said, anime is a medium that involves lots of amazing stories as well as mediocre ones, just like any other form of storytelling. I personally like fantasy and sci-fi animes, but I do enjoy the occasional slice of life anime (Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, for example).
One of the subgenres of anime, and stories in general, is something called isekai (in Japanese, this translates to 'another world'). As you can probably tell from the name, isekai involve characters moving from one world to another, usually between the real world and a fantasy world. There are lots of stories like this, in every medium (for example, The Matrix falls under this category, along with Sword Art Online, which is another of my favorite shows/book series and will be the topic of its own future post).
There's just something magical about the idea of leaving our mundane lives and going to someplace extraordinary. Just like the idea of flying, it's something that's been a dream of humans for a long time; one could even argue that something like The Odyssey falls in that category, and that was written thousands of years ago!
In any event, Re:Creators is a kind of reverse isekai: instead of the main character, an ordinary seventeen year old guy named Sota, going to an alternate world, the alternate world(s) come to him.
The first episode begins with an unknown girl commiting suicide by train, which sets an interesting tone for the story. You don't learn more about her until much later, but, suffice to say, she's important. After that, you meet Sota, who's super into anime, but who also strives to create his own. In some of the opening scenes, you see him open his computer and try to draw in graphic design software, before giving up due to artist's block, and going to watch some anime to clear his head.
Before I talk about the important thing that happens next, I want to comment on the animation style of Re:Creators, which is fantastic. In scenes involving computer screens, the level of detail for both the screen itself and its contents is stunning. Seriously, there is an insane attention to detail in Re:Creators, and it's one of the things I love about it. Take a look at this screenshot:
Anyway, upon turning on his tablet to watch an episode of one of his favorite shows, Elemental Symphony of Vogelchevalier, he gets sucked into the anime, where he is protected from an assailent by the main character of that anime, Selesia Upitiria. A moment later, they are both sucked back into Sota's room back on Earth, where, needless to say, both of them are a bit surprised. Selesia is the first creation you meet in Re:creators, although you meet several more later. You also end up meeting the creators of these characters, the artists and writers who made their characters so believable that they literally came to life.
Re:Creators gives a rare glimpse into the lives and work of the people who create the stories we love, and it offers a wonderful philosophical question on what makes us people, and the beauty of creation. The creations come from a variety of genres, and this gives the show a diversity of experiences that makes it really interesting.
I loved this anime, for its animation, its wonderful characters, its perspective into the oft-forgotten creators of stories and its unique idea of a reverse isekai.
I've watched it twice, and am planning on watching it for a third time at some point.
Anyway, that's all for now! Stay tuned for more nerdy reviews and comments!
-- Bradley