Optic

First of all, this episode had A LOT of talking with little variety in scenes and a lot of cutaway shots so apologies in advance for the bland screenshots. The episode starts off with a glance at Alicetaria and Blitz Talker together. The two reflect on their pasts, with Alicetaria being aware that Blitz Talker lost her daughter in the past. We then continue back with Sota’s story. Setsuna texts Sota, confirming she definitely hasn’t plagiarised the artist she is working with, but does not want to defend the allegations and starts to question whether she should even continue to draw. It is apparent Setsuna was trying to draw on Sota for support, but he responds half-heartedly with a “don’t ask me”. Sometime later, Sota then discovers a farewell message from Setsuna and with it, a debut video of a new character: “Altair World Etude.” At this point, Sota then ceases contact with Setsuna completely. He later gets a phone call from Setsuna’s mother via her mobile, we are led to believe that Setsuna killed herself. In shock, Sota deletes every memory of her from her computer and smartphone. In short, Altair was created by Setsuna’s despair, and Altair is now trying to fulfill her wishes by destroying the world. Sota FINALLY acknowledges to the group what he did to her was terrible and he tried to run away by trying to forget. With this, Sota exclaims he wants to stop Altair for good. Meanwhile, Alicetaria has freed her creator, and the two have a conversation in very frightening circumstances – soaring through the air on horseback whilst she dangles the creator with one hand. As the episode ends, the group discovers that Altair has the ability to gain new abilities based on fan made videos. They decide they need to undertake the support of all the creators and government to make a new story capable of containing Altair. 5/10 – well, we finally learned the full backstory of Altair and Setsuna Shimazaki. I felt the execution was quite a letdown. Part of the problem is, it’s hard to have the same impact with just text messages. Why didn’t Sota try to meet Setsuna again in person? Why just that one time? Not even a phone call? To me I just find it baffling Sota would just cut all contact with Setsuna like that. At least now this sets the stage for the second half of Re:Creators, as now everyone is FINALLY on the same page in wanting to stop Altair.

The pacing has slowed considerably as we deal with the aftermath of that showdown in the the previous episode of Re:Creators. Selesia and Meteora are recovering from their injuries in hospital. Interestingly, the doctor notes the creations are very similar to humans but are able to recover really quickly. Matsubara shares some bonding time with Selesia, reflecting on ehm… the power of people believing in stories. This prompts Matsubara to consider adding in side stories for Selesia in future developments of her character. Meanwhile Rui and Sota share some time together… and he notices that Sota is sulking. Rui hates seeing Sota like this, so he decides to take Gigas Machina for a spin with Sota inside! It’s a thrilling view… These are somewhat interesting exchanges, as it is apparent the creations have differing opinions on their worlds now that they know they were primarily created for entertainment. Later with Sota back on the ground, Selesia and Meteora have fully recovered. And it is at this point Sota finally decides to reveal the full story of Setsuna Shimazaki, a former friend and Altair’s creator. In short, Sota met Setsuna on an online artist community, he had submitted some fan art and this caught Setsuna’s eye. The two became closer after that and decide to meet each other in person at an event. It's quite a cute interaction meeting each other for the first time and they both have a good time. However, shortly after this event, Setsuna manages to secure work by working with a famous artist. At this point the two start to drift apart. Sota then becomes upset and traumatised when he discovers online comments alleging Setsuna is plagiarising the famous artist she is working with. His initial feeling is to intervene and defend her, but he hesitates and decides not to. The episode ends with Sota claiming this event made him feel less lonely, much to his disgust. 5/10 – I really felt that Sota’s’ interactions with Setsuna was cute, but I really didn’t agree with Sota’s actions and found it very hard to sympathise with why he would treat Setsuna that way. To me it’s a bit of a weak reason, and as a result I didn’t enjoy this arc at all.

Unfortunately, other than with closer friends and colleagues, anime is not something I would readily discuss at work. In that sense, I mean I'm not going to be leaving wallpapers of it on my workstation. As mentioned above, many titles have fan service and sexualised imagery which could completely be taken out of context by a passerby or anyone not familiar with anime. Talking about it too much with older work colleagues does raise eyebrows. To give you more context, I once worked with two Japanese teachers. One was older and very traditionalist. The other was younger but still took his work seriously. When I said to both of them on separate occasions that I really love Japanese animation, the older one replied "Oh is that so?" and that was the end of it. Whereas the younger one was more interested and we discussed several titles, as well as him trying to implement parts of it in his teaching lessons for fun. So yes I think there is still a general stigma - which is unfortunate as anime covers so many different themes and stories. Thankfully it is definitely less than what it used to be as more and more anime movies are being shown in cinemas.

OK thanks, on the new theme I removed most of the options there which I will mirror on the older themes later. For now you should just adjust your Chat display position as per the screenshot @zoop posted above to revert it back to the previous behaviour so it doesn't display on all pages.

@Renee, I meant larger phones with larger resolutions, not just HD... to give me more context what make and model are you using, and can you take a screenshot and attach it here? I'm using an iPhone 6 Plus and this is how it looks for me: Of course everyone has different sizes and personal preferences - so for some it takes up a big chunk, for others it's not intrusive.

Hi @Akutagawa&\#039;s Ghouliet, welcome to AF! If the title is in this list then you can write a review directly in the Anime section: https://animeforums.net/community/threads/writing-an-anime-review.3871/ If it's not on the list, please start a Conversation with me and let me know what title it is and I'll look at creating the page for you! You can also try doing a forum search to find a related topic if you just wanted to add general thoughts on the title.

I have a Synology DS412+ sitting in the home theatre. Similar to @brycec I'm primarily using it as anime library storage for Plex Media Server (server and client run locally on a Mac Mini) I'm also storing most of my anime BD purchases on it for the anime screenshot galleries and also using it as a download server (very good for overnight tasks). 4x 4 TB Western Digital Red HDDs (in RAID5 I think?) = 10.82 TB (usable)... 4.14 TB free space remaining...

A lot of action happened in this one! Following on from the previous episode of Re:Creators, and with Alicetaria now appearing on scene, she lunges straight for Meteora. It is quickly blocked. Then Yuya Mirokuji intervenes and attacks Alicetaria. Meteora implores Sota to call their government contact, so he flees the scene to call for help at a safe distance. With Sota gone, Magane stops the fight and proposes to help Alicetaria out by fighting against Yuya, which would allow her to fight against Meteora. At first Alicetaria is reluctant but Magane EASILY persuades her. And so Alicetaria focues solely on Meteora, whilst Magane focuses on Yuya. Just as it seems Meteora is about to be finished off by Alicetaria, Sota rushes back to intervene! Unfortunately, he isn’t able to fully convince her that Magane is lying to her. Finally backup arrives… Selesia and Rui arrive on scene and Selesia wastes no time in pouncing onto Alicetaria after seeing Meteora’s condition. But then she is impaled by Alicetaria (much to her shock and surprise too) when her sword turns into a flower due to Altair’s sudden appearance. She then implores Alicetaria to decapitate Selesia but she hesitates, prompting Blitz Talker to finish her off with a gunshot... but then the gunshot is stopped by Yuya who then engages him directly. Meanwhile Rui is tired of watching and decides to engage Altair directly using Gigas Machina but then Altair clones it and the two engage each other! Selesia’s creator Matsubara then has an outburst, vowing to save her. In desperation, he contacts Marine to get the drawing of Selesia’s new ability (back in episode 3!) and announces it on a social media channel. As the audience quickly react to it, Selesia’s new explosive powers materialize, and she is able to drive away Altair and co with a jaw-dropping attack! But the effect only lasts for a short time, and Selesia reverts back to her injured state… 7/10 – I really liked this episode, it had some very nice escalating combat scenes. Selesia getting impaled was gruelling but she still responds in a badass way, despite coughing blood out multiple times. And Alicetaria’s reaction from Selesia’s attack was priceless!

I only get Pizza every 3-4 weeks, having said that I think Pizza Hut is pretty good! More expensive but better than Dominos in my opinion. Here in Australia, Dominos has the biggest market share in sales, followed by Pizza Hut. There used to be another smaller chain called Eagle Boys Pizza but they were bought out by Pizza Hut... I'm not sure how it works in the US, but here many of the pizza chains are franchised and well when Dominoes is pushing out $5 cheaper Tuesdays, it really digs into the profit margin for all the chains. I remember reading about stories from disgruntled franchisees not getting enough marketing support to offset that. Interestingly, I noticed independent stores and gourmet pizza chains such as Crust who charge $20+ per Pizza for premium toppings like duck and veal seem to be doing quite well. So it seems people here are willing to pay more for a really good pizza.

Oh goodness… this is probably my least favourite episode of Re:Creators so far due to having very mixed feelings with the events that occurred. After a very dramatic escalation of force during Mamika’s confrontation with Altair in the previous episode, we are then presented with a heavily injured, bleeding, Mamika flying through the city trying to reach Alicetaria. And yet somehow, SOMEHOW, Magane happened to be directly under the same flight path as Mamika, with blood dripping onto her snack. Mamika is unable to make it so after she collapses, Magane approaches Mamika who implores her to tell Alicetaria to stop Altair due to her ulterior motives. Alicetaria then happens to arrive but is too late as she cradles a dying Mamika. Of course, at this point, when Alicetaria tries to find out what Mamika’s dying words were, Magane uses this as an opportunity to amuse herself by twisting the message by implying that she should instead stop Meteora instead of Altair, sending Alicetaria astray vowing to whack Meteora. The rest of the episode is spent with Magane bumping into Sota yet again, finding great amusement by calling him out on his sulking and hesitation to reveal his knowledge about Altair to Meteora. Thankfully, Meteora and Kuronagimaru appear to intervene but just as they’re about to engage Magane, Alicetaria then appears – with Meteora trained on her sights. 4/10 – I felt this was a terrible way to show Mamika’s last moments (hope she is somehow revived later but doubtful). Alicetaria being so easily manipulated like that for by Magane for convenient plot really bothered me.

Only two have managed to do it for me so far... [spoiler=Clannad: After Story] I think at that point, it was due to so many plausible bad luck factors. The bad snowy weather that had brought things to a standstill, Nagisa's ailing physical health, nobody had done anything inherently wrong and the stage was set for a really beautiful relationship. Seeing Tomoya's downward spiral after the loss made it even more powerful. [spoiler=Angel Beats] When Otonashi was trapped underground in the train with all the other passengers. Again, due to plausible bad luck factors. He was really struggling and pained after the loss of his terminally ill sister. And finally pulled his life together with new ambitions until the train incident. What really sealed for me was when he decided to consent to organ donation on his card, as at that point after several days they wouldn't make it. But in a really painful twist, just after he passed away the rescue teams finally broke through.

I was drawn to the Rewrite anime as I really enjoyed a lot of other KEY titles (Angel Beats, Little Busters, Planetarian: The Reverie of a Little Planet) But after just one episode, I was turned off by it and dropped it because I found it so disorienting, confusing and convoluted. I think it was definitely aimed for people that have played the VN game who already had background knowledge of the universe and its characters...

I currently have mixed feelings for Re:Creators. On one hand, I really like Meteora and Selesia. Their chemistry together is great. It started off with a nice bang and the clashes between the creations are awesome. Visually they pop quite well and Sawano's music during the clashes are jaw-dropping and nail-biting. But outside of the action, the pacing is all over the place. Instead of focusing solely on the events of the creations themselves, there are times where they reflect on society and life. I normally wouldn't mind this too much but the lines are bland, and the camera angles/cut-away shots are also bland during the dialogue scenes... Also I agree that @Cy~ is spot on in regards to the writing. Yes they are meant to be exagerrated archtypes as they are based off different franchises but things just seem too convenient. Magane appearing at the right moments with Sota and Mamika and her ability to manipulate others so easily really bothered me. Meteora is also quite amusing... I am a little biased though as she is also the same voice as Rem from Re:Zero. Even with Meteora's deep rambling and snide remarks at times her voice is still soothing! Sota's sulking and hesitant behaviour also irked me - now that is resolved, I am hoping the second half of Re:Creators will pick up the pace now that they have a very clear strategic goal against Altair.

Hi @RepentantSky, thanks for your feedback. At this point the default chat position appearing on all pages is likely stay as it has helped improved activity overall. I am aware though that it does take up space, particularly for users with smaller smartphones (due to having less screen resolution) I am looking into possibly reducing the font-size of the bar to help make it less intrusive - as @zoop has mentioned you can definitely overeride it to restore the previous behaviour. This is tricky, as if I reduce the sidebar widgets then it will also look strange for those that prefer to have the chat box in the previous position. I was experimenting with making the sidebar sticky (so you will never have a gap) but this proved to be buggy on mobile devices. It's something I'm still looking into...

I have moved this from Chit Chat to Feedback. @SAO LILDOOP - it's a nice idea, wouldn't be able to add it as a shop purchase though so it would have to be available for everyone to do based on a field in your profile preferences... @Imogen - could also look having an option to hide the speech bubble completely. Would that work?

Sota has gone AWOL in the eyes of Meteora and the others whilst he interacts with Mamika (answer your phone!!) But it’s OK, since they also discover Altair’s identity too. However, they have yet to find her creator. Then the creators of Yuya Mirokuji are brought in by the government and one of them turns out to be rather arrogant, angering Yuya, so he decides to demonstrate his attack. Back to Sota, after Mamika has left, Magane bumps into Sota and pretty much is toying with him using her previous spying as leverage against him. Mamika and Alicetaria then shares a tender moment with each other, clearly Mamika loves the world they were brought in and grows fonder of it. With this in mind, Mamika then decides to confront Altair directly, trying to change her destructive motives in light of all the events that have happened since coming into this world. 7/10 – although there was quite some filler at the start, I felt the ending scene of Mamika confronting Altair was very well done.

Quite a bit happened in this episode. In typical magical girl style, Mamika continues to intervene with her own attacks and threatens to use her powerful Magical Splash Flare attack even against Alicetaria.. But the fight still continues into the night, and Yuya joins the fray who attacks both Alicetaria and the new creation with the gun… in the midst of the fray, Selesia and Meteora try to get Magane to follow them but she refuses. Reluctantly, Selesia and Meteora are forced to intervene too to stop the fighting, leaving Magane to her own devices. Rui then appears in Gigas Machina… and this FINALLY de-escalates the situation, prompting all the attackers to flee. Kuronagimaru is bonding with Rui in the government office – best friends in the making? Meanwhile, Magane has already tracked down her creator and killed him in an attempt to change the plot of her character, which doesn’t work so she leaves… Selesia and Meteora later find the creator but it’s too late. Back in the office, Sota has discovered the identity of the creation with the gun – Blitz Talker, a mercenary from the Code Babylon franchise. On the way home, Sota meets Mamika on the train, and later at a café… SOMEHOW Magane happened to be at the same train station (what are the chances?) and tails them both at a distance. When Mamika questions Sota if she knows the woman in the military uniform, he confirms it – her name is Altair, and he thinks she hates the world. 5/10 – ehhh... I thought this was an alright episode, but to me it bothers me and it just seems TOO convenient that Magane was able to tail Sota and Mamika right at that moment.

The strategy has now changed. Now that Sota and co. have the support of government resources behind them they decide to focus on proactively finding the creations before the mysterious woman in the military uniform does. Oh and Selesia has a mobile phone now and really likes it. Meanwhile, Mamika and Alicetaria continue to share bonding time. It seems getting Alicetaria to smile is a struggle, but Mamika seems to do it with little difficulty! The next day, a new female creation character, Magane is introduced that appears in a bookshop. Accused of stealing she manages to use her ability to twist a lie into a deadly attack, thus slaughtering the shopkeeper. I feel out of the blue, things have really taken a violent and gorey direction at this point… In any case, Meteora and Selesia take the lead in playing detective. Mamika then bumps into Magane to try and recruit her but fails when Alicetaria rightfully gets bad vibes from Magane. A major showdown occurs and escalates when Meteora and Selesia track Magane down, with Selesia intervening by blocking Alicetaria's attack. As Mamika watches helplessly in the distance, ANOTHER new creation character appears with a gun and attacks Meteora, eventually overpowering her. Mamika then eventually musters up her courage to intervene too by protecting Meteora. 6/10 – though we get to see Alicetaria’s awe-inspiring attacks, I found it bizarre and a little jarring that so much dialogue was slipped in despite there being a showdown and confrontation between so many characters!

This episode focuses on the new character Rui Kanoya. He along with Gigas Machina appeared when his creator was watching an anime. Sota, Selsia and Meteora brings him up to speed with the situation. I personally feel at this point the explanations are starting to get a little tiring now whenever a new character is introduced into this world, even when they become awe-struck or surprised. In either case, Rui does not take too kindly to the situation and storms off, seemingly frustrated that he hasn’t been able to date the heroine in his world. Selesia offers to go on a date with Rui if he stays but Rui rejects her, stating her prefers to date women younger than him… Selesia does not take too kindly with that remark. Suddenly the lights go out and military forces storm the building, prompting Selesia, Meteora and Rui to take defensive action. And the situation escalates when Rui activates Gigas Machina. Thankfully, cool-headed Meteora de-escalates the situation by getting Rui to deactivate it and getting everyone to surrender. So now Sota and co. are taken into government custody under a secret task force that is dealing with all the paranormal creator events that have occurred up to this point. A lot of lengthy explanations between the government and Sota’s crew then ensues. Back home, as the episode ends, Sota can’t help but shake off his feeling he knows the mysterious woman in the military uniform. And he discovers a forum discussion topic that links to a video entitled World Etude. 6/10 – I felt the episode had its interesting moments but the dialogue is starting to get repetitive, especially when they reached the government’s office.

Not much happened in this episode… so Meteora and Marine (Selesia’s illustrator) are at Titan Digital, the publisher that Meteora was hoping to meet her creator at… but it turns out the creator had died in an accident. With this new development, Meteora decides to go to an Internet café to play her own game and learn more about herself and the world. …she beats it in one day and reflects on the experience. In short, she found it very fun. Meanwhile, the mysterious woman in the military uniform discusses her motives with Alicetaria. Then Mamika and Alicetaria share some “special” bonding time, chatting, and eating Mamika branded food together … Oh and ANOTHER new character with his creator is introduced at the end - Rui Kanoya, a mecha pilot, along with his giant Gigas Machina… from Monomagia. 6/10 – even though not much happened, Mamika was adorable.

I have made some major adjustments to the Anime Episode Discussion section. When browsing the section: The columns have been adjusted to allow more thumbnails The preview text has been hidden Also, to help tie the episode threads together, I will be adding a bar for titles that have at least a few episode threads. This will allow you to jump between episode threads, the anime page (to view the plot and write reviews) as well as the general discussion thread. Some examples of it in action so far: Re:Creators Attack on Titan Season 2 (try jumping between episodes and the general discussion using the bar!) It's a work in progress, and I'm still creating episode discussion threads for the previous season (I'm a little behind). Please feel free to start episode discussion threads of your own and I will also link them together in this way. The end goal is to do this for all anime titles going forward to make it much easier to navigate and boost anime episode discussion.

This episode starts on a dramatic note! Yuya Mirokuji has barely finished introducing himself in a badass way when suddenly ANOTHER new character appears on horseback: Alicetaria. She promptly snatches Mamika to safety and leave. The four share a meal and before leaving, Yuya provides insight on the mysterious woman and discuss ehm… the potential of the creators to impact their powers and speculalate on why they were even chosen to appear in this world in the first place. Not too much seems to happen after that – Selesias’s illustrator is introduced into the mix, and really LOVES seeing how awesome Selesia’s outfit is for real... Meteora is bemused by the bickering between Selesia and her creator, throwing in snide remarks here and there. ... Umm, they continue to relax... with a sunset scene, drinking coffee and discussing life in general? (was this scene really necessary?) … Oh and Meteora decides to test her theory on enhancing Selesia’s powers through the creators by trying to realise a new design for Selesia – which doesn’t seem to work yet… It’s at this point a networking opportunity presents itself, Meteora can meet her creator through a publisher under the guise of a tour. We are then left with a closing scene of the mysterious woman, talking to someone (Setsuna) at the sky, mentioning she will always be her ally. Mamika watches in the distance. 5/10 – for what I felt was rather slow pacing with a tad too much talking, but it still had some interesting moments.

Despite the very long delay from Season 1, overall I was really impressed with Attack on Titan S2. Will certainly post my thoughts per episode in the coming days... I do have a question as I haven't read the manga, only seen the anime. Many of the episodes in S2 started with the present, then jump back into a flashback or a few hours earlier. I personally found this a little jarring - did the manga do this style too?

After all the initial chaos, Selesia and Meteora decide to be friends with Sota and hang out with each other to learn more about this new world they’re in! Much of the episode revolves around the trio learning they are fictional characters and exploring the world. They finally decide on trying to find their creators. And so Selesia manages to meet her creator. But then at the meeting place ANOTHER new character appears – magical girl Mamika. She appears to be on the side of the mysterious woman in the military uniform and so a showdown occurs, causing more destruction… [MEDIA=gfycat]height=361;id=SoreMiserlyBunny;width=640[/MEDIA] In a rather amusing way, Mamika is extremely remorseful for wounding Selesia despite having attacks that cause massive explosions in typical magical girl style. And ANOTHER new character is introduced at the end… Yuya Mirokuji. 6/10 – for being a fun episode, though felt a bit all over the place.