Sagrada Reset Episode 3

Review:

Little bit long this time for a single episode review this time.

Despite the ongoing question of whether everyone in this show is actually a robot, episode 3 has finally managed to move this show from ‘interesting concept but what are you doing’ to ‘okay, show me more I’m really quite intrigued’. In a previous episode Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics were used to make an interesting point and now now we have a fairly ongoing MacGuffin around the character figuring out why someone asked him if he knew what a MacGuffin was.

Self-aware comedies annoy me, I admit that openly. However this show is aware its characters are portrayed in a robotic manner and deliberately raised the issue that one of them might be an android and continued that line of thought with Asimov’s three laws. This week we have a clear MacGuffin thrown at our protagonists in the form of ‘save the cat’ and the characters are discussing what a MacGuffin is and how it works in stories.

The clear self-aware and slightly pretentious vein running through this story would annoy me if this were a comedy, and yet in this context, is working remarkably well. Because the story without this commentary on their own use of plot devices and references, and without the potentially multi-layered interpretations these have created, Sagrada Reset would be pretty much a nothing show. In fact it would be a dull show where little to nothing ever happened. With these devices in place it remains slightly pretentious though it just might live up to that if it can bring all of these ideas together into something that resembles an actual cohesive theme by the end of the season and might even be kind of brilliant in its own self-aware way.

Otherwise, we’re going to have a mess of ideas and references that will entertain me enough to keep me watching but at the end of the season will make this show unrecommendable.

Despite all that, this episode introduces a number of possibilities both in regards to the resets and to the purpose of the Bureau. The thing is, despite being obvious and heavy handed in some areas, Sagrada really does play the important information close to the chest and there are too many possible theories that would actually fit the information we’ve been given at this point. The obvious would be that the Bureau is trying to see if it can use the Resets for some nefarious plan of its own and sent cat-girl with the request to Kei having set the whole thing up in advance given he clearly reports when they have a save point to the Bureau guy and everything that is happening at the moment is just a field test. That conclusion is supported by the teacher telling Kei not to Reset until the maximum time had passed, implying he knew that an occasion for a Reset was going to come up despite the fact that they theoretically were on a new timeline.

While that fits most of the clues it doesn’t explain the hole in the wall that appeared after the first Reset and loose ends tend to irk me when I’m theorising but I just don’t think I’ve got enough pieces yet to see what the picture is that I’m constructing.

Even if this show ends up tanking, this episode got me really thinking and wanting to sit and pull it apart and put it back together so Sagrada is kind of a keeper for the season at this point.

Sagrada Reset is available on AnimeLab.

Are you a fan of 100WordAnime.blog?

If you like this site and you like what I do, consider becoming a patron.

Thanks,

Karandi James.