UQ Holder Episode 7: The Girl Who Cries Incompetent

Posted on by Karandi
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Review:

This week we learn about Kirie and her particular brand of immortality (though I’m going to call this one a cheat because she isn’t immortal – she’s just able to avoid death through time travel, though I wonder if she’s actually as young as she looks or if there is something else going on). Anyway, we learn about a guy named Fate something-or-other and that he is after Tota so after many resets Kirie manages to convince Tota to follow her plan and they all get ready to capture Fate. And it goes about as well as expected even though we haven’t actually seen the outcome yet it is more or less a given that this is all going to go to hell very quickly.

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Tota is an idiot. That has been clearly and repeatedly established, though he’s the kind of idiot that isn’t overly annoying so we’ll just move on. There is however a clear difference between being an idiot and being incompetent and if you ask me the label of incompetent belongs to the time traveller who gets herself killed nine times before she even manages to execute a plan, and to be honest the plan is pretty rubbish even before we find out why it isn’t going to work. It was never going to work.

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So basically this episode is set up and laying ground work for a fight that may or may not be over quickly next week. My money is may not because as much as it looks like Tota and the group should be toast, they’ll probably surprise us with some resistance and maybe they’ll even get to run away. I’m betting on them getting a severe beating and Tota being taken though. Better plot progression if that happens.

The question then becomes why on earth would anyone want to kidnap Tota. The guy is an idiot. An immortal, part vampire, possessing some bizarre power… but still an idiot.

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Sagrada Reset Episodes 15 + 16: Why is there no restore power?

Posted on by Karandi
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Review Episode 15:

I’m going to get this out of my system first: Why didn’t Misora tell Kei what she learned in the dream world? He reset it out of existence and because he didn’t know about it, it’s gone except for Soma’s malicious comment at the end. She may not have trying for malice, but telling someone they erased a crucial character development point from the girl they just admitted to liking is malicious no matter how you want to spin it.

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Okay, this episode ends the whole dream world story though to be honest the resolution was pretty much believe in yourself and reach out to friends or whatever and even the show itself didn’t really seem to care in the end about what happened to Michiru so I doubt we’re supposed to either. It really feels like this whole arc was just an excuse to get all the other players into place.

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This show is still incredibly slow even when it packs that much information into an episode the pace of events feel like they are crawling, but I kind of need to know what Soma is up to, so next episode here we go.

Review Episode 16:

This episode starts a new story arc and I must say this one has started in a pretty interesting manner. Then again, this show has never had a problem with intriguing ideas, it is more delivery and characterisation that it falls flat in.

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Soma is playing a fairly dangerous game by the looks of it and she’s most definitely dragging Kei (and by default, Misora) into the mess. From a relationship side, Kei finally actually spoke to Misora and made sure she saved after that point so for once he won’t reset their relationship progress out of existence. That’s a step forward. Too bad it took 16 episodes to get there.

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Okay, I am going to finish this show. I was thinking of dropping it now the new season had started but I can’t help it. I’m curious and want to know how this ends.

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Sagrada Reset Episode 13

Posted on by Karandi
sagrada13b

Review:

Sagrada Reset continues to be a frustrating and yet intriguing watch. Once again, the delivery is pretty dull as characters have stilted and vaguely robotic conversations that don’t quite get around to telling us anything but sound like the should have a point.

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Still, the introduction of a power that actually writes a perfect script including resets and predictions kind of makes the whole witch thing completely pointless so I have to wonder where they are going with this. And clearly that is the plan with this show. Just enough intrigue to prevent anyone from actually cutting ties with it even while failing to be a satisfying viewing experience.

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That said, I kind of hope the guy from the bureau attempts to take Asai Kei out because that would be kind of entertaining.

Looks like my own sense of curiosity is dooming me to continue watching this one into the Summer season.

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Sagrada Reset Episode 3

Posted on by Karandi
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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.

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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.

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