Re:CREATORS – Episode 8 [I CHOSE This Way of Life]

At the meeting hosted by Masaaki, he reveals Altair’s identity as a secondary creation, meaning she’s based on another character but retains none of the original’s traits, personality, etc. In this case the character Altair was inspired by the character Shirotsumekusa from a social game called Eternal Wars Megalosphere. Meteora theorizes that the creation of Altair is what caused her world and the world of Shirotsumekusa to seperate (since both characters shared the world of Megalosphere), allowing Altair to gain sentience and awareness, and her own unique world in the process.

Kikuchihara has brought the Yuuya and Blitz’s creators to the meeting. Yuuya’s creator in particular seems doubtful of recent events and thinks that Yuuya is merely a cosplayer, so Yuuya actives one of his abilities to prove his identity.

After the meeting is over, Souta meets up with Meteora intending to tell her that he knows who Altair and her creator are. However Meteora beats him to the punch and says that they know who Altair is plus the name of Altair’s creator, absolving Souta of that guilt. However something’s still eating at him and Meteora can tell. She gently coaxes him to tell more of what’s bothering him, and Souta vaguely describes what seems to have happened between him and Setsuna. Meteora tells Souta that it’s ok to be jealous and envious of others, but it’s harmful to pretend that those emotions don’t exist. If one does, then the negativity will build up in that person’s heart and lead to pain against others, and this can lead to a negative cycle that must be changed. In the end, Souta still does not reveal that he knew Setsuna.

Later when he’s walking through the city alone, Souta bumps into Magane, who reveals that she’s been following Souta and has picked up on enough of his conversations and body language to know that he’s hiding something. Souta is understandably freaked out by her revelation, and is basically blackmailed by Magane. She exchanges phone numbers with Souta, telling him she’ll message him later.

Elsewhere in the city Mamika and Aliceteria meet atop a skyscraper. They look out over the city, but see very different things. Predictably, Mamika thinks the world of humans is beautiful but difficult, yet she likes it very much. On the other hand Aliceteria hates the world of the gods because she feels that everyone is too tired and no one has any honor. Mamika says that she’s glad she was created, and confesses that she likes Aliceteria, even going so far as to hold her hand. Now one gets the impression that Mamika might be saying goodbye…

Which is certainly feasible when we see that Mamika has gone to see Altair. Mamika accuses Altair of hiding information from her, and says that disturbing the world of the gods will only increase the distortion in the worlds of the creations which have some to the human world.

However, in a move that I honestly wasn’t expecting, Altair doesn’t hesitate to turn on Mamika and stab her with many swords. Altair hates humans because of how they treated her “ally” Setsuna, and how they ostracized her and caused her pain. Altair wants to destroy the human world because of how Setsuna was treated, full stop. She will hurt everyone and destroy everything until there is nothing left, and she will not hesitate to hurt those who stand in her way. This includes Mamika.

Moments before Altair moves to impale Mamika with even more swords, Mamika activates her Magical Splash Flare attack; the abandoned dome where Altair had been hiding detonates in a massive explosion of pink light.

My thoughts: Wow, this episode really shed some light on what happened to the relationship between Souta and Setsuna. I’m going to guess that they were friends, but Setsuna’s art skills surpassed Souta’s and he got jealous, so he withdrew from her life. At some point Setsuna created Altair as a character based on the pretty Shirotsumekusa, and got a lot of flack on it online. People said she was ripping off the original, that she had no talent, etc. With everything that was happening to her she felt like she had no support, and she killed herself.

As a result, Souta feels horribly guilty for how he treated Setsuna. As he told Meteora indirectly, he wants to be forgiven. It’s too late to get Setsuna’s forgiveness, unless Altair gives it by proxy, but hopefully through his actions in dealing with this whole creation mess he can try to redeem himself somehow. Time will tell if Altair will be able to forgive Souta for what he did to Setsuna.

I also suspect that this guilt is part of the reason why Souta has been unable to make art: whenever he tries, he feels like he has no talent (remembering how Setsuna’s artistic abilities surpassed his), and then feels incredibly guilty for shutting her out and making her feel bad, and maybe even feeling like he contributed to her suicide. Ugh. No wonder he’s had such a blockage with his art.

Was this episode… did we see the start of two new ships? (Meteora x Souta & Mamika x Aliceteria)  Or am I reading into their respective friendships too much?

The cliffhanger in this episode was fucking awesome, and I really hope Mamika isn’t dead. I’ll be sad if she’s killed off this early in the show. I’m sure Aliceteria would be too. ;D