Review of Sagrada Reset

"I like hearing wind chimes when I least expected it. Like finding a rainbow." Sakurada Reset; episode 3 "Please, Tomoki. It's like a ritual...like exchanging rings becasue you pledge your everlasting love to God." Sakurada Reset; episode 16 "Thank you, I wouldn't want the ice cream to melt." Sakurada Reset; episode 18 "Grab her by the p*ssy" Sakurada Reset; episode 25 Sakurada Reset is an anime that grabbed my attention months before it started airing. The story's main gimmick- the reset ability- is an interesting concept that has been explored well in literature and other anime but with this anime promising a young duo using clever tactics and witin conjunction with the reset ability, it looked to be an actually good addition to a string of otherwise bad thriller anime that have been pervading the last few years. It was very unfortunate, then that I carelessly ignored checking up on the staff on this anime. And I paid for it.

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE ANIME

Sakurada Reset is a flat, shallow, farcical anime that whole-heartedly thinks its a serious show. It's a tragic example of a good idea done completely wrong. Sakurada Reset's problems go way beyond simple bad writing and bad direction- it's a mix of so many terribly done aspects that it's actually possible they have no connection to each other. In other words, everything is individually bad and not because one part of the anime affects the other. It's an additively, not multipely, bad anime. This makes it more annoying than normal bad anime since those at least have things tied together to the point one bad thing affects everything.

First off, the characters. All the characters are boringly written with very little to actually develop them. Their dialogue is bad (more on that in a latter paragraph) and all of them except the main characters merely exist as plot conveniences whenever the main character needs a handy ability around. The main character himself- Asai Kei- is an omniscient and omnipotent God who simply cannot lose because he's always right. Not my words, mind you, the other characters all treat him like he's the Messiah coming down from heaven in a wave of majesty. He's incomprehensible. His entire backstory is incomprehensible. The other characters are just bland as heck. Most of them are introduced in small arcs in the 2nd act (eps 3-12) of the anime and all of them suck. The arc has them play as minor villains who, in the end, become allies for the main character in the final arc of the show. Damn this anime make them incomprehensible. I'll try and explain the main arcs in order.

The first arc had the character- Murase Youka- have a terrible excuse in that she wanted to save a cat and you can clearly see the anime pad out the runtime with pointless dialogue and events that make no sense. But its climax was where she literally tried to kill Kei. She has literally zero reason to kill him but the anime was written to have her be crazy and stupid enough to do so. Not one character talked any sense during this confrontation or even before. In the end, she just pisses off until she is needed again by the show. Next arc we have Oka Eri as our Scooby Doo villain of the week. She's a character who for some reason holds antagonistic feelings towards our hero and wants to "beat" him. That would be great if the anime actually showed us any motivation for her. It's offhandedly explained in some throwaway dialogue but this girl has no reason to be as bitchy as she is. The arc also has her do F*CKING NOTHING at all. Seriously, she just shows up, bitches about things, and pisses off to wait until the anime needs her again. Also in this arc there's something about a Witch and shit which I'm sure is important but was so boringly done I forgot most of it. Oh yes we are also introduced to some bloke who can transfer abilities from one to another through touch. He'll be a super important bland character later. Oh yeah, we also have WhatsApp guy. I mean Tomoki. He's a friend. I think. The anime doesn't exactly show him unless it needs him. Funny...I'm seeing a trend here...

Anyways, the main problem with all these characters is that they're just so boring. The main characters (Kei and Misora) have the exact personality of an unpainted brick wall. I don't get how anyone can get behind their relationship because, unique as it is in anime, it's a very poorly handled relationship. There's a fair bit of emotional scenes in this anime and all of them fail due to the fact that these are badly written characters. Much of the development is rushed (ironically in such a slow show) and ham-fisted and the emotional scenes get in the way of much of the show instead of weaving itself closely. This is done much better in the final act of the show where I could see the anime sort of trying to give proper development but its let down by bad pacing and direction.

The only character I was even half impressed with was Souma Sumire- the only character to carry this show from "unrelentingly horrendous" to simply being "really terrible". She's a walking plot device. Not kidding, she even describes herself as such. She is, however, the only character with even half-reasonable motivations and explanations for what she does. She has an actual interesting character arc and sees more development than all other characters combined. She's also the only character we see being subtle in her methods and you can see faint threads throughout the story that she leaves behind- meaning she has a genuine presence within the show (for example, setting up the McGuffin so that Kei can meet up with Youko. I think that was one of the reasons. Though it still doesn't give any reason for Youko to be so bitchy about things). Helped A LOT that she was voiced by a top form Aoi Yuuki who puts everyone else to shame (not too difficult though since they're all as engaging and relatable as sandpaper). All other characters in this show do not matter. They're all plot conveniences used by the main character to look smart and show his omniscience.

Then finally, we have our villain- introduced in the second half of the show and wants to erase all abilities from Sakurada town. He's a villain so bad he puts the villains from ERASED, Chaos;Head and Guilty Crown to shame. I literally know nothing about him. The anime does such a poor job of building him up as a character and thinks flashbacks and sinister smiles are enough to make him imposing in any way. The anime tries so hard to tell you he's a smart guy with an excellent plan that they fail to actually show him being smart and doing excellent things. All he really does is get driven around in a badly rendered CG car, writing notes and talking about how angsty his childhood was. The anime does a sloppy job giving him any motivation to why he wants to erase abilities from Sakurada. This creates a problem in the main conflict of the show. There's supposed to be this grand conflict of ideologies in this show about how Kei wants to keep abilities (also very poorly shown) and direclty opposes bad guy's desire to erase abilities. For all the anime trying to sound smart it doesn't give us anything tangible as to why we should support any of these characters. The themes that run through the arcs are poorly carried over and lost in the bad dialogue near the end of the show. This anime has very little to offer in challenging the viewer's views as it can't even present the opposing viewpoints of the characters very well. Also, the 2 side goons of the main villain have no personality at all. But that's not surprising.

The story is about as incomprehensible as the characters. It's mostly all over the place with numerous plot holes that pop up whenever a character opens their mouth to explain something (which is frequent).The show also tries to do these really "clever" twist showing Kei's intelligence but these twist are shown in such an infuriating way its impossible to take seriously. The anime gives us so little information up until the twist that when it does come we're just left standing confused at what is going on. This mostly happens near the end of the show when they're wrapping things up but a good example would be in the penultimate episode with the bad guy in the car talking with Kei (btw episode 23 is one of the worse episodes of the show which says something). It's revealed that KEI ACTUALLY HAD A TALK WITH THIS GUY IN THE OTHER TIMELINE WHEN THERE WERE NO ABILITIES. What a cop-out. We got shown none of this nor was anything done to allude to the possibility that this happened, Kei just kind of says "Yeah. So I got you to talk in that timeline. Now I know everything because I'm the main character.". Not all the twist are as badly done as that but it definitely contributes to the overall incomprehensibility of the story. If you want more details of plot holes from Sakurada Reset pm me and I'll find some (its such a bad anime I have to research into why it is so bad). For the most part the story is only about as bad as the characters get though due to much of it being people sitting around talking about stuff.

Now we go on to the crux of this show's problem. Every problem this show has traces back to one thing- the dialogue. The dialogue in this anime would make M Night Shayamalan proud. Its terrible. I can't begin to describe how badly written the dialogue is. It's like it was written by a robot who doesn't know how normal human interactions are like. This makes the writing feel mechanical. Too flowing. Too unnatural. The show is pervaded by this kind of dialogue. Every character, with no exception, speaks in parables, Aesops, thought experiments or metaphors. I thought it was only the 2 main characters but no its everyone. There's so many examples I could show you but I'll take one from near the end of the show. Kei goes back to where he was born and raised and meets his mother who has had her memories rewritten so Kei can stay in Sakurada. A simple dialogue between a mother and her son whom she has forgotten about should be an emotional gripper with subtlety. But no. They speak like robots. The dialogue is so unfitting of the real emotional music played around it its jarring. This is an extreme example of where the dialogue messes up but this ENTIRE SHOW has dialogue like it. The quotes in the beginning of this review are mere dabs of taste of what this show actually does. I watched it subbed like everyone but I know a fair bit of Japanese so I can safely say the subs are actually less silly than what the poor voice actors had to say at some parts. It ruins every interaction, makes everyone bland and shows how little the main characters develop (even in the personal monologue scenes.). It's dialogue that doesn't make them sound anything human. I know the point of the show is to show how detached many of the characters are but when everyone speaks like Shakespeare all the time its unnerving. It boggles my mind to think how anyone could approve of this sort of writing. The director and writer must have both agreed to have dialogue like this to be in the anime. You honestly have to watch the show to hear some of the dialogue that is being said. Its the main reason the story and characters are incomprehensible. They cannot express themselves naturally. The show has obviously done this to sound more mature but it only serves to disengage and confuse the viewer. I stress with no small experience that Sakurada Reset has the absolute worse dialogue I have ever seen in anime. Some of it is self-destructive to the story. Much of it is pointless. And all of it is brain-melting. I repeat THE DIALOGUE SUCKS.

The last thing in this review is something that is not as bad as the dialogue but much more annoying- the direction and art and animation. The director isn't particularly well known but has directed stuff like Non non boyori and Kokoro Connect. Sakurada Reset has a slow pacing with many stills like those anime but its so...boring. Nothing of interest happens in the shots, the lighting is undramatic for much of the show, the shot composition and angles are bland and uninspired and there is no subtle changes in things like character expressions or body language. It really is just people standing around and talking to a flat, level, mid-shot camera position. Its one of the most boring directed anime I've watched. Art direction is also flat with the aforementioned lighting but also has crappy colour design, bland backgrounds, unexpressive character designs (except Souma Sumire and maybe even Chiruchiru), REALLY BAD CGI and a general blandness in the settings. There's such and overuse of white and light colours in the show that SJWs might protest it. So many scenes could have been directed better and therefore made better. There's a scene in episode 16 where the show has very real potential to build up on a romantic relationship between Kei and Misora where Kei ask Misora in a message to meet him on the roof. The scene was directed blandly with unnecessary cuts of Misora WALKING to the roof. It would be far more effective to simply focus on Misora herself with some slight change in expression and body language to just display some of her thoughts and inner turmoil (its episode 16, she should be at least somewhat developed by now) and have the camera linger on her from a high angle show framing her in the bottom right or left. But no. I guess walking is more important to show.

Other problems I have with this show...They almost ruined KanaHana's and Ishikawa Kaito's careers by forcing them to do bland deliveries of bad dialogue. The anime has terrible sense of time and location. In one instance a month had passed from the beginning of an episode but it really felt like a few days at most. The Bureau is a rubbish organisation on par with the Orbital Knights from Aldnoah Zero and Daath from Guilty Crown. The other characters I didn't mention like Ukawa and the teacher being completely stupid and changing motivations on a dime for reasons I fail to understand. The abilities being poorly explained or shown in general with few exceptions and the fact that the only actual abilities being shown are only shown to become tools for the main character to use (Except for the ghost girl thing. That was entire pointless and will take a team of scientist at least 5 years to understand why the writers even included it). The anime looks rubbish even though its the same studio that made Jojo. Things I liked? Ehhhhhh the music was pretty?

Sakurada Reset is an anime that had suckers falling for it with its supposed intelligence. What it really is is Kami sama no memochou except that it sucks. The characters are so badly written and bland its difficult to see any meaningful development. They're so unexpressive it makes me cry. If you want to see a show that is actually smart with clever dialogue and narrative twist as well as being well directed and beautiful to look at, watch Kino's Journey. If you want a show that does a mystery thriller better, Gosick is your answer. The Raildex series are infinitely superiour in terms of a place with abilities and using abilities to save people (as well as being a much better in-depth character piece). All in all, avoid watching this show and if you have watched it for fun and not for academics like me, I feel so bad for you since there's just so much better stuff out there.