「Memory in Children 1/3」

The story of Sagrada Reset went in a completely different direction than what I anticipated after researching it for the Season Preview. In all honesty, I was probably expecting an anime closer to Hyouka but it ends up being a much more serious slice-of-life featuring two teenagers with special abilities. Asai Kei (Ishikawa Kaito) first asks about Souma Sumire (Yuuki Aoi) after she invites him to meet him on the school’s rooftop. Kei think it’s a confession, and when he does make his way up, he finds Haruki Misora (Hanazawa Kana) there instead. Apparently Sumire set Kei up with Misora because she wanted the two of them to be friends. It’s here that Misora uses her “reset” abilities to go back in time – except the catch is that Kei’s powers actually allow him to remember everything. He can recall that he’s living his life the exact same way the second time around and confronts both Sumire and Misora about it. And it’s here where he starts to learn more about Misora, her powers and how he wants to partner up with her to do good. But first – he has to gain her trust.

The story is a bit confusing to follow at first and I’ll admit that I had to rewatch the episode twice; focusing really hard on what they were saying. I blame myself for not completely being present while watching, but I also think the premiere wasn’t very captivating either. It doesn’t grasp me (even the way Alice to Zouroku did) and it felt very monotoned and calm during the entire episode. That’s probably the mood and setting that the creators are going for, but it doesn’t make for the greatest first impression. While the animation, character designs and overall imagery felt very standard, there were a lot of awkward transitions or close-ups for no apparent reason. At the same time, there’s not a whole lot of plot driving the story either so I found myself zoning out during conversations. The only point of interest came at the end when they confronted “Mari” and by then, the episode was over.

That’s not to say that it was all bad but Sagrada Reset does require more effort to sit through. It’s a shame because I was expecting great things from their source material and staff members (especially from the same director that did Kokoro Connect and episodes of Durarara!!). The light novel even has its own live-action film adaptation so the source material must have more substance than this. As a result, while I don’t think the first episode was amazing or even average by any standard, I will stick around to see if it gets better (*cross fingers and toes*). The presentation and animation (or lack thereof) is the downfall of this adaptation and it’s a shame that it couldn’t live up the hype. Not to say that it won’t get better later on, but I’ll need to readjust my expectations going into the second episode. I’d like to hear what others think of the show so far and what it could improve on. Maybe there will be more of the mystery aspect that I’d be keen on seeing.

Bottom Line – @RCCherrie: Ummmm… So #sagrada_anime ended up taking me longer than I would’ve liked to finish… Not particularly excited for #SagradaReset anymore after this premiere… but I’ll give it a few more eps before judgment.

 

ED Sequence

ED: 「トナリアウ」 (Tonari Au) by THE ORAL CIGARETTES

Preview

16 Comments

  1. Hmmm, maybe it’s just me, but I didn’t have any expectations for this anime since I didn’t even know what to expect even with Takaii’s preview of it, which is why I was rather busier asking questions about what this 1st episode had and didn’t focus on the flaws. I still don’t know what to expect, but I think I’ll stick around to find out. At least it should have some direction going forward.

  2. I was interested in the premise but this was a really bad opening episode. The characters were lifeless with monotonous expressions and voices, and there was too much exposition interlaced with philosophical bits resulting in conversations quickly going from one subject to another. The biggest plot hole is how Haruki can remember her resets and saves if she says she loses her memories whenever she does it. It just doesn’t add up.

    It’s difficult to believe that this show is from the same guys who gave us JoJo.

    ET
    1. So if we accept that Haruki “magically knows” what her power is what good is it? If everything resets things will just repeat with no change. If it doesn’t make a difference there is no difference. I also question the “reset” vs “rewind time”. Does it only happen in the town? If it does, does that mean that the town is now out of sync with the rest of the world? Even reseting everyone in the world would still leave discrepancies physically with the rest of the universe that scientists at least would see.

      The lack of emotion from the two main characters makes them seem like their on some very heavy antipsychotic drugs. Neither seem to question Souma and how she knows all of this about the two of them either. I can’t remember any anime characters that struck me as that lifeless.

      Bear
    1. Because we’re already at 4 parts of 8 and the 8th isn’t even complete in the source material. JoJo needs to rest for a bit, and David Pro needs to have more projects that aren’t JoJo.

      El Huesudo II
    2. JoJo part 4 just ended in late December, there’s usually a couple of months break before they even announce a new part. It is natural that the next JoJo should take a couple more months before it gets aired, I’m just hoping for an announcement sometimes soon. Part 5 is my favorite.

      chillyfalcon
  3. Huh. I actually really liked the episode. It’s no great shakes in the animation department, but I tend to forgive that more for shows that are more character centric. I didn’t find the dialog too inaccessible, but I was paying close attention the whole time, so maybe that was why.

    What disappointed me is that it felt like they wrote this episode as the first HALF of a premiere. Like it needed the second episode to finish showing off what the show will be like. Some anime will premiere the first 48 minutes in one go, and I think they wrote this with that in mind, then for whatever strange reason they cut it in half.

    This could be a really good thing (they’re writing with the finished product in mind, aka thinking ahead) or a really bad thing (they just don’t know how to adapt the material well). I guess only time will tell.

    StormyAngel
    1. So now that I’ve even the 2nd episode, I’m going to have to say that it was definitely the missing piece of the premiere. Mind you, the episode is similar to the first, but it provides answers where the first episode did questions. Closure where the first left it open ended. And by the end of the episode, I was pretty engaged. (That’s an understatement.)

      At the very least, I’ll say everyone should give this a two-episode viewing before writing it off.

      StormyAngel
  4. Watched this after reading this review, and I must it is rather intriguing. Can’t help but feel the irony of resetting time, but since you don’t remember resetting it, you can’t really consciously do anything to change events. Makes you wonder why she does it, and how did she found out that she has that ability?

    As for the characters, I’ve got my eye on Sumire. Did she think about the possibility of that event in the preview happening? If she did, did she take into account the possibility of resetting before getting Kei to do what he did? She seems like a nice girl, but…

    Regarding the pacing, yeah it’s slow an unassuming. I could really see people missing things if they’re distracted. Was fortunate to be able to watch without any distractions and actually noticed that fact. They’re really trying to make things slowly sink in I guess.

    theirs
  5. I’m getting The Lost Village vibes from this. Not that it’s anything like The Lost Village, that was just the general feeling i came away with. I guess I’ll give it a couple more episodes before i decide anything.

    sealouse
  6. For the record, I did almost consider dropping the series at the time but decided to stick with it. It starts out slow, but turned out to be a hidden gem later on. The scores on MAL also reflects this – it used to be 6.2-ish back then. At present, it has risen to 7.3.

    tra-

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