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「渦巻く陰謀 獅竜 、共闘」 (Uzumaku inbou)
“Swirling Conspiracy”
Well I guess now is when the pedal starts hitting the metal. With the central mystery well established and the love triangles blooming in all their melodramatic glory, SnS has apparently decided to throw some suspense into that bubbling mix by invoking the tried and true methods of tragic betrayals and distressed damsels. We’re still no closer to figuring out several key questions dancing around in plain sight (Elicia I’m looking at you), but hey, it’s epic showdown time—what more could you possibly need?
While arguably annoying how Takanori and Haruto wound up pulling a draw in their “fight” (not like it would end any other way mind you), the hilarious white knighting between both easily made up the difference. I’m not sure whether it’s experience, but committing to staying with a girl 24/7 because obsession love and smiles? Yeah it doesn’t work like that, especially when those good chivalric Takanori intentions runs hard counter to what Asahi is after. Not to say Haruto is much better of course with his well vocalized commitment to protecting the smile (and admittedly it’s a pretty cute smile), but I give him some kudos for at least not outright kidnapping the love of his life—as you know that can obviously be easily explained away! If Satsuki is determined to get with the hero of the moment she better get a move on it, because when it turns out Asahi actually likes Nozomi over the boys and prefers the more pure, wholesome love life, Haruto isn’t going to be in any mental state for a while to indulge in new romantic interests. Don’t deny, you know you want the yuri ending too.
Further movement on these romantic developments though will likely take a backseat to the more immediate issue of Asahi herself. Quite a few interesting tidbits were dropped regarding her this week, from Asahi’s current state of physical existence being unknown to everyone shown so far (if Takanori’s talk can be believed) to Asahi’s Sense ability confirmed being what everyone is after (suggesting the potential to separate the ability from the user), and even certain guilds supposedly having direct communication to the upper echelons of Re’Union’s corporate overseers. As these points reinforce previous learning it could be that, as discussed last time, Asahi’s Sense and the promise of real world rewards are nothing more than bait to get Re’Union players into helping find a way to wake her up, but another option is Asahi’s Sense being the true goal. Predicting the future is quite useful after all, doubly so if you found a way to make it work in real life. Could it be the true purpose of Asahi’s current state is to find a way to awaken Senses outside of the game? Anyone’s guess at this point, but the nagging issue of one girl helping Haruto try and protect Asahi at all costs (among other weird oddities) certainly suggests something sinister and nefarious at work.
I imagine we will find out a bit more of the truth once our star of the moment beats his way through to Asahi and the guild duo hiding more than they’re currently letting on.
Preview
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12 eps confirmed for Shichisei.
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/daily-briefs/2018-08-02/seven-senses-of-the-reunion-anime-listed-with-12-episodes/.134988
Not surprised. Source is ongoing anyway and my rough guess is that it will probably end around them knowing Asahi is really alive, only confined and that the only way to take her back is become execs in the company that published the reunion vrmmo.
It’s definitely going to be a cliffhanger along that angle, but one never knows. Entirely possible for example Asahi does get rescued this season and the ending revolves around something more damning than one girl being trapped in a game. We’ll have to wait and see.
Heh too late for takanori to realize he is a one big fool in thinking he can protect asahi alone with his fail guild. He is so annoying with him repeating the “my divine sense told me” again and again that I eant to shoot him down. Well i guess haruto is the best guard for asahi after all.
https://randomc.net/image/Shichisei%20no%20Subaru/Shichisei%20no%20Subaru%20-%2005%20-%20Large%2008.jpg
I definitely don’t like Takanori. Takanori is your generic ”CuckGuy” trope who likes the girl who likes the MC in its generic MC childhood friend version who feels envy, jealousy and has a huge inferiority complex towards MC and can’t deal with fact that the girl he likes doesn’t like him, but the MC.
You don’t have to be a genius to know that Takanori is going to act like a complete bastard miserable beta asshole practically the whole show, shitting on Haruto, blaming Haruto for what happened to Asahi even knowing that Haruto is not to blame for what happened, and calling Haruto a weak even knowing that Haruto is far stronger, talented and skilled than him, and all because of his envy, jealousy and his huge inferiority complex towards Haruto and not being able to deal with the fact that Asahi doesn’t like him but Haruto.
While it’ll likely be shown later on I wouldn’t call Haruto more talented or skilled than Takanori right now. The latter has a good degree of managerial skill with leading a guild and plenty of cash for coercive tactics as evidenced by the butler a couple episodes ago. The big thing Takanori despises is that Haruto has none of this and (in Takanori’s eyes) directly caused Asahi’s death—why would any girl choose such a disaster over him and his success?
It’s why Takanori goes full beta and doubles down on the Haruto hate, he doesn’t understand it takes more than material and long lasting commitment (i.e. his six year crush) to get the girl. He fails to see the charisma Haruto possesses and the alignment of Haruto’s interests with Asahi’s (i.e. reuniting Subaru), resulting in the “just doesn’t get it” attitude which makes him into such an annoying character.
One does not simply walk into the strongest guild’s base.
And now that I think about it, Subaru members sure do care about their rings. Some would say they’re very….. precious.
I don’t know, we haven’t seen someone try and take them away just yet. That’s when I imagine we’ll discover the level of precious they actually are 😛
Pedal to the metal indeed, but I an still struggling with basics of this story it’s like math to me, I’m going to need to re-watch episode 1 – 5 again because I need answers to these questions.
Asahi: I don’t understand her purpose In the Anime besides motivating Haruto to resolve any regret(s) and move forward in life. I can defiantly see Haruto do what he is doing now in in Re;Union as what he did previously in Union.
Main Plot: Since five episodes ago, the point to this title sort of got berried deep in the mist of all the explanation of the world of Re;Union and normal life for the players.
End goal: I don’t think I have a clear picture of what Haruto, Asahi, Satski are trying to achieve and why. This also goes for Takanori.
If I were to gauge their motivations, it would be as follows: Haruto wants to deny Takanori a full life, not appear selfish, and achieve a martyrdom that requires no sacrifice. Takanori wants to own Asahi and deny her a full life. Satsuki wants to shame herself before Haruto. Asahi wants everyone to just get along and for her and Haruto to have a half-full life that the others must enjoy vicariously. Offhand, I’m not sure that any of the other characters are permitted to have motivation.
You pretty well nailed Asahi’s purpose, she largely exists just to give Haruto something to work towards. Also being the third angle in the love triangle with Satsuki, but mostly a damsel in distress at this point.
As for the main plot it’s entirely about finding a way to get Asahi out of her predicament, but you’re definitely not wrong on the show’s explanations; there is a serious lack of information on important plot points and answering the reasons for certain actions—i.e. The real reason the guilds want Asahi, how one goes about “winning” in Re’Union, and anything and everything to do with Elicia.
I’m imagining we’ll get the infodump episode later on that answers all given SnS’s light novel origins (if at all), but it certainly is annoying right now trying to figure out where this story is headed.
I think that while this show has a host of shortcomings, the fundamental one for me is that this whole Subaru thing is meaningless. And for what it’s worth, it seems pretty meaningless to its former members as well, excepting Asahi and we don’t really know why it’s driving her beyond the grave. They’re sort of pretending that Subaru was Camelot and it isn’t working.
Other similar shows, such as the two seasons of SAO, make the other world important to the characters whereas this one doesn’t try. It just has the characters occasionally mouthing things that aren’t worth even listening to. Despite that the show takes itself far too seriously.
Compounding this, it doesn’t take the characters seriously. The main characters are paper thin, and the other ‘characters’, e.g. Takanori’s lackeys, or the whole of the thousands strong guilds, aren’t even the caricatures that their masters are. As an aside, given how all these ‘characters’ are, I can’t even begin to imagine wanting to play such a game. On top of being shallow stereotypes, the characters are pretty wretched and stunted (and likely would be even if Asahi hadn’t done whatever), their actions and dialogue are juvenile and its hard to cheer for any of them. This is some impressively awful writing.
It does feel like the “game” is just being used as a way to lure in more fans of the isekai-style genre when one could just as easily have this be based around a normal school club or something with some altered circumstances (like Asahi being an actual ghost / spirit or something).
If this had been made a few years earlier, it probably would have revolved around a battle high school. A couple of years before that, maybe an alien and a camera would have been involved. This isekai stuff does seem to be the current trend though. While it is obviously part of the story, I’m not sure that it actually adds anything to it. I don’t mind the genre but I can’t help but think that this show would have been weak regardless of the setting.
The game is very much the series’ flavour, it’s just present to differentiate it from other isekai works. By itself it’s not really a problem (see .hack//Sign’s game world which lacks similar detail), but the issue as you both highlight is that there’s nothing to make up for it.
SnS wants to be a character driven show, but it’s trying to be one with cookie cutter character archetypes and a lack of secondary details for needed complexity. The guilds are probably my biggest pet peeve right now for example, they’re supposedly really important, but we don’t get much beyond their leaders and their craving to possess Asahi. This could improve (ex. next week after the battle), but it seems like half the story is currently missing—and not in the “will be revealed later” manner.
For all that’s terrible here though I’m still interested in finding out what twist the series has planned regarding Asahi, which probably is the main reason I committed to covering this. Also Takanori is hilarious to watch flounder with his holier-than-thou attitude, so that doesn’t hurt things either 😛
I think that the mystery around Asahi is really the only piece of the show that’s mildly interesting. I can see making a story around that. Alas that Asahi herself is so lacking.
As far as the game thing is concerned… It’s not that it’s a game that’s an issue. It’s that this is basically the end of the sales pitch. I’ll go back to SAO as a contrast, which is funny because I’m not the biggest fan of the show, but its premise included a game world that overlapped with reality: first with the nervegear stuff, and then with the potential consequences of playing the game. Also, the hero of the story, while certainly being easy to criticize, wasn’t apathetic and had interests outside playing the game (albeit related to the game system). And mixing it up with him during the two seasons were three heroines who in addition to having their own drama points (their family in the first two instances, and friend in the third), each had some depth (although that diminished once their respective stories were told). There’s a lot of story to potentially tell there.
But here, none of the above, and nothing really at all actually. As you point out, there is a lot of failure here regarding the characters. What do we know about any of them that would elicit more than a ‘Too bad for them’ response? So all we’re left with is a germ of an idea.