Sagrada Reset - Final Thoughts

[Dave Baranyi]

“Sagrada Reset” was a 24-part anime adaptation of a series of fantasy novels about a town called Sagrada in Japan where many of the residents have strange and different powers – some trivial, some god-like. The story is told from the point of view of Kei Asai, who has the power to remember everything, even if time is reset. And there is a person in Sagrada who can reset time - Haruki Misora. Kei befriends Haruki and convinces her to aid him in his plan to “help” everyone in Sagrada.

This was a very deliberately strangely done anime. In many ways it felt like a Wes Anderson film, particularly in its characters and their behaviours. The characters talk a lot to each other about various philosophies of life. Ideas such as Donald Davidson's “Swampman” thought experiment and others come into their discussions. None of the major characters come over as being “normal” due to their manners of speaking, but I had the impression that this was done deliberately in order to indicate how people might develop their personalities if they had and were aware of having extraordinary abilities.

To a good extent this was a very ambitious anime project. It attempted to show how super powers might be integrated into a contemporary society without resorting to simplistic “good versus evil” conflict. One result is that the ending is rather ambiguous – the viewer doesn't really know if “good” prevailed or not, but again, maybe that was the intention.

With all this, the anime was a bit of a chore to go through and at times was a bit tedious as the characters presented a lot of arguments to one another every episode. But it was intriguing to see if the creators of the series could pull everything together by the end, and to a good extent they did. So while I can't unequivocally recommend “Sagrada Reset” and I wouldn't watch it again, I ended up rating it a “B” for ambition as much as anything else.

Dave Baranyi

[Chris Buckley]

Post by Dave Baranyi
“Sagrada Reset” was a 24-part anime adaptation of a series of fantasy novels about a town called Sagrada in Japan where many of the residents have strange and different powers – some trivial, some god-like. The story is told from the point of view of Kei Asai, who has the power to remember everything, even if time is reset. And there is a person in Sagrada who can reset time - Haruki Misora. Kei befriends Haruki and convinces her to aid him in his plan to “help” everyone in Sagrada.
This was a very deliberately strangely done anime. In many ways it felt like a Wes Anderson film, particularly in its characters and their behaviours. The characters talk a lot to each other about various philosophies of life. Ideas such as Donald Davidson's “Swampman” thought experiment and others come into their discussions. None of the major characters come over as being “normal” due to their manners of speaking, but I had the impression that this was done deliberately in order to indicate how people might develop their personalities if they had and were aware of having extraordinary abilities.
To a good extent this was a very ambitious anime project. It attempted to show how super powers might be integrated into a contemporary society without resorting to simplistic “good versus evil” conflict. One result is that the ending is rather ambiguous – the viewer doesn't really know if “good” prevailed or not, but again, maybe that was the intention.
With all this, the anime was a bit of a chore to go through and at times was a bit tedious as the characters presented a lot of arguments to one another every episode. But it was intriguing to see if the creators of the series could pull everything together by the end, and to a good extent they did. So while I can't unequivocally recommend “Sagrada Reset” and I wouldn't watch it again, I ended up rating it a “B” for ambition as much as anything else.
Dave Baranyi

I enjoyed _Sagrada Reset_. It was thought-provoking, both for its complex
plot and for the philosophical debates throughout. It was not an exciting
anime with exciting characters; it was often boring, and unless you want to
spend time thinking about the raised issues, it would be tough to keep on
watching it.

The ideas and execution are worth me watching it again, but I probably
won't; I object to the main character, Kei, too much. He's too
perfect and too confident, and I object to his answer of setting
himself up as a benevolent dictator. If the point of view of the
anime were changed, it would not be too difficult to paint Kei as the
villain of the series. The intellectual debate between Kei and Urachi
(the actual antagonist trying to get rid of all abilities) was not
convincing and was "solved" by examining Urachi's emotional
justification for his actions rather than really pushing the argument
that abilities are too dangerous without having a single dictator in
charge, and that having a dictator may work short-term, but there's
too much power involved for it to work long-term.

I was also uneasy about the romantic relationship between Kei and Haruki (the
girl with the reset ability). I thought her character development was good,
but I couldn't see any change in Kei's thoughts of her as she completely
changed herself. He was the dictator of the relationship from the beginning.

It was interesting, but I think I can give it only a high 7 on my 10 point
scale.

Chris