Sagrada Reset

Episode 9

Following last week's revelations regarding Sumire's fate and ability, this episode takes us back to the immediate aftermath of her death, letting us see how Kei coped with her death: inexpressively. At least Haruki insists that Kei is bummed out by it, in a rare interior monologue from her. He's so sad, in fact, that he's deciding to stop resetting. Of course, this means that Haruki is now literally unable to use her power, since Kei doesn't want to. So her innermost desires, as well as her self-worth, are just a reflection of her utility to Kei. I think that this is supposed to be sweet, but it's just depressing.

To recap, Sumire's death is mysterious because it marks an unexplained deviation during a reset part of the timeline. At this point in the story, Kei is the only person who should be able to make these sorts of changes, so something's up. Her death also couldn't be fixed since Kei had just turned back time for a stupid selfish reason (to dodge the consequences of having kissed Misora), and Sumire died in the unrepeatable period right after that. Now he's angsting over the ramifications of changing the future, as well as having lost his preferred lady love due to testing out a new one. Good job, bro.

This episode consists of Kei deciding that he'll keep using Haruki's ability to help people. To do this, he goes to the place where Sumire died and talks to another conveniently present lady named Sasane. Sasane chats him up, assuming that Kei is Sumire's boyfriend and planning to commit suicide too. This cheers him up for some reason. After mulling over the basic ethics of future-changing (bad stuff can happen, but if the good stuff outweighs that, it's fine) Kei decides to go back to people-saving. Haruki's Kei-centric self-esteem is repaired, and they return to business as usual.

There are also flashbacks to Sumire interspersed throughout the episode. In one of them, she tells Haruki about one of those stupid logic puzzles that she loves. It's a metaphor for the false choice between two boring, interchangeable futures, as well as a hint at her likely future-sight. Her talk about wanting to take another option makes me think that she might have killed herself to escape the burden of knowing her entire life. It looks like we'll learn more about that next week.

Overall, this was yet another boring episode about how stoically perfect our hero is. The total lack of emotionality throughout Sagrada Reset really hurt this week, since it was supposed to be all about the characters dealing with grief. Are the people behind this show deliberately trying to make it as cold as possible? It feels like there's effort going into making sure that the voice actors don't act, and Kei's perpetually blank expression is becoming comical. Where are all of david production's resources going right now? Is it a secret JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 5 announcement? Haruki's character also continues to get worse somehow, as the show hammers her codependent attachment to Kei. How is this supposed to last two seasons? Well, at least we might finally get some answers regarding Sumire's deal next week, and maybe even an answer to the question: is she actually stuck in that damn rock?

Grade: C-

Sagrada Reset is currently streaming on Amazon's Anime Strike.

Gabriella Ekens studies film and literature at a US university. Follow her on twitter.