Sagrada Reset

Episode 5

In this episode of woman solvers, our heroes solve a woman who gets trapped inside of a rock. Well, it's actually a marble, but those are just rocks that they sell at the store in bags. It's less that the object is either a marble or a rock and more that it's shiny, since Sawako Sera has the power to enter reflective objects. The problem is that she can't control this power so well, so she gets trapped and it's up to our heroes to bust her out. Of course, this is all tied to her emotional issues, which Kei immediately deciphers and explains to her.

Sawako is extremely hung up on the idea of herself as “pure.” This stems from some well-meaning, if ill-advised nonsense her teacher told her when she was a kid. As she grew up, this blossomed into a full-blown good-girl complex. Afraid of ending up “impure,” she strictly abides by even pointless rules that everyone ignores, like not eating in class. At the same time, she envies the normal kids who can do things like skip school every once in a while. By the time Sawako starts high school, she's become sick of this life and decides to cut class for once. Halfway through the day, however, her defensive instincts kick in and shove her into the marble.

But why, exactly, would this complex result in her trapping her soul in some object? There was a clock reflected upside-down on the marble's surface, and the flipped-over clock made it look like morning in the reflected world. Sawako's consciousness jumped in out of the desire that it be morning again, so that she wouldn't have been late to school. That's it.

I think it's finally time to cut to the chase. I've seen plenty of procedural “fix someone's magical realism-based psychological issues” shows, and this is not only an exceptionally boring plotline for one, but a poorly presented one too. The episode's bulk consists of a shot reverse shot conversation between Kei and Sawako, where he coaxes her into gradually articulating her issues. There's not even much of an investigation process to Kei figuring out her problem. He looks at where Sawako got marble-ized for a moment and then just knows it somehow. To get her out of there, they just reset and prevent her from getting stuck in the marble at all. This episode helped me understand why shows like Bakemonogatari deck out their conversation scenes – which cover the same ground but in a different dialogue style – with such outrageous visuals. It's very easy for a premise like this to come out looking like nothing. The cold, robotic characters don't help either, making the show feel more like a first draft outline than the finished product.

This episode's only saving grace is that they didn't try to spread it out over two weeks. It's also notable that this episode seems to take place before the previous two. Kei and Misora are shown submitting club documents to babysitter Tsushima, who describes the Sawako case as a “test.” The stinger also introduces Murase as if we don't already know everything about her. I wouldn't be surprised if this episode was supposed to come earlier in the lineup, but it got pushed back for some reason.

Next week starts a three-parter. Hopefully it'll be at least a little bit interesting.

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.