Rewrite Episode #14 Anime Review

Three Cups of Coffee

What They Say:

Kazamatsuri, a modern, well-developed city renowned for its burgeoning greenery and rich Japanese culture, is home to Kotarou Tennouji, a high schooler least privy to the place's shared values. Content to fill his pockets with frivolity, the proud and nosy boy whiles away his time pestering the self-proclaimed delinquent Haruhiko and indulging in his amorous feelings toward the oddball Kotori.

Equipped with the superhuman ability to permanently rewrite any part of his body to multiply his strength or speed, Kotarou is naturally drawn to the supernatural. One special meeting with the lone member and president of the Occult Research Club, the "Witch" Akane Senri, leads to Kotarou reviving the Occult Club by recruiting Kotori and three other members: the clumsy transfer student Chihaya, the strict class representative Lucia, and the unassuming Shizuru. As Kotarou unveils hidden secrets of each member of the Occult Club through their shared adventures, he will inevitably encounter a fate that only he might be able to rewrite.

The Review:
Content:(Please note that the content portion of the review may contain spoilers)

It's back! And it's...weirder than ever. After what would have been a definitive ending for anyone but KEY back in the thirteenth episode, Rewrite picks up in what is essentially the middle of nowhere in terms of this anime's underlying plotline. After several confusing, unrelated scenes of Kotarou thrown into random situations without even an inkling of relevancy to one another, we [the viewers] are able to ascertain that, once again, there are alternate dimensions in this KEY production. Luckily for Kotarou, each of these alternate timelines seem to have him matched with one of the five heroines in Rewrite (Which I'm assuming correlate with the girls' respective routes in the VN. But, just to remind you, I have yet to play that).

While Kotarou spends the better portion of the first episode describing his current situation to us, there is still plenty of imagery and a plethora of Kota-routes (One of the worst puns I've ever made) that all seem to wind up with him just waking up from a dream. Once his dream comes to a close, he picks right back up where he was in the pilot of Rewrite -- that abandoned, decaying town with Kagari and himself being the only inhabitants. In fact, the pilot of Rewrite may have even been a flash-forward to this particular moment in the timeline because the probability of Kotarou having the same exact jumping pose this time around as the one from months ago seems relatively slim. However, Gaia summoned a damn dinosaur with human souls last season so I am in no position to doubt the probability of anything.

Regardless of my position concerning dinosaurs and humans souls and whatever, Kotarou's mission seems plain and simple. Get to Kagari, talk to her, don't die. However, this three-step plan is not necessarily fool-proof. In fact, Kotarou winds up dying almost every single time he approaches Kagari -- but that's probably due to the fact that half of those times he just wound up hitting on her. Queue the semi-sentimental bonds from last season!

Near the end of the episode, Kotarou decides to just try and help Kagari in whatever way he can. Fortunately for him, one of those methods of helping includes making coffee -- and we all know how much Kagari likes coffee. Needless to say, after bringing a pretty nice-looking thermos to the super-tree and giving a mug of fee-cof to Kagari, the bond between them reawakens, albeit ever so slightly. In fact, I have a feeling that Kagari knew this bond existed the entire time and was simply testing Kotarou. Even Kotarou showed hints at this through lines like, "We've met before, haven't we?" Either way, Kotarou has managed to go a day without dying -- making him an already more effective protagonist than Natsuki Subaru.

At the end of the day (Literally), the story inches forward and we are left with too many dots that need to be connected just to figure out where we are in time. Is this post-apocalyptic Kazamatsuri? One would normally assume so considering the town's decaying state. But, Hell, you never know with KEY. One could even argue that this is far in the past before Kagari was even discovered by Guardian. In the coming episodes, I'm sure more will be revealed. But as of right now, I'm just happy Rewrite is back. And I have a damn strong feeling that this season will be better than the last.

In Summary:

The return of Rewrite comes off as confusing at first but once it's able to find its footing, we pick up right where we left off -- with Kotarou trying to make a slight difference in some way or another. We get some fanservice in the route-scenes with Kotarou and the heroines that I'm sure the VN players will be able to correlate back to their time spent with the game, but the episode doesn't solely focus on that and instead diverts its resources to plot advancement (Which there is going to need to be a damn lot of if this is going to work). KEY's love for alternate timelines comes into play once again and, guided by Kagari, will become more prominent than ever.

Grade: A-

Streamed By: Crunchyroll