Re:CREATORS was a fascinating series, at least in Souta's opinion.
The story's core premise could be summarized as:
"Characters from fantasy works break into the real world and wage war."
It was a show where you could literally see a magical girl fight a mecha.
Altair was the first character to break free from the constraints of fiction and manifest in reality.
As for how she actually pulled off such an absurd feat?
The original anime never explained it.
If you asked the creators, their answer would probably be:
"Don't question it—it's just how the setting works."
In the Re:CREATORS storyline, Altair's creator, Shimazaki Setsuna, was driven to suicide by cyberbullying.
As a result, upon arriving in the real world, Altair bore a deep hatred for the very world that had driven her creator to despair.
Destroy reality and return it to nothingness.
Even though Altair was ridiculously overpowered, the real world had something called "Restorative Force".
This force would automatically correct any unnatural changes, preventing illogical phenomena from persisting.
If Altair went all out, she would immediately be ejected from reality.
To counteract this, Altair began traveling to other fictional worlds.
She pulled characters from various works of fiction into the real world.
Her plan was to create a collision of different worldviews, disrupting the Restorative Force and allowing her to tear reality apart.
When the restoration force stops functioning, she will use her own power to destroy the real world.
The story of Re:CREATORS unfolds against this backdrop.
Altair: "What do you mean? What am I misunderstanding?"
Souta saw Altair's message and didn't hold back. He directly answered her question, using a more visual analogy.
Souta: "Altair, you know Russian nesting dolls, right? To put it simply, you're a doll inside a doll inside another doll."
Souta: "Don't rush. I'll explain it step by step. Altair, you were created by Setsuna Shimazaki as a fictional character. The relationship between fiction and reality is one layer of nesting dolls."
Altair: "You really do know about my creator... But nesting dolls? That's a strange metaphor. According to your logic, I'm just a small doll inside the big doll of the real world—just one layer. Why two?"
Souta: "Are you sure the world you call 'reality' is actually real? Or rather, why do you assume that your experience of leaving your fictional world and arriving in 'reality' isn't just another story being told in a different work?"
A long silence fell over the group chat.
After a while, Altair finally responded.
Altair: "You're saying that everything I've done and experienced is actually just part of a story? That my very act of entering the real world is nothing more than a setting in another work? That the real world... is just another story?"
Souta: "That's right. That work is called Re:CREATORS, and it tells the story of authors and their fictional characters. In that story, you are both the protagonist and the antagonist. And the world you originally came from—the one that Setsuna created—is actually just a story within a story."
Souta: "The true real world is my world. That's why I said—you're a doll inside a doll inside another doll."
The chat went completely still.
She was probably struggling to accept this revelation.
She thought she had already broken free, only to realize that the act of "breaking free" was actually just another part of the narrative.
The most critical part—was Setsuna Shimazaki's death nothing more than a necessary plot point in a story?
Altair suddenly felt... lost.
Was her creator truly killed by her world's people?
Or was she simply written out of existence?
Seeing her lack of response, Souta was worried she might spiral too far, so he quickly sent a reassuring message.
Souta: "@Altair. You don't need to overthink it. You read my post in the announcements, right? About my theories on the nature of existence, including the concept of an 'Omniversal Reality'? There's no definitive answer on whether fictional worlds are truly real or not. Whether the relationship between them and our world is like nesting dolls is just one possible interpretation. In a broader sense, there may not even be a clear distinction between what's real and what's fiction."
Altair: "Thank you. I'm fine. I just... needed a moment to process."
Altair: "Can I call you Souta?"
Souta: "Of course, that's what names are for."
Altair: "Souta, can you tell me what happened to me in the work you mentioned? Did I destroy the real world?"
Souta: "No. The real world still exists. Your plan was stopped."
Altair: "Stopped? By who?"
Cough, no, Souta wasn't about to say that.
Souta: "By Setsuna Shimazaki. Oh, but not your actual creator. One of the people opposing you created a fictional version of Setsuna based on his memories of the real one. Then, you met this 'fake' Setsuna, resolved your inner conflict, and abandoned your plan to destroy the world. You left with her."
Altair: "How dare they!?"
Altair's fury immediately ignited.
To her, this was nothing less than an insult to her creator.
A person who had died in despair was instead reduced to a fabricated tool for saving the world?
What an utterly cruel joke.
Even through the screen, Souta could practically feel the hatred radiating from Altair.
People always fall victim to the "It'll never happen to me" rule.
Altair might be furious now, completely rejecting the very idea...
But when she actually meets the "fake" Setsuna, she's definitely going to break down crying and surrender to emotion.
It happened in the original work, after all.
Truth be told, Souta had never been entirely satisfied with Re:CREATORS' ending.
Because the Setsuna that saved Altair... was fake.
A tool, crafted to resolve the plot.
The real Setsuna had died full of hatred.
Thinking about this, a sudden question popped into Souta's mind.
Why didn't Altair just revive Setsuna?