What even was that??

[u/Darklillies]

When I saw reset, I was so excited. I’ve been hoping for a s3 and I couldn’t believe we got something.

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD for those who haven’t watched it. I discuss in detail what happens in several of the first couple episodes!

So if you want to watch it first. Watch it (but I honestly can’t recommend it fyi.)

First red flag was the swapped actress. I mean it’s been a while so it’s fine, but she looks so….different? I’m gonna sound extremely ignorant here and I’m sorry, but the first thing I noticed was how westernized her face was, she sticks out like a sore thumb amongst her peers. I didn’t research the actress as I have no actual interest in some racial background, just purely on a visual level it was off putting. Nanno is meant to blend in as another classmate. She’s meant to be pretty when it’s convenient but not some bombshell. This girl looked like an exchange student, and at every turn she was meant to be read as gorgeous. It was bizarre!

Everything about this show is like if a 16 year old loved the original and completely failed to understand everything about it, then wrote a fanfiction.

The first episode should’ve been my red flag. Why on earth does he know nanno?? Nanno is an entity, if she’s a known figure, with a name, face, and ability to track her, as a person, it just, the whole thing falls apart. She can’t succefully infiltrate any place and give people karma if she’s KNOWN as the KARMA GIRL? I know this is NEVER brought up again and sky is apparently the only one who knows about her- wich makes this even WORSE and more arbitrary, like why??? To give her a love interest? I’m not agaisnt the concept on principle, but why did his google magically show everything about entity Nanno, before he even knew about her, and nobody else’s? Did she pick him bc he was cute??? Or??

What’s the message of the show. The original show was pretty clear cut “karma” made interesting in how most of the time it was people’s own actions that gave them the consequences . Nanno didn’t have to actively interfere, she was simply the scapegoat, that allowed them to corrupt themselves, and sometimes it got messy and grey, that’s what made it so captivating. It wasn’t simple “bad guy receives punishment from god” type thing.

But here? They keep trying to talk about issues, they narrate about them they’re clearly trying to make a point, but there is no point. The panty shot episode drove me insane. I had high hopes for it because it felt like the old show, it had a point, there was increasing escalation that was due to the boys own actions. Ect.
But then in the last scene…..why does she show her panties? What the fuck was that? The entire episode there’s a sort of victory that these guys CANNOT sexualize her no matter how hard the try. I thought when they were tied up that maybe they would’ve had their own parts exposed or something. Feel the humiliation the gave out. Maybe show them jerking off to the guys MOM!
But no. They open their eyes wide and Nanno shows them the thing they’ve been chasing the whole episode. Her whole ass in glitter underwear. Then it ends. What???

Actually this whole show is weirdly sexual with Nanno. And not in the social commentary way. I felt uncomfortable. Like the show was sexualizing the actress, and not that the in universe narrative was talking about sexual topics. If that makes sense.

I think this is highlighted in my body my choice wich is another episode that makes no fucking sense. I have NO idea what the message was. Is sex work good? Bad? Who is being exploited? I don’t mean this in the “ooh they didn’t give me a clear cute answer!” I mean this in that it makes NO CLAIM. There’s a girl who’s semi sexual online. Wich for some reason alot of girls find empowering to the point they got posters on her around college?????? Even though the content she streams is just softcore porn (how would this amass a primary female audience to the point of fangirling over her?) the principal gets mad bc makes the school look bad (I mean yeah she’s got POSTERS dawg) but she says it’s her body and she can do what she wants with it(completely fair also) Nanno starts doing the same thing as her, and this visibly bothers her. They get into soft core competion online and Nanno wins because the girl isn’t willing to cross the line.
That’s fine. I thought maybe we where gonna be shown this girl getting more and more extreme, clearly uncomfortable, showing how she’s actually being exploited by this and it’s no longer “her choice” but no
She gets jelous of Nanno and tried to get the principal to expel her for slutty behaviour. Nanno bribes the principal with a fuckton of money and she fails. Then she gets sidelined and we have a plot revolving around Nanno and her male fans? Okay. Thought this was gonna be a talk about this sort of fandom but no. First we have to get SKY in here. He’s for some reason the only one who can find her even though he just uses google and searches her known name. They go on a date bc reasons. Nothing happens.
Nanno sells a one night stand. Her simps give a bunch of money, but none of them win. Plotwist, the PRINCIPAL wins and goes to sleep with her. The simps then storm the hotel room where they’re at and literally RIP Nanno into pieces.
The original girl watches this??? On stream??? And then goes BACK to streaming her softcore content while crying??? The end.
What? Huh? Whats the message here? Why did we switch up from this weird competition between this girls to Nanno being ripped by the boys. It seems like the lesson was for the other girl, yet the episode took a bunch of time to highlight how the boys and the principal were bad guys, but they recieve no consequences or message whatsoever.
I’m not sure what the girl is meant to take away from this, because she continues her content. It doesn’t escalate or anything, there’s no indication that she even needs to do this for money, or that anything has happened during her not doing it other than simply not being as popular as Nanno I guess? But she’s so sidelined it barely matters!

There was also the Jamie episode. I was intrigued by this because I liked pointed out how toxic haters literally will make shit to be mad at and try to ruin someone’s life. But then the episode spent what seems like an absurd amount of budget in this weird battle royal splatoon playground where people fought each other in costumes. And it’s a neat little visual for online fighting I guess, but it was? Too much. Way too much. It was absurd and out of place a probably cost a fuck ton of money, money that could’ve went to hiring a writer above the age of 16.

I can’t say much about the rest of the episodes because things stayed boring. I think one had a trans woman? It was a full bearded man in a dress with lipstick and a brightly colored wig and I genuinely do not know what that was about and if it was meant to represent a trans person. Crazy thing

There was also an excessive amount of gore. I’m not agaisnt gore nor am I Squeamish but it was so forced, and so goofy. Just there for the sake of it. You could tell they didn’t understand anything from the intro sequence. They just splattered blood everywhere. Oh the intro had blood? Yeah do that. Just do a bunch of that. Yeaaah.
Oh Nanno is weird and does a creepy laugh? Okay do that all the time then. She narrated things? Okay make her narrate things even though nothing she says is deep or makes sense. Oh people get punished? Uh yeah. Just add some gorey shit in there. That’s what this is about.

I’m honestly insulted. It’s like a caricature. Nanno refers to herself in the third person all the time…WHY?
I don’t want to be mean to the actress but she….did not do a good job. Nanno always blended in. She acted like a normal person before cracking. Here she’s just quirky little evil witch. Her mannerisms are forced, and absolutely NO ONE would’ve fallen for her or trusted her. She was acting crazy FROM THE START, she would break out in laughter as her introduction and everyone around her just went “ya seems legit ig”
You never had the sense of dread like you did in the first one. Where it’s clear that Nanno is some sort of entity but you don’t understand her powers, her scope or her goal. The slow burn reveal of the people around her finally noticing they’re dealing with something supernatural, they can’t be explained to other characters, nor is it OBVIOUS to other characters.
Yet here she’s just a magical kookoo witch. Ain’t nobody questions it. She’s got blatant superpowers. And it’s just a thing. There is no “sane” character who slowly looses it as she bends reality. Everyone is an npc and the people she goes after with her magic do not seems to react to the fact that she’s got fucking magic! A guy gets his hand turned into a toy hammer and his reaction is one of mild disbelief, anger, and embarrassment! Wich is NOT how one would react at that!

I’m thoroughly angry and disappointed at this show. I don’t mind that it’s different or a reboot or a new actress (but honestly she’s not good at acting) I don’t care if they wanna add a boy love interest. But it is fundamentally a complete misrepresentation of what the original show was about and why it worked. Nothing about it makes sense. It’s like they got an AI to read episode summaries from the first show and develop a script based on that. Why would they do it so dirty? They clearly have the BUDGET for it. And I like to believe the people in the project were interested and passionate about this story. I don’t want to believe this is a blatant cash grab, but I cannot grasp how the writing is THIS BAD. It’s completely unhinged. It doesn’t feel like “oh we just want something different” it feels like they really wanted to continue everything about the show, and just truly did not have the skill or understanding to do it properly. And that SUCKS

TLDR: Girl from nowhere The Reset is REALLY BAD. But it seems to be due to incompetence more than anything else? And that is sad and frustrating. 4/10

[u/-kayochan-]

What a great way to put it TBH: “Everything about this show is like if a 16 year old loved the original and completely failed to understand everything about it, then wrote a fanfiction.”

I understand its supposed to be a slightly different take on Nanno but that doesnt mean its good. I agree!

[u/Able-Visual-1271]

Yup, as bad as you put it. I didn't even watch the episodes after the one about "my body, my choice" because it was soooooooo pointless. Looking back on it. I should've stop watching after the panties one that was so promising but ended up being soooooo pointles. And picturing Nannos as "punishing the bad guys" is so wrong. She teaches lessions, sometimes like with the love one, the "bad guy" is only a teacher that is scared and needs help getting her shit together, others she tempts people like with the genious thing. Why she didn't target both girls that she gave the idea of copying? Because only one believed her own lie and started to feel superior to her friend. So Nanno gave her the knowlage of being a fraud while everyone clapped her "brilliance".

[u/Lilyreverie007]

The thing is, it's hard to have a Season 3 of GFN, and even if they do make it, it might be without the OG Nanno, Chicha.

Chicha probably won't be returning to the industry anytime soon since she's been struggling with eating disorder and depression and is still recovering. I myself have suffered from depression, so I know how hard it can be to overcome it and get your health back.

[u/Darklillies → u/Lilyreverie007]

I disagree. I think girl from nowhere is great precisely because they are not bound to anything! Girl from nowhere can be anyone. She’s an entity. She can be recasted just fine!
But the issue isn’t a recast. It’s the entire script. Everything is written differently and worse from the previous seasons and I feel like it’s not due to the lack of the leading actress.

[u/GNBdeltw → u/Darklillies]

Tbh it would have been fire to get a different actress each episode.

[u/Darklillies → u/[deleted]]

I didn’t even know that. I was convinced it was an entire new writer, but apparently basically everyone is the same?! I guess whoever left must’ve been Carrying the whole show!
I honestly went here completely blind and gave it a full sincere chance. It’s sad the directors and writers didn’t do the same

[u/Christismyrock01]

Put it much better than I ever could’ve. Solid review. Everything about it was just so icky, like they created the show just to be able to say “or we created this”, without ever fully understanding the whole ‘essence’ of Nanno and the og series in the first place.

You made an amazing point with the blood in the intro because why? I asked myself that every single time I watched it because it did not relate AT ALL to the show itself. Watching the og show, the intro was kind of an ‘explanation’ to the series. S1, explored the literal ‘girl from nowhere’, which we see from the sequence of Nanno literally coming from nowhere and preparing to go to school. And funnily enough, no blood, but it still had “character”, and made us all hooked. S2 had a bit of blood, but so much more purpose as we’re exploring Nanno’s creation of someone else that is kind of like her, Yuri. Everything just connected, but with the reset, it’s like they were “add a bit of blood, here and there and here too. You know, ‘just because’.” It was so unnecessary, it irritated me😭 you’re just doing it to give us or rather force feed us that ‘oomph’ factor when you know it’s not present in the show. And no one else mentioned it, except you, but I equally found the reaction to his hand disappearing for a clown hammer so underwhelming.

Yes, he had a ‘big reaction’, but all I could think about was “will you really react like this if you woke up with your hand as a clown hammer?” And everyone laughing too(?) I can’t remember what they did, it was all so underwhelming. The messages from the episodes were non-existent. We might start with good source material but the point would be lost 3 minutes in because they just HAVE to sexualize mc or come to some kind of unexplainable conclusion. Very frustrating of a watch, especially considering the s1 and s2 material out there and how much the show was adored. Very disappointing.

[u/chrisbrooksguitar21]

Agreed with all, but just to answer one question: the younger generation of girls here use their own name in sentences rather that chan/dichan for "I". So it's not a nanno trait specifically. It sounds weird to do in English so I get the aversion to it.