Anime 31240 Re Zero Kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu Reviews Filter Check 3

Ahh, the reviewer. The first line of defense to quell the flames of irrational thought and often the bearer of bad news for those of the general public. They're the Buzz Killingtons that take it upon themselves to blow the "no fun" whistle and send the partygoers back on the hype-train that they rode in on. It's a thankless job, one that doesn't reward anyone besides the smug satisfaction of the man with the whistle, tipping his top hat and waving "adieu" at the fanbase, outraged that someone had the audacity to bring an analytical lens to the "totally bitchin party, bruh!"
And as the seasonal ... lineup ends and the hype-train chugs on to the next destination to start the cycle all over again, the reviewer, Mr. Buzz Killington, slaps his final verdict in the form of a nasty wall of diatribe, as he carries on his endless crusade to educate would-be viewers, one party foul at a time.

Now, before I go any further, I'd like to put all my chips on the table. I don't plan to campaign for Re:Zero's public standing, nor will I bastardize its name for the sake of winning the appeal of dissenters. What will be written from here on out is simply one man stating his viewpoint. If that means dispensing the full-range of my vocabulary like a snobby know-it-all, then so be it. As long as my assessment is clearly understood, whether you choose to sling mud at my remarks or practice diplomacy is of no concern to me.

And without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, weeaboos and pseudo-elites, I, ZephSilver, will serve as your Buzz Killington for the evening, as we take a tour through anime's latest mistake, Re:Zero, or as I like to call it, Re:packaged goods.

Writhing in pain it doesn't understand, with paint-by-number personalities that desperately try to express it, Re:Zero is a gaudy, yet entertaining, blowhard that stumbles upon an ingenious formula for mainstream success. In a cynically calculated ruse, Re:Zero combines snippets of set-pieces from other works to create a Frankenstein that's built to be a surefire hit, regardless of how much manipulation is required to keep the circus act up. By capitalizing on the ever-increasing demand for MMORPG inspired settings, time-travel narratives and well... a gratuitous amount of shock value, it captures the general populace's attention with ease. And really, who could fault it? The anime industry has within its grasp a foolproof method to gain the public's ear. A method that's figured out, down to a science, thanks to countless trial and error. It just so happens that this 'foolproof' method is predicated on sales and popularity, whether it receives critical acclaim or not is secondary. Dangling its bait right after the success of works with similar setups, it was inevitable that many would bite. Re:Zero offered many fan-favorite arrangements all in a convenient, one-stop package: a smorgasbord of goodies to satisfy a wide range of palates. And if that wasn't enough to seal the deal, it marketed a premise that potentially subverted the MMORPG formula into something dark and decrepit, capturing any stragglers that might have avoided the bait in disinterest with the promise of something "re:freshing."

The rest was simply a matter of word of mouth. The match was lit, and all that was left was to sit back and watch the wildfire burn. With viewers exalting Re:Zero as "smart," "bold," and "enthralling," ignoring this show's existence became nigh impossible. An anime that was built to be popular. An anime that was predestined to become the centerpiece discussion of every anime-related thread during its run. A wonderful monstrosity concocted in a lab by a board of executives, perfecting their latest endeavor to siphon money out of people's pockets, without so much as making the intent noticeable. I know we all want to hold an optimistic view on this situation but I advise that we take a step back before purchasing the snake oil.

Re:Zero is to White Fox what Kabaneri was to Wit studio: a proven investment, disingenuous or not.

Seriously, think about it for a moment. What were White Fox's most successful outings so far? Akame Ga Kill, a show about gruesome deaths in a medieval fantasy world, riddled with the underpinnings of political intrigue, a setup that deviated from typical shounen fodder, and a broad range of colorful personalities that inhabited its universe. And Steins;Gate, a show about time-travel being used to save your loved ones after a conspiracy was discovered, forcing the protagonist to revisit key events to find the best path to save everyone. Putting aside how you may feel about those shows individually, the fact remains that Re:Zero meshes these two appeals in a fashion that seems far too perfect to be simply a case of coincidence.
When you look back at the shows that garnered the most attention in the last handful of years, how could you not feel that Re:Zero is a product of the machine? There's being at the right place at the right time, and then there's simply casting your fishing line after analytical charts and focus groups indicate that the waters are ripe with hungry prey.

So after stating all this, it may surprise you to know that I fully recommend this show to anyone that confronts me about it. Why may you ask? Well, to be honest, it's pretty entertaining. Whatever my stance may be regarding the title, it cannot be denied that the show is easily digestible. With plot twists at every turn, bloody fatalities being dished out at a moments notice, and cliffhangers guaranteeing your return for more, Re:Zero is a binge-worthy viewing experience. However, my reasons for full-heartedly endorsing the show are probably not the reasons that the creators would probably like. For now, just hold on to that thought, we'll discuss why later.

And with that long-winded preface out of the way, it's time to continue our tour.

Stepping out of a convenience store in modern day Japan and being transported to a medieval fantasy world for no more reason than the writers saying, "We need to start the story somehow," our main protagonist, Suburu, enters Capital City; the epicenter of commerce for this foreign land of Lugunica and the place that would mark his burial ground on several occasions to come. After he comes in contact with a mysterious silver-haired girl named Emilia, he finds himself caught up in a web of deceit, hidden mysteries behind every corner and a bad case of groundhogs day that's marked with the end of his life.

And so goes the rest of his journey, constantly being respawned at key locations similar to game save checkpoints until he conquers a life-threatening obstacle. Death, birth, repeat. A rat churning cream to avoid drowning and hoping its efforts would create butter, allowing for solid ground to escape its entrapment. Some might refer to this as "torture porn" or a snuff film in animated form. And while I might find these sentiments to be a bit overstated, I still can't help but feel like there's an underlying truth to that way of thinking.
There's always a feeling that gnaws away at your subconscious when you watch the show. Something that many viewers may not be able to pinpoint but that they know is there, like the nuisance of a small object stuck in the sole of your shoe or a lingering thought that's just out of reach. I believe this feeling derives from the way the show presents its ideas. Themes that are supposed to be profound but end up taking on a whole new meaning when highlighted in neon lights and announced over a loudspeaker.

Suburu doesn't just die; he's butchered in the most gratuitous way imaginable. A newly gained tactical advantage isn't just implemented; instead, it's buffered through excessive expository dialogue. Character arcs don't just happen naturally; they're highlighted with drastic presentation changes and streams of confetti. In the words of Urban Dictionary, Re:Zero has no chill.

Re:Zero falls victim to sensationalizing things that it thinks would be considered poignant, as is the case with most shows that are said to 'subvert' the formula they're a part of. And by doing so, it indirectly counteracts that notion. A narcissistic protagonist being humbled by the realization that life doesn't revolve around him isn't a great revelation if the show goes out of its way to constantly point it out. Being mentally exhausted from the toll of dying constantly isn't eye-opening if the show literally has to tell you it is. Subtext ceases to hold meaning if the creators have a habit of making its intent obvious. This is the problem that many high-strung shows have, where they don't trust the viewer to pick up on the clues themselves. 2001: A Space Odyssey wouldn't be praised as a sci-fi classic if it had its ideas being pointed out with Blue's Clues paw prints. Se7en wouldn't be a great mystery/thriller had Dora the Explorer show up as a movie guide. Point being, good subtextual content is only good if the creators don't over-extend their control over how easy it's discovered.

Like Erased from winter 2016, Re:Zero's attempts at something far beyond it only backfires when this issue plagues every facet of its existence. It's trying to be symbolic; it's trying to interweave motifs; it's trying to create intrigue; it's trying to tinker with psychology... but, it's doing so in the most ham-fisted way possible. It fully rejects the idea of subtlety in every aspect imaginable, instead choosing to holler everything in an ostentatious display that's borderline masturbatory. A premature celebration of its accomplishments that's mired in the stench of hubris.

Setting tone and forcing tone aren't the same things. You can't give birth to natural reactions by simply pumping your content full of steroids to make it blossom faster. Anything worth having should come to fruition on its own merits through the course of the narrative. Re:Zero is simply too impatient for proper grooming, and as a result, we get villains that are essentially godforsaken hybrids of the Joker, Batman V Superman's Lex Luther, and the wacky waving inflatable tube men located outside of used car dealerships, snacking on their fingers like crispy chicken tenders. We get characters that deviate from common anime tropes to simply fall victim to yet another trope instead. Re:Zero's biggest enemy is itself, a show that can't be subdued even if it comes at the cost of its own integrity.
But what about the people that don't see these issues? What about those who are genuinely enthralled by Re:Zero's efforts? Those who, despite the obvious blare of ‘trying-too-hard’ fireworks, don't pick up on the show's underlying meaning until further inspection? What about the people who push the agenda of the show being "smart," "bold," and "enthralling?" The foot soldiers that perpetuate the show's self-worth, finding depth where others see beyond it? Surely they're not mistaken. What do they see that others don't? As it turns out, the real question isn't what they see, but what they choose to give the show credit for.

It's the interesting themes that Re:Zero flirts with throughout its narrative. The outer shell that masquerades as in-depth concepts. If there's no prior contact with the ideas that Re:Zero presents, this kind of perception is easy to understand. First exposure to something that insinuates a deeper layer could cause any viewer to wax philosophical. And there lies the difference: those that have seen the laminated copy, as well as the genuine article. When the same concepts are seen done right, suddenly that laminated copy starts to become all the more noticeable. And so is the case with Suburu's supposedly "broken psyche."

Like the case for Gakkougurashi of summer 2015, another show proclaimed as a 'deconstruction' of its genre, Re:Zero also takes pleasure in tinkering with delirium, but refuses to truly dive into it. It glorifies the main character's mental breakdown, turning it on and off at the whims of the scriptwriters. With something as easy as a pep talk and hug from LoveInterest#2 being all that's needed to make things better, it's really hard to justify the "psychology" that Re:Zero boasts about.

Want to truly show a mentally broken state? Then have the line between past existence and current life be obscured with each reincarnation, and don't fix it. Just imagine how amazing it would be if the memories of all respawned events were compressed upon each rebirth, to the point where Suburu is no longer aware of the difference between them. It would truly demonstrate the anguish that Suburu suffers through by making the consequence something that's not only visual for the viewer but also something that implies that deeper layer that the show so desperately seeks to obtain. Instead of simply being the laminated copy, it could have been like other animated works that truly dive deep into this concept, such as Satoshi Kon's Millennium Actress and Perfect Blue. Both featured films containing women who slowly lose their minds and grips on reality as they descend further into a fever dream of delirium and jumbled memory. It didn't just carry around psychology like some fashion accessory, but it made it a very real thing for the viewers looking on and the characters that took the plunge into the never-ending spiral of irrational flatlining.
See that the protagonist suffers a loss that he can't simply fix with a jump off a cliff. Have stakes. If respawning to checkpoints is the only way to advance the narrative, the very least the creators could do would be to place Suburu at the crossroad of a decision that would allow advancement only if someone else were to perish. Let there be permanent blood on his hands, not just a never-ending clean slate. Don't resolve psychological trauma like it's just some phase people get over after a few days. Don't just wave around psychology like it's a toy. People don't simply undo damage because the plot demands a rational mind in a given scenario. This shouldn't change even for Suburu. Embrace it fully. Let go of safety nets if you truly want something that's "deep" and not just another copy of something other creators (Satoshi Kon) have proven is possible to achieve.

And really, this is just covering one aspect the show chooses to claim as its own. The same level of commitment is expected for every aspect of Re:Zero, not just some half-assed effort. With these nebulous concepts about redefining a protagonist's importance and exposing inner truths that felt entirely too heady for something as simple-minded as Re:Zero to muster up in any meaningful way, the only chance that the other half that doesn't see the show as "smart," "bold," and "enthralling" could buy into it, is if the show stops trying to find compromise that's easy to live with. It may seem "smart," but it does so with an air of smarminess while also over-pronouncing its efforts. It may seem "bold," but it never takes any risks that could be seen as irreversible. It may seem "enthralling" for advocates, but for everyone else on the other side of the aisle, it's just dumb schlock-entertainment.

And if there was anything that made this half-ass commitment more apparent, it would have to be the presentation that it was given.

Re:Zero is that kid that just learned a new 3-syllable word and just spews it out at every opportune moment in a sad attempt to appear intellectual. There're some elements here that demonstrate some semblance of writing chops, I would give the show that, but the way the writers flaunt their ability to come up with said ideas comes off as conceited, especially when these moments wallow in content that's tantamount to idiotic orchestral displays. It's a proud peacock, flaunting its ideas, while strutting around with toilet paper stuck to its ass. As it navel-gazes, everyone else looks on in amusement.

When I said it points things out with neon lights, this is what I mean.

“Hey, the camera is shaking excessively. Hey, we're giving Suburu a manic expression, one step away from having him foaming at the mouth. Hey, we literally added a 10% darkness opacity filter to Suburu's color scheme. Hey, all of these scene compositions literally bathe Suburu in a constant shadow. Hey, his eyes are big and bulgy. HEY, HEY, HEY!! Do you get it yet!? Hey, are our actions to paint him in an obscure light after a big altercation with Emilia not made clear yet? Please reward us. Please tell us we're smart. I learned a 3-syllable word today! Please applaud my efforts!”

Evil can't be expressed without outlandishly warped expressions. Happiness can't be felt without copious amounts of animated tears, a gust of wind, and painted on blushes. Insanity can't be expressed without darkened eye bags, manic expressions, and rape faces. Everything is calculated. A stage play executed with no blemishes. A play that remains a play. Art that imitates the art of others. Re:Zero wants to be a real boy, but its growing wooden nose tells the truth it doesn't want to admit to itself. If the warped face of anger looks forced, then guess what: it's forced. If the happy moments felt a bit too inflated with random rose peddles flying around and kawaii-level faces, then guess what: it's inflated. If sadness felt unauthentic with instantaneous waterworks and elastic expressions at the drop of a hat, then guess what: it's unauthentic. You're not interpreting it wrong. That pang in the back of your head that tells you this is kinda overkill isn't "just you." Deep down you know what you're seeing is over exaggerated, and after time has settled and you reminisce about key events, that would become clearer than ever. Re:Zero is a novelty act that blinds you with flurries of action and plot twists, but the moments the spectacle is over, what would remain is the realization that what you held dear was nothing more than snake oil sold by a quick-witted businessman.

Even things like auditory cues can't help but feel like the show signaling excessively to get your attention, an example being a high pitched hum, like angelic beings from a choir taking a laxative-laced shit. It could be seen as "chilling" to some, or you could be like me and think it's the angels of heaven passing a kidney stone in orchestic unison. Point being it's played only to signal a disturbance. And seeing that the show is all about disturbances, it just ends up exacerbating a problem that didn't need any more highlighting than it was already getting.

What needed more attention, however, were the characters and environment that the story took place in. For a show that's supposed to be genre defining, it does very little to prove it.

We get characters whose defining personality trait is being a loli with a speaking habit, I suppose. Beatrice and the rest of the loli cast could fuck off, I suppose. But I suppose since half of Re:Zero's main cast is lolis, getting rid of them would leave very little, I suppose. Stereotypical roles don't suddenly become better by simply switching them to another stereotypical role. A visual novel maid character doesn't gain depth by making her “waifu-bait” contestants. And this extends to every other character Suburu comes across on his journey. They're all just there to fill in expected roles, like a bunch of NPCs that are brought to life.

There's no sense of culture. No ethos to pull from. Nothing that defines the world that Suburu is tossed into. Just snippets of ideas cobbled together to serve as yet another medieval fantasy world that draws from the same well as any other. Were Re:Zero the only anime to tackle high fantasy, this wouldn't be a problem, but sadly for it, Escaflowne exists. Rage of the Bahamut exists. Berserk(1997) exists. Moribito exists. There's nothing here that defines Re:Zero. Even trainwrecks like Akame Ga Kill had a better-thought-out universe. And for whatever it does try to establish, it's either extremely overbearing or missing things that could be attributed to half-assed resolve. To go into specific cases would require spoiling some events, so join me in the spoiler section to go over them if you've already seen the show. As for everyone else, skip past for final thoughts.

**** brief spoilers****
(scroll down to avoid)

Naita Aka Oni (The Red Ogre who Cried), is a popular Japanese children tale that teaches kids the cost of assimilation and what it means for loved ones left behind to gain it. This is shown with a red and a blue ogre. Re:Zero attempted to use this story to insinuate the relationship shared between Ram and Rem. But like everything else that the show highlights unnecessarily, this parallel drawn was also made blatantly obvious, with Ram and Rem's hair color being pink and blue, which obviously alluded to the red and blue ogres, respectively. This wouldn't have been a big deal had they kept it at just that, but like I've already stated, the show doesn't trust its audience to pick up on the subtext implied. Instead, we get the arc with the inclusion of both sisters being superimposed with a symmetrical balance of pink and blue at every turn. It beats you over the head with the symbolism it's trying to present. This also included Suburu stating to the sisters that they're “fanatical like demons” with their reactions indicative to their origin as literal demons. It's this kind of obviousness that shows like Erased demonstrate when they highlighted everything in red to insinuate danger. Attempts at cleverness that's just painfully juvenile. And now this same kind of forcefulness is being carried over to Re:Zero.

And 17-minutes into episode 11, Suburu states, "You know, Rem, you keep putting Ram on a pedestal and undermining yourself—," while the camera unapologetically focuses on blue and pink flowers, both literally sitting in a vase (pedestal) of equal height. These are the kinds of things that Re:Zero does repeatedly that demonstrate its lack of restraint. Constantly drawing attention to your symbolism only defeats the purpose of it, to begin with. Symbolism and motifs alike are supposed to be discovered, not spoon-fed. And this is the problem with this show: it can't simply let things be without intervening with forceful resolve.

And then you have ideas that are used only to add detail to the universe or serve as a new plot reveal to keep the story exciting, but that are never properly thought out.

Like the battle against Moby Dick, a beast with the ability to erase the memory of people's existence consumed by its fog. We get an example of this when Rem sacrifices herself to save Suburu and is immediately forgotten by everyone who knows her. But yet, when this incident occurs again during the heat of battle against a battalion in episode 20, the powers don't work the same way. Where in the case of Rem her very presence and existence was erased, in this battle, soldiers only forgot the names of the soldiers lost in the mist but are still aware of the fact that people are missing. So how do people remember a whole platoon going missing during battle when they're consumed when prior cases of the whale's mist made it clear that you wouldn't even be aware of the lack of anything missing? This is just one of many small plotting issues littered across the show, and the only conclusion is that the creator needed another plot twist to hook viewers in, but fell victim to a plot hole later on when it no longer served a purpose.

Suburu is said to smell like the witch to a few people, yet, from all accounts, no one has ever encountered the witch face to face, so how do they know this assessment to be accurate? So the statement:
"Do I smell like the witch?"
is no better than saying:
"Do I smell like the thing you've never seen or come in contact with in your life?"

The entire show is just built on one unanswered question after another. How did he arrive in this world? How does his respawning ability work like a save point? In episode 24, he was shown to restart after getting past the whale and into the mansion, but then he could conveniently go back to the point where he defeated the whale as a save point after he dies at the village? It's obvious that this was done only to bypass having to reset the progression he made with Rem in episode 18. A moment where the show bends its own rules by going beyond simple retconning, instead, rewriting the very nature in which the resets work.

How could he speak their language and be understood but not write their assigned text? It's minor things like this that demonstrated that they wanted to appear insightful, but in actuality had only half-baked ideas… half-baked ideas that gave way to a show riddled with plot inconsistencies.

And then there're just scenes that are supposed to be tragic but just come across as ludicrous. Episode 15 contains the biggest culprit that comes to mind. This is where we met joker-inflatable-tube-man, who proceeded to break Rem's neck and limbs, and yet, somehow, she crawls over to Suburu and uses magic to free him… and this is supposed to be tragic? Nothing about this moment makes any sense whatsoever. And to top it off, it also demonstrates a moment where the writers switch Suburu's mental breakdown on and off whenever it suits the story. This isn't some "deep" moment; it's bullshit.

Re:Zero doesn't know the difference between mental anguish and parading characters around for personal amusement, nor does it understand that tossing ideas and lifting entire passages from other folktales don't mean it would work as a cohesive piece. There's a reason there's no cohesiveness between arcs; all it does is pattern storylines from works that preceeded it. A fairy tale whose identity can't exist without leaching off of others, and whose attempts at something different result in the aforementioned problems.


*******end of spoilers*******


When Hayao Miyazaki said that people "don't spend time watching real people" with industry, in-house anime creators being "humans who can't stand looking at other humans,” this is what he's referring to: shows that can't find inspiration outside of their own anime tropes because the people working on them don't see anything beyond anime. Re:Zero is a self-indulging anime with no worldly influence to speak of. Shinichirō Watanabe, Satoshi Kon, Mamoru Oshii, Yoko Kanno. What made these industry giants well-known was their ability to draw inspiration from influences outside of anime. They brought something new to the table, a claim that shows like Re:Zero can't prove. It's a product of its environment. Anime feeding into anime. It's Ouroboros incarnate.

Remember that thought I told you to hold on to, as to why I still suggest this show, regardless of how I feel about it? Well, this is the reason why. This is what it all boils down to. Re:Zero is an embarrassingly pompous try-hard that's fun to gawk at. It's a show that has proven to be a source of entertainment for those unconcerned with the finer details and who simply want to be amused for 20-minute intervals, as well as a comical mess for those who do see beyond the smoke and mirrors and enjoy dissecting silly shows for purposes of discussion. It's a show that takes itself dead serious while being oblivious to the fact that it's anything but. It's the Elfen Lied, the Mirai Nikki, the Akame Ga Kill, the [insert your own example here] of 2016. A show that could appeal to everyone, regardless of how they view their entertainment or how much thought they place into the pixelated images flooding their peripheral. It's the "M. Night Shyamalan" of animated works, a name big enough to fill in seats on opening night, but consistently funny enough for critical thinkers to jump in knowing they'll experience something amusing, even if unintentional.

Everyone wins. The studio heads make their profit, the majority get to be entertained, and the critics get a new punching bag for their inner circles. The world needs titles like Re:Zero. Titles that everyone will see. Cynical cash grabs will always come and go, but if I'm given a choice in the matter, I at least want my price of admission to be a show that's still entertaining. And with Re:Zero, that's what I got, a good ole dumb time.

Re:Zero is a great show if you don't care for subtlety, think 2-D waifus are laifu and are impressed by characters emoting in boisterous ways. But in terms of actual quality, this is an anime that puffs its chest out, holding its breath for as long as it can, with the slightest release exposing it for what it truly is: hot air.

I could count on one hand the number of shows I've ever used the forbidden "pretentious" word on without so much as second guessing my stance and I would unequivocally state here and now that Re:Zero became one of them. A show that strong-armed me into using a buzzword that I promised myself I would use only as a final ultimatum. And in a way, I guess that could be seen as an achievement. So congratulations Re:Zero, a show where only the cheapest blow every self-respecting critic dare not to resort to, could be the only appropriate response left available. But in this case, it's worth it. No other shows I've seen in recent years deserve the rare honor more than this. Take the mantle Re:Zero. You’ve officially become the most conceited MMORPG-inspired anime to date.

Re:Zero is spray-on tan psychology with peel-off sticker-tattoo themes. It's the kid on internet forums who are constantly saying "90's Baby," with a 1999 birth certificate. Its out-of-touch executives googling anime-related search results in an attempt to assure their product is "totally dope.” It's an anime that's rallied in on a stage sponsored by corporate suits, with "best waifu" pillows and other merchandise already pre-made upon launch date. Re:Zero is shallow, plain and simple. A skim off the surface of whatever topical events stick their noses out far enough to be noticed by those too busy counting the zeros in their bank account to dig any deeper.

But you know what? That's fine. I watched it, laughed and had a good time. And if people could cherish the laminated copy with the same vigor that others do the genuine article, who am I to stop them? Shows like Re:Zero will always come and go; you could either fight it or say "fuck it" and simply kick back and enjoy the nonsense on screen.

Every now and then, we, the anime community, are blessed with a gem. A gem, shining ever so brightly in the sea of mediocrity that are the seasonal anime manages to blind the majority of the community with its seemingly endless blister into thinking that the title at hand is somehow special and praiseworthy. After a rather short period of time, the bright light the gem once used to vividly emulate begins to flicker, until eventually fading away into eternal darkness and being forgotten. It's nothing new; rather just a byproduct of hype culture and the negative effect it has on entertainment media. ... The implementation of various anime databases and platforms like MAL in recent years make the anime medium in particular all the more susceptible to this horrible disease that seemingly spreads like wildfire. And for that reason, I will gladly presume the role of a firefighter. This one'll go in-depth.

Adapted from a rather lacklustre source material, the story revolves around our protagonist, Subaru. When Subaru one day decides to venture out into the wilderness that is the grocery store next door, he is out of nowhere magically transported into an unfamiliar fantasy world. Why / how / who / what was it that teleported him there? He doesn't know. We don't know. No one knows. Literally 2 minutes into the show we are presented with a plot device that sets the entire anime into motion. While definitely a negative, I don't particularly mind too much as it is a problem on a far lesser scale than in say Erased, where the plot device is something integral to the narrative. The rest of the plot is fairly straight-forward. In essence, the main character explores the setting, goes through various scenarios, meets a shit load of cute girls while going through individual arcs, etc. So obviously, it possesses all of the shitty traits that plague each and every light novel in existence, and if there was one thing that all of the people who share my general consensus on the show agree on, it would be on how generic it is.

As if to counteract its' generic nature, the story constantly puts in a conscious effort to be as unpredictable as possible. It serves as a mostly-consistent source of entertainment and I truly do commend the author for that one. But.. where exactly is the line drawn? While plot twists can do wonders in the heat of the moment, Re:Zero tends to gradually overdose on them, often resulting in a faint sense of redundancy. No series is supposed to be this reliant on shock factor to keep the audience seated but apparently going in with the mentality that each respectful viewer suffers from extreme ADHD is the only way to make it big nowadays. The "dark" in the "dark fantasy" is emphasized on quite a lot, if not a little too much later on. This seems to be what most fans consider to be the driving force of the show, ultimately setting it apart from the typical light novel adaptation. However, a wise man once said "A different approach does not guarantee a quality outcome". The wise man in question happens to be your humble writer, of course.

Various anime in the past have thrived off of their dark element, but it is extremely important that you, as a viewer, are able to differentiate between shows that are completely reliant on constant edge and shows that are able to stand on their own two feet without it. I'm not implying that Re:Zero is completely reliant on its edge.. But yeah, I am. While most of the community seems to find it intensely gripping for some odd reason or another, I found most of the "dark" scenes to be outright laughable. This is not because I'm some kind of despicable shounen antagonist who has a preconcieved notion against the very fundamentals of fun, but rather the execution of said scenes being far too comical for their own good. Once in a blue moon I really was able to get invested in some of the grimdark stuff, but for the overwhelming majority it was just me laughing my ass off at the sight of villains that resembled an inflatable tube man outside a used car lot that would wiggle their arms and body around while being EVILLL.

Something that constantly kept pissing me off is how the anime goes about presenting itself. The rough transitioning between dark and goofy makes it extremely hard to ever get fully immersed into the story as it is both completely off-putting and can easily ruin the mood that was in place just a minute ago. I know not every show can have the godsend that is Puck (the elf, not the furby) to ease things out in dire times but really, they could have tried a bit harder. You've got instances where one second the protagonist is casually talking with someone and not even a full minute afterwards he is frantically running for his life. Or even better, while participating in a deathmatch against one of the deadliest assassins in the land, the characters randomly start throwing jokes and snarky remarks at each other like their current life or death situation is a family picnic. It should be obvious to virtually anyone how something that feels so out of place singlehandedly ruins the tension and intense atmosphere that the show was trying to build up just a mere second ago.

Moving on, I'd like to cover what I consider to easily be the biggest problem of Re:Zero. While I could hardly fault a show for having crazy powers in a setting that is entirely reliant on the supernatural, time resets are one of the absolute worst writing tricks in history. "Return by Death", ignoring the lack of creativity within the name itself, is by no means an exception - Granting Subaru the ability to go back in time whenever he is killed AKA basically giving him a free checkpoint, returning him to the moment that suits him the most before the time of his death. In Re:Zero, it feels like this trick is implemented whenever the writer comes to the realization that the story is incredibly reliant and dry without it, and so time is reset. It's not a bad thing to spice things up every once in a while but chances are that it's either going to be Subaru constantly going back in time before everything was fucked and starting all over again from step 1 or have the said conflict be resolved by sleazy plot conveniences. "Oh Roswaal-sama, I didn't see you there! How mighty convenient it is that you have arrived at just the perfect time to evaporate the gigantic demon-dog from the underworld that was about to devour my flesh in the span of two seconds!" It kinda makes you wonder if the concept of good writing is really such a mysterious term to the people who write light novels.

Return by Death also works as a double-edged sword in the case of Re:Zero. I am taking into consideration the fact that when executed properly, it allows for a fair number of interesting scenarios to play out throughout the series which is something that shouldn't be dismissed. Putting that aside, it is almost guaranteed that the implementation of time resets will deal a heavy blow to any cast of characters that are unaffected by this phenomenon. By having the protagonist and the protagonist only be able to utilize this ability renders the development of the rest of the cast completely null and void, seeing as he will be the only person to retain his memories from the previous iterations. It sacrifices the very fundamentals of characterization while completely throwing the concept of development out of the window for anyone besides him and is the sole reason that stories which rely on time resets have difficulty reaching critical acclaim. I can literally think of a single instance in anime in which time resets are utilized successfully but I don't see Yuasa Masaaki's name under the staff section.

Lastly, it brings up several plot threads for a brief period of time before lightly shrugging them under the rug whenever it so pleases, as if they had never existed. While not inherently plotholes, they almost feel like inconsistencies within the overarching narrative and I'm not sure if they are ever explained in the novel, but briefly covering them in the anime and never touching upon them ever again is completely pointless and a waste of time. Stuff like: Does Return by Death have the ability to take effect on others around Subaru or did Emilia just suffocate to death from the peer pressure of his hug? There are also huge inconsitincies within the world's functions, which have no backbone to sit on as the theory behind them is completely amiss. Stuff like: What was it that triggered Subaru's transportation? Will we ever be given proper information on Return by Death? - "But is explained in da light novEL! ! !" is not a valid argument, sorry. It's also worth noting how inconsistent the story is in terms of quality between its individual arcs, namely with the final act of the series being utterly ludicrous in the worst way possible.

Through a long and careful process of deduction, I have come to the conclusion that to be a character of Re:Zero, you must poses at least one of the three mandatory traits. The traits in question are as follows:

Be able to appeal to the otaku audience in one way or another ✔
Be an easy to hate, psychopathic piece of shit ✔
Lean towards borderline insanity ✔

This lot can be applied to absolutely any character in the series, from Subaru to Puck with few and far in between. And what better way to start this section off than with the man who encompasses all three?

Subaru is the very definition of a hit or miss main character. It’s not hard to decipher that at his very core, he is a self-insert who was brought into existence solely as a means of identification with your average basement-dweller, which is hardly surprising considering that this is a light novel adaptation. But while he does seem to inherit the “Nihilistic shut-in protagonist who’s actually a really nice guy on the inside” trait, he surprisingly has a few quirks of his own. In my eyes, he started off as the most hateable cunt in the known universe (Orange still hadn’t aired at this point) but as the series progressed, I was to my bewilderment able to actually empathize with his character. With that in mind, it still took all I had in order to watch most of his normal interactions with the rest of the cast when he was in his right mind so it really was a breath of fresh air when he went absolutely bonkers and stopped talking altogether. Of course this only lasted for a single episode because as we know, anime protagonists are immune to petty mental disorders. It took Kirito a year to overcome PTSD yet it only took Subaru an episode to recover his sanity. Talk about a hero!

Emilia, while supposedly being the main heroine of the story as well as Subaru’s primary love interest is a fairly mysterious figure throughout pretty much the entirety of the show. For some reason, she physically embodies the appearance of the Jealous Witch that is known and feared by citizens all across the land and unbeknownst to Subaru also happens to be one of the candidates for the throne. Her other attributes consist of being strangely sympathetic towards people she has never met before, having a pet furby and being fairly cute. That right there about fully sums up her character which is quite unfortunate as she's supposed to be the main heroine as opposed to being a side hoe, completely overshadowed by Rem.

"Only I'm allowed to sniff Subaru-kun!" Rem is first introduced as one of the 2 maids that govern Roswaal’s mansion. When Subaru is hurt and taken to the mansion, she’s appointed as his caretaker along with her older sister, Ram. She initially seems like a cute and innocent girl up until her psychopathic tendencies come rocking in and she brutally murders Subaru in cold blood without giving it a second thought. No one really seems to take that into consideration when labeling her to be the best gurl of da century but it is what it is. Unfortunately, she’s probably the character on which the time resets took the biggest toll on as a huge chunk of her development was constantly being thrown out the window during the entirety of the mansion arc. This takes effect up until the premise of her entire character shifts to being Subaru's lovey-dovey, 2nd-rate love interest during the latter half of the series. Despite that, she still manages to take the cake for the best girl of the series due to an extreme lack of competition.

Produced by studio White Fox, the art and animation really don't present anything new to the table. Although, one thing that sticks out in my mind is how well they were able to handle the tonal shifts the show makes regularly, most notably by effectively switching up the color palette from the usual bright and cheery NGNL-ish style to a more dark and brooding one. The character designs don't have a distinct style but do include a lot of variety between the individual characters. Subaru is noticeably plain-looking and dull, while the citizens that inhabit the fantasy world come off as flashy, with bright clothes and hair in every color imaginable, almost serving as to further alienate Subaru from the norm.

If Re:Zero had a strong suit, it certainly wouldn't be an exaggeration to say it lies within its music department. Despite the fact that like any other sensible man on this god-forsaken Earth, I proudly despise pop music with every fiber of my being, both of Re:Zero's ending and opening songs are admittedly catchy with a handful of decent OSTs to the side. While varied, the voice acting was pretty consistent throughout and most of the seiyuu were able to kick their game up a notch whenever shit hit the fan. Nonetheless, there are still some performances that either managed to evoke mixed feelings or just left a lot to be desired, with Petelguese being the prime example. Episode 15 felt like a comedy skit due to his constant laughter and overly-exaggerated mannerisms, killing any possible tension. Additionally, there's a scene in particular where he is just frantically laughing while the camera slowly zooms-in on Subaru's depraved expression as he screams and drools all over himself.. What? I realize that scene alone tops 95% of comedy anime out there but was that really all it took to boost it into the top 30? Not to mention how all of his lackeys from the Witch Cult also share his exaggerated tone, making the so-called "antagonists" of the show practically intolerable.

Re:Zero to me is one of those series you can't help but enjoy no matter which side of the spectrum you've landed on. Even if you don't genuinely like the show, you can still get somewhat of a kick out of it for a variety of reasons. Because the paragraph I wrote looked extremely messy, I've summarized it in good ol' Rkpandey fashion (vote-bots are still in development, though):

Pros:

+ Semi-thriller
+ Subaru offing himself
+ Subaru getting killed
+ Overblown scenes and performances (enjoyable for all the wrong reasons)
+ Inflatable tube man

Cons:

- Extremely repetitive plot-twists
- Generic
- Subaru
- Character caricatures
- Subaru
- Laughable antagonists (not a positive)
- Subaru

Nothing is worse than an over-inflated sense of self-importance.

I don't expect nor want any diehard fans of this show to agree with me. The sole reason behind this review's existence is that you lot can hopefully understand where me and many others are coming from when thinking that Re:Zero is in fact not the second coming of Christ, as that is the best I can hope for when going against the norm like this. So in conclusion: Re:Zero is a torture-porn, flavor of the month show with an uninteresting cast and a bland, oversaturated premise far too reliant on constant plot twists in order to keep the viewer seated even after long passing the point of redundancy. It does a few things right and does try to deviate from the typical light novel adaptation by adding heavy emphasis on the dark fantasy setting it establishes early on. Unfortunately, most of these scenes are either too comical or far too overblown to be taken seriously and it holds no merit when compared to other dark fantasy anime like Berserk. On the other hand, the thriller appeal is still somewhat there until it goes off the rails during the last act and even then I'd be lying by saying I wasn't entertained while marathoning through the whole ordeal, albeit for all the wrong reasons.

Re:Zero- A Lengthy Yet Critical Dissertation

Well, I told myself I wouldn't review this, but I felt so disgusted while reading through the reviews of Re:Zero on MAL that I had to address the glaringly obvious issues with it. I binged 23 of its 25 episodes while sick at home with the flu, and by the end of it I'm not sure if that or the vomiting I did was worse. I know a lot of people aren't going to agree with this review, but I plead for you to take off your fan service blinders and tune in while I break down the psychological disaster ... Re:Zero truly is.

In essence, Re:Zero is a deconstruction of the fantasy/stuck in game genre, one I've never particularly been a fan of. Our "noble" protagonist, Subaru is magically transported to a mystical world where time travel is commonplace, the MC activates God Mode and chicks are all over his nether regions. Sound familiar? I decided to start the series based on a friend's recommendation that it was like Steins;Gate. I will tell you from personal experience that the biggest similarity between the two is the existence of a punctuation mark in their two titles. That or the fact they're the same amount of episodes. For the remaining episodes, writers cater to the libidos of pathetic teenagers by combining the worst elements of shows like Sword Art Online and other overpowered harem titles and do a fantastic job evading any responsibility developing intelligent plot lines. Non-cohesive potholes are disguised as "psychological" or "edgy" and the main character whines continuously like a three year old who lost his balloon.

One of the most notorious blemishes on Re:Zero's resume is the messy shifts its tone makes. It's one thing for a show to be edgy, but when there's no legitimate segway between a slapstick joke and an emotional gut punch, it leaves the viewer confused. Bunguo Stray Dogs has this same issue, which ends up making neither the comedy funny or the shocks effective. It's like watching someone comically slip on a banana peel cut short by an image of puppies being boiled in acid. That's not edgy, it's just a fucking disaster. It's feasible for a show to contain multiple genres, but they must be developed with finesse or else the viewer is left watching the equivalent of a bipolar teen not knowing what they want to be in life. The unfortunate part is how the majority of viewers are so desensitized to this streamlined method of script writing that it seems normal and acceptable. The writers could've benefitted from watching shows like Steins;Gate and HunterXHunter in order to learn how to effectively balance humor with serious or cerebral scenes.

The rest of the story seems as though it's being written week to week. Instead of taking the time to carve out an effective story, writers use sporadic shock value to trick the viewer into thinking what they're watching is good. Their adrenaline is pumping, and it almost creates a sense of tunnel vision in order to distract them from the real issues the anime has. Shows like Game of Thrones have shock value as well, but the superb writing, effective timing and added characterization separates it from phonies like Re:Zero. Unfortunately, unlike other shock and awe disasters like Akame ga Kill, Re:Zero fans will defend these contrived elements because of the time resets and other excusable aspects of the series. In that respect, the director achieved his goal of pure entertainment value. It appeals to the masses. I, like anyone enjoys a good cliffhanger from time to time. However, Re:Zero gives The Walking Dead a run for its money in the sheer amount of forced close-calls in its episode conclusions. It gets incredibly annoying if you're bingeing it, just like one of my few issues with Kaiji.

Initially I thought the time-resetting element could be incorporated effectively into the already entertaining first 3 episodes of the series. I was dead wrong. This aspect ends up existing as little more than a plot device to excuse weak writing and character development. Subaru screws up, doesn't atone for his mistakes and tries again a different way. I get that this takes place in a fantasy world, but what is the viewer learning from a kid that cries about "they didn't do what I wanted them to do! Wahhhhh!" He shows little to no respect for the world he gets transported to, and instead of learning from his errors, repeats them with somebody or something else. Since he's still a kid, this exists again as a cop out for writing legitimate character growth throughout the series. However, he probably acts close to how many other people his age would if they were thrown into a supposed "game-like" world... With blatant disregard to everything around them. In some ways, the writers really put off a pretentious vibe for the lack of responsibility Subaru has in his actions. It left a bad taste in my mouth and seemed as though they were sticking their tongues out at critics everywhere like "I'm writing this and there's nothing you can do about it, nah!"

Of course, Re:Zero offers a plethora of eligible waifus to choose from. There's the emotional shy one, the lolli, the yandere and everything in between. Not to mention, they all end up falling for Subaru in the end. It IS 2016 people, recycling the same harem formula with duplicated generic tropes for characters got old about 20 years ago. No character in the entire show, sans our antagonist, is unforgettable, unless you're speaking from purely lusting reasons. Every time a new female character was introduced it felt like another nail in Re:Zero's coffin of legitimacy. Character development isn't formed from generating multiple cardboard-cutouts and assigning them to becoming romantically involved with our MC. Regardless of what you think you're interpreting as development, it all exists as a facade to promote its narrative... whatever that may be.

But what about our Lord and Savior, Subaru???

One important piece of a television series that can make or break a viewer's experience, is the ability for us to relate to facets of a character's personality or their cause for actions in the world. Unfortunately, Subaru exhibits neither of these. Throughout Re:Zero's painstaking 25 episodes he learns virtually nothing about his previous mistakes, and his actions towards other characters are unjustifiable or entirely belligerent. He disrespects others in the world, and thinks the best way to fix his blunders is to just rewind time again. If only it were that easy. Unfortunately, not enough intelligence exists on this planet for anyone to call him out for being an idiot. Everyone just goes along with his irritating behavior because he's an "outsider". Some would be quick to call Subaru a selfless "hero", but he blindly helps strangers he's known for about five minutes. This clearly isn't a reflection of his personality, but is out of character and exists to propel the story forward. He's helping people because "he's supposed to" and continuously bites the hand that feeds him, and always seems to come out scott free. He's an oblivious moron lacking any bit of hindsight, but it's alright because he ultimately gets all the chicks, and that's all that matters right?

Whew, now that I'm completely out of breath I can mention the few positives I can take from Re:Zero. In no particular order:

1. The animation is pretty damn good. It reminds me a lot of No Game No Life with regard to the vivid, bright colored environments and attractive character models. White Fox at its finest
2. The premise is great. Execution is abysmal, but at least I can ponder about what could've been.
3. It's oddly entertaining at times, if for no other reason than to watch a train wreck in progress.
4. The laundry list of waifus ensure that all plebs can be satisfied. Most of the female characters are oddly sexy in their own way.
5. The soundtrack is consistent, pleasant and well mixed. I mean, it damn well better be based on the composer's credentials.

There, I did it. Parts of me are baffled as to how this is the 35th highest rated show on MAL as this review is completed, but after the giant Erased debacle from a few seasons ago nothing really surprises me anymore. I hope at least those individuals deliberating on whether or not to watch Re:Zero have gained some valuable information in this review. Don't be so easily deceived, use your head when you watch it.

All in all, while I'm disappointed that this is the same studio that put out gems like Steins;Gate and Katanagatari, I'm not that surprised. The director and writers successfully catered to the mass appeal of shock and awe as well as shameless fan service when they wrote Re:Zero. The writing is shit and the characters suck, but I guess if you're looking for a cheap thrill or to be hip with your fellow weeaboos, you might consider watching this pompous piece of fiction. Thanks for those who pushed me to write this review, I had a lot of (cough) "fun" reliving my sickness in order to produce this critical analysis. Be sure to check out the rest of my Summer '16 reviews!

This anime doesn't make sense at all. I can agree that the show has an interesting premise and tries it best to be something original but in most episodes it seems like the writer itself doesn't really know where to take the story. Subaru is just transported into this fantasy world and immediately accepts it without ever questioning where or how he got here or even try to at least get back to his own world. The characters are simply one-dimensional and have no personality at all and just seem like lifeless robots who are simply their to complete the harem circle. The reasons ... Subaru does things is simply illogical. The two maids are simply there for fan service and serve nothing to the plot at all except being "waifu" material. The relationship between Subaru and Emilia felt fake and forced to be honest and in my eyes don't really see why he even likes her as it doesn't feel genuine .This series could have had great potential but after the ending it was pure trash and i don't understand how anyone calls this a masterpiece. The last episode felt disappointing and felt like many things were missing like some characters were completely tossed on the side. Overall this show is a mess with a cast of bland characters and a weird main character with no intelligence.

You know, for all the shit I give visual novels, I'll say this about them: at least they have the decency to fucking end when it comes time for them to expire. Light novels, on the other hand, never seem to be written with an end goal in mind. Every single one I've seen tries to be the otaku pandering version of a Shonen Jump manga (well, more otaku pandering than Shonen Jump already is) and as I've made it very clear before, I'm not into on-going stories, especially when they have the straightforward nature of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I grew ... up on movies and novels my school made me read, so I'm used to things having a beginning, middle, and end, especially when said end give birth to a bunch of shitty sequels that make you want to castrate the entirety of Hollywood's population. And it'd be one thing if they had the substance of a (really good) live-action drama, but I've yet to see Hannibal: The Light Novel version come from Japan, let alone be as successful as that show.

Sitting through Holo and Lawrence flirting with each other whilst mostly ignoring the reason why they started traveling together to begin with might be your idea of a good time, but there's only so long a bunch of Tales skits are going to entertain me when you rely on them for substance. Oh, but these interactions are what allows us to care about the characters so that when the drama hits...in which case I stop you right there and tell you that philosophy can fuck right off. Yes you need to develop the characters, but you're not supposed to put the story on halt in order to do that. If you can't meld the character interactions with the plot, then you might as well have not had them at all. But then again, I didn't grow up on superhero comics or anything otaku-related like a lot of anime fans (especially these days), so maybe it's just a style of storytelling that's not meant for me. Just like idol shows. Or anime about bread.

The thing is though, even by those incredibly bizarre Marvel-esque standards, Re:Zero still isn't very good. And it's not just because I hate meta-humor, although that's certainly a big part of it. Despite what Digibro might tell you, anime has always been lazy in regards to being meta, but it's definitely gotten a lot worse in the last few years, and I'm getting really annoyed by how inward anime is starting to become as a medium in general with popular light novel shows like Saekano and even anime video games like Danganronpa. The main character is an otaku - which in theory is supposed to make him relatable to everyone but in practice would only make him relatable to anime nerds (which I am not) - and every time he brings up how something is just like one of those anime he watches, I wanted to reach into the screen and beat him to death with his own face for not realizing that for comedy relief to work, you need to have comedy and something to relieve.

And he keeps quoting anime tropes even when he's in danger. Hell, even the other characters occasionally join him on his nerdy rants despite video games and harpoon guns not existing in the world. It'd be one thing if Re:Zero was a comedy anime, but nothing about the premise is inherently comedic. No one wants to be the Pirate King in a world where pirates have superpowers. Nothing about the fantasy setting screams Tex Avery and none of the characters make Hanna Barbara sound-effects whenever they breathe. Very few of the jokes are even fantasy-related, so why the hell do I have to sit through a speech regarding the glory of the maid? I don't give a shit about maids. Especially not when characters are in the midst of getting burnt alive by a raging inferno.

But even if you did become infected with the same sort of fatal disease that all Romeo Tanaka fans have, the story is like every other light novel story ever in that it's "light" (which in my mind translates to "incredibly boring"), and has all the storytelling quality of Dragon Age II - another shitty fantasy product. It's about this otaku dude with no past and no reason to be the lead that's not circumstantial named Subaru, as he one days get transported to a strange fantasy world for some witch-related reason that's never really elaborated on and falls in love with a half-elf princess named Emilia because the plot says so. However, the two of them end up as bloody corpses thanks to a mysterious female assassin, only for Subaru to discover that he has the ability to go back in time, Majora's Mask-style every time he dies. But this is just the setup. Where did this power come from? What overarching plot comes from it? Who's the main villain? Where's the grand adventure that usually accompanies these fantasy worlds? What exactly is Re:Zero about?

Well unfortunately, there isn't a single thing Re:Zero is "about" that appeals to anyone who's not an anime nerd or a Fire Emblem fan that disagrees with me that the franchise has turned bloody awful since the console releases. Every single character seems to be written with the mindset of "ship first, characterize second", and they all seem to change personality depending on what the plot wants to do with Subaru. Want to torture the dude? Let's have everyone hate him. Done with the torture? Okay, let's have everyone be nice to him now for no good reason. The only meaningful interactions Subaru has in the show are with the two love-interests: Emilia and a blue-haired maid named Rem, who people seemed to like an awful lot once she lost all her personality after becoming attracted to our rough otaku lead. Apparently, this is because the less your know about a person, the easier it is to ship them. A rule that I seem to recall being completely untrue during my brief shipping phase, but what do I know about what's cool these days?

And the plot and dialogue have about as much momentum as a Pro Stock car super-glued to a garbage crusher. It starts with Subaru getting introduced to his time travel powers, the characters, and an evil female villain we never see again in a plotline that screams "obvious setup" in capital lines and enough exclamation marks to fill the Atlantic Ocean. Three, technically four, episodes later and I still don't understand where the show is going with all this. So Subaru is going to move in with Emilia? Why should I care? Where's the story going to go from there? Well the next arc answers this question through a plot line of a mysterious killer in Emilia's mansion that might have acted as a tense mystery if the slice-of-life scenes weren't so utterly canned and the acting wasn't so hammy. But even if they weren't, the end boss turns out to be nothing more than a pack of dogs you could have defeated by chucking a fucking bone at them, and all it amounts to at the end is Subaru getting closer to Rem while having some lap pillow time with Emilia when he can be assed. We're halfway through the series and it's been nothing but prologue material that'd make the seventh Harry Potter movie blush.

But eventually, after sitting through twelve episodes of boring character interactions that were only that long because of the show's utterly stupid usage of its time travel gimmicks, the anime pulls a Shyamalan and gets into what it's really about. A self-loathing prideful dude whose shittiness destroys everything and everyone around him as a sort of deconstruction of the traditional shonen protagonist/trapped in a foreign world/anime in general storytelling. Basically Danganronpa 3: Despair Arc, except with a strange obsession for physically torturing Subaru repeatedly in order to fulfill the two-cour order to the point that it gets ridiculous, whereas Danganronpa Despair generally made the brutal killings of its anime tropes nice and quick bar the most important death scene, which stood out because it happened to that character and said character stayed dead. Listen show, I'm pretty sure I got that Subaru's prideful nature is toxic to humanity after you killed his ass to the point that his body literally broke apart. You didn't need to repeat it five fucking times with the only difference between each time being the method you used to do so and dedicating one episode to each time. Twice would have been sufficient, because the first time might have just demotivated him a bit, but other than that, this is is an anime. Not the Japanese version of American politics.

What really annoyed me with this "true plot" though is that all the torture amounts to at the end of the day is just to give our male lead an incentive to be a better person, which is the fucking white noise of how to do character development, whereas any good writer would have made the general direction from there a lot more bittersweet, or if you're Hideaki Anno, fucking brutal. But because Re:Zero's usage of time travel can conveniently erase a character's death whenever it wants to and make people forget how much of an asshole our lead is (and when they don't, they really easily forgive him), it makes all the effort put into depicting a twisted arm pretty pointless unless you really seeing torture porn animated. Not helping at all is that the actual torture is kind of lame and unimaginative. Nothing but bone-crunching and bleeding eyeballs, which - compared to Danganronpa's ridiculously creative death traps - just looks like the majority of the show's action scenes aka really bad. There's some decent animation in the fights sometimes, but they're either one-sided, badly choreographed, or shot to the point that you don't actually see the blows land. I know a lot of people talk up the white whale stuff, but I don't think the whales actually attacked anyone short of breathing on them, and I'm pretty sure Wilhelm's moves were the only ones that actually made contact.

So the show really never amounts to nothing more than making the viewer feel "emotions", which is something the creative team seems to be very much aware of because all the budget seems to go into the "hard-hitting stuff", causing the animation during the clean-up phase of Re:Zero's tale with the actual fighting and resolutions to look like absolute ass. The final scene is nothing more than a cheesy love confession with the screen brightness turned up and looks nowhere near as good as any of the climaxes in Episodes 13-18. And it didn't help that when all is said and done, all that happened was that Subaru went through "character development" to become a better man. But why? What was the point in watching that? Character development for the sake of character development can't function on its own as substance, and certainly not when the end goal of it is to be a better man for a girl who didn't even have that much screen time and whose half-elf heritage doesn't even factor all that much into the plot other than to be a convenient conflict. You do realize that I could just buy Tales of Symphonia at my local retail store, right?

I liked Danganronpa 3 because it used being "anime" ironically as well as a weapon to corrupt its well-meaning protagonists and their individual philosophies into a bunch of murderers where the only way to cheat death was if the writer was in a trolling mood, and Re:Zero's "anime" nature just feels incredibly lackluster by comparison. The only reason Subaru goes through any sort of shit is so that he can overcome the whiny drama and be rewarded with a personality-less girl who has no chemistry with him ala a shitty JRPG. And the only way he overcomes something is due to someone saving him at the last minute or becoming a little braver after suffering a traumatic event, which is also the kind of thing that characterizes most shitty JRPGs. When characters got corrupted in Danganronpa 3, they had to deal with the consequences of their actions for the rest of their life, generally by staying corrupted or put into a computer simulation for the rest of their days. And most of all, love interests died as a result of their actions and stayed dead! Things stuck in those shows. And whatever interesting point Re:Zero brings up is always invalidated before too long, like a happy marriage after the honeymoon is over.

As a final point though, I don't know who voiced Subaru, but his voice is annoying as fuck. There were several episodes where it became too much for me to the point that I had to mute the video just to get through it, and this includes Episode 18 where I only got through the first two minutes with sound. Just because you're supposed to be a deconstruction of the alpha male doesn't mean you have to sound like a whiny bitch. And don't even get me started on the final villain. I'm pretty sure you could make a funky remix out of every annoying Kugimiya Rie character verbal tic she's ever done and it'd still be more listenable than watching Kirito orgasm at the sound of his voice.

The review contains some minor spoilers. I actually watched the whole show but only as a method of self-mortification. Whereas monks used to practice mortification of the flesh, I treated watching Re:Zero as mortification of my mind, patience and my sense of self-respect.

I hate it when everyone is super hyped about a show and I can't for the life of me understand why. And this is exactly what happened with Re:Zero. Everyone was excited about it and called it the best anime or compared it to objectively superior shows. I watched 12 episodes of the show and got bored of it. I also had to ... pause every time the MC said anything because I couldn’t stop cringing. But people kept saying "dude, watch episode 15, you'll love it!". Well, I watched it. And I didn't love it. But why exactly is the show bad? Let me explain.

Story:
The MC, who is a NEET/shut-in (it's just an informed flaw, he never shows any signs of NEET-ness that can't be attributed to his severe mental retardedness, more about that later) and who gets transported to a fantasy world for some inexplicable reason. Hopefully this will be at least a minor plot point in the future because during the first season it is completely irrelevant. WHY does it always have to be a NEET teleported to a fantasy world? If you need a person unaware of local customs etc. you could think of a multitude of different ways to introduce them in the story without resorting to that awful cliché. And the worst part is that he instantly figured out this cliché but the time-resetting one took him so long that for some time I thought that that time reset damaged his brain (later on I found out that actually he'd been brain damaged the whole time). Thankfully, he had that fucking bag of chips or he would still wander around the alleyways getting killed over and over 25 episodes later.

Anyway, the first 3(4) episodes were not that terrible. Actually, they were the best part of the show. I’d give that arc 6/10 even though I couldn’t see shit half the time because it was so dark (maybe that’s why I didn’t dislike it that much?).

The second arc is definitely worse than the first one. The MC becomes totally unrelatable and we get introduced to more boring, soulless, mindless characters that serve no other purpose than to orbit MC’s dick. The plot becomes a complete joke with overused random “humor” and embarrassingly bad dialogue. Even though I’m a very empathic person, I couldn’t relate to the main character at all, the “tear-jerker” scene (in ep. 8? I think) just made me look at my watch every few minutes which is never a good sign when watching anything. I don’t want to get too much into detail (and there isn’t even that much to go into) but it is safe to say that you could either compress episodes 4-11 into two episodes or, even better, get rid of them completely and the show wouldn’t lose anything important. My score for this arc is 2/10.

Episodes 12-14 is where the show went completely downhill. The amount of cringe was so huge that my body killed off half of my brain cells as a self-defense mechanism.

And what about the famous episode 15? Well, it was ok. Better that the previous 10 or so episodes but still mediocre at best. By this time, I totally hated MC’s guts and actually caught myself rooting for his opponents so I didn’t feel anything when bad things kept happening to him.

If the series just went downhill in episodes 12-14, it crashed to the ground and and made a 10 foot hole during episodes 16-21. Despite that, the show did something actually praiseworthy. Making two action-focused episodes so horribly, mind-bogglingly BORING is a huge feat that deserves recognition. Bonus points for including flashbacks filled with weird emasculation fetish-fuel (what is up with that? The whole show is full of it). In fact, these episodes were so boring and dull that I had to watch the rest of the series at triple speed to somehow ease the pain connected with watching it. I may hate myself but not to such an extent as to watch this show normally. I actually tried to play it even faster but unfortunately I couldn't keep up with the subtitles.

Still, I have to say that this last arc was more interesting than the 2 or 3 previous ones. Of course it doesn't say much since nothing more boring than those arcs even comes to my mind. I know that I watched the show for free and of my own free will but somehow I still considered filing a formal complaint about my wasted time. Watching the show was like watching a trainwreck but even less fun. The only thing that was interesting about the show was wondering how much worse the next episode was going to be and the show never disappointed and always brought a large dose of cringe, stupidity and boredom.

Generally, the time-reset cliché is not used very well and the show suffers from edgeitis. It also paradoxically depends on using shock value and resetting time instantly after, which makes most of it pointless. And please, don’t tell me that this makes the MC slowly go insane or whatever. He’s already retarded. He doesn’t need to go insane as well.

What is more, this series can't decide what type of show it wants to be. It tries to be a psychological show but it utterly fails at it because the characters are retarded and/or one-dimensional. It includes a lot of action but its action scenes are so boring that most harem anime have better action sequences. It tries to be a drama but the only sad and heartbreaking part of the show is the number of people enjoying it.

Taking everything into consideration, the story definitely showed promise but it was presented so poorly that it is impossible for it to salvage the show. It’s all because of the aspect of the show that definitely is the weakest, namely…

The Characters:
Oh boy. I don’t think I’ve ever watched a show with worse characters. The ones that aren’t stupid or boring are stupid, boring and annoying at the same time.

The MC is probably the worst MC I’ve ever seen. It is definitely nice that the author tried to give mentally retarded people some representation in the show but perhaps he shouldn’t have included one as a main character. The MC is completely unrelatable and during the course of the 15 episodes he becomes completely unlikable as well. Again, it is fine to have characters that people are going to despise in the show but please, don’t make them the MC!
The MC is incredibly dumb, can’t do anything right, is a creepy stalker that acts like an obsessive ex-boyfriend and is the cringiest character that I’ve ever seen. Every time he opens his retarded mouth he spews things that instantly increase your autism spectrum. Seriously, I didn’t cringe that much even when watching WataMote and that show was based on second-hand embarrassment humor.
What is more, the MC doesn’t learn anything, like, for example, the fact that he can kill himself to fix the past. He did it once and he fixed everything thanks to that but he never tries it again. However, during the course of the series, me saying "kill yourself" to the main character gradually stopped meaning "go back in time and fix everything" and changed the meaning to "just end the suffering - both yours and mine". Apart from mental retardation, the MC also suffers from a bipolar syndrome. Every time he dies he switches from being a pathetic waste of oxygen wallowing in self-pity to being a super-aggressive and even more supper-annoying avatar of cringe and stupidity, and vice versa. He gets less dumb towards the end of the series but his cringe-factor is still through the roof and you still can't take such an embarrasing person seriously.

Also, the fact that he can’t tell anyone about his time-resetting predicament is a very cheap plot device. If I recall correctly, it had a practical use once or twice but that still doesn’t justify that.

So, to sum it up, the MC is retarded, unlikable and unrelatable and his motives are stupid (he went through so much shit just to save maidos whom he had known for a whopping 5 days or so and who showed almost nothing but disdain for him and one of them actually tried to kill him).

I’ve always thought that there is nothing worse than a bland, beta character without any personality traits but they at least usually have an interesting supporting cast unlike the MC in this show.

I’d discuss other mouth-breathing, soulless and completely bland and cookie-cutter characters but it is actually not worth it (just like this show). There wasn't a single character that I liked when the show ended. I liked the crazy dude for an episode or two but I got bored of him pretty quickly. And I felt pity for the blue haired maid because she was trapped in this show and fell for such an idiotic character. It doesn't mean that I liked her though. Besides being a cheap waifu-bait, she is completely uninteresting and unremarkable.

Seriously though, I don’t remember any show that had characters so terrible. Even other edgy shows like Akame ga Kill had a few characters that I almost liked.

Art & Sound:
The art is ok. A solid 7/10. There is no fanservice which is nice. Character designs are shit though.
There is nothing particularly good about the audio aspect of the show but there is nothing bad either. Unremarkable.

Summary:

Let’s see: the premise was ok but the actual story is bad (to put it mildly), characters are atrocious and drag the whole show down, the rest is unremarkable. However, I actually have an idea how to salvage this show in the second season (if there is one). Let the MC reset time back to the first episode, kill him for good and start again from there.

You probably noticed that I used the words "retarded" and "unremarkable" a lot. That's, of course, because most of the show is retarded and the rest is unremarkable. The fact that most discussions about the show are waifu wars also confirm it. When someone says that the show is great just keep in mind that what they probably mean is "I liked one of the maids/the loli/that half-elf". Even if the best part of the show is waifus, then it completely fails since they're so bland and uninteresting. Seriously, no matter what you're looking for in a show, other shows do it better. If you want to see a good time-travel-related anime then watch Steins;Gate. If you want to watch a good transported-to-a-fantasy-world anime… Well, tough luck. But other anime are still probably better than this one. However, if you are tired of actually good anime and have too much time to spare and/or you are a masochist... then I still can't recommend this show. It would be too cruel. Recommending this show should actually be considered a criminal offense.

Right now, the show is rated 8.77 on MAL which is a complete disgrace. Originally, I rated this show 4. I did so because it was horrible but I still watched it. Unfortunately, it commited the worst sin any show can commit - it became really boring. I mean, it had horribly boring episodes before but episodes 18-21 were so dull that it actually made me think that I'd rather go outside than watch this show and that had never happened to me before when watching anything else. That's why I deducted one point. And, once again, I’m surprised by the fact that so many people genuinely enjoy this show.

I know that everyone is entitled to their own opinion but it’s still a stupid opinion.

*Disclaimer: Admittedly, the ideal way to read this theme rant is by having an experience with the full show in mind. Hopefully, this isn't much of a problem. With that out of the way, let the ranting commence!*

The more I think about Re:Zero, the more infuriating it becomes. 2016’s third monumental mainstream title is a sham! It shot for the stars, gave up halfway, and settled for firey Venus. It had a lofty goal of delivering a message to the audience about their habits, but amidst the laughable, self-indulgent torture of its main character and neat-looking “directing tricks”, it was too scared to commit. It’s ... The Last Jedi of anime, except even worse. Both start off harmless enough but by the end divulge into a mess, except I resent this show more for its sheer dishonesty as opposed to just not having a backbone.

So, what did Re:Zero attempt to tell us? To find out, you’d need to understand the main protagonist. Wanna know why you hated him? It’s because he was meant to represent you, the entitled audience who escapes life by inserting yourself into fantasy. You who feels entitled to a 2D anime girl of your choice because you think you understand life and the scenarios of any given genre of fiction. He is an attack, a satire on the self-insert, as well as a twisted reflection of the audience, at least for 3/4 of the show. You see, after the infamous confession scene in episode 18, he stops being antagonized or treated as someone who just doesn’t get things. Now he suddenly is smarter and less desperate than he’s ever been; now he’s going to get the girl and help defeat the enemies who caused him immense pain earlier. Now he’s easier for you to insert yourselves into, and now he is suddenly cool with many of the people who felt disgusted or annoyed by him. He lost the one thing going for him, the one thing that made him better than the rest of the cast. He has now become the self-insert he was created to mock.

That’s not to say they did a remotely good job to begin with. For one, there are moments in which after the mildest of trial and error, he suddenly knows how to solve any given situation. Afterwards, everyone around him who hated or otherwise didn’t care much for him is suddenly cool, but on a smaller scale. Look no further than the end of the second arc, with the now iconic Rem turning from hating Subaru and wanting him dead, to loving him with the passion of a yandere, in the span of an episode, solely based on him helping her survive even when bleeding badly himself. I get that this is a noble action and that if you hated someone and he did that for you, you’d likely rethink your position on that person, but Rem becomes an entirely different character in the span of one scene! If this moment didn't reveal the show's true colors, then the third arc which comprises of the entire second half of this show, most certainly does.

They do still give Subaru the most painful wake-up call in recent years, but often through contrived means that are poorly resolved. The payoff of Subaru realizing his mistakes, adapting, and improving never hits, as even with his blood sweat and tears, it's never truly earned. After the relentlessly awful gauntlet of middle episodes, after their insulting attempts at shaming Subaru through pathetic “aesops” and punishments characters inflict that are contradictory to their nature, as well as one of the most horseshit plot ideas I’ve seen with questionable existence-erasing gas, the show can’t handle it anymore! After all of the headache it put us through, it instead opts to play it as safe as all the Light Novels it went against! It's all part of this ridiculous cycle where it punishes and tortures Subaru and therefore audience by proxy, and then handsomely rewards them with more waifus and cool shit with the sole purpose of the pattern beginning once again for three arcs in a row. It's especially insufferable in this third arc given that this is where it pretends like this is the last straw for Subaru and employs all of these fake lessons, developments and trials before actively undercutting all of that once again. No wonder nothing feels earned! No wonder the aesops and lessons the show piledrives into Subaru's/our skull in this arc in particular are so offensively fake! No wonder I feel ripped off! This show is one of the most dishonest anime I've ever seen!

This isn’t even going into other reasons why the writing crumbles faster than Subaru’s mental state, from the pathetic names of some of the enemies, to time loops in which certain events that could not possibly play differently or happen at all somehow do (episode 3 has one with a little girl Subaru and his girl Emilia helped out previously), or how people know the smell of the underlying threat of this series --Satella, the jealous witch-- despite how they never saw her or smelt her. This isn’t even bringing up the laughable excuse of a finale, the hideous fight sequences and CGI, or how horrendously defined the checkpoint system truly is. The lack of remotely decent side characters and character designs wasn’t taken into account either, though to add, the cast is less interesting than even SAO's, and the villain is laughably horrid. The merits regarding the opening/ending themes and some of the visuals were left off the table as well. This is ultimately a cursory glance at the show's mishandling of its promised message and themes rather than a holistic look at the show's folly. As it stands, Re:Zero was only remotely respectable in its initial mediocrity, not when it abandoned all pretenses of sincerity.

Care to Re:Set for us, Re:ZERO?

I am usually not one to write reviews, but I feel like I have to on this one to help save someone else their time that can never be taken back.

I got sucked into this anime b/c I made the mistake of trusting the hype train on this one. After watching it, I have no idea why this anime was so hyped.

The story starts off with an interesting premise in the first couple episodes, and then quickly evolves into a shell of what its potential could have been. There are only 2 characters that undergo any type of real character development, and it is ... shallow at best. Not to mention this guy is thrusted into another world, keeps dying and going back, and b/c of this, it seems like he's known characters for months, but really it has only been a few weeks tops, and already he has formed deep bounds with many of the characters, including the love and admiration of some. I kept watching it hoping the plot would really get going somewhere, but it never did. You are left asking more questions by the end of the anime than when you started, and not in the good way. The whole world he seems to have been transported to is extremely shallow the whole way through the and hardly ANYTHING is ever explained.

Look, this story and world building and character building in this anime was honestly so terribly bad I could go on for a long time on it, but I'm sorry I'm just not one of those people that can write a college paper on an anime that frustrated me to this extent, especially when I'm pretty sure no one will ever read this. I'm not someone who normally rates anime's I have watched extremely low either. Typically b/c usually when an anime is just so bad I can't bear it I will give it up after around 3 episodes usually. The thing that was simply SO frustrating about this anime though, was that it had the formula. It had the setup to really turn into something special, instead, it never delivered. Imagine you wanted a nice car. You see a present in the driveway that looks like a car under the wrappings, and then you tear it open and its a little hotwheels car. The disappointment I feel in this anime can not be overstated.

Art-wise there are a few episodes and scenes that are well done, but as the anime goes on the quality VERY NOTICEABLY DROPS. Really after the first 3 episodes it becomes apparent, but there are some scenes where it gets good again, specifically some ending scenes.

Character Designs. There were honestly so many loli characters it was disgusting. Is this really what anime is becoming? Where the animators really think having 4/5th of the female cast being loli are a good thing? Apparently they are trying to appeal either 10-13 year olds or grown up perverts.

Please don't watch this. Or if you want to watch it, give it a chance, but if at any point you're thinking: "just one more episode and I know something is going to happen that is going to make this anime really good all the sudden"...just stop it there. It never happens.

[3.0/10]
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[Re:Zero – Our Very Own Buzzword]

What is deconstruction? What is subversion? What is the reason these terms exist within the realm of entertainment media? Why do they matter? Our need to attach holistically positive or negative terms to reinforce our own positive or negative ideals is a staple of criticism. It's a staple of judging media, period. These buzzwords have filled everyone’s vocabularies over the course of the last few years. Whether it's due to online critics or simply the consumption of analysis-based content without the interest and engagement necessary to understand these more nuanced topics. It's unfortunate that I even must call something like ... subversion or deconstruction a "nuance" at this point, since it most definitely isn't. However, with its use being flanderized beyond belief, I find it hard to call it anything but a nuanced definition filled with separate sub-contexts and colloquialisms. Which is disappointing because all these new meanings pull away from what these words were meant to describe within the realm of entertainment.

Re:Zero isn’t what you may think it to be. I say this because after over a week of watching this show, I gaze over my ten pages of notes and I see things that I feel I wouldn’t care about if these newly defined adjectives weren’t tacked onto this show. Re:Zero feels like a victim of its expectations and what people drew it as, which is why I feel the need to describe exactly what I view is wrong with this series in excruciating detail. Detail that I feel will need to cut because I want this review to be at least somewhat palatable to the daily reader and not some thirty-five-thousand-word analysis that it may come out to be.


Spoilers are to be expected here. If you are a someone who has yet to see the show and values complete plot cluelessness walking into it then I advise you not read any further. I feel the need to go step by step, arc by arc, and examine and identify the root of a show like this’ problem. It lays within marketing, within pandering, within safety, within the very industry which spawned its being. For once, I feel like I have a lot to say.

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[Re:Start – Beginning a Journey]

The opening is boring enough. Our tracksuit wearing protagonist, Subaru, walks out of a convenience store, closes his eyes, and opens them in another world. The context to these events can be read into as the entire story of the show begins to slowly become clear, however, the “journey into the new world” aspect of this show didn’t have an inspired start. Regardless, it’s about what you’d expect from a “trapped in another world that just so happens to be the most generic possible fantasy setting that we’ve seen in hundreds of shitty Asian MMORPG’s”, especially since our protagonist is self-aware. Which doesn’t amount to anything, he points out things he recognizes from games and moves on. “This is like a video game”, isn’t really substantial or investing commentary in the situation. I get it’s supposed to be comedy, but it doesn’t sell the scene with these comparisons especially since he just got transported an alien world. You have no idea what will happen with your what just happened, yet; hey, at least it looks like a video game, right?

He eventually encounters some thugs and meets his love interest. The wonderfully designed Emilia, who serves as the crux of this shows narrative in an expected way. From her very introduction, and my awareness that there most definitely won’t just be one girl in a show like this, I foresaw the obvious truth that she will be what drives the protagonist. Now it’s up to the show to “subvert” those expectations, which is a buzzword you better get ready to start hearing. Throughout the initial two-episode pilot, we encounter exactly what this show will revolve around. Subaru’s “Return by Death” ability, which was named by him because “hey, it’s like a video game anime thing!” This ability allows him to return to a previously visited situation and, for all intents and purposes, reset time. Okay, so it’s a Groundhog Day stuck-in-a-fantasy-world series with video game roots. You can see why I harbored doubt after the first two episodes, right? Unless it works hard to craft a separate identity that’s able to sustain a strong narrative then it’s bound to fail as a combination of two genres that are both really popular in the industry right now.

I’d go so far as to say that the entire idea is a perfect marketing strategy. If two generic archetypes for light novel shows are popular, why not mesh them? It’d be even better if the mesh comes from yet another light novel so you have previously established fans to add to the stock number you’ll get by just having appealing character designs and a quazi-harem. While the biggest surprise is its R-rated violence, which is still held back by the entire Japanese industry, unfortunately. On a slightly off-topic note, it’s so strange to see an industry that revels in the sexualization, even of incredibly young characters, yet recoils at the idea of having blood that doesn’t have a fake sheen and hilariously sloppy sound-effects. You may say these kinds of unbelievable sounds are a remnant of the past, however, I’ll offer my rebuttal in the words; “Evolve or go extinct.”

The first few episodes may be generic; they aren’t overly bad. I remember first checking out the pilot with a few friends many months ago when it first aired. While I had no interest in picking it back up, I will say that they weren’t nearly as awful as any of us were expecting. This world, or its characters, aren’t interesting, but the premise and nature of the show isn’t an inherent turnoff either.

We begin meeting a plethora of characters in the first mini-arc of the show that really go nowhere within the first season. Felt, a bandit-loli that is pretty much the shows tomboy. Reinhard which isn’t a heavy armor-clad German knight from the future, but instead is a generic spiky-haired knight wearing cool futuristic-yet-medieval robes that exposits some dialogue about magic or something. They play virtually no role within the show’s first season apart from being reintroduced later, so ignoring them we proceed with the protagonist, Subaru, dying multiple times to what feels like poorly thought out situations.

The first villain, which doesn’t get killed, also doesn’t return. I feel like this show is working extra hard to try and get as many elements moving without being sure of a second season. No hate against that, though. We proceed to the moment this show truly beings to show its colors. The introduction to the MC’s home for the next ten-ish episodes. A mansion that Emilia lives in with her cute spirit-cat, owned by Roswaal L. Mathers. There is another loli, Beatrice, who serves to give exposition and hilarious plot holes, then get promptly forgotten. As well as a group of maids. Rem and Ram. Now I say Rem, then Ram, because that’s pretty much how the show wants us to think.

These two incredibly well-designed and inherently attractive characters are twins that are, in my opinion, the finest example of waifu-bait I’ve seen in anime… so far. Especially Rem, since Ram, similar to most secondary’s, gets forgotten about quickly. Rem is an interesting beast, and as the story progresses I’ll get the opportunity to dive further into why I believe she’s so popular.

Now don’t get it twisted, I was very aware that these characters existed. The reason I watched the entirety of this show was because the ludicrous amount of hype that was being drawn to it. I want to say this directly, though, I’m not one to get fully invested into the hype. I was aware about the kind of show this was and I didn’t expect it to be anything great even if the community was collectively circle jerking about it.

The show then takes on a slice-of-life-esq narrative which involves Subaru getting to know everyone and then getting brutally murdered by a mysterious figure. These episodes are, by all means, light hearted. The scenes shift between teased romance and comedy often and the only true stingers we get are in the obligatory cliffhangers that exist solely to create interest in the upcoming episodes. I’m not one to care about cliffhangers unless they are used sparingly to create a drastic tonal shift. However, they quickly became extremely common-place within Re:Zero that they harbored no dramatic tension to them. You happen to glance over at the episodes run time and notice it’s about to end, “here comes the stinger,” you think to yourself.

Towards the intended climax of this arc, as the baddie is revealed and I slowly start to get a better picture of this show, it began to infuriate me. Not since No Game No Life has a show gotten so deep under my skin as a product with the intended purpose of entertainment. It felt cloying in the worst possible way. The reveal that Rem was the assailant and that she was also a cute girl made me instantly understand that this show only has the intension of subverting expectations when it means not sacrificing its market value as something made to get money.

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[Of Dogs, Rem, and Broken Things]

This show isn’t bland, forgettable, or insipid. It’s infuriating, pandering, and redundant. Now I know what you may be thinking, “well, don’t those things go together?” No. Not really. There’s a distinct difference between praising something and simply having something be popular. I don’t get angry at Transformers for being an incredibly high-grossing film for the same reason I don’t get angry at Taylor Swift for selling millions of records every year. They’re there to fill that abundant market and they do it well. If I watch, or listen to them, I will review them accordingly. I gave Sword Art Online a two, and I gave its second season a one. I did this because I truly believe that show has nothing to offer to me as a viewer, however, I acknowledge its role in the entire industry. It’s the bran flakes, the transformers, the Swift, the Drake of anime.

Re:Zero isn’t that. Or so you are lead to believe. Re:Zero tries to have its cake and eat it too. It wants to be respectably different from the archetype it encapsulates, but it also wants to maintain the ability to sell to the people that love the archetype it encapsulates. I won’t be the first to say that this kind of entertainment inherently doesn’t work. The people who love SAO wouldn’t love something that completely contradicts why they love SAO, and to create a compelling, awe-inspiring narrative, you genuinely must do something completely contrary to what SAO did. I’m not saying this because SAO is a show that people love ragging on, because I can see why people would think that, I’m saying this because as a student of entertainment I feel it’s my job to discover what works, and what doesn’t. It’s also my job to understand why it works and doesn’t.

Re:Zero doesn’t have this luxury so you are left with a show that is in an infinite tug-o’-war between itself. Two parts of a whole that can never be complete. This inherent want to reach for the stars but to stay grounded in preconceived tropes and ideals is what keeps this show thoroughly frustrating to watch, and what keeps me from ever getting invested in anything that happens.

An easy example is the concept of subversion in context with this show. I see that word, as well as “deconstruction” being thrown around by people. Not only is there a complete misunderstanding of their intended concepts, but the entire idea is missed here. This is because subversion is used to comment on the archetypes being subverted in a clever way. It’s almost a backhanded and creative way to show, rather than describe. It is a play on expectations, but it isn’t a twist. A twist is something you don’t see coming, a subversion is the ability to twist what you may think describes something. What it isn’t is meta. A subversion doesn’t have to be meta. Re:Zero misses this mark with astounding accuracy.

Subaru is a self-aware character, and that’s fine. But the only explained subversion I see here is his ability to point out a cliché. Which is, naturally, a fine thing to do from a character like this. Yet they don’t comment on this cliché, they don’t do anything with it, he simply comments on it and continues through with it. Once again, the show attempting to have its cake and eat it too. It doesn’t work and, as I’ve said, is frustrating as hell to sit through.

Re:Zero’s meta nature is something that detracts from its verisimilitude, but the show needs to have believability if it wants to be taken seriously; which it does. The amount of cloying emotional melodrama that occurs within this shows second arc is intoxicating, as I constantly found myself with flashbacks of Your Lie in April, as every character’s teary-eyed confessions and pained yells try to claw at your heartstrings. I said this during my review of that show and I’ll say it again here, if you want me to care and feel bad about something, give me something to feel bad about. I want to know these characters before you tell me why I should be crying. I don’t care that something sad is happening.

This is further exacerbated with Rem and Subaru’s growing relationship and how the situations they find themselves in are absolutely ridiculous. This witches curse that Subaru is inflicted with conveniently prevents him from telling anyone what he is going through, yet he obviously begins to get attached to these characters. However, to my hilarious surprise, they begin to reciprocate these feelings towards him without any reason to.

At this point in the show it was very obvious that the writer was going for the villain-empathy into wanting companion trope with Rem. She’s “evil” for a little bit but I don’t think anyone with an eye for television believed that she wouldn’t turn good. I haven’t seen much anime at all and I can easily tell that when a character is cute, they must be inducted in the harem. Especially if this show is in a fantasy setting with a spiky-haired protagonist who only has one pair of clothes. Rem was clearly going to start wanting to floss her teeth with Subaru’s pubes, the question was… how?

The “attack of the dogs” mini-story serves to finish a wider arc as well as to give reason for Rem to be inducted into the Subaru show. Yet it’s done in such a backhanded and hilarious illogical way that I had to literally pause and sit back in true-to-god shock at what I’m watching right now. To explain further, let me spell out the first, and incredibly hilarious plot-hole that’s so bafflingly in your face that I’m surprised people didn’t just outright drop the show.

Earlier on in the Re:Zero’s second arc, Beatrice, or as Subaru calls her, Drill-loli, as she has funky looking hair-drills, explains to him that curses are inherently incurable. You cannot cure a curse with simple magic. The way a curse is placed on you is through touch, so the biggest way to avoid getting it placed on you is to avoid touching. Which is kind of dumb to begin with, since by those means this world may be the most unsafe and awful place to live in. But regardless, those are the rules. Fine. I can accept that.

However, literally two episodes later, while Subaru is investigating how he got cursed, he finds the culprit and takes the information to Beatrice. She shows him the location of the curse and then… I kid you not, cures it with simple magic. There was this special moment where I was waiting for the show to acknowledge what just happened. I waited and waited and then the credits rolled. Then I realized I was watching something that’s bad. Then it all made sense to me.

With this shows lack for attention explained and showcased, the “attack of the dogs” arc should’ve been more expected to me. At this point I was watching this show because I was curious to see what anyone liked it in. Subaru, and trust me, I’ll get to his character later, throws himself into a hilarious dangerous position where he is positive to get brutalized again, however, to his surprise, Rem the cute-totally-not-pandering character bursts out of the woods and saves him. She promptly makes work of the mabeasts and shows him that she’s one hell of a badass (but she’s totally cute and dressed like a maid so not threatening in terms of characterization). Then more dogs show up. Yet for some reason she says that now it has become too dangerous and it seems like this is a situation they may not survive. Even though she just obliterated fourteen demon puppers in a few seconds. She tells Subaru to run away and he kind of does, as she follows him whilst chopping, smashing, and bashing her way through the plenty of demon dogs being thrown at her.

The next we see of her she’s been wounded, somehow. Then a rockslide occurs. This rockslide has direct contact with Rem, yet for some reason it ends up knocking her into the sky. Which baffled me. Aren’t avalanches supposed to suck you under? So, she gets knocked into the sky and falls onto the ground bloodied and beaten. However, her true edginess has just begun, as it’s revealed that she is actually a one-horned demon. Cool! She begins to go super saiyan and just destroy all these dogs that stand between her and survival. Subaru, being the retard he is, notices a dog behind her and instead of gauging the situation as it is, this bitch is going HAM, he decides to push her out of the way and sacrifice himself. Which makes zero sense in context or without context. She was going ballistic and just destroying them. He begins to get chomped up as a distant call of his name is heard from her.

This is further unexplained as to why she called his name because as we see later in the next arc that she has no concept of what she’s doing whilst in the demon form. So, her calling his name would be like the hulk reading a dictionary whilst hulking out. Makes no sense. Regardless, this kind of ridiculous and flawed kindergarten writing is prevalent throughout the entirety of this shows first half. This doesn’t just make me lose faith in what makes animation great, this makes me lose faith in what makes entertainment great. The fact that countless people praise this show to the extent they do while looking over obviously failed, major narrative problems makes me believe that the only reason people like this show is because for once the eventual love-interest is also someone who kicks ass on occasion. That’s not anything new, why do people care about this? Oh, yeah, she’s cute. There is one thing giving the viewer what they want. There’s another thing with force feeding them forced romantic bullshit with no character, chemistry, or creativity until they are bloated, greasy balls of bullshit rolling around praising a show for elements that aren’t there.

At this point in the series I would’ve dropped it two times over. I honestly couldn’t stand it. At the time, it was the epitome of everything I despise in anime and why this medium isn’t taken seriously. It is pandering bullshit disguised as subversion when in reality it’s a show made to make you feel the basest of emotions while wrapped in a semi-original premise. There are non-characters flopping around on-screen until one them gets murdered in some boring, edgy, dark, and uncreative way. I don’t care these characters are getting killed because they have the personality and engagement-potential of a wet mop.

The show’s third arc, which expands on Rem and Ram’s backstory, which to the shows credit isn’t fucked up with crappy plot holes and semi-cleverly explains Ram’s reliance on Rem as a parallel to Rem’s earlier reliance on Ram. The show even goes so far as to hint at a sadomasochistic side of Rem, as her younger self is shown smiling at her sister’s fate. However, much like a lot of this shows earlier elements, it is never mentioned again. The backstory itself isn’t overly creative, however, the way it is told is engaging. Unfortunately, the obvious conclusion from this backstory still needs to be explained by Rem in the most contrived and “do you get it yet?” monologue.
Re:Zero also has a tendency to pull character abilities out of thin air. Ram gets some crazy psychic abilities that weren’t ever actually talked about before she had to use them, which, while acceptable, still is an incredibly unoriginal way to introduce and use character abilities. The fight scenes within these arcs are also resolved through convenience and not actual development. This shows over-reliance on a character’s appearance to make you care about them is a perfect example as to why a lot of anime struggles with character relations in my eyes. I don’t care if you are gorgeous or ugly, you need to be interesting if you want me to be engaged in your story. This is a cheap tactic to create empathy where otherwise there wouldn’t be any.
The third arc wraps up with Rem having a breakdown over her previous childhood reliance on Ram, while Ram has a reliance on her now. She does the thing every anime character in these shounen shows does and blames herself for things that were very clearly out of her control in every way. Cause why not. Since Subaru is a white knight (more on that later), we get a scene where he talks about how amazing she is, yet the things he brings up are kind of hilariously mundane. He talks about how she’s a good cook. He tells a maid… how she’s good at cooking. Listen, she’s having an emotional breakdown here and if your main talking point is how good a woman is at cooking then I think you’re talking skills are exactly where your ideologies are; in the past. I’m not some ranting feminist or anything, but this was a hysterical scene for all the wrong reasons.

It also became very clear that Subaru doesn’t have a vested interest in Rem. He has always liked Emilia and will most definitely end up with her by the end of this season. Yet this show really tries to make you believe that he won’t, even if it is obvious he will. This is further disappointing since Emilia, up to this point, lacked any kind of character. At all. While Rem was a mish-mash of the most appealing possible waifu traits, Emilia was a cute mom. Hey, she’s unaware about flirting and is soft-spoken. That’s her personality. Yet Subaru is head-over-heels for her for reasons that can only be described as “plot-oriented”, since the only thing she must offer is her well-done design.

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[A Tale of the Whitest Knight]

Subaru sucks. He is an infuriatingly incompetent main character. Not because he has character. It’s because he’s genuinely inexplicable as a character. He starts off as a snarky self-aware protagonist that isn’t original, but serviceable. Then he becomes flirtatious. Then he becomes edgy. Then he reverts to where he was but with more self-awareness. However, what truly drives me nuts is how much of a white knight he is. If you are unaware of this term, Urban Dictionary will aid me with the definition; “A person (usually a male) who sees the typical maiden in distress, and believe that he can help her.”

Subaru is this. Except he’s like what you’d imagine a socially incapable neckbeard to be like around girls, but the girls are just cutout waifu characters. Yet Subaru acts incredibly confident, yet still defensive of these characters which can’t be described as anything but his own possessions. I could honestly see him forbidding one of them from going outside just because he fears for them. The only reason for his infatuation with them is because they are cute, and man if cute girls don’t make the anime world go around.

So he feels indebted to Emilia for her ability to save him, yet he feels indebted to the point where he falls in love with her simply because she saved him. It’s such a shallow reason to love someone that I honestly didn’t expect the show not to acknowledge it. Yet it doesn’t. Subaru gets himself into so many obnoxious situations simply due to his ability not to let his possessions get hurt. It is maddening to see this kind of story repeat over the course of this shows first half. Actually, fuck Subaru.

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[Politics in Anime]

Politics suck in anime. I haven’t seen a single anime do politics well. I don’t want you to take this as a holistic statement. I haven’t seen much anime, but much like anyone’s notions about television or anything, really, they are based on experience. In my experience, politics in anime are insanely unappealing. They are always so black-and-white that they lack any actual tension or reason to be invested in the situation. What makes politics interesting is how much moral grey there is to the arguments being made. However, that is never actually portrayed. So when Re:Zero delves into some politics in the middle half I was at my peak groan-level. It was hitting every preconceived trapping and archetype so well that I was expecting some kind of twist showing that all of this was an elaborate plan and it was all just some kind of simulation.

But no. We are introduced to these wacky and zany archetypes of political figures during a big meeting where the new ruler of their land is decided. These elderly councilmen all line up to determine the leader, which all happen to be cute-ass girls! Then the bickering begins. For an entire episode, we get non-stop bickering from everyone. Every ruler states their desires and motivations in such a amusingly forced way that It was a surprise the show didn’t point out that cliché. They just step up on their little soap box and give us a line or two about what they want to do. Let me break it down for you.

Potential Leader 1 --> I want equality for all!

Potential Leader 2 --> I hate everyone and I just want to rule over all you scum

Potential Leader 3 --> I’m greedy and just want stuff

Potential leader 4 --> The government sucks and I want reform

So two of those four are completely drawn to be characters not there to truly create any kind of political and moral intrigue. They are just the “bad guys”. The fourth leader is there to play a part in a future episode, which she does. The first leader is Emilia and is obviously the one audiences should want to win.

How is this compelling again? Why should I care about this? What’s the point of this arc? Oh, yeah, to have Subaru become the whitest knight of them all. There is clichéd bickering in front of the council of elders that are just kind of sitting there watching their leaders bicker over what might as well be spilled milk, which is lacking any self-awareness. Subaru hears his waifu get offended over her race, which is half-elf, and gets triggered and begins to try and yell at people. He then declares himself, get this, her knight. And the knights in this show all wear white. I couldn’t even make this up if I tried. Then he promptly gets beaten up by another knight and then explodes on Emilia for not repaying him in any way. Yet all he’s done is act like a white knight and get himself killed many times. It’s dumb, yet it creates a rift between the two that lasts the entire second half of the show. He likes her cause she’s cute and nice. Then tries to be her knight. That’s this arc.

When I went to the fan-reaction of this episode so many people were praising the characterization Emilia got that it prompted me to want to re-watch this episode. Where was she being characterized? All it did was give her the ability to get upset. Fucking good. She should’ve been annoyed by how clingy and annoying Subaru is by the fifth episode. These fans are praising a character for literally just showing an emotion that isn’t her base kit of cute blushes and smiles. Is this how fucking backwards and asinine liking a show like this has become? “Well this character isn’t just waifu-bait cardboard-cutout-chan, what great writing!” This wreck is doing the bare minimum here.

A few things happen here and there and he finds that everyone died. I don’t care because over the course of fourteen episodes they didn’t develop anyone but Rem, and her development went from deadpan cute maid with a bad ass side to cute maid that loves our protagonist because he saved her by getting almost killed for no reason with a bad ass side. All these characters were slaughtered yet we already know exactly what will happen. Something will lead to his death and then he’ll have another chance at it all. This is a fault in the very concept of the show. It’s showing us all this shocking shit yet none of it is retain-able because none of it is lasting. The only way to make it last is through Subaru’s emotional state. Yet that gets reverted quick, as I will explain shortly.

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[Episode 15]

The one thing I knew about this show other than that “Rem is best girl!” was that episode fifteen was a doozy. I was expecting some twists, I was expecting some turns, I was expecting something neat. Obviously, my expectations slowly waned as I watched the fourteen episodes leading up to it. All I was expecting at this point was that it won’t leave me wanting to gouge my eyes out. Here’s hoping for some hype!

You know what? It delivered on hype. It was the best episode of the show, bar none. While this isn’t necessarily a great accomplishment, it is something nice nevertheless. Unfortunately, I don’t think it was the best episode for the reason the show was intending it to be. It introduced a new villain and oh boy is he hilarious. Episode fifteen made me genuinely laugh harder than I had in a week. This new villain is like those generic anime villains where they’re eyes bulge out of their faces and they are all zany and wacky and edgy. Also, in true Re:Zero fashion, he’s hopelessly self-aware about certain clichés yet the show still does them so those self-aware remarks serve no purpose other than to rub in the fact that they are doing these clichés with no actual subversion. But he’s also like discount joker; and it’s fucking sidesplitting. What makes it even funnier is that the characters are genuinely frighted on him. I had tears in my eyes for all the wrong reasons as our beloved character, blue waifu, had all her bones broken and her limbs twisted. It was glorious. I was so happy to see this show showing something gruesome for once.

I won’t lie, I’m a huge fan of gore. I think the ability to show something gory, whether it’s for shock value or not, is inherently interesting in some way or another. The idea of gore is, in concept, very interesting. I’ll avoid discussing why as it’ll make this insanely long review even longer, however, I will say that I think it has the potential to add a lot to something. This show was bloody, but it wasn’t gory. It was always just streaks of blood or just wonky gushes and sprays here and there. It never felt brutal and it sure as hell never felt emotionally powerful or draining to witness. Rem getting destroyed wasn’t overly disgusting or anything, but at least there was a small effort made here to be a little disturbing. I would’ve loved if they took it farther. Like, much farther. To sell a psychopath you need to not be restrained by the industry.

I was shown how gory the show could’ve been in some illustrations that I believe were based on the Light Novel (if not directly from it) and I was thoroughly saddened by the fact that this was airing in an industry where even a little gore would be censored immediately. I feel like if it embraced its B-movie roots it would’ve been an astoundingly fun show to watch. Unfortunately, not, though, and as the hilarity ends and the regular cloying-ass cliché dialogue starts again we revert to what the show sucks at. Just about everything else. The episode, though, to its benefit had a great cliffhanger for once.

This truly awe-inspiring cliffhanger was unfortunately undermined by an after-credits scene that sucked all the epic-ness out of everything. The fifteenth episode finally had the show revel in fuckery and was quite enjoyable because of it. It’s a shame that it was the only one of its kind, since this show refuses to be campy even if it is. These characters are meant to be killed, and while I know a lot of people would be upset with since I’m sure everyone loves blue-hair waifu and everyone loves white-hair waifu and probably didn’t like red-haired waifu as much, but I, personally, would’ve loved to see a classic grind house in anime form. It’d be a pleasure to watch with friends.

An increase in gore would’ve also had a better effect on the story. Since the only way to raise these psychological stakes is to have us experience what Subaru is. You do this by showing us the gruesome results in a way that does have us recoil in nastiness. The way Re:Zero does this is just weak. It felt like Subaru didn’t “want to die”, however, he had to, but it doesn’t feel like remotely enough progression. It didn’t feel like he grew too much from each death. It didn’t feel like he got properly damaged, and when the show showed that he may have, it never actually solidified this kind of narrative progression. He just shifted from fiery MC to depressed boy and then was knocked out of that depression by some motivational speech.

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[The Confession]

Rem spills her wish-fulfillment on Subaru and it’s probably the most I’ve ever cringed at an anime before. No hate towards anyone who enjoyed this sequence, but I just felt so uncomfortable. It felt like the most pandering possible thing to do. It’s wish-fulfillment. Really just a cute girl talking about this is made for guys to fawn over and that’s about it.

With that being said, Subaru is self-aware about these flaws he has. Towards the latter half of this show there is an incredibly long emotional scene between Subaru and Rem. He dishes out just about everything he has taken, about the pain, the anger, the amount he’s been broken by these experiences. Whilst for me I didn’t buy his trials and tribulations since they lacked any kind of emotional resonance, I did feel like the VA did the best job he could’ve done conveying these feelings, though. Inopportunely, these feelings are based on a sub-par narrative. When a character admits his flaws, that’s the first step to overcoming them, right?

Well, not for Re:Zero it’s not. He gets literally all of these flaws validated. Every single one. It’s supposed to be a parallel to how he helped Rem’s emotional breakdown, however, it doesn’t remotely feel like the same thing. Rem is straight up excusing everything he’s done just because she has fallen in love with him for an equally shallow reason that he’s fallen in love with Emilia. This kind of situation didn’t make much sense to me. They make these clear parallel’s yet do nothing with them, but more importantly, these parallels serve as a way to excuse actions that an MC who was made to be self-inserted into did. It’s the queen of all fan-service and pandering. Rem, the most waifu-bait character just validated everything that would be criticized of socially-incapable nerds. They give this corny quazi-relationship throughout a lot of this shows middle-half where Rem clearly has a big crush on him, and I suppose that gives her enough of a reason to fawn over him so much that she literally goes into cringe-inducing details about a fantasy relationship. It genuinely made me uncomfortable, which is funny since the actual scenes meant to make me uncomfortable couldn’t even do that.
It’s a soap opera. Subaru is an awful person who does nothing yet takes the blame for everything and that’s portrayed as okay in this show. He does grow, but in ways that benefit the character. It frustrated me to no end. Regardless if he buys it or not, it happened.

Here’s the saddest thing though. He rejects her. As I guessed from the first few episodes, Subaru’s heart lies with the cardboard cutout waifu and not the body-pillow waifu. Since he’s an anime protagonist and every girl is bound to warm up to him eventually, even Beatrice in this odd shoehorned scene of her expressing sadness over his inevitable death. So this rejection was then supplemented by Rem just kind of shrugging it off and then both of them laugh it off.

I was just annoyed about this move. They had to address this relationship and made it seem like this crazy narrative maneuver but instead just made it an excuse for Rem to continue to fawn over Subaru with a potential tease of their possible relationship. It is frankly sickening how much Re:Zero wants to stick to a perceived status quo while still pretending to subvert clichés. This scene is there to maintain their relationship and the cutesy factor without actually addressing the core of the “MC can get em’ all” trope. It’s a cheap tactic that simply tries to, as I’ve said many times, have the cake and eat it too. It doesn’t work. Either be a sleazy harem or be a show with one relationship. This kind of unbelievable mushiness is there to serve as pandering fan service and is a detriment to original television.

From here on every conversation Subaru has with Rem is just dripping with this kind of pandering bullshit that makes my eyes roll back. All they do is complement each other and pledge loyalty to one another and say how awesome they are over and over again. It’s a competition of who can be a massive suck up and it’s painful to listen to. It genuinely ruins my mood to see this gushy bullshit amidst a supposedly intense battle. They are trying too hard to keep this ship alive, and to my unwarranted surprise, people actually buy it.
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[A Whale of a Climax]

The White Whale arc is cool. This is where I think the show finally could get to something that, while far from intense and original, was serviceable as entertainment. It ditched a lot of cloying nonsense and went for a direct threat-to-solve scenario. A massive White Whale was in the area and, of course, one of the previously established characters has a sad history of it. The first few episodes were slow and somewhat tedious, but the actual confrontation was, if anything, fun.

I think it lacked quite a bit of tension as the battle never quite felt big, especially since the entire show falls into the Shounen trap of elongating these battle sequences with chatty expository dialogue mid-fight that not only rips me out of the moment, but stretch the believe-ability of the event. I think if Re:Zero would shorten this sequence down by three or maybe even four times, it could create for a more intense, believable, and well-animated battle.

For shows like Game of Thrones, extended battle sequences work because there is a lot of narrative to cover. Well, that and just generally this is a lot more investment and believe-ability in the characters and setting. But since the narrative is extremely simple in Re:Zero, there is no reason to have this. The battle episodes have dialogue that is generally contrived filler. Subaru didn’t really do anything apart from catching someone and saving them, and then pointing out an insanely obvious boss mechanic. This mechanic was so clear that it was extremely unbelievable that no one else thought of this. The “no one” I’m of course talking about the political figure that wasn’t one of the two that was portrayed with no shred of moral ground.

Karsten Crusch is a pretty fun character to have on screen, even if her design is a little more uninspired than a lot of the other ones that the show has offered. She’s portrayed as this tactician and mastermind yet missed this mechanic completely, which made it all the clearer that the writer needed a reason to have Subaru be the one that is praised since he’s the protagonist of this show. That being said, it was a fun arc to have. Even if it felt like it was the most filler thing in the show, it was also probably the most fun I’ve had with this show that wasn’t’ the fifteenth episode. Things started to actually look up for Re:Zero.
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[Anti-climax Within a Climax]

The show ends in a fairly anti-climactic way. We get an eventual reunion between Emilia and Subaru and the crazy joker gets defeated in a way that would probably feel cathartic to people invested in this story. There was this vague overarching narrative involving the seven deadly sins being represented that never actually felt tangible at all. They just felt like names tacked onto certain characters. Certain people were considered “sloth”, yet didn’t act slothful. This got to the point where Subaru points it out but it actually is a serious complaint that the show just glosses over because it was being meta.

There are a few backstories reveals here both about the characters we know and about our protagonist, Subaru, that we could’ve probably figured out if we knew about this vague overarching narrative before it was introduced. I wish foreshadowing was something this show implemented. This isn’t really a bad way to go about things, but I can’t help and feel that it’s a generic route to venture down.

This show offers a simplistic look at racism as well which serves no purpose other than to give Emilia another reason to get empathy from the viewer. It doesn’t work because it’s like empathizing with a cute pencil. Literally wooden. The racism isn’t ever portrayed in a way that I felt commented on anything apart from, “hey, don’t do that.” Which is the most simplistic and obvious way to go about commenting about something that is inherently thought of as a negative.

However, we finally get a climax that doesn’t feel too interesting but we get the titular reunion of Subaru and Emilia and it’s everything that you could imagine. An overblown field of grass blowing in the wind with the sun’s rays outlining the characters as Subaru dumps his feelings on Emilia. She of course reciprocates in a nebulous way and the show wraps up. To give an example of this show lacking believability in its relationships I’ll cite one of the characters. During Subaru’s huge emotional confession to Emilia he says something to the extent of, “If you name ten bad things about yourself, I will name 2,000 things I love about you.” That’s nice in theory, however, I left me asking if he could even name five. I don’t actually think she even has five features, let alone two-thousand. She’s an ultra-hollow character that didn’t appear much in the show. She was a carrot on the stick that is sought after for reasons that aren’t believable.
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[Subversion, Deconstruction, and a Conclusion]

To return to the very first topic about this show. Is it subversive? Well, no. Not really. It doesn’t work to subvert anything that remotely lies within the narrative heart of these kinds of shows. There is no attempt to deconstruct elements of this archetype. This show relies heavily on meta-commentary as humor, rather than actual commentary on narrative. I can’t say Re:Zero isn’t trying to do this, since I don’t know if it is, but it sure as hell is failing if it is.

I think the plot-holes and narrative leaps this show has are enough to dismiss it, but pile that on top of the miles of pandering content and cloying narrative with unbelievable relationships you get a show that is overrated by a wide audience. That being said, it isn’t without its positives. I appreciate its character design, they fit exactly what this show is trying to do very well. Particularly Emilia and the twin maids have standout designs. The VA’s are also mostly solid, with some great performances by Yuusuke Kobayashi playing Subaru, and Inori Minase as Rem. It also does a few smart things when it comes to presentation. I particularly loved how it avoided the opening credits in some cases to maintain the pace of the narrative. This is something I haven’t seen done in anime much and I’d love to see more shows attempt this.

I think Re:Zero shows a glaring flaw in this entire kind of entertainment. A lot of anime can often feel shallow to me. I usually am unable to pinpoint why exactly I’m having trouble connecting to these characters, especially since animation is a medium in which I connect to characters more due to their overt expressiveness. I often ponder this question without ever coming up with an answer, however, I feel like I can finally describe it in maybe an overly simplistic way.

Anime is the only medium in which I hear the term “best girl” being thrown around. It’s the only kind of entertainment where the quality of one, and only one, sex matters over a lot of significantly more important things for many people. It’s this kind of strange shallowness that is pandered to relentlessly since the industry knows the kind of demographic it’s attempting to appeal to that keeps it from being taken seriously by a lot of people. It is a show like Re:Zero that stretches my ability to consider this as anything but an elaborate ruse to have me spend money because I thought some cartoon girl was pretty and had a cute blush and a childish voice. It appeals to this basic instinct and doesn’t rely on its ability to tell a story. People get bored of watching the same shit, even if that same narrative shit is secondary to how attractive the characters are. So, when they see something like this, which has objective narrative issues, but at least conveys a different kind of mindset, they may view it as something more. Especially since it’s still delivering a barrage of girls acting in a way only anime girls can act.

Regardless of whether you think this is an issue or not, I feel like it is a topic that is worth discussing. So, why is subversion needed? To create entertainment that isn’t a slave to an industry. You need subversion because it undermines the power of an established kind of media structure. However, do not confuse subversion with self-awareness or just unexpected outcomes. Being unexpected is simply what a story needs to be if you want it to be engaging. You need to keep things unpredictable to a certain extent if you want to keep the viewers engaged.

Re:Zero is far from a narrative masterpiece that many people may believe it to be. It is, however, a show that tries to defy conventions while still ticking off every checkbox of its clichéd genre. It’s something we’ve seen many times before yet it plays out with just a few differences that make it something worth remembering just a little. It’s not something that I overtly enjoyed, however, I will say that I will remember my time watching Re:Zero.

I wish that I had more positives to say about the show that was the craze of 2016, however, I also wish it left me with a more positive impression. I don’t think I’ll forget Re:Zero, but I can’t really tell why. It’s a piece of entertainment that feels Re:Made countless times, Re:Packaged into different archetypes, Re:Written for different generations, but ultimately remains Un:Inspired.

Rezero is easily the most popular anime of Spring 2016, it’s your typical isekai anime but it comes with a twist, that twist being that it has a time travelling aspect. Yup, an anime that’s involving time travelling, nothing could possibly go wrong riiiiight?

So what makes this show so popular? Well, the story follows a guy named Subaru who got randomly teleported into another world, why does he get teleported into another world? Who knows, its magic. Funnily enough he acts as if teleporting into another world is a completely normal thing to happen, he didn’t give a single shit on why he got teleported ... into another world and instead tries to be this genre savvy character where he acts pretty self-aware of what’s going on. From there we meet our 1st waifu bait, Emillia. Without any knowledge of what’s going on, Subaru decided to help Emillia, and by doing that we finally encountered this show’s twist, that twist being that Subaru has the ability to go back in time every single time he died, basically, he’s invisible, This is probably the worst thing you can give to a character.

By giving a character an ability to basically redo everything till he gets it right basically kills any potential suspense that this show could of have since Subaru actions literally have no consequences because he can just redo everything and try to do things right. And I know what some of you are thinking right now “Bb-but Farrel! If you keep dying constantly it will result a psychological damage thus making you depressed and that’s what makes Subaru so “Realistic”. Pft yeah right, the psychological strain is just melodrama that gets out of its way with the power of friendship (Or with the power of a Lap pillow LOL). His mood swings are so quick that it is hardly believable, forget about realistic. He has a breakdown, then it's resolved within an episode or two. Constantly doing that makes the consequences feel tame and do not have impact because they constantly has not well executed breakdowns then resolves them with just as bad execution.

I think that the people who considered Subaru as a “Realistic character” is referring to the fact that Subaru is a completely useless character and that makes at least 90% of the people who watch rezero easier to self-insert themselves because it’s relatable to them.

Okay enough with Subaru, let’s move on to the more crucial problem that this anime had, that being the storyline. Rezero’s setting is entirely reliant on the supernatural power, that being the teleportation. What was it that triggered Subaru's transportation? Why Subaru of all people? Of course it didn’t get explained, are you really expecting a show where the author does whatever he asspulls every 5 minutes to give us a logical explanation? Lol, keep dreaming.

>inb4 someone tries to justify it by saying “It’s all explained in the Novel!! xDD”
Sorry, but saying that “It’s explained in the novel” Is not a valid argument. You should understand that we’re not talking about the novel here. The light novel and the anime are two completely different entities as they should be. A novel is not to an anime what a guide or a manual is to a videogame, so please dont try to justify how shit this anime is by saying that all explained in the source material.

Another problem that this show suffers is they rely on shock factor to make this show more “Interesting”. If we take a look at the early episodes, it took Subaru MORE THAN 2 TIMES to figure out that he has the ability to travel back in time. It’s quite ironic how they show Subaru as this genre savvy character in the 1st episode, where he’s pretty self-aware that he’s being teleported into another world, but it took him that much time to realize that he’s stuck in a loop.

Of course they are doing this just to show us that this show is edgy, they torture Subaru so that the people have the impression that this show is dark when it is not. I’m sorry but adding torture to your main character every episode in a whole arc with no actual story progression or content does not equal a good subversion. And they didn’t stop there, they have to torture Subaru again in the later episode where one of the maids has a suspicion on Subaru, and then guess what Rem did? That’s right, She kills him. If one is suspicious, wouldn’t any individual go ahead and try and reinforce those suspicions with facts and an ounce of sense, things which they have garnered throughout an investigation? Of course that’s not what rem did, but instead, she kills him. Oh wow, what a dark show we have here everyone.

If you don’t do anything more than killing or torturing characters, it will get boring very fast because the audience will get over the initial shock, and eventually get used to it. Plus, we know that Subaru is not going to literally die anyway, so why do we even care at this point?

Another thing that’s quite ironic about this show is that the author said that he wants to critique the whole isekai genre, but he doesn’t do that at all. Infact he did the complete opposite, he basically did everything that he wants to “Critique”.

In conclusion, rezero is nothing different from any other generic light novel adaptations out there, it tries to be something different, but fails miserably. The show is relying entirely on the plot convenience and cheap ass shock factor to get the story in motion . All the characters can be summed up in a word; they're cliche and the story hasn't utilised anything or even the time reset aspect, it's more a way for the story to get to point a to point b faster than anything. The setting is dry bland and bleak as ever. I won’t recommend this show to anyone unless you’re one of those people that are easily impressed by some cheap ass shock factor and a premise that’s too reliant on constant plot twists in order to keep the viewer seated.

WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS HEAVY SPOILERS.
It should be treated more as a critique for those who have already finished or do not plan to watch the show and are browsing for opinions, rather than a "Should You Watch".

INTRO: Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu. At one point, I had high hopes for this series. It was announced to much fanfare and excitement from source Light Novel readers who hailed it as an intelligent deconstruction of the Isekai (Parallel World (typically) fantasy) genre/setting, oft-mocked for being oversaturated by mediocre tales of self-insertable Gary Stus flung into fantasy worlds and quickly finding themselves with a harem and overpowered ... abilities. Despite this, I should point out that I generally bear no ill will towards Isekai series despite these criticisms, and have no issues enjoying them if they are executed well enough. Overall though, I do agree that the genre is laden with tired tropes, and I was looking forward to seeing how Re:Zero would topple or at least subvert them as advertised. Unfortunately, that is not quite what I got out of it.

Watching this series was certainly a unique experience. I struggle to remember the last time such a well-received anime so utterly baffled me in the complete disconnect between its supposed intent and its delivery (with perhaps the sole exception at the time of writing being the first season of Oregairu, though that is a story for another day). It is a story with so many blatant contradictions woven into that I could not help but assume that it was a deliberately satirical work, and yet it is clearly meant to be taken at face value. Were it not for the comparatively exciting and entertaining presentation of the first arc in episodes 1 through 3, I would have most assuredly give this show a sum score of 1/10. That is how much ill will I hold towards this show and its betrayal of expectations. It is so consummately deplorable that I feel compelled to waste my time writing this, my first MAL review. Though I have heard various opinions regarding the quality of the anime adaptation versus the light novel, I will be treating the show as an independent product with no comparisons to source material. Contradiction and contrast, as I said before, is the name of the game here, and will be the central themes of this review.

ART AND ANIMATION: Let's begin here. In the typical anime, particularly one with fight scenes, the quality of the art and animation is understandably expected to fluctuate due to time and budget constraints. The greatest peaks can be expected to occur during the attention-grabbing climactic episodes of the first arc and last arc, with smaller peaks throughout. However, that is not what happened in this series. Though the animation in episode 3 (the end of the first arc) has some particularly striking moments, it is in fact one of the only episodes I would label as noteworthy throughout the entire show. There are many instances throughout the series of significant scenes that are weakened by lack of detail and/or fluidity. The series also makes ample use of CG elements, such as the crowds in towns, that do not blend in well at all. Most viewers, myself included, would likely forgive this, simply assuming that they are conserving their resources for another set piece moment. Yet... that moment never comes. No battle scene ever comes close to that of episode 3, in animation or even in dramatic tension. After it was all over, I felt cheated, as though I had been bait-and-switched by episode 3 and its glimmer of potential, waiting for a return to form that simply never arrived.

Apart from more objective qualms, the series also makes very heavy use of less-than-subtle visual metaphors and direction cues in an attempt to stir emotion. Examples include: supposedly emotional moments being punctuated by rays of light and brightness filters that look like they would be right at home on Instagram or a JJ Abrams film, a single flower conveniently left blooming on the barren battlefield to segue into a floral-themed flashback scene, frequent use of flashback flickers in almost any conversation where past events are even lightly touched upon, and a literal flock of doves during a particularly forced emotional scene. While not dealbreaking flaws, these heavy-handed additions certainly detracted from my viewing experience.

SOUND DESIGN AND MUSIC: The series often opted to skip the OP, the ED, or both, presumably in an ill-advised attempt to cram in more dialogue or events into each episode, so I never got particularly attached to any of them. Perhaps I would have enjoyed the OPs and EDs more were they actually played more than about 3 times each in their respective single cour runs of 12-13 episodes. This was especially evident when the show went for "OP drops" during critical scenes, and I would suddenly hear a vaguely familiar song I had not heard in several episodes, not realizing for several moments when I had heard it before. In my opinion, the decision to shun the general convention of ~1:30 Opening > ~20 Minute Episode > ~1:30 Ending is not something that should be taken lightly, as eschewing the traditional restrictions on the medium in a "director's cut" fashion often leads to issues with pacing or bloat, along with the aforementioned issues of song memorability. It's a shame, because they were fairly unique as far as OP/ED tracks go.

As for the OST, a few tracks were of note, but their impact was often dulled due to being used in conjunction with the heavy-handed visual direction I was not a fan of. In those same scenes where the lighting was turned up to max, more emotionally charged music tracks would be played at a noticeably higher volume than the usual. In many scenes, I found myself irritated and distracted that the show was TELLING me how to feel about what was going on on-screen instead of allowing me to form my own opinions. It was almost as though the show was accompanied by a commentator shouting at me "Hey! Look, this scene is sad!" or "Oh man! Things are getting heated!" at regular intervals. Most shows do this to some extent, and it is difficult to describe in words why exactly this show in particular was so egregious, but the real problems came when what the show was telling me to feel directly contradicted with how I was actually feeling about the scene.

STORY: The premise of Re:Zero is actually quite interesting. The "hero" is thrust into the fantasy world, but does not possess any hidden overpowered talents. He has the ability to reset, but not without very serious drawbacks. Subaru wishes to be just like the heroes of typical Isekai stories, in self-referential meta fashion, but finds himself grossly underprepared to do so, and this is how the story begins. The first arc, the Auction House Arc, is very fast-paced and clear-cut. As Subaru awakens in the new world, he has several immediate issues that need resolving. First, getting his bearings in an unfamiliar environment. Second, discovering and understanding his "Return by Death" ability. And third, discovering and preventing the sinister threat lurking at the auction house. Though I have my complaints of how Emilia is introduced and immediately converted into a forced plot device with whom Subaru is instantly infatuated with and motivated to act for, the conflict is developed organically from there, with these three elements introduced and expanded upon simultaneously in a fairly sensible manner. This is, without a doubt, the peak of Re:Zero's storytelling. Sadly, as the show goes on, the plot becomes progressively less focused, less interesting, and more longwinded with each new arc. The second arc, the Mansion/Maid Arc, has two main conflicts, the mystery of the curse and the mystery of the killer with the flail. By the end of the arc, it's clear that both conflicts had very little impact on the plot and world as a whole. Instead, they were meant as character development for Subaru and the new characters, especially Rem. It's not necessarily a bad thing for a show to treat overall plot progression within an arc as a secondary to character development. However, that is only true if the character development is interesting or satisfying in some way, or if it helps to develop sympathy for a character's situation.

It is very difficult to sympathize with Subaru in this arc, despite his gruesome deaths and mounting paranoia. Throughout the arc, Subaru's rapidly unraveling mental stability as he is struggling to make sense of why he keeps "resetting" is conceptually interesting, if not perfectly executed. However, it is difficult to truly root for Subaru when he makes a point of making exceptionally rude comments to almost every individual he meets for the first time, and enjoys showboating and generally making himself appear highly suspect during a canonically tense time where everyone is wary of spies and traitors. It is also hard to feel surprised or sympathetic when Subaru finds himself dismayed and shocked at the mistrust -- and worse -- that he receives. This is compounded by the extremely harsh contrast between drama and awful "humor" in some episodes, as well as Subaru's panic being portrayed through his increasingly frequent, very loud, very grating, false displays of bravado. I understood what they were going for, but it doesn't feel natural or well-done at all. On the other hand it's also quite difficult to see why Subaru feels so attached so quickly to those antagonizing him, despite having little to no significant conversation with them. His shift from utter fear and distrust to gratitude and compassion is so abrupt and ill-considered that it's more comical than the show's actual attempts at humor. This will be elaborated upon in the Characters section.

STORY (cont): The third arc, the Whale/Cultist arc, is by far the longest of the three. And yet, there are again only two or three main conflicts, and they certainly aren't any more compelling or developed than those of the second arc even given the extra runtime. Not only does this arc quickly introduce and abandon the Royal Selection subplot, which is the first truly significant event that could move the overall story forward, it takes an entire cour to tell its story, if it can be called that. By the end of the arc it did not feel like much ground had been covered at all, even compared to the first arc, which had perhaps a quarter of the runtime, if that. This is where my dislike of the "director's cut" approach comes in. The frequent cutting of the OP and ED was presumably done to fit in more story, so it is baffling to see how much time was actually wasted on drawn out exposition and repetition. Several antagonists are revealed in this arc, all tied to the Jealous Witch and her Cult, but are all either so uninteresting or so over-the-top villainous that it is really difficult to care at all about what is happening. The way the resets are presented, each antagonist is introduced and reintroduced several times before the conflict is resolved, taking away all gravity from their final appearances. Even the final battle of the series is underwhelming, and not just because of the fairly unimpressive animation, as mentioned earlier, but because that enemy had already shown up and been "defeated" multiple times in rather anti-climactic fashion, draining all potential excitement for his last duty as a jobber. Even after all of the conflicts are resolved, the finale of the third arc, much like the second arc, leaves the overall progression of the plot at nearly the same place that it began. There is some minor development of character relationships between Subaru and the side characters, most of which consists of Subaru making them hate him, and then trying to make amends, but that's all. By the end, we know about as much of the world, Subaru's "condition", and the motivations of each important character as we did when they were introduced.

And yet, that still is not the worst of it. Despite the fact that, episode for episode, the story of the second cour moves quite slowly in comparison to the first and does not contribute to the plot progression, it still somehow feels rushed. Along the way, Subaru spends a significant portion of each episode rebounding between drowning in self-loathing and defeat, to soaring on hubris and bombast. These mood swings into depression are typically triggered by yet another death, which by this point in the series are tossed out like candy and are harder to care about each time. Each time this happens Subaru then receives a pep talk from a character who notices his despair, which cheers him up until the next soul-crushing event happens. I would estimate that, on average, each episode in the second cour contains 1-2 such pep talks, with the final speech-giver tally including almost every side character of any significance. This gets repetitive quickly and takes up quite a bit of runtime. Despite this series getting two cours, two extra-long episodes for the intro and finale, and skipping the majority of its OPs and EDs, conflict resolution still feels rushed. Every time an issue was resolved for good, I found myself questioning if that was really it. All of these factors combine in a way that, when viewed as a whole, gives the feeling of a story that hits the ground running, but then spends two cours slowly choking and grinding to a painfully dull stop.

CHARACTERS: Suffice it to say, I felt that the characterization in this anime was some of the worst I have ever experienced in any medium, and certainly not remotely worthy of being hailed as deconstructive or subversive where tropes are concerned. In fact, the characters I enjoyed watching the most were mainly just entertaining side characters that had very little plot relevance, such as Wilhelm, Beatrix, and Ram. This is because, paradoxically, the more personal interaction a character had with Subaru, the less sensible or developed they felt as a character. Then there are characters such as Felix, whose crossdressing habits seem to be purely for viewer pandering towards fans of "trap" character. There is not the slightest hint towards progressive themes or rationale that could suggest otherwise and make Felix an interesting character, an odd choice for a show supposedly avoiding typical character tropes. To make things easier on myself, I will split the focus of this section into three pieces for the characters I believe shoulder the burden for the vast majority of the criticism I can level against this series: Emilia, Rem, and, of course, Subaru.

EMILIA: Emilia truly bordered the line between main heroine and non-character. Despite the series repeatedly pointing out that she is an independent and powerful Spirit Arts user who is more than capable of defending herself, the way she is presented in the series is not all that different from a damsel in distress. These are the main facets of her character: Subaru's savior who was the first to reach out to him (this is the peak of her character, and it lasts for exactly one episode -- the first episode); Subaru's ideal girl that he wants to get closer to; the girl Subaru most wants to save from danger (this is the most common way she is presented and is a major motivator for Subaru throughout the show); the girl who sometimes acts cold, but is actually just suffering due to prejudice that Subaru wishes to defend her from; the girl who gets angry at Subaru but has a soft spot for him and is inwardly worried sick about him. There is an obvious common thread between all of these. Emilia's character, despite the show's protest to the contrary, is solely defined by what Subaru is doing at any given moment, and how his actions relate to her wellbeing. She is treated essentially as the trophy Subaru wishes to win for his victory against cruel fate. While she is not particularly unlikable, she is also far too pristine and unbelievably irreproachable to be compelling. Everything that Emilia is simply comes together to form the "perfect" heroine for Subaru to fight for, and she is never developed beyond that.

REM: As much as Emilia was a forced "perfect" heroine and romantic interest candidate, Rem is a thousand times more so. She is introduced without much characterization at all, and what characterization we first get is that she truly hates Subaru. She resents Subaru who has shown up and taken up residence in her home with suspicious intentions, even staining the mansion with the "Scent of the Witch" she hates so much. She resents him so much, that she is more than willing to murder him, and refuses to listen to his "excuses". The way the series treats her character and relationship with Subaru from there on is, in a word, contradictory. First, Subaru is to be given a reason to fight for this girl who, even given his many repeats, he has known for a matter of weeks. And on Rem's side, she must be given a reason to appear sympathetic despite displaying murderous intent towards someone who, in her timeline, she has known for less than a week. Surely, such a feat would be quite difficult, given the established relationship they share. Suddenly, in an amazing feat of Deus ex machina, Subaru has a flashback to a memory he didn't even know he had, reminding him that Rem and her sister held his hands at his bedside when he was ill. The striking realization of this truly earth-shattering display of human compassion is apparently enough to overwrite the fact that she literally murdered him, so much so that Subaru becomes more than willing to die to save her. And that's just the beginning. In a single episode, Rem is given the opportunity to dump a 10 minute monologue of tragic backstory that, again, apparently redeems her past homicidal actions unconditionally. And then Subaru responds with a canned motivational speech to cheer her up, which somehow shakes Rem so deep down to the very core of her being, that she instantly falls completely and madly in love with him.

Everything in the show up to this point, I could forgive. Rem's backstory was fairly enjoyable, and was certainly the most development a single character gets in this entire series. I can certainly understand that she, who has lived her whole life trusting basically no one but her sister, would be moved by Subaru's kindness, even if that kindness came in the form of a generic support message. I can even entertain the possibility that this could lead to her giving Subaru another chance to make her trust him, and lead to her opening up to and maybe even falling in love with him, given the proper additional development. What I truly cannot comprehend is that I, as the viewer, am expected to believe that this single backstory dump and the speech Subaru makes in response justifies making Rem into a completely different character overnight. So much so, that in the span of perhaps two weeks to a month in-universe, she now has an exhaustive mental list of all of Subaru's best traits, and all the things that made her hate and want to kill him are now "so cute". So much so, that, in that span of time, she has prepared an entire itinerary for how she and Subaru could elope and spend the rest of their lives together in idyllic happiness. So much so, that every word she speaks in favor of Subaru directly contradicts how she acted not a month prior.

And the worst part is, the show is actively cognizant of this fact. There are instances where Rem, after a marked moment of hesitation, proudly proclaims her ability to discern the truth behind Subaru's words at any given moment, or that she has never once doubted Subaru's intentions despite to the "Scent of the Witch" lingering on him due to the revival curse. Both of these are direct contradictions to actions she took in the past, such as literally murdering him without giving him a chance to explain himself. It's so absurdly contradictory that I initially truly believed that she was supposed to be a satirical deconstruction of typical Isekai heroines, unhealthily affectionate towards and dependent on the first man to ever show her genuine kindness. I thought her character had the most potential to be genuinely interesting, and was curious to see how she would be developed. But as the show went on, I realized that it was all just a pipe dream, and that the show clearly did not see anything strange about her character. With how close Rem and Subaru get, and all the tender hugs and nose-nuzzling moments they share as the series goes on, a viewer seeing their new relationship out of context would be hard pressed to think that Rem is anything other than the primary love interest. But oh, how wrong they would be.

SUBARU: This is it. The crux of the review. Everything prior led up to this singular purpose and end goal: to provide the appropriate context to discuss why Subaru is one of, if not the worst anime protagonists I have ever had the misfortune of watching, and for 25 excruciating episodes at that. As Subaru is a difficult character to sum up, I will instead follow his characterization as the show progressed, from beginning to end. But first, some disclaimers. I am fully aware of the concept that Subaru is intended to be a flawed protagonist. I understand that he is supposed to be a "weak" character who does not have the typical hidden reserve of power that an Isekai protagonist is expected to have. I understand that he is supposed to be an ordinary guy who is placed under the extreme mental duress of experiencing countless painful deaths. I understand this, but despite all that, he is still a truly awful character.

In the first arc, Subaru is actually pretty decent. He is rather annoying, loud, cocky, and brash, but if you do accept what the story is telling you, its not that hard to believe. You know that he is operating under the presumption of being a NEET who is finally living the dream, summoned to a fantasy world to save the realm and get the girl. You know that, while weak by fantasy standards, he is actually fairly physically capable and quick thinking as far as normal humans go. As the first arc progresses, he is humbled by his lack of power and accepts it, resolving not to give up despite that. He understands that he put Emilia on a pedestal, but still believes that she is someone worth saving. I actually like the Subaru of the first arc. Everything changes as soon as the mansion arc begins. From the outset, Subaru seems to have completely forgotten all notions of caution and wariness he had just finished picking up. He bursts through the mansion, laughing and often insulting or harassing its occupants. Even after learning of the country's precarious state, and being told outright how suspicious he appears as a traveler of mysterious origins, his behavior does not change. He is unable to grasp why he is being targeted, and instead of confronting the situation directly, continues "trying harder" in the hopes that the winds of fortune will somehow blow in his favor. Finally, he calms down, overcomes the trauma and panic, and buckles down to work together with those who suspect him to solve the problem.

At this point, I thought the worst was over, and he had finally developed as a character. But again, I was wrong. At the start of the third arc, he once again regresses as a character, so far backwards that he is in an even worse position than the Subaru at the beginning of the show. I suppose the explanation is that he was soaring on the high of victory from arc two, but that is not enough to explain how he once again completely forgot everything he learned and backed himself into a corner. Completely ignoring his promise with Emilia, Rem's advice, and even Julius', a third party's, warnings, he humiliates both Emilia and himself in his misguided quest to act as a heroic knight. This would perhaps be acceptable, had he not supposedly overcome this hubris on two separate occasions in the previous arcs. Even a flawed character has limits. If I really stretched my patience, I would still be able to accept the situation were it clear that Re:Zero is a deconstruction, and Subaru was rightly debased for his wrongdoings. Instead, after the fallout, we get scenes of Emilia regretting being "too harsh" on him, and Rem comforting him and telling him he had the right intentions. What follows is four full episodes of Subaru once again proceeding down the wrong path, despite both verbal and physical beatings and chastisings from other characters on multiple occasions. Again, even for a flawed character, there are limits to what is acceptable before it becomes gratuitous. It got so bad, that the only way to make Subaru a sympathetic protagonist again was to introduce a villain that was so comically off-the-rails psychotic and evil that Subaru couldn't be anything but the hero.

Somehow, even up to this point, I was willing to accept Subaru as merely "a bad character" the kind of generic throwaway used in many shows, ironically the type Re:Zero supposedly satires. And then I watched everyone's favorite episode. Driven to the breaking point, Subaru asks Rem to run away with him and start a new life together. Rem, though very flattered and tempted, refuses to accept, knowing that Subaru's heart was not in the request. What followed was a long sequence of Subaru berating himself with surprising accuracy, and Rem comforting him with the the aforementioned praise and affection. I thought maybe, finally, Subaru had awoken for the last time, and become the protagonist he was meant to be, the protagonist that should have already existed after arc one. Instead, I got that line. That infamous line that was so egregious, it spawned countless memes: "I love Emilia." This character, this man, had just finished listening to Rem pour out her misguided feelings, after first directly asking her to run away with him, and his first reaction after getting his spirits back up due to said girl was to reject her.

Even then, even after all of this, I still naively thought the worst had passed. Instead, the Subaru of the following episodes acted in the following ways: asking Rem to support him in his quest to win Emilia's heart (she smiles and calls him terrible while he laughs it off); asking Rem for a knife to carve his and Emilia's names on a tree; nuzzling noses with Rem after a rescue; outright telling Crusch that he has a #1 and #2 girl in his heart. By this point, Subaru had transcended my worst imagination, and gone from a simple flawed character, to an absolute scumbag. But the series never acknowledges this as wrong. In the final episodes, everyone, including Rem, treats Subaru as the hero he always wanted to be perceived as. We even get a heartwarming confession scene from Subaru to Emilia that was so similar in tone to the scene with Rem, it was as though the series pretended that the previous confession had simply never occurred. The way Re:Zero condones Subaru's near two-timing behavior and his treatment of Rem actively promotes the idea that it's okay for a guy to perpetuate an emotionally abusive relationship with an emotionally unstable girl who debases herself and accepts that she is his second choice, but still idolizes the guy just because he reached out to her once when she was vulnerable. This was what I found to be the absolute most vile and deplorable aspect of this already flawed show.

Sometimes, when I think about the time I wasted watching and thinking about this dreadful anime, I wonder if I would like to have the Return by Death ability myself, if only so that I could kill myself and reclaim that lost time and blissful ignorance. But honestly speaking, knowing that a show this offensive and terrible exists serves as a great benchmark, and makes me appreciate the ones that I like even more. 2/10.

Honestly? I don't see why this anime is popular. (In fact, I disliked some of the elements so much that I came here to do something I said I wouldn't: become a big enough weeb to write a serious, deconstructed review for a fuckin' anime.)

I've dropped the show after 14 episodes.

(reposting bc it got accidentally deleted! glad to see a lot of other top reviews share my opinion haha)

Story: 5/10
The story's decent, at least in the beginning. Time travel, fantasy lands, slapstick humor: nothing unusual, and all elements that've proven popular in other animes, but here, it seems to be a poorly executed jumble. ... From the surface, it looks cool- a regular joe dimension-jumps and finds himself in a world where, like in a videogame, he can die to return to the last checkpoint- but any deeper probing reveals what is, in my opinion, a goddamn boring shamble. It's disorganized in places, and plain dull in parts. There are some redeeming strokes, which are nice, but not, in my opinion, enough to pull up this anime into the 'must watch' region. (I might be biased against harem animes (and this one definitely has elements of a harem anime). I think they're dumb. Sorry.)

Art: 7/10
Nice art. I liked it. Nothing particularly special, but not off-putting, with good proportions and colors, and nice landscapes and worldbuilding. Probably one of the biggest redeeming points of this anime.

Music: 7/10
Same as the art- good music choices for the themes, well-fitting. Not distracting. Definitely helped set the mood for some scenes.

Character: 2/10
This is, in my opinion, where Re:Zero starts to go down the shithole.

The characters are boring as shit. The main character makes use of some slapstick humor tropes, like being comic relief and the hero at the same time- all it makes me think is that he's stupid as hell. Additionally, he becomes bizarrely obsessed with the main heroine over a very short amount of time, and this... devotion... becomes more and more drastic over the episodes, up to the point where he's directly disobeying her express wishes to do what he thinks is best- for her. (This was the biggest reason I dropped it. I fuckin' dislike the protag.) Finally, in a holy trinity of shit, he switches character types alarmingly often, from the charmingly obtuse but cheery character to the murderously entitled one to scared-to-the-point-of-shitting-his-pants. (I felt like he was a real gary sue, as happens a lot with harem animes. Dull as shit, but all the chicks end up falling in love with him anyways.)

Whew. Got that off my chest.

The rest of the characters- honestly, none of them really stood out. There are the basic character tropes- maid twins, tsunderes, the nice guy (though i have to say, out of all of them, Reinhard was probably my favorite), lolishotas, the perfectly bland girl, the eccentric master- and I found myself wondering when this episode was going to finally be over so I could see if the next one was any less boring. (Hint: It wasn't.)

Consensus: 3/10
I don't drop a lot of animes. Even moderately boring ones. Hell, I watched all 26 episodes of Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei, and in terms of a ridiculous main character, that was even worse than this. Mostly, the thing that got me about Re:Zero was how goddamn annoying Subaru- the main- got after 5-6 episodes. Watch if you like good animation and music and interesting fight scenes, or are a fan of the trope fantasy genre, but if you're looking for genuinely dynamic, realistic character development- keep moving, nothing to see here.

Let me paraphrase Hitler. "Any anime that seeks to be popular has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach."

That isn't to say that anyone who enjoyed this is stupid. Just to say that this show caters to stupid people. And that is to say that it's some pretty lowest common denominator stuff. And I'm explaining that so that I don't get slapped on the wrist for insulting people.

Now that I've insulted "the best anime of spring 2016, the year, the decade, and possibly of all time", I'm going to take some time to state why ... I disagree with this statement, before breaking down into a slander based rant where I compare this anime to 3 month old dick cheese.

I'm off to a fantastic start, aren't I?

(spoiler warning.)

Re:Zero is a show that is often overblown. It is called a psychological masterpiece when Subaru has a mental breakdown, an action masterpiece when they kill a whale. It is said to be a character-driven emotional epic where the main character reacts realistically to what happens around him. And yes, while it does have its moments, it isn't nearly as good as people make it out to be.

I want to start off by addressing that this show is no different from the "generic overpoewered mc" trope. Before you lynch me, let me explain. Subaru is often said to be a protagonist who is not overpowered, and has to struggle to achieve his goal since he has no "trump card" or superhuman strength that will triple in power to help him defeat his enemies. However, while he isn't subject to a sudden power up, he is constantly subject to ridiculous plot convenience at every corner. The show lasts all of 10 minutes before he meets Satella, a magic user and her familiar Puck, and befriends them both. Our merry band of three then go off on a journey to get back something Satella lost. On their way, they save a little girl (hooray for good deeds) who the turns out to be the daughter of the store owner they met earlier, who apparently knows exactly the information that they need (boo for using said good deed as a cheap plot advancement technique). The point of this ridiculous paragraph is that Subaru didn't have to use his ridiculously big brain or his ultra technique to solve the problem- he just needed to wait for things to fall into his lap. Just like with how it then turns out that Satella is actually Emilia, and she also just happens to be living in a mansion with a rich lord willing to employ Subaru for his services, and also happens to be a candidate for Queen of the kingdom. And as soon as it began, Subaru's struggle to make a place for himself in society via struggling for things he has not earned has ended with his superpower- not Return by Death, but by the superpower of plot convenience.

And this isn't an isolated case. This happens throughout the anime, other cases being anytime Beatrice does anything (thank you, helpful loli of plot advancement. We'll need you until we're not in the mansion anymore), Reinhardt showing up in the store to prevent the crazy knife girl from killing Subaru because he "just so happened to be in the neighborhood".

Moving on to the ridiculous edge factor. The constant over the top bloodsplosions and limbs flying off comically reminded me of Akame ga Kill, a show constantly called "2edgy4me" and "reliant on over the top gore for shock". However, when it's in Re:Zero, the same thing is praised for being "horrifying" and is generally thought of as adding to the show. I am not trying to say that any gore is edgy- but Re:Zero's use of gore definetly is. Gore should be a "show, don't tell" aspect of a show. It's the icing on a violence cake. It isn't the cake itself. Re: Zero constantly shoves how gory it is in your face. Each fight is secondary to the blood spilled during it. There is one genuinely disturbing moment in its violence, and that's when Rem gets twisted up like a pretzel. Although that moment is immediately ruined by the fact that recently-made-into-a-pretzel Rem drags herself to Subaru comically thanks to the power of love.

For a show that has a love affair with violence and making its main character watch his friends die, it's super scared of actually having anyone die (and yes, I am aware of the "it" that happens in the light novels and think that not including "it" in an anime that has no confirmed season 2 as of yet is a good idea). Death of characters loses its meaning when you are looking for the shock factor in the character's death not in the death itself, but how the character will die this time. Death also loses its meaning when it's happening all the time and has no consequences. It doesn't matter if someone dies, because they will be back. Characters here elude the reaper via Subaru returning or straight up ignoring death. Unless you're a side character, in which case fuck you and die a gory death for shock value.

But enough of that. Time to bitch about characters.

Subaru is constantly a happy-go-lucky-devoted-to-his-companions type until they visit the royal city, where he starts letting his ego get out of check, resulting in A Very Bad Time for all involved. Seriously, the way he behaves in the royal court made me physically cringe. Maybe that was the point. Seriously, who acts like that at a royal court where all of the top officials in the land are? It's the equivalent of walking into the UN and doing the same thing. Doesn't matter how much of prick the people may be, you don't act like that at a place that is deciding the equivalent of the fate of the world. Regardless, after making an absolute fool of himself and getting beaten up by Purple hair fujoshi bait while Red hair fujoshi bait looks on all sad-like that his friend is getting beat up, Subaru undergoes a transformation and becomes the new and improved Subaredgy, who likes to believe that without his godly intervention, nothing will go right. Which would've been a really good change, if not for the fact he becomes an insufferable tool out of nowhere, for no reason. It isn't even a result of him having to deal with a whole lot of shit like getting killed by Rem, dying of mana exhaustion, etc. He was fine all that time in the mansion despite what he went through. For him to suddenly develop this new personality because Julius called out on his behavior and the beat him up for trashing the name of the knights of the kingdom (the equivalent of shitting on soldiers) is unreasonable and stupid. This new personality also causes his intelligence to regress, making him attempt to have Princesses who control armies and businesses with great success bend to his will because he simply wants them to rather than thinking of how to navigate the political climate. And this all lasts until Rem gives a great speech to him to cheer him up. And then he's back to his happy-go-lucky self. And despite realising how he can't do anything because he doesn't have the fighting skills or magic skills to help. And he still doesn't attempt to learn them, leaving others to do the work for him. The one time he does attempt to learn it is when he is Subaredgy, and gives up soon after he changes back to regular Subaru.

There is a constant slew of characters who are introduced and do almost nothing of note despite how much of an impact is seems they will have when they are introduced. Here lies Felt, Priscilla, Anastasia, Aldebaran, Beatrice, Russel Fellow, Elsa, Roswaal, and Old Man Rom (and to a certain extent, Ram).

But by far the worst character has to be Betelgeuse. Rapey weirdos who lick people weren't okay in Sword Art Online, and they shouldn't be okay here. Betelgeuse is a jarring addition to the cast, constantly talking about his brain trembling and pulling weird poses and munching his fingers and talking about how slothful people and having a crush on the Jealous Witch and not much else. Props to the VA though. He was fantastic. Made Betelgeuse actually bearable.
Betelgeuse is constantly built up to be the ultimate bad guy of the series, someone who is seriously bad news. and in the 4 episodes they actually go out of their way to fight him, he is constantly killed ridiculously easily. It took double the amount of episodes for Subaru to be able to leave Roswaal's mansion alive (which brings me to another gripe, it took 12 episodes to introduce the first major plot point, which is the Queen candidate story. 12 episodes. half the series. What.).

Rem and Emilia are the least grating of the lot, but that's because they're the waifu bait. They need to be likeable. problem is, Emilia disappears right after episode 13 and only reappears in episode 23. 10 episodes of the main love interest disappearing leads to what happened- people start supporting Rem as the main love interest rather than Emilia, which is sad, because Subaru and Emilia had a bunch of really good moments, which all evaporated in the wake of a 10 episode disappearance.
Rem has the problem of literally trying to murder Subaru in episode 6. How can a show where what happens has a "psychological effect on the main character" brush this off the very next episode because "she held my hand when I was having a nightmare"? It just doesn't make sense.

Truthfully, Re:Zero is a bad show. Not truly bad, but also definitely not amazing or deserving of being called the "best". And it sure as shit would've been a better show if not for the constant outpouring of praise from those who watched it.

Not the best of its season. That's Boku no Hero Academia. Not the best of its year- that could be Konosuba, Boku no Hero Academia, ReLife, or Shokugeki S2. Definitely not the best of the decade, when you share the decade with shows like Katanagatari, Bakuman, Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica, Steins;Gate, Anohana, Nichijou, Usagi Drop, and Fate/zero. And that's just 2010/2011.

Re:Zero is show that got popular for a good reason. One that I'll never understand.

Imagine getting suddenly thrown into a fantasy world. Would you be:
A) shocked about the whole thing and desperately trying to survive and then find a way home,
or
B) cheerfully helping random girls and running into mortal danger like an action hero without any care?

If you answered B), then congrats, you just might be the protagonist of Re: Zero. Who would act like that, really? No actual human being. As a result, this guy is impossible to relate to. Whenever they try to make him seem more human, he always quickly reverts to his waifu-chasing heroics. Just listen to him:
"One good deed a day."
"My main heroine ... is an easy woman, huh!?"
"Men are about guts, and women are about beauty!"
"You get a front row seat to see the man you fell for become the most awesome hero ever!"

This is the kind of dialogue where faces and palms meet.

Re: Zero is a show where we have our "I must save everyone; girls are cute and men are heroes" protagonist facing off against the "Mwahaha, I'm so crazy and psychotic and I like murdering people" villains or, even worse, random unintelligent monsters. Black and white to the point of tedium. It's all meaningless, really. Whenever there are signs of moral ambiguity in the supporting cast, we are quickly convinced that they are good people at heart after all. We might get interesting characters then and we can't have that.

The author must have noticed how stale the script is, so he tried to wash it away with blood. And they failed. Re: Zero demonstrates that overflowing gore and surreal horror don't by themselves constitute interesting moral conflict. Yes, arms will fly off and heads will roll on a whim. Yes, there are otherwordly monsters and esoteric vistas with piles of corpses. This is all fine if you like bloodbath or surreal horror for the sake of itself, but if you are looking for meaningful moral struggle, the show can't deliver at all. I don't want to watch ten minutes of some bland douchebag ranting about how insane he is or how much he likes murdering people. And I certainly don't want to watch two episodes of fighting against a generic RPG monster.

Meet Natsuki Subaru, alleged NEET and shutin (never demonstrated onscreen) and also a blank slate with no past or original thoughts to speak of. He has no wit, no charm, no decent lines. A large chunk of his screentime is spent delivering boring cliches about girls, dating and alleged feminine virtues. Now and then the show tries to be self-aware and lets him lampshade some tropes, but he only does it for the really obvious and boring ones.
"Read between the lines a bit, will you!? It was supposed to be a classic scenario where I save a girl from hoodlums!"

So anyway, he is cast into a fantasy world and for some reason gets time travel powers, getting stuck into a time loop every time he dies. Which happens all the time because the whole world is out to get him and this guy has no sense of self-preservation in the first place. For him chasing girls takes precedence over finding a way home, discovery about this new world and even simple survival. In mortal danger he spends his time planning dates (or how to harass the girls, rather). Indeed, much of the show consists of the protagonist getting murdered in increasingly brutal and strange ways.

What is really disappointing about the time travel is how much he has to rely not on smarts but action hero stunts, which he is somehow able to pull off, apparently because he works out sometimes. Seems legit. There are a few good moments here and there of Subaru getting more and more insane because of the time loops and the responses it draws from the other characters. It is then that he comes across as slightly human, but he'll go back to his heroics soon enough. How many times do we have to listen to cheesy speeches about bravery and selfless sacrifice? He even wants to save people who have tried to kill him. How much of a goody two shoes is this guy?

The show has him "reform" himself every few episodes, by which I don't mean he is questioning his motives or values in any substantial way. No, what happens is that he reconfirms his purpose in life, which is saving his waifus, and comes up with a better plan to get it done. Again. Well, at least he hasn't done his stupid poses with shaking his hips anymore, so there's that.

It's not like it would have been hard to come up with better goals for this guy. He could be an anti-hero or villain protagonist trying to get more fame and fortune for himself. Or how about improving local society and social conditions? The place sure would need it. But alas, in this show politics is little more than a plot device that occupies a few minutes. It's kind of silly, actually: politics would have offered countless excuses for war, riots and other potential massacres to satisfy the bloodthirsty viewers. But we can't have real social commentary; that would get in the way of joke-like villains and waifus.

The rest of the cast isn't much better. The main love interest Emilia is barely in the show, mostly standing in the background or more often offscreen. You'd think that a romance would require more, you know, interaction between the two characters. Her main personality trait is helping people in need. How original. There is also a collection of other waifus with awkward dialogue, usually involving Subaru harassing them in various ways. A few of the side characters have more interesting personalities, but out of them it is the boring ones who get the most screentime. We even get lengthy flashbacks of one guy's past when he was never interesting to begin with. Thanks.

There is also poor pacing. Too often, the episode consists of 20 minutes of filler and hanging out with waifus and 2 minutes of pointless gore and cliffhangers. Occasionally we get a full episode of pointless gore instead, but it isn't much of an improvement. Especially episodes 4 through 11 are very slow at moving the overall plot forward. There is some mystery surrounding Emilia, but in 25 episodes it got so little focus it might as well have not been there. Surely there would have been time to develop it if they had cut down some of the pointless fight scenes or hanging out with secondary waifus. You had 25 episodes, there's no excuse. Get on with it!

No amount of blood will wash away bad writing, and Re: Zero is proof of that.

Re:Zero is the currently airing anime that many people are watching right now. It begins with an otaku, Subaru Natsuki, who is transported to another world where whenever he dies, he comes back to life again from an earlier point in time, being able to correct his mistakes.

Many people seem to enjoy this show, but I feel this show isn't really that great. Although it is not finished yet, I have read some spoilers about what will happen next and I believe around the 15 episode mark is a good place to make a judgment upon a series. Even though I am in ... the minority about this not being a great show, I still want to offer my opinion on the show in case it helps anyone out.

[Disclaimer: There are spoilers about the series below. Read at your own discretion.]

Story: 4/10

I feel like this anime, so far, really has no end goal in mind. It really is just Subaru trying to find a way to survive. With a lack of focus on any sort of plot, I have no idea what kind of ending this series is supposed to have. If we go each arc at a time, I find that first arc is pretty decent. While it has its flaws, I can still find some enjoyment in it. In this arc, Subaru is introduced Emilia and has to find her pin that she lost. Using his past experiences as a guide, he is able retrieve it. This arc serves as a decent introductory arc to what the series can be, but it is lost potential from there. The second arc is totally useless and provides almost nothing to the main story. The only bit of story is from the first episode of the arc. Other than that, it totally deviates from the main story and can easily be skipped without missing out on anything. The characters introduced here are forgettable and so bland, you don’t even need their introductions to know them well enough, but I’ll go into more deeper in the character section. With the second arc, we can begin to see the Subaru break down as a character, as he becomes more obsessed and broken. I was forcing myself to watch this second arc, but the lack of focus this has on anything made it a major chore on me. The third arc started okay, but delved deeper into meaningless and boring territory, with what I think, no way out. We learn about the priestess selection ceremony and how Emilia is part of it. But as we go further into the arc, it delves away from this and instead goes into another meaningless arc with Subaru’s action being really cringe-worthy and eventually is just Subaru wanting to return to Emilia’s mansion, with no focus on the storytelling anywhere else to help deepen the plot and world.

Characters: 2/10

The characters beside Subaru in Re:Zero are bland and have very little personality. They are not interesting and have generic backstories. I do not feel attached to any of the characters at all because we, as viewers, aren't given any reason to do so. For example, the maids Ram and Rem are introduced and we learn they are demons. Their backstory is not compelling and is essentially the writer trying to force emotions onto us when it is working due to the genericness and the way it is presented to the viewers. As for their personalities, they don’t really any. They are just maids and do maid tasks to varying degrees of success. There is nothing interest about that at all. Theses characters are truly forgettable. As for the main protagonist of Sabaru, although he does have some semblance of personality, the way he acts and behaves makes me exasperated at him and the show. Firstly, he does not even question how or why is transported into this world. Instead, he acts like it is completely normal and is surprisingly chill about it. He does not even contemplate about his past life and the things he has lost, like his family and friends. Over the course of the series, Subaru begins to acts more irrationally and puts emotion over logic, which greatly affects him both physically and mentally. Although experiencing death is taxing to an extent; the way Subaru lets his emotions control time and time again leads him to make stupid decisions which ultimately leads to a preventable death and therefore less stress off him. Subaru’s main motivation to is for a girl he met, Emilia. Over the course of the show, Subaru obsesses over her constantly, without being given an actual reason to, besides the fact he finds her hot. His actions are a main reason that this show really is off-putting, since a rational person would not act like he does. Character death is supposed to be used to draw emotions from the viewer; but instead, Re:zero uses it as a plot convenience instead of its intended purpose. This is because Subaru can alway die to prevent his own and other’s deaths. And although an element was added in a recent episode that worked around this flaw, I find it to be stupid due to it seeming to be going nowhere.

Art: 7/10

For an anime to come in 2016, the animation is fair. It isn't great, but it isn't bad either. The animation is fluid and the colors are nice to look. Overall, it's pretty decent. The character designs seem really generic and I don't really feel any uniqueness from them.

Sound: 5/10

None of the tracks are memorable, but they aren't bad. They are just there. The opening nor the ending really stands to me. The voice actors are pretty good and they portray the characters well while delivering enough emotion where it isn't too much or little. Overall, the sound is just mediocre, there is nothing special to it.

Enjoyment: 2/10

I really forced myself to watch this show because of the large amount of people saying it was worth my time. While watching, I was forcing myself to try and find the good parts of the show, but they were few. The characters, plot and world were all bland and boring. I did not enjoy how the story did not expand to anything more than Subaru doing a small task, while the bland and tasteless side characters made this show more of a chore. The animation and sound did not help my enjoyment of the show at all.

Overall: 3/10

Overall, RE:Zero could have been much better, if it decided to flesh out many elements and put more effort into building an actual story. With this and better characters, this show would have a lot better and I would have enjoyed even more. Unfortunately, this show fails in these aspects and does not live up to the hype it has built for me personally. This is why I am giving RE:Zero a score of 3.4/10.

I swear to god i dont get it, I dont get the hype surrounding this show. I feel like this will eventually become like the new SAO where there is just such a divide in the community in terms of its quality.

Re:Zero stumbles early on but manages to prop itself back up in the middle but then falls apart worse then ever before. The characters are annoying, bland given useless backstories and most of them are just introduced to feel up the screen and i can compare Subaru and Emilia's Romance to Anakin and Padme's from the Star wars prequel trilogy, where Subaru would ... constantly go back for Emilia and i could never think of a reason why or but Subaru could think of 2000 apparently (kill me). The action for what its worth does look good but im a story and character guy mostly so if it has great action every now and then but im not invested it just looks like money wasted. Also the fact that they havent even hinted at why Subaru is in the world just pisses me of cause i feel like there should be a reason and whenever something interesting starts to happen or is hinted at the show completely ignores it (Subaru being pride but just being like nah). The villains are extremely weak, not threatening and not given as much screen time as they should have been so they can properly develop so when the characters are scared over the edge lord Betelguese you dont understand why cause he is kind of funny. Also due to semi cliched nature of the last third of the show you can just predict the final outcome.

Sound was fine but nothing to memorable for me not gonna waste time on it.

By the end of the show when Subaru died i wish he stayed dead and the show would end, but i was not so lucky. This review is all over the place and not very formal but this is just me letting my unfiltered, not spell checked and formatted opinions out there.

If you like Re:Zero thats fine, i know im in the minority but to me personally it represents what is wrong with not only the anime medium, fans and culture but basic story telling across all forms of entertainment

Hi, I'm going to write a simple review. I did not like the anime and I am going to explain why.

[Story: ]
The events were boring. There was no buildup to anything and all that seemed to happen in the show was a psychopath or beast killed the protagonist and his friends over and over, and the protagonist tried to stop them from dying. I think in the entire show the only buildup to an event or murder was that the murderer or beast was mentioned in a passing conversation. Like "hey watch out for that whale, it's bad news" was it and *poof* there's the ... whale.

The setting was a boring anime fantasy.. There were no cool powers, no interesting villains, no realistic depictions of economy, war, or politics. It's baffling how anyone makes a fantasy setting boring and generic given the potential to do anything with it, but Re:Zero somehow accomplished me being bored in a fantasy setting, which is exceedingly rare.

The writing was pretty bad. The series continually killed off characters, only to say "not really" to the audience over and over. The only tension was of the protagonist mental state since everyone in the show was effectively immortal, regardless of how much the protagonist cried over each of their deaths, even after the 4th time it happened. Then there is the fact that no one the show seems to have any real motivation outside of undying servitude to a princess or evil witch.

[Art/animation]
Mediocre animation. A couple of animation cheats such as reused animation or repetitive jump cuts, but for the most part it's simply "passable." Not much to say outside of "nothing interesting/new to see here."

[Sound]
Mediocre soundtrack that was used extremely poorly. Re:Zero tries to baby the audience by putting a "whoo-wee-whoo" at every sign of something bad, often in a much too obvious manner. The soundtrack itself is forgettable fantasy anime soundtrack #76, but it was also played extremely low in the background throughout the anime, making a lot of scenes almost dead quite with the exception of a few twangs every now and then.

[Characters]
Subaru is a polarizing mess. He's poorly written, has inconsistent mood swings and changes of character, and is generally an idiot about everything to an unrealistic degree. His backstory is completely forgotten by episode one and there seems to be no real reason to make him from an alternate dimension outside of Japanese otaku self-inserting themselves into him.

Emilia is basically non-existent for over half of the anime, despite being a major focus of Subaru's actions and motivations. If you want to note something about her note how little of a connection she and Subaru have and how big it is played out.

Rem is the "too good for this world" character who develops so fast from her original "shy but psycho" personality that it's almost as if the author replaced her with a clone halfway through.

Wilhelm is probably the only character within the show I view as being good. He has a consistent backstory and motivation for his actions. Sadly he's sidelined and his entire existence is merely defined as a side-character by his position alone.

The rest are forgettable archetypes. Loli's, tsunderes, white-knights, traps, the whole shibang you see in almost every fantasy series.

[Final thoughts]

Re:Zero remains to me what is a growing problem with the industry, that anime are put out in mediocre condition with no desire to go anywhere or do anything but be another fantasy anime among hundreds. Sure, it got hype and success because of calculated marketing decisions regarding characters, but I'm sure it's not going to stand the test of time.

I'm sure that I'll look back on this series and rate it lower thanks to it's terribly low rewatchability due to it's reliance on shockfactor/plot-twist/edge, but for now it's a solid 3/10.

It's not the worse anime ever produced, it's not terrible. But it's certainly got a lot more fundamental problems than other anime have.

In a classroom of Isekai anime, Re:zero would be the edgy kid who screams "F*ck the man" while having no idea what its talking about.

Ah, yes, Re:zero.

"Read the source, it explains everything!" They said.

"Subaru totally grows and matures and is realistic!" They said.

"You just hate him because you like Gary-stu!" They said.

... You know what, I read the WN even further than you LN fanboys so I can criticize Re:zero all I want.

Story - 2

Re:zero starts with a boy named Subaru transported to another world then death, suffering and screaming happens. You see the fanboys like to pretend there is this cool mystery about why he got transported or who the witch of envy is and how the stake is totally high cause the world might end.

But it doesn't really matter, you see Re:zero uses the classic style of shitty mystery called "making the character retarded and never ask the crucial questions" such as Subaru never ask how he got transported or how his power works.

"It is a deconstruction of Isekai work, huh dun dun, those characters never ask, huh dun dun". Then you are not being realistic are you? score 1 for hypocrisy, just to rub salt in the world, a lot do ask. So Re:zero is merely deconstructing a straw man it created in its head.

Why does Subaru act like a hot-head moron? "It deconstructs the shounen like protagonist, huh dun dun." Ignoring that a lot of the shounen like protagonist actually fight pretty smart and knows what they are doing.

Why does the other characters never talks regularly? "Because this is a deep mystery and there are conspiracy's and stuff, huh dun dun." Which they immediately start explaining when the protagonist is about to loop, so Realistic.

Why does the evil witch cult characters act like rejected Danganropa characters? "Cause that is what scary crazy villains act like, huh dun dun!" So scary, guess that's why I was in tears laughing. I guess Hannibal lector, Yohan and all the other villains are total failures compared to the magnificent Re:zero.

And these pretty much is where Re:zero's plot fails, it tries to hide its generic "girl world guy" plot behind the excuse of "deconstruction" and "mystery" yet it fails to understand the very thing it is talking about. Isekai stories have a lot of varieties, everything Re:zero does had been done and made better in other places. On its own it is a shitty mystery, cause magic, there is no logic behind it, in fact if I sum up the answer to the mystery from even the later arcs it is summed up as "The Witches did it!"

Character - 2

Subaru is the creation of an author who is up his own ass, about how he is amazing for going against the common flow. And this is true, you can actually find interviews or replies from the author anytime someone criticize him for creating an unlikable protagonist.

"No no, I meant to do that." Yeah, you purposely created garbage, good job.

For all the fanboys defending Subaru is realistic or would grow, allow me to let you in on a little secret.

You know how he whines and push the blame onto everyone else, act like a prick, and never thinks before charging into something?

That never goes away, ever.

In fact he gets a character reset every arc, which goes, loop - bullshit happens - whine - loop - breakdown and scream at people helping him - loop - miraculously solve things because of luck - reset character arc.

So tell me, how can a man that never grows be realistic?

"You're just a hater, why you read/watch it if you hate it so much. You just don't understand."

Beyond Subaru the amazingly emo MC, the other characters are not that good as well, since time loop, there is basically no consistent growth. Especially Emilia whose characteristics never moves past the "nice lonely love interest", I literally cannot think of another word to her personality, she is blank.

Rem and Ram have a bit of character, but Rem suffers from character rewrite as she is in love with the MC to an unbelievable extent. And they get toss on to a bus anyway.

Others doesn't matter, they appear, they leave, leaving no long lasting impact as the story doesn't revolve around them.

Art, Sound - wasted

Overall - 3
Garbage torture edgelord material, if Akame ga kill and stein's gate had a baby, this would be that. And on the quality side, this definitely approaches akame ga kill's horribleness more.

Re:Zero is not one of those generic animes that almost anyone with a little bit of taste in the fantasy genre can enjoy, regardless of the things that keep bothering him such as excessive fan service or frustrating plot inconsistencies. No. Re:Zero is much, much worse than that. It’s a show that is aware of its own flaws but is surprisingly okay with them. It even points out several clichés and generic characters as they were mere facts. Re:Zero admits that it’s overwhelming and boring to use those elements again, and again, but uses them anyway and tries to hide them with violence and melodrama.

The ... show starts as a joke of almost every fantasy anime using the main character as the perfect parody tool, making him say satirical things like: “This must be the event where I cast my spell. Ha!”, “Where’s my protagonist status?” and “Where’s the cute girl who summoned me?” but then the story quickly settles down and becomes a serious matter. It’s like the writer wanted to tell us: “We get it. We know that you’re tired of this overused fantasy world, but we’re going to use it anyway”. We laugh because we know that they’re right, even though we feel like we’re giving them the permission to use it. After starting on a parodic tone, Re:Zero slowly becomes darker and darker throughout the episodes, using horror and drama as its main genres. It gives us this unusual feeling that it’s original and appealing unlike its siblings, by ending almost each episode with a dramatic cliffhanger (sudden death of a character for example). And the problem is, it takes advantage of it EVERY episode to shock the viewer by making the main character look miserable and pathetic to the point that it becomes repetitive and melodramatic. The writer has one rule: each episode MUST end with a cliffhanger whether it makes sense or not. Re:Zero hides under a carpet of clichés and uses drama as an excuse to get away with it. Many people don’t have a problem with this. They actually find it awesome and thrilling. But I don’t. I find it exaggerated and unnecessary. What we need is a real explanation of the story, but sadly there is none: the story is divided into small or long arcs so there is no “story line”. What we demand is a motive, a goal that our main character has to achieve, a reason why certain characters act the way they do, a character development or a background story and NOT a sudden character transformation into the “Good Guy”, nor a romance that’s going nowhere. Unfortunately, we get nothing. Nothing at all. There is no attractive story and the characters are badly written. The whole show is painful to watch and makes you want to break your screen.

Please note that some sections in this review contain some spoilers. Feel free to skip those sections indicated by a *.

Let’s start with the bad elements:

•STORY: It seems that nowadays, new animes are basically copy-pasting what’s popular (be it an idea, a set of characters, a setting…) and keep twisting it around until it becomes better. One of the major problems in Re:Zero is that it can’t decide what it wants to be so instead it becomes everything at the same time: parody, horror, mystery, slice of life, comedy, action… And you can’t just pile up all those elements and expect a good and comprehensible story. What is Re:Zero trying to be? That’s the question that I’ve been asking myself (and still is) the whole time. Because to me, the anime fails in every aspect: there is nothing mysterious that you have to find out. Instead, some elements are brought up once and then completely forgotten later (characters, plot elements…). The slice of life (the mansion arc) is unnecessary and repetitive: it doesn’t develop the relationship between the characters. It insults it because the time-travel resets everything. The comedy is also removable as it doesn’t relieve the tension, because there is no suspense to begin with. It’s a time-travel fantasy where the main character never dies and keeps respawning back in time to try again and again until he manages to save everyone. It’s like playing an arcade game where you have an unlimited amount of credits. You’ll win the game eventually.

1) DRAMA: The drama fails due to a simple plot device that keeps the show going: time-travel. Many writers don’t take this sensitive element seriously in their Si-Fi’s and fantasies, and use it whenever and however they want to. But the real advantage in using time-travel in a fantasy is allowing the writer to tell the story in a different kind of narrative: use of different characters and scenarios, seeing the story in another character’s point of view… Time-travel can easily lead to a suspenseful and interesting story if used correctly. However, if it is triggered when the person holding the ability dies, it becomes a little bit more difficult to handle. The main character’s emotional state becomes crumbled with fears and traumas after each death, whereas from now on, each character who will die besides him will have absolutely no effect on us because we already know that anyone can come back from the dead by time-travel. So the point of this “Rewind by Death” is not to shock the viewer, but rather the character. And the sad part is that everyone thinks it’s the same thing. It’s not. You’re feeling sorry for the main character, and not the person who has just died in front of him. And why should you sympathize with a useless main character who doesn’t do a single thing during the whole show? Nevertheless, the drama is forced due to the vicious cycle of death-rewind. It lost its value when the writer made this poor choice of allowing the MC to reset the day when he dies. So stop trying to force it, it’s not working.

2) CLICHÉS: I already mentioned this at the beginning, but Re:Zero is still full of clichés no matter how much you want to deny it. Think of it: knights, castles, elves, witches, “lizard people”, “ground dragons”, actual dragons, apples that look exactly like ones but are called “appas” (talk about originality), lolis, maids… The problem is that the show is aware of all of those lame and overused elements. For example, the MC refers the small and cute characters as “lolis” and barely use their actual name. So in the end, we can’t really say that the fantasy world in Re:Zero is original because the setting and characters are nothing we haven’t seen already. And changing the name of a known fruit is not going to help, sorry. Re:Zero is based on a whole bunch of clichés, and made this very clear to us. This seems ironic given that it’s a cliché and is trying so hard not to be.

3) CLIFFHANGERS: The cliffhangers are poor. Some of them are too predictable, others are too unexpected and impossible to believe. Cliffhangers must make a little bit of sense and more importantly be relevant to the story but instead, they are used left and right for shock purposes. It’s not shocking if it’s not convincing, and it’s not convincing if it’s not provided with any proof. Even the MC doesn’t understand what’s going on anymore, so how can we? One or two cliffhangers are fine, but if you’re going to end each episode with one because you want more drama to your story then it’s not going to work. The viewer will eventually get bored after playing the long and famous game: “Who’s going to die next?” And the answer is too obvious: Subaru, and maybe another character that we don’t care about.

*MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD*

An example of a typical cliffhanger is the episode where we learn that one of the maids Rem killed the MC. Get this: a loyal maid trying to kill the totally-not-suspicious guest who tried to save her master more than once. This was way out-of-character. She didn’t even talk about her suspicions with anyone, and didn’t even provide any evidence. The only thing suspicious about Subaru was his witch scent, but everybody knew that and nobody really cared to bring that up again.

How about the episode where our MC commits suicide, but then becomes too scared to die again and let the "plot conveniences" (some random monster you don’t know yet) take care of that? Why raise more questions when you can simply avoid them by letting him commit suicide again? And we're talking about a desperate and hopeless guy who wants to save EVERY SINGLE character he meets, even villains who tried to kill him once. And that’s definitely not going to work if he’s going to wait for something or someone to kill him so he can reset everything. He’s wasting his time, and ours.

There’s also an episode where Rem is brutally killed in front of Subaru because the killer wanted him to feel guilty and bad. That’s the reason why there are so many deaths in this show: to traumatize the main character, and not us. Because killing a character in this show is unbelievable and pathetic. It’s like faking death: we already know that whoever dies is not really dead and will come back by Rewind.

*END OF SPOILERS*

The endings are executed in a way to keep the suspense and thrill but in the end it’s just for a cheap shock value to keep you hanging and wanting more.

4) PLOT CONVENIENCES: The story doesn’t look appealing nor smart at all. Why? The plot conveniences are everywhere, not to mention too easy to spot. This makes the characters look manipulated instead of independent.

The first issue is that all the deaths are forced and used against the MC in order to traumatize him.

*MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD*

In episode 14, Subaru arrives at the mansion only to find everyone dead. He then blindly walks into a suspicious ice room and suddenly freezes to death by some curse just after hearing someone whispering to him: “You’re too late”. That’s right: Subaru waits to be killed by the unknown because letting him commit suicide will be nuisance to the writer, since Subaru will take advantage of it every time and use it whenever something bad happens. Instead, the writer let him witness everything because he wants to traumatize him even more, kills him using someone/something we don’t know about, and later on tries to justify it. That’s not smart. That’s running away from a logical path that the character could have taken.

An episode later, Subaru gets his head chopped off by the same monster. His death is not only absurd, but confusing. After we learn the monster’s identity, we then come to the conclusion that killing Subaru in this way doesn’t feel right. It was not his fault. It never was. The monster could have prevented all of this, but didn’t because Subaru HAD to die. It’s almost as if he let him die on purpose. And the writer tries to justify his poor excuse of making this monster kill Subaru even if it doesn’t look compatible with the monster’s personality.

Another issue is a very annoying plot armor: the inability to inform anyone about the Rewind ability, either by killing the person holding the ability or by killing the person listening about it. Subaru needs to suffer ALONE before transforming into a completely different person. If he ever tries to alert someone, he starts hallucinating and seeing a witch’s hand coming from the dark grabbing his heart. Let’s say for the sake of argument that this is part of the witch’s curse. Couldn’t he IMPLY that he has been there before or that this was a Deja-vu? Repeating a character’s line for example, predicting his actions and movements… Is it that hard? (like the MC in “All You Need is Kill” or its movie adaption “Edge of Tomorrow”). But of course that’s too much for Subaru. He can barely lift a sword, literally. What about the other characters? Are they like Subaru incompetent and indifferent? Just by observing a person’s behavior, you can tell that there is something wrong with him, or that he may have experienced this before. We get to see one of the characters who barely shows on-screen saying that there’s something off about Subaru’s eyes, and that he looks like he experienced many deaths and traumas, but keeps it to himself. It seems that no one really cares about Subaru or pay any attention to him, and I guess it’s normal given his personality.

The writer needs something that can emphasize the drama. Every episode, from 1 till 18, someone HAD to die or something bad HAD to happen so Subaru can feel guilty, because that’s all on him. He’s the only one who can prevent this using his ability but nobody can help him because they’re not allowed to. So this is really a cheap plot armor that is barely justified by the writer. It is used to traumatize the MC, and it takes way too long that the trauma eventually becomes impossible to erase or overcome. So how, in just one single episode, did Subaru magically overcome his trauma that began since the very first episode and turned into a completely different person? But we’ll get to that later.

After episode 18, the drama fades away, because it did what it had to do: make the MC suffer alone using a simple tool: time-travel, while preventing him from telling anyone about it, since it would hurt the show so badly it would end in 12 episodes instead.

The story is also riddled with plot holes. The writer doesn’t explain why Subaru is suddenly transported to another world and then cursed by a Witch who doesn’t show up in the end. He doesn’t explain how the “save point” works. One of the most obvious examples is the episode 23 where Subaru respawns back to the strategy meeting after the White Whale battle and says: “Wow. My save point was updated!”, which is the same as him implicitly saying “Thanks writer, even though I have no idea what happened!”.

5) FILLERS: The story doesn’t have a sense of continuity because it’s divided into small and unrelated stories. Some of them are short and acceptable, others are fillers to lengthen the drama and waste our time. I’m going to explain the real reason behind those removable parts of the show, so I’m most likely going to give examples.

*OBVIOUS SPOILERS AHEAD*

The Mansion and the Village Arc (Episode 4 to 12): This whole arc has one purpose based on an absurd claim: to strengthen the relationship between Subaru and Rem after she killed him several times because she thought he was a threat to the whole mansion. This is why it’s absurd: she’s JUST a maid so it’s not up to her to decide who lives and who dies. The fact that she’s even trying to kill a guy that has done nothing more than being nice to everyone and helping them because he’s in debt is beyond ridiculous. Subaru tries to convince her that he’s innocent but she doesn’t even listen to him. Beatrice act as his witness and tries to justify his innocence but fails. He blames himself for that and tries to figure things out because his life is at stake here, and not because he cares about Rem. So this arc is just another way for him to escape death by building a fake relationship between a maid so he can earn her trust. The writer makes Rem act irrational and out-of-character by accusing an innocent guy with no evidence whatsoever so he can give this arc a meaning. So if this isn’t filler, what is?

The Royal Selections (Episode 13): This episode has one goal: to get Subaru into a fight with Emilia. How? By making him look as ridiculous and pathetic as possible in front of everyone. The episode looks like a joke because not one single character in it takes the situation seriously. Subaru keeps screaming and shouting at anyone who insults Emilia. One of the council of elders is caring enough to ask him who he is and if he is done with his painful speech already instead of throwing him out instantly. Felt (one of the eligible candidates) also makes a scene screaming at Reinhard and asking him what she is doing here (I mean, isn’t it obvious?) but later on claims that she will kill everyone in this town if she ever becomes the queen, because to her that’s what a perfect ruler should do. Priscilla claims that she will become a tyrant and make everyone kneel before her, while Anastasia informs us that she’s too greedy and wants her own nation. Old Man Rom literally pops out from the ground to save the day and Emilia finally kicks Subaru out of the room after getting embarrassed in front of everyone. In other words, the introduction of the candidates which was supposed to be the whole point of the episode happened too fast and eventually turned out to be another cringe moment for the viewer.

The White Whale Arc (Episodes 19 to 21): the main objective of this arc is to make Subaru look smart and helpful, showing us a contrast between his old personality. This arc is no more than just a fight against a giant floating whale that takes up to 40 minutes when it could have ended instantly. Yes, the fight looks serious and cool, but what does it have to do with the story? Isn’t Subaru’s current objective to save Emilia, and not to waste his time running around a monster while teasing it? Wilhelm thanks him even before the fight because defeating this monster is avenging his dead wife, so it’s kind of a big deal for him. In other words, the writer makes the arc look serious and necessary to everyone so we don’t complain about it, and here I am trying to figure out the whole point of it. I think Subaru’s priority is to defeat the guys who killed Emilia in the first place (The Witch worshipers), and not a random monster who killed him once.

*END OF OBVIOUS SPOILERS*

•CHARACTERS: If you thought the story was bad, just wait and see what’s even worse.
The characters are too plain. They have up to 2 noticeable characteristics and once they do their job, they are thrown away into the garbage and completely erased from the show. Moreover, most of their lines and dialogues sound cheesy and messed up. Here are some examples:

“Do I look clever to you?”

“You are still Emilia’s dog”

“Explain this to Emilia and the loli”

“That was a vague order, but alright”

“Thank you for being defeated”

"Only I'm allowed to sniff Subaru"

“Love love love love love love love love love love love…”

“That was perfectly well-coordinated. Did you guys practice that for this meeting?”

"Will you be quiet? I'm trying to make myself look good."

This is not a joke. Those are actual lines from the show that are applied to serious situations like fights, meetings, convincing a certain character about something, giving an order. In general, the characters are well-presented (art, animations, voice) but look dumb when they talk so it’s impossible for you to take them seriously. It’s like they don’t even care about their situation as much as we do. They talk because they NEED to, whether what they say makes any difference or not. They don’t have a mind of their own. They are just following the writer’s orders without thinking like a reasonable human being.

1) MAIN CHARACTER: To put it simply, Subaru is an 18-years old that acts as if he’s 12. He has a special ability that lets him rewind time by his own death but he barely takes advantage of it and doesn’t really explore its limitations. He thinks of it as a joke and doesn’t understand what he’s truly capable of. In the first episode, it took him 5 seconds to realize that he’s been transported into a fantasy world: “It's safe to assume that this is a fantasy world” (Episode 1, minute 3), but when he dies the first time and resets the day, it took him almost 2 episodes to understand that he can time-travel by death (did I mention that he’s a NEET who plays video games and watches movies all day?). And what’s worse is that when he goes back in time, he takes the same routes and doesn’t try out new ones. He goes to the same alley where he got mugged last time and screams to the thieves: “You again?”. This is a time-travel fantasy, shouldn’t you at least explore different paths, meet different characters, and for the love of God question yourself: “How did I get here?” or “How do I get out of this place?”

In other similar shows like SAO, GATE and KonoSuba, the main character voluntarily travels to a fantasy world, so he doesn’t need to find a way out of it since he knows what he’s doing. So why does Subaru who is suddenly transported to another world take the situation so lightly that he doesn’t even TRY to escape. He accepts everything that happens to him AND everyone that he meets without using his brain.
Instead of searching for a way out of this world or getting rid of the curse, he ends up hunting for waifus, from maids to princesses to cat girls, because to him that’s more important than safety.

Subaru is one of those main characters who pretends to be the “know-it-all” but actually has zero intelligence. He doesn’t do anything in this show; it’s that simple. Instead, he just let the other characters do their job as he sits idly, claiming that he will save everyone. Hell, he even admits it later. There’s one sentence that could sum up his personality: “Go with the flow”. And by flow I mean plot. Subaru’s role is to blindly follow the plot without thinking twice. He repeats the same mistakes over and over again because he NEEDS to die so he can reset everything or wait for something “shocking” to happen in the end of the episode. In other words, he acts this way for the sake of the drama-cycle (so he can die, reset, then die again…)

Subaru’s second role is to over-dramatize the show, either by making an irrational decision, regretting it later and blaming himself for everything (even though it’s not his fault. He feels guilty because he knows he can do something about it but doesn’t) or becoming completely traumatized and unable to speak. One of the writer’s main objectives is to show us a development of his mental state (from best to worse) but it becomes exaggerated and too dramatic. There’s a whole episode where he doesn’t speak a single word because he witnessed another death: he has given up, but he hasn’t done anything AT ALL so how can he easily give up? Death is a serious matter, but not when you can reset it by time-travelling. It’s almost as if you’re taking advantage of it, since this will help you avoid it next time by exploring different possibilities. I don’t want to spoil another anime, but go watch Magical Girl Madoka and you’ll know what I mean.

Subaru also changes his behavior every time the plot demands it. Sometimes, he makes a scene because the show needs more drama. Sometimes, he doesn’t and completely turns off his psychological scars by pretending nothing happened because the drama needs to cool off at some point. He saves a maid who killed him once while pretending that she didn’t. He ends up protecting a thief named Felt while pretending that she’s not the reason why he and Emilia died in the first place.

Subaru wants to feel like a main character even though he’s not, at least not to me. You can almost hear his screams “Notice me! I’m important too” when he throws a tantrum in the royal selections episode and gets mad at anyone who insults Emilia, even in the episode where a Knight simply kissed her hand showing his respect towards her. On the other hand, Subaru acts like an ex-boyfriend who’s still overprotective towards his supposed girlfriend. He claims that he’s a Knight that’s going to protect her in a room full of Imperial Knights while wearing a track suit and shouting like a complete idiot but that’s just too pathetic because he simply can’t. Everyone knows that. He knows that. Consequently, Subaru is beyond pathetic and cringe-worthy. He shouts that he’s going to save everyone and two minutes later he runs away begging for people to help him, to the point that he was willing to lick the foot of a princess. Yes, that’s how far he was going.

After episode 18, Re:Zero becomes another “Find the missing Main Character” game (similar to Tokyo Ghoul Root A), where you have to question yourself: Who is the main character in this show? Is it Wilhelm, a Knight who suddenly becomes important to the plot and defeats the enemies in one swing of his sword? Is it Julius, a respectable spirit knight who acts as Subaru’s personal bodyguard? Or is it Subaru, the supposed main character who can only act as bait using his witch scent?

In episode 18, Subaru becomes self-aware and finally accepts his character: “What I am now is the result. All my powerlessness, all my incompetence, is the product of my rotten character (…) That’s right. I have no character”. If he was aware of his character the whole time, why didn’t he do anything about it? Why wait an endless 18 episodes to do so? And here’s the worse part: his character transformation is too sudden. After Rem’s speech, his personality makes a 180⁰: he becomes smart, patient and calm. This long speech barely seems convincing and powerful to completely turn a person’s personality upside down. It’s the personality that we’re talking about: it’s almost a built-in feature that you are born or raised with and it’s too difficult to change that quickly. It takes months, even years. And using Rem’s love confession is a weak excuse as it doesn’t suddenly make him a better person: it takes time.

There is no convincing character transformation, like the one we see in Tokyo Ghoul (where the MC was mistreated during the whole show and almost tortured to death before becoming a complete badass). Even though his character is written that way to make you hate him and then watch him overcome his flaws, it takes up to 18 episodes and in the end it doesn’t really succeed. After “Subaru’s second form”, he becomes a completely different person: calm, reasonable, smart... A true gentleman who admits his mistakes and forgives his enemies. It’s impossible to believe that 1 episode ago he was the same character. Subaru 2.0 still asks people for help because he can’t do anything on his own and acts as bait the whole time while others defeat the enemies. So what really changed in all of this? He made one good decision (a deal with a princess) and that was it. Then what’s the problem? He’s still weak and useless, but everyone accepts him as their hero and start helping him out for no reason: he gets his own army at his command, even though before no one knew about his existence and if they did they though he was a complete idiot. His character transformation is like night and day: one second he was irrational, stupid and thinks that he’s Rambo and then 1 episode later after one simple love confession everyone thinks of him as Napoleon executing the perfect plan or Gotham’s next Batman saving the entire city? I don’t buy this.

Believe it or not, Re:Zero becomes another shonen after the MC’s “transformation”. Rem made it very clear to us when she kept insisting that Subaru is her Prince Charming. There are different factors involved. I’ve counted three so far:

1) He informs the people about the whereabouts of the White Whale (a floating monster), because apparently nobody in this world can use their magic powers or a simple magic spell to track it down.

2) In every single fight, he acts as bait using his witch scent while others defeat the enemy.

3) He risks his life by acting as bait again, and saves a random maid he barely knows by doing so. Not to mention that the risk is non-existent to him since he can reset time the moment he dies.

Doesn’t this seem a little bit insulting to other heroes out there, who try their best to defeat the enemy, using their different set of physical and mental skills? I’m not even convinced that Subaru is a main character, so how can I believe that he becomes a hero later?

Not to mention the overuse of soliloquy (a situation where the protagonist speaks his thoughts out loud so he can indirectly address himself to us). Subaru keeps screaming out loud "OMG. I'm awesome!", "I look great!" and "I'm garbage" so he can highlight his character. He points out clichés to tell us "See? I'm aware of that, so it's not a cliché!".

2) SECONDARY CHARACTERS: Well, let’s start will the main heroine Emilia. She is a kind and caring person but in reality she’s simply a cheap fan service element for a barely developed and non-reciprocal romance. She’s very naive as she welcomes Subaru into her home after knowing the guy for no more than 10 minutes and that he smelled like the Witch (a very despised figure in the show). In addition, Emilia’s character doesn’t get enough development and this seems crucial since the whole show is driven by the relationship between Subaru and Emilia. Think about it: if you remove her then everything else will lose its meaning: the maids, Subaru’s objective and decisions… Emilia can be considered as a plot engine, and some characters even admit it. Ram acknowledge Subaru as “Emilia’s dog” (actual line), not only because he acts as one (he barks at people he doesn’t like and defends his master without thinking) but also because the story wouldn’t have made any sense if his master was not in it. Isn’t this the plot device of the whole show: a relationship between a dog and his master? So why give more attention to side characters like Rem & Ram? Let’s analyze then each character so we can see for ourselves:

-Rem: a bipolar maid with no fixed personality. She starts as a kuudere, becomes a yandere and slaughters everyone, goes back to being cold to Subaru, goes completely insane, then becomes surprisingly kind, but later on turns into a typical tsuundere who can’t admit that she’s in love. So instead of creating more maids, the writer decided to mix all the possible personalities you can come up with into one bowl of a character, thinking that he created a character development instead. Rem acts as a supporting character as well as a fan service one. Try to remember what happened in episode 18: she falls in love with Subaru while telling us (and not him) a fantasy about them living together and having kids that we know will never happen so we can fantasize about it. And of course, she’s just another mindless puppet who makes the drama look even more dramatic by acting irrational all the time and getting herself killed. Her actions barely help the story and the MC. In fact, she once ran away from Subaru and went to the mansion all by herself only to be brutally killed. This was the only safe and logical decision she could think of. But in reality, she was just following the drama path: to shock and traumatize Subaru when he finds out that everyone is dead.

-Ram: Rem’s twin sister with a dull personality, unless you consider “cold and irrational” a type of personality. Her character design is almost the same as Rem’s (except for her hair color) but surprisingly she’s not giving any importance at all. She’s there because the writer needed a background story for Rem, then decided to throw her away since she did her job. In episode 23, she comes back, only this time to kill Subaru and his entire army because he left the mansion and ran away from his master: “So this is what it means to bite the hand that feeds you”. It was Emilia who asked Subaru to leave the mansion in the first place after they got into a fight and NOT him running away to a new master without telling anyone. It was a simple request, not a betrayal. So if she can’t even tell the difference, what can she really do?

3) SIDE CHARACTERS: Almost all the side characters seem completely static and hold no real meaning in the show. They are there because the story is not crowded enough and the writer needs some fillers.

-Wilhelm: His Sword training with Subaru doesn’t change anything. It’s just to show us that the MC is actually trying to do something for once, that he’s trying his best, but he fails in doing so and finally admits it. Wilhelm is suddenly giving more attention than primary characters when he got his own flashback about how he met his wife. He can almost be considered as a main character replacement for Subaru.

-Beatrice: a tsuundere loli who despises Subaru but ironically enjoys his company. She tries to help him by convincing Rem that he’s innocent but apparently that led to his suicide.

-Reinhard: a.k.a “Mr. Nice Guy”. He’s an angel, a saint who helps Subaru out of the goodness of his heart but later on abducts a harmless child. Lolicon confirmed?

-Felt: too childish and ignorant. She blindly follows Reinhard without resisting and becomes one of the eligible candidates for becoming the ruler, only to ask him in a room full of princesses, Imperial Knights and people: “Why did you bring me here, and why am I dressed like that?” (most likely to relieve the tension).

-Felis: your typical cat-girl who turns out to be a boy even though he acts, speaks, and looks like a girl. His job is to look cute and help others without interfering with the harem (like the one in Highschool DxD).

-Julius: a spirit knight who takes his role very seriously, until he becomes Subaru’s pet and obeys any order he gives him without complaining.

-Roswaal Mathers: because the show needs another clown besides Subaru. He acts and speaks like a clown. That's his only unique trait.

- Betelgeuse (In English “Beetle Juice”): One of the 7 Sin-Archbishop representing Sloth. He reminds me of Nobuyuki Sugou: a one-dimensional, too-evil villain who becomes a joke in the show due to his funny way of speaking and acting.


Now for the good elements:

•ART & ANIMATION: The art looks really good and is actually nice to look at. The background scenes are noticeable enough and more detailed than usual. The choreographic scenes are fun to watch, others become repetitive but that’s fine. In conclusion, the art & animation is overall enjoyable.

•SOUND: The voice acting was acceptable except for some characters like Bettelgeuse: it was too high-pitched and was a pain to the ears. We get that he’s a villain but trying to make his voice as ugly and insane as he looks is just too much that he eventually becomes some sort of a joke in the show. We look at him and all we see is a Joker-wannabe but with a really annoying voice. Another voice acting that was supposed to be funny became extremely distracting and ruined the whole mood: Roswaal Mathers’ voice. It even makes you question his sexuality.

Other voices are good, like Rem & Ram (same voice actress), Emilia, and most male characters.

The OP was also great. I never skipped it. Same thing for the ED, except I didn’t listen to it every time. I was too busy trying to figure out the ending.

•CONCLUSION: In a nutshell, Re:Zero is an obvious cliched fantasy that tries its best to appeal to the general public. What I mean by that is the typical “edgy” cliffhangers, the time-travel, the fantasy elements (cute maids, princesses, Knights… the usual), the horror elements (blood and gore… so it can look serious and addressed to adults), the melodrama (way too much), the harem... Now try imaging a show that has all of those elements and more. No wonder you’ll get a messy, scrambled anime that is not just confusing, but painful to watch.
Re:Zero has a tendency to introduce certain characters but later on completely dispose of them as they were mere paper characters. Now the characters are one thing, but take a look at the story line: it’s not linear nor episodic. It’s lazy and filled with useless and boring arcs. It’s a whole bunch of stories, like a small book that you read to your child at night: it doesn’t make any sense but it’s a good way to make him fall asleep quickly.

•ENJOYMENT:
I never enjoyed a single second in this show. Why should I? The story is divided into stories, the main character is pathetic, useless, and acts like an idiot but suddenly becomes the hero we all need by acting as bait the whole time. Some episodes were rushed, others were mere fillers and the cliffhangers are always there, whether they make sense or not. Fan service and forced drama win in the end, because that’s what people want nowadays.

Do I recommend this? Well, let’s see:

Do you like to watch a bunch of unrelated stories, each one in a different genre?

Do you enjoy watching a completely useless and static main character similar to a statue?

Do you have a problem with abusive drama and cliffhangers that don’t make any sense?

After you answer each question, you'll know what to do.

Re:Zero started out amazing for the first four episodes, became average but still entertaining enough midway through, and then ultimately became a complete terrible farce in the last third.

The characters are just downright awful.

The main character, Subaru, is a selfish entitled self-centred cunt. Which is fine at first because that's the way the he was written to be, and the story punishes his actions and attitude. But in the last third of the series, one by one all the characters start sucking the main character's cock. All of a sudden Subaru can do nothing wrong and everyone kisses his feet. He hasn't changed one ... bit, he's every bit the same cunt that he was at the start, but suddenly the show is rewarding him.

Rem starts out pretty interesting, but in time becomes nothing but flatly-written waifu bait. There are multi-dimensional fascinating characters that would also happen to make a great waifu, and there are characters that exist for the sole reason of pandering to the viewers. Rem unfortunately is the latter. There's zero personality or thought behind any of her actions other than being in love with the main character. Her character development died the moment she fell for Subaru.

Emilia is your generic nice girl, and just when she starts showing the least bit of development, when she calls out Subaru for his bullshit and tells him to fuck off, she then gets shafted for the rest of the series. Subaru's so-called "love" for Emila is nothing but toxic possessiveness; at one point he even says "you should have a greater debt to me than you could ever repay".

The show is that it ends up being the complete opposite of what it set out to do. It ends up being nothing but a self-insert wish-fulfilment fantasy. I'll be the one to say it: Sword Art Online season 1 as whole is better than Re:Zero; at least it never tries to pretend that its anything more than the fulfilment fantasy it is.

The selection of candidates for the throne? All shifted aside to watch the main character playing hero. Why he was transported into this alternate dimension? Not explained. Why the main character can keep reviving time after time when he dies? Not explained. Why can he only revive at particular save points, which change throughout? Not explained. Why even bother? The writers can just throw anything they want into the story without any explanation.

Don't even get me started on the atrocious writing. Subaru's so-called PTSD magically appears and then goes away at random; whichever is more convenient for the plot at that point in time. His supposed turning point in the series goes something like this:

Subaru: I AM USELESS I HATE MYSELF
Rem: I LOVE YOU SUBARU
Subaru: OK, I AM FANTASTIC AND I LOVE EMILIA :D LoOoOL, HELP ME SAVE HER?
Rem: YES! :)))))))

Atrocious.

What does this show prove? Just add a bit of gore and deaths and edginess and everyone with circlejerk over it and go all "2dark2deep4u". If this show is supposedly the "saviour of anime", then the entire medium is beyond redemption. Just look at all the waifu wars amongst the show's fans, it shows you what kind of target audience is intended for the show. If not for the brilliant first four episodes I would rate the show even lower. Don't waste your time on this, its overrated, overhyped, utterly pretentious, and not worth watching.