Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu - Hyouketsu no Kizuna

Covered in ice and snow, Elior Forest is the home to dangerous magical beasts and 50 elves frozen in ice. One day, the great spirit Puck helps a young girl break out of her ice prison. Her name is Emilia, a half-elf born with silver hair, long ears, and amethyst eyes—features that resemble the evil Witch who destroyed half the world long ago.

Shunned by society because of her appearance, Emilia dwells in the forest with Puck as her sole companion and family. Burdened with a sin of destruction she does not remember committing, she spends her days trying to find a way to help her frozen kin. But when the great spirit Melakuera, the Arbitrator of the world, finds Emilia, her right to stay alive is brought into question. Will the bonds of ice she formed with Puck prove to be the warm thread that defies fate?

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Emilia Main

Takahashi, Rie Japanese

Pack Main

Uchiyama, Yumi Japanese

Rem Supporting

Minase, Inori Japanese

Natsuki, Subaru Supporting

Kobayashi, Yuusuke Japanese

Echidna Supporting

Ram Supporting

Murakawa, Rie Japanese

Mathers, Roswaal L. Supporting

Koyasu, Takehito Japanese

Melakura Supporting

Genda, Tesshou Japanese

Chap Supporting

Hino, Satoshi Japanese

Tanaka, Shou Producer

Iizuka, Aya Producer

Beniya, Yoshikazu Producer

Yoshikawa, Tsunaki Producer

Reviews

Apr 1, 2020

swirlydragon

Recommended

Emilia-tan Maji Tenshi
-Natsuki Subaru (2016)

Story 10/10

The OVA shows Emilia's past with Puck. It showed how Emilia was treated by villagers and how SHE treated them in return. It also showed her daily life, how she earned her livelihood before she was selected as a candidate for Lugunica's queen, her relationship with Puck, her first meeting with Puck, a little about Elior forest (her home), her powers, etc. There are also some decent (but short) fighting scenes involving Emilia and Puck plus some badass Emilia scenes in which she gets really angry. And after the credits, we have a lovely Emilia and Subaru interaction to lighten ... up the mood.
Btw this OVA only gave a glimpse of her past. There were still many unanswered questions (like frozen statues of people and how Emilia was frozen herself) and unnamed foes who are yet to appear and will hopefully be covered in season 2. We also get to see a little glimpse of season 2; that is, a little tease on Petelgeuse's backstory, an unknown voice at the start and Emilia's relatives.

Art 10/10

The art was just as good (if not better) as in season 1 so nothing to complain about.

Sound 10/10

Loved the OST. They really amplified the emotions in certain scenes. And the credit song was lovely

Character 10/10

I'll just be straightforward. Emilia is beyond selfless. If anything, Subaru wasn't wrong when he called her EMT (angel), EMF (fairy) or EMM (goddess). We already know from season 1 how most people in Lugunica hated her because she looked like witch of envy. Here we get to see Emilia's willingness to become friends with the villagers but sadly they treat her like a disease (so she hid her face mostly). They ran away whenever she went to the village and called her a witch except one old man who treated her kindly. Unfortunately, the villagers and even the kind old man betrayed her by confessing her location to some slave traders. But even so, she still cared more about those villagers than herself and tried to keep them safe disregarding her own safety. Even after she saved a family from monsters, they still insulted her and were scared of her instead of showing gratitude.
Puck's relationship with Emilia was also highlighted here. His caring attitude towards her and willingness to protect her from any sort of harm (like a spirit named Melakuera who considered Emilia a threat due to her likeness to witch of envy) was admirable. We also get to see Puck's original form in this OVA which was not shown completely in season 1.

Enjoyment 10/10

Really enjoyed this OVA. Can't wait for season 2 tbh. I am really excited!

Overall 10/10

What else is there to say? Give it a watch! It's really good and quite emotional! I couldn't stop myself from crying.
EMT!

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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May 17, 2020

aoikimahri

Mixed Feelings

Like another review mentioned, this is 40-50 minutes longer than it should be. They tried to turn a short OVA into a movie. Even if properly edited and paced, very little is actually revealed or actually transpires. You learn that Puck is protecting Emilia from a fire spirit and the two form a contract to fight it, win against this self-proclaimed arbiter, and then profess their love for each other and intentions to leave the forest. There is very little substance otherwise. The dialogue is repetitive, vague, meandering, and abstract. There is very little revelation about Emilia's past, how she actually met Puck, or why ... he is infatuated with her. It's really only a retelling of that single point in time where they fight the fire spirit and not much else. The animation and sound are fine, no different than the anime, meaning it's far from movie quality. There are some cool icicle spell effects and fire beams juxtaposed with terrible two frame gifs of swirling fire or breaking ice. Half the stills of Puck's beast form look lazily drawn and rather deformed. The pseudo-movie in general felt very slow and underwhelming and would have been better incorporated into the anime as a flashback.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Apr 23, 2021

TK8878

Not Recommended

Review in brief:

The Frozen Bond struggles and ultimately fails to be anything more than unnecessary padding between two seasons of Re:Zero. Stretched out beyond any reasonable purpose and full of incomplete story elements, it does a better job of highlighting the problems some people have with Re:Zero than the enjoyable aspects that others would have surely hoped for here.

Review in full:

As a small part of a large story, Re:Zero was bound to leave a lot of questions open after its first season. This was something which ended up being a considerable problem for many viewers who would rather not wait multiple cours to ... see certain major characters fleshed out or important lore expanded upon, much less wait multiple years for a new animated season. Perhaps this led to undue expectations being placed upon The Frozen Bond, a prequel project which appeared to promise some backstory and answers surrounding two of Re:Zero’s more ambiguous characters. However, when it doesn’t appear to serve much more purpose than either that or padding between seasons, it becomes challenging to justify it as anything other than a hollow holdover.

Framed as an inner reflection Emilia has after the events of Memory Snow, The Frozen Bond centers around the relationship between herself and her guardian spirit Puck, and how it came to be that way for Emilia. One wouldn’t be blamed for thinking this would go on to expand Emilia’s character, yet it doesn’t so much as attempt to. The Frozen Bond is unquestionably about Emilia, and yet refuses to answer any real questions about her, and the main series had left many by this point. Despite spending a lot of time beating around the bush on the circumstances surrounding Emilia’s isolation in the Elior Forest, none of it offers any new perspective on who exactly Emilia is. This orbiting issue wouldn’t be so disappointing if it wasn’t the event the entire story revolves around and continually brings up to offer as an explanation for most of the story’s other events. By displaying so little character when given the spotlight for so long, Emilia only ends up appearing shallower.

The only other character to speak of is Puck, who does end up getting fleshed out over the course of this largely Emilia-centric story. The mystery surrounding him works much better not just because there’s some answers provided as payoff to the inevitable questions, but because of how much more dynamic Puck ends up being than anything else The Frozen Bond offers. His wit appears to be backed by experience, his motivations pondered over, and his side of the relationship with Emilia (unlike Emilia’s side which can be chalked up to pure circumstance) organically developed. Sadly, his role in all of this is treated as a secondary concern, often getting brushed aside and inevitably left much less complete than it could have been.

Instead, The Frozen Bond devotes much of the time it isn’t vaguely and fruitlessly hinting at Emilia’s backstory on attempting to make the antagonists look like actual characters. Chap is a one-dimensional thug whose ill-defined drive of “revenge” fails to justify why anger is his sole trait. Meanwhile, Melakuera is just a spirit automaton, yet there is an ample yet pointless attempt at making it seem to be more than that. It follows reasoning that falls apart with just a handful of questions and rules that Puck quickly dismantles the validity of (and yet it still follows them). Perhaps Melakuera exists to point to the unfairness of Emilia’s situation, but Chap already bumbled his way into proving that, as shallow as he is, long before Melakuera even became relevant.

The whole product suffers the effects of being stretched out much further than it had any right to be. The full extent of Emilia’s backstory that was covered could have been the side plot of a regular anime episode, yet it encompasses the majority of this feature-length entry. Chap & Melakuera’s situations add nothing substantial to the story as a whole either, and while more time could have been spent on Puck, that’s ultimately a separate story from the one being told here. Even the production quality takes a hit, with soundwork that (unusually for Re:Zero) struggles to even have one decent, memorable aspect, and visuals that slowly degrade from pretty, fluid, & clear to rough slideshows that can’t even bother to show (what would have been) the climatic final action scene. Why build up to it in the first place if the result is obvious and the production is too burnt out to do it justice anyhow? Unfortunately, it would only be fair to ask that of nearly every other element of The Frozen Bond, as none of it justifies itself any better.

Verdict:

Presented with an opportunity to address some of the fundamental problems of Re:Zero, Frozen Bond instead deepens them. Stretching this half-baked backstory to twice the length needed to tell it only serves to make its pointlessness more apparent, especially at the point of the main story it suggests itself to be relevant. Viewers who would level similar complaints towards season 1 are bound to be disappointed, and all but the most devoted of fans are unlikely to be amazed as well.

Reviewer’s Rating: 2

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