Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu 2nd Season Part 2

“I love who I am.”

The final line of the opening’s chorus, as well as the ending’s titular “Believe in you”, form the thesis and backbone of this season of Re:Zero. This cour shifted its focus away from the usual Subaru character study, delving more into worldbuilding, developing its side cast and delivering its core messages.

Why does Re:Zero, within the abundant sea of modern isekai, stand out like a shining beacon of light 5 years later? Some will argue it’s the breadth of its “best girl” selection, others will say it’s the impactful thriller elements. Re:Zero’s true strength lies, if you were to ask me, in ... the humanity of its characters and the messages it imparts. These aspects are in the limelight in this cour. The previously established Trials mechanic is used to explore characters’ histories and motivations, all the while sprinkling in setups upon setups leading up to the grand picture of the series. Subaru, as the protagonist, takes a back seat; he lends a hand to the other characters, gives them a push, and yet it remains up to them to make a choice and save themselves. Yes; Re:Zero Season 2 is about self-reliance — but it is also about the fact that when you do decide to take that first step, whether it’s to change, to save or improve yourself, there are people out there who will cheer you on. The message of this cour is a deeply positive one, hence the show momentarily forsaking its usual gimmick. It’s also a very satisfactory watch, after the feeling of deadlock within the first cour, as the characters smash through insurmountable odds set up by the charismatic villain of Part 1.

Due to the nature of the show, some spoilers will follow.

Cour 1 revealed the antagonist for this season to be Roswaal, behind both the Sanctuary situation and the mansion attack. I would, however, say that beyond specific characters, the true antagonist in this arc is a symbolic, or abstract one — the idea of “stagnation”, which happens to be behind every obstacle of the arc. Roswaal is stuck in 400 years past, believing in the permanence of feelings and chained to the past, intent on fostering that same weakness which he believes exists in others to manipulate them; Elsa is on a desperate hunt to recapture a feeling of warmth from her past; Beatrice remains bound to a 400 year old contract; Garfiel is terrified of the world being too big for him to protect everyone and decides that the Sanctuary should remain closed off. Re:Zero acknowledges that the status quo is attractive — is it not normal to stay attached to the beautiful Witch who saved your life, to want to recapture a feeling of relief from one’s past, or to want to keep your world small where you can control and protect everything? — before pointing out that it is also deeply self-destructive and dangerous, from the impending doom in the form of a carnivorous rabbit horde to the mental degradation of Roswaal and Elsa’s characters. All of these ideas are conveyed with no shortage of symbolism, the most striking one for me being the use of Beatrice and Roswaal’s Gospels.

In order to overcome these barriers, Re:Zero asks its characters to find the balance between “dangerous self-reliance” and “toxic dependence”. Subaru, unable to overcome anything by himself despite his abuse of Return by Death in the first cour, realizes something in the second thanks to a friend; the gears of victory start spinning only when he reaches a hand out to his allies and starts valuing his own life. The main heroine Emilia takes the opposite path, beginning her growth only when her dependence on Puck and Subaru is broken. From there, this hero-heroine duo constitute the heart of the anime, spurring everyone else into action. Characters argue and fight; ideals clash, sparks fly. This would be around the part where the average viewer would call the dialogue overlong and repetitive, without any effort on their end to connect with, or at least understand the situations at hand.

I couldn’t disagree more.

The dialogue forms the heart of the arc; when a character speaks, their lines aren’t artificially tailored for some 3rd party viewer. The core ideas, themes and motivations aren’t spoonfed; they’re inbetween the lines, asking a degree of investment and attentiveness from the viewers. Camera angles assist the viewer in finding meaning, if not to simply immerse them into the scene, like the series’ iconic eye reflection shots that convey “understanding” or “trust”. The argument between Subaru and Emilia in EP40 is probably the strongest display of that particular strength of the series, from the sheer rawness of it to how real it felt as an unreasonable clash of emotions, all the while allowing the two characters to overcome their emotional hurdles. It wouldn’t be difficult to argue that the Sanctuary premise, and the mansion situation at hand, are only present to allow all of these clashes and character explorations to take place, and the attentive viewer will most definitely appreciate this setting that goes beyond the isekai fantasy norm.

From a purely script-writing perspective, a lot of these moments overshadow the first half of Season 1, and come close to even the legendary, all-dialogue episode 18. This is all, sadly, from a purely script-writing perspective. While the directing throughout the show is generally good (with sadly more dips than usual in this cour — and no, this isn’t referring to the liberal use of filters, which I didn’t find too bothersome as someone used to such things), the animation is insufficient to carry the weight of certain moments. Anime is, first and foremost, a storytelling medium, but even the best story will fall flat if poorly translated on screen. While Part 2 certainly doesn’t fall to that level, the feeling that something is *missing*, or to be more precise that the characters are too static to properly elevate the scene is certainly there. It also certainly doesn’t help that the downgraded character designs, making most of the male characters hard to look at compared to Season 1, have carried over from S2P1. Re:Zero has had segments even heavier in dialogue than this cour before (again, the pure dialogue-heavy EP18 comes to mind), but a lack of dynamic animation on top of the increased complexity of the writing will inevitably lead to some false perceptions for the average viewer. These production-related issues, along with some cuts to the source that may negatively affect the flow of scenes for some, make it so that I cannot give this a perfect score; nevertheless, White Fox persevered admirably, trying their utmost to stay faithful to the source with consistent 30-minute episodes, this entire season reaching up to 33 episodes disguised as 25. While cracks in the production are present, series director Watanabe managed to balance out ambition with a schedule that didn’t require a crunch to the finish line like other popular gems of this season. But I digress.

Making up for the more static animation is a soundtrack that may just match AoT in its movie-like feel; the “fantasy” aspect of the series shines through in almost every track. The voice acting is stunning, from Yuusuke Kobayashi’s emotional performances to Rie Takahashi’s more and more confident and energetic voice, matching the arc of her character. Let’s also not forget to praise Takehito Koyasu, who managed to convey every facet of Roswaal’s character with skill. To top it off, this season came with two character insert songs, both used fittingly and beautifully. In a season as focused in fleshing out its cast through numerous backstories, character arcs and climactic moments, these are some of the most essential components, and I can only be glad the production remained stellar on that front.

Overall, if I had to sum up in a sentence what this arc of Re:Zero imparted in me, it would be, once again, “when you finally decide to take the first step to make a change, there will be people willing to help and encourage you along the way”. Subaru isn’t strong, he isn’t even cooler, but he isn’t alone anymore— just that fact is enough to change the tone of the series into something more positive. You cannot remain dependent on others, but avoiding human relationships with those around you will also get you nowhere.

If nothing else, I think what Re:Zero Season 2 does is worth lending an ear to.

Re:Zero's second season's worst aspect is revealed through each episode's runtime. A little under 30 minutes and most episodes do not include an OP or ED. At first glance you might think this means every episode is packed, but in reality every episode is not packed but rather bloated.

Bloated with what? Information, lore, backstories, exposition. The story doesn't move until the last couple of episodes of the second part of the second season. The lore itself isn't bad, at times it can actually be quite intriguing, but it's just one mystery after another. I don't mean mystery as if you as the viewer are given ... hints and you can hypothesize on what's going to happen or take a shot at guessing missing information. The mysteries you're given are impossible to interact with, they're just there to make you question why what's happening is happening, but there's nothing to help you make sense of it all, it's all just one big confusing mess.

*SPOILERS*

Take Emilia's trial for example (also the trials are a lazy story telling tool for revealing information), we're introduced to the Witch of Vanity, who is she? No idea. Petelguse an ally of Emilia's family, why? Why does he care about them? What is he doing in the witch cult? No idea. Everyone's worried about 'The Seal', what's 'The Seal'? no idea. Emilia's the only one with access to the key for 'The Seal', why? no idea.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't expect the show to spoon feed me answers and reveal everything without keeping a sense of wonder. The problem is that this type of story telling is constant across almost the entire season. You are constantly bombarded with scenes such that you simply have no idea what to make of them. At a certain point it just gets overwhelming and I simply didn't care to know what anything means anymore.

Re:Zero's lore is reach and grand, but the way it's revealed is lazy, inorganic (Characters will just constantly spill out information for no reason that makes sense) and it's just too much lore and not enough actual story. A good mystery keeps you in the dark while keeping you intrigued and following a certain kind of logic, Re:Zero keeps you in the dark and you're just forced to wait until it decides to let me some light in.

One big reason for why it's so hard to understand the lore is because it's given through a huge cluster of eccentric dialogue that sounds really deep but is really just too complicated for it's own good. For some reason every character speaks in the exact same way, it causes the dialogue to unnecessarily drag on for too long, hence the long runtimes of each episode.

Beneath all of this horrible story telling though, lies a beautiful world and epic fantasy. Hopefully next season's plot will be tighter.

"Re:Zero is boring."

Three words you've likely heard before or said yourself. But why? Why do people find Re:Zero boring? If you already love Re:Zero, I hope this review will help you understand the other side of the audience. If you don't love Re:Zero, I hope to provide some clarity as to why.

From my observation, most people who dislike Re:Zero are anime-only viewers, whereas the dedicated fans have read the source material: This tells us two things:
1. The story, characters, and themes hook specific viewers to the point of delving into the meaty source material (which includes 11 manga volumes, one video game, four character-focused side ... story light novels, and a total of 26 light novel volumes).
2. The viewers who don't get hooked by the story will lack the background knowledge to make the characters more nuanced.

I fall within the latter category. While watching the first season back in 2016, I despised it and rated it 3/10 overall. I made a concerted effort to understand the fanbase's point of view by supplementing missing information with Youtube analyses and Wiki articles; that's why I immensely enjoyed Re:Zero despite the show's flaws. After stewing with my thoughts, I've concluded the show itself overall has a subpar presentation, despite providing intriguing and nuanced characters.

First of all, the screenplay is bloated. Most of the characters talk the same. I don't mean they have the same voice, but the same way of speaking, which makes it obvious the same person wrote them. Of course, they were all written by Tappei Nagatsuki. However, it breaks my immersion when every character speaks esoterically with additional words and phrases added on top of what is, at times, a simple script. Characters such as Roswaal and Beatrice demand to speak superfluously because for narrative purposes. Roswaal speaks in riddles because he is manipulative, enigmatic, and a liar. Beatrice hides her anxiety and abandonment issues by not cutting to the chase and saying "I suppose" at the end of every sentence—it's not simply a cute quirk. Some reasons become apparent with time.

Side characters such as Regulus Corneas, the eccentric and terrifying archbishop, speaks like a conservative senator attempting to filibuster by spouting rhetoric about "free speech" and his "rights" before mercilessly killing innocents. He does so because his psychopathy and hypocrisy befit the archbishop of greed—the reasons are very clever but entirely missing in the anime. The choice to leave out this and other content threatens to obscure each scene's meaning. To the uninformed viewer, all of these behaviors, meaningful or not, are annoying. It doesn't help that when the more sane characters speak, the dialogue is delivered slowly and with a drab presentation. The production is to blame for this.

That brings us to the second issue: animation: There is barely any. When it really counts, such as the combat scenes with Garfiel, Elsa, and memorable moments in Emilia's backstory, it looks good—but for the rest of the time, it's hard to sit through. Frames freeze for minutes on end, with simplified versions of the beautiful character designs. There is motion, but the animators rely heavily on motion tweens, camera pans, jump cuts, and digital zooming. White Fox only drew a few angles of the main casts' face, so whenever the camera is at an angle that deviates from the norm, the characters look messy and off models. Often, fans of the series are frowned upon for criticizing the lackluster animation, but I believe they're 100% valid. If these people complain about the cafe scenes in SAO, yet they ignore similar problems in Re:Zero, they're hypocrites.

In this case, they're not at a table, but somewhere: In front of the Sanctuary and the forest. Episodes go by, and people will be in the same place talking. Whether they're telling a story, explaining their secret motivations, or telling a story someone told them. If you've already gotten hooked by the characters, the information you'll learn is fascinating.

Thankfully for me, I am invested. My favorite characters, Garfiel and Otto, perhaps got the best side-stories barring Emilia's trials. Garfiel yells to compensate for his short height on the surface. Due to developments, his earlier actions got recontextualized. He has a grudge against his mother, who left him behind. He believes nothing will get better, even if he leaves the Sanctuary. Letting people go would be admitting he can't protect them all. Even though the animation was as bad as usual, it still pulled my heartstrings enough to make me cry. If you told me Re:Zero would make me cry four years ago, I would've laughed in your face—and that's why I think it's worth putting in the effort to understand why people like the characters so much. I acknowledge the characters are motivated by friends and family, and that's not very complex writing. However, it is in keeping with the show's themes. It tackles the cycle of abuse, trauma, grief throughout multiple character arcs. If Re:Zero did not have this thematic throughline, I would've been more critical of its simplistic aspects.

Another gripe I have with the director is the use of comedy; I like the occasional quips and humor, but sometimes it falls flat. When Subaru interrupts dialogue to yell or one of the girls squeals like a VTuber, I can't help but roll my eyes. This kind of humor may be suitable for most people, but for me, it only detracted from the show.

Intillialy, I despised Subaru for how he betrayed Emilia's trust in episode 13 of season 1; nevertheless, he has indeed grown. Nearly every one of my wishes for his character, and everyone else's, came true. Emilia claimed the center stage and had her own agency, for once, and Subaru provided emotional support rather than overshadowing her accomplishments. I will always decry his objectifying of her, especially when attempting to get taken seriously, but I believe the author will remedy this issue in the future.

This was my favorite season of Re:Zero. On a surface level analysis, I could point to the happy ending; it scrapped the Return By Death plot mechanic, Emilia had a heartfelt backstory, and how they saved violence and gore for critical scenes. Ultimately, what really made this season was the leaps and strides in character development. Even for the passive viewers, you will likely find the ending of Re:Zero Part 2 worth sticking around for. I'm in a difficult predicament—where I both love the characters, but multiple aspects hinder my enjoyment of the show overall. The truth is, it is more enjoyable for me to talk about Re:Zero, and analyze its complex characters than it is to watch it. For that reason, it failed to meet my expectations.