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I can only call this a nihilistic romance show.

The author shows you a romantic situation that seems to be quite definitive, and then, she spends entire episodes arranging scenes suggesting that, even though the situation once looked hopeless, maybe... maybe, change is actually possible. That something new and beautiful will blossom.

Then she shits on it.

Nearly every episode has one or two rage-quit worthy scenes where you just want to abandon ship and jump into the ocean, yet those tiny embers of romantic intrigue prevent you from dropping it, keeping you curious about if the situation will change the next time. It doesn't - the show ... methodically destroys hope. It's literally a textbook narcissistic relationship: small gestures of kindness that give you hope, which are then followed by a long duration of relentless abuse.

This isn't just some normal romantic bait and switch. It is scientifically perfected to be as enraging as possible. If I'm giving this a 4/10, 3 points of that are thanks to Hina. She exists independently from the author. There's a certain sadism in the production of this story. If you are the type willing to play the M to the author’s S, you'll love it. Otherwise, don’t bother. I certainly wouldn’t have if literally any other worthwhile romance existed right now.

My issue with Re Zero is that it's way too unrealistic.

The guy gets thrown into a dangerous world of constant death, and discovers that every time he dies, he leaps back in time. And the way he reacts... it's just surreal. Almost immediately, he starts adapting and trying to help his friends. He just catches onto things way too fast. How is he even supposed to be relatable?

I mean, sure, he screws up a lot at first, but the speed with which he starts catching on is nothing short of unbelievable. How did this guy even end up becoming a NEET in his ... previous life? Was he a NEET by choice? I can't imagine it being otherwise.

I have autism. World is complex to me. The constant deluge of information is relentlessly chaotic for me to keep up with. Life just doesn't come naturally to autists. I have strategies for dealing with this. I make lists. I wrap a blanket around me and put on lo-fi music. Sure, everybody has their chaotic moments where they take a break from things and dabble in their hobbies away from everyone else, but I'm trying to say that life just doesn't come as naturally to autists. It just does not.

This is why Re Zero is inaccessible to me. Had what happened to Subaru happened to me, I’d probably spend years in useless bouts of denial, and every time I returned by death, I would ask "Did I just die?"— and I wouldn't be able to believe that I just did, and I'd gaslight myself into thinking that I was just daydreaming. Because it wouldn't make sense to me. I'd be sure I was imagining things up. How does he get it after just a few times?

The characters? Okay, yeah. Emilia is...fine? Maybe? Like, she’s potato-adjacent, but at least she’s a nice potato. And Rem? Designed to appeal to otaku, for sure. Reinhard? He's cool.

Maybe this show's story doesn’t have the conceptual weight of Higurashi or the cleverness of Steins;Gate or the raw ambition of Full Metal Daemon Muramasa in deconstructing character ego or the fluidity of Summertime Render or the memorability of Mushoku Tensei. But there’s something kind of fascinating about it anyway. It's like what if universe was designed by a rationalist and we could keep retrying life or if life was a video game made by Fromsoft. It's something that makes me feel like maybe I’m the problem. Like, the reason I don’t love it isn’t that it’s bad, it's very good, but that I wouldn’t survive in its world.

Imagine that The Iliad starts with the Trojans and Greeks both headed home. There is no Helen, no Achilles, no Trojan War, just some descriptions of trees and roads. Welcome to Frieren.

Everyone seems to love this show, so consider this a contrarian opinion, and the following will be a list of my issues that I want to express before season 2 comes out.

Jesus Christ. Why did they defeat Demon Lord before the story? That's supposed to be the exciting part. What am I supposed to do with a dragon when you just skipped the most important fight? I get the whole thing is a ... meditative “after the end,”, but you could at least show this really epic fight in the first episode and then do whatever you want. How in heaven’s name did we just skip over the "Demon Lord"? The concept of the hero’s journey is thoroughly mutilated here.

Art style looks really weird. The color scheme is muted, and all characters are expressionless and move and talk very slowly and calmly. It feels like they're bored of each other and they aren't ever excited to do anything. What happened to joy? It's very lacking in charm. Why does everyone look so… motherly?

The pacing is so frustratingly slow, that it feels like they made it to deliberately numb you. Stuff barely happens. There were like three plot molecules in the ten episodes I've watched. Two sentences to summarize the whole thing, max.

Also, the black and white morality is just so embarrassing, and for a show so well received, I had expected better. She just sees some "demons" that look 99% identical to human beings and then immediately starts casting a spell to kill them? Then of course, after she thoroughly "owns" them, story says she was right all along and everybody claps with tears in their eyes. Is that it? Is that really what we've become?

And I'm not going to ignore the elephant in the room. Why is the God of universe a female? What happened to the father? Doesn't seem like a mistake that he isn't there. It's the holy father not the mother. You can't just swap things out like that. Maybe the destruction of heroic masculine spirit coincides with that.

I’d rather start the whole thing back at the fight, with an actual Father. But now it's just dropped on episode 10. The message is clear: life after defeating your enemies is just boring. The adventure is over, this is the life that waits you now, we get it.

I really liked the alcoholic priest though. I guess the most exciting character was Demon Lord since they were so insistent on not showing us the guy. Just my two cents.