Reviews

Sep 18, 2016
Mixed Feelings
Every once in a while, a show comes around and takes the anime community by the storm. Forums end up being filled with reactions, and comments talking endlessly about the most recent episode. Images of best girl pops up everywhere. In other words, the show becomes hyped as hell. Some of these shows are actually good while others range from terrible to the mediocre. But through my poorly written intro, the question remains. Is Re:Zero worth the hype?

No, no it isn't.

The story of Re:Zero revolves around Natsuki Subaru. An Otaku/shut in who gets transported magically into this fantastical new world filled with dragons, cat woman, and basically everything that an otaku could wish for. He ends up getting saved from a bunch of robbers from this mysterious girl and aids her in finding something that is important to her.

And thus starts Subaru's journey through a living hell.

Probably what has made this anime so popular in the first place is the amount of gruesome deaths that occur, and although I do agree that this gruesome approach to the show is its selling point, it’s also one of the main flaws of the show.

You see, I can appreciate well displayed deaths, but Re:Zero goes out of its way to make most of its deaths as tragic as possible. That’s not to say that tragic deaths are inherently bad, but rather Re:Zero tries to do this too damn much. I’ll admit I did in fact enjoy some of these scenes, but when this happens over and over again I can’t help but feel that the show is just trying too hard to get some emotion out of its audience. It tries so hard to feed the audience with these deaths, these tragedies, that by the end of it I mostly became apathetic to any suffering that Subaru would experience.

The other problem that I have with this show is that the arcs feel a bit fragmented from each other. Throughout the show it never felt like each arc was an actual progression, but rather separate stories that don’t help with the main plot. I found myself having to consciously remember why the characters were doing this sometimes because the show is so loosely constructed.

The characters in the show are a mixed bag. Many of the characters like Emilia who seem to have a prominent role in the story at first end up being shafted to being side characters so that the show could introduce more characters. Other characters like Rem seem to have a more withstanding impact in the story but it seems that Re; Zero favors switching the main characters for each arc. The problem with this is that any other character excluding Subaru seem to just fade out of relevance, and at the very end it had me questioning whether they were that important to the story in the first place.

Speaking of Subaru, the problems that I have with him isn’t that he makes the most idiotic decisions, and ends up hurting the people around him. But rather I have a very hard time trying to figure out what this character exactly is, because he is so inconsistent as a character.
At first I really liked Subaru. He was this smart person who used his brain rather than strength to solve his problems, which was a breath of fresh air. Afterwards we see his flaws show up, as well as his obsession with being the knight in shining armor. We see him fall and break, his resolve shattered. But then after a certain event, he does a complete 180, completely overcomes his trauma, and turns into this badass hero.

What?

It isn’t just Subaru though; the quality of the plot as a whole drops rather significantly after the start of the Whale Arc. The foundation that Re:Zero built for itself is trashed completely in favor of boring side character development, terrible pacing, mediocre screenwriting (I guess the screenwriting was always mediocre though), and the feeling that the show has lost sight of its original purpose.

The animation of the show is mostly inconsistent. The show looks really good in the first half, but the quality does drop a bit probably due to budget reasons. Nothing that makes the show unwatchable but it does hinder my experience a little. A good example is the CGI used in the show. It sticks out like a sore thumb and I wished the studio made a better effort trying to hide this. One thing that the show does extremely well though is character expressions. Whether Subaru is filled with grief, absolutely mad, or broken. His facial expressions express his suffering perfectly, with expressions ranging from uncomforting to absolutely grotesque.

Music on the other hand was a bit better. The OP’s are decent. I’m not a particular fan of them but I know many people that are. I especially liked the Ed’s though, especially “Stay Alive.” It fit the show perfectly and I would find myself listening to it for days. The soundtracks are pretty nice too. The composer has a good grasp of adding tension and an ominous air into his tracks.

I guess I’ll end this show with a small disclaimer. I don’t hate this show. I actually enjoyed this show a decent amount, and it has moments of greatness. But the lack of direction, confusing character development, poor pacing, and quality drop really dampens the experience. Re:Zero is a show that didn’t make me think of how good it was, but rather how good it could have been.
Re:Zero aims high, but falls short of being a great show.

(Btw, I don’t care what you all say. Felis is best girl)
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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