First of all, I don't HATE Re:zero, and I can see why so many people like it. The concept is actually something that has never been done good in anime, the idea of an adventure with “checkpoints” is fairly well managed and it makes Re:zero different from other SAO clones. Because it IS a SAO clone, but that is not an insult since a lot of anime that exploit the success of SAO are amazing (Log Horizon, Overlord). If you want to read something with the same concept of a story with checkpoints I suggest to read All You Need Is Kill. It's really short but it uses this element a lot better in my opinion (the manga is drawn by Obata so it's top quality).
Back to Re:zero, the first arc is hands down the best: Subaru needs to resolve a problem and he deals with it from different prospectives, it's a trial and error and it's damn good, also beacuse the secondaries are super likeable.
As the series progresses it becomes obvious that the focal element of the series is the supportive cast since the second arc gravitate around Ram and Rem, and the lore also gets more in depth with the magic mechanics, different races are introduced and the next sovrain selection (or whatever that thing was) arc starts, but things starts to degenerate from right here.
And here we come to the greatest problem of the entire anime: Subaru and Emilia. From the begining Subaru has no real motivation to be part of the story. He ends up in a fantasy world and meets a cute girl (you know, standard anime stuff), he has the opportunity to save her and does whatever he's able to, and that's perfectly ok to me. On a side note: it makes no sense that he is THAT strong in th first arc, that was just dumb considering that he never participates in a real battle after that.
The second arc starts with Emilia that apparently has brought Subaru at her home, and that makes little sense considering that she never met him in that specific loop. You could say that she just offered help to someone that actually helped her, but why him and not Rom whose injuries were lot worst than Subaru's? It's not that big of an inconsistency, but this plot point serves only so Subaru can keep interacting with Emilia, and this kind of things happen too often through the series. Emilia has no real personality most of the times, all she does only serves to justify why Subaru is in love with her. Because from the beginning, Subaru is in love with Emilia for no reason. He meets her in the city, thinks she's hot and goes with her, that's understandable, but then Subaru gets unhealthily attached to her, and that's not justified. You could say that you cannot command the heart, but the real reason is that it's just forced romance. Everytime Emilia talks it looks like she wants to jump directly on Subaru's dick, but the romance never progresses. That's not a personality, that's trying hard to be waifu material. On this matter, Subaru's single and only motivation in the entire series is that he wants to get laid. He has no other motive for being there or doing anything, it's fucking dumb if you stop and think about it: the whole series progresses because Subaru wants to jump inside of Emilia's panties and never thinks about why he ended up in that fantasy world or how to get home, he just thinks about getting that mad pussy, yeah. After realizing this, then you start thinking that maybe that's because Subaru has nobody that is waiting for him at home (that's even established i think). And MAYBE it's because Subaru is a shitty person? Thnk about the beggining of the third arc, where Emilia specifically tells Subaru to not get out of the room no matter what happens. The first thing the idiot does is obviously to storm the fuck out of there messing with random people in the streets which obviously turns out to be a super relevant character that is going exactly where Emilia is going. She then tells Subaru to not do anything stupid because it's an important moment for the future of the kingdom or some shit, and he gets in the way of an important event without knowing anything about it “because he can't stand Emilia getting bullied”. That supid fucker thinks she can't stand by herself and has to defend her. That's not being considerate, that's being sexist. And if that's not enough, he also insults all the knights in the kingdom without reason. When he fought Julius I couldn't stop thinking that Subaru was just wrong. When he confronts Emilia again and starts shouting at her I assumed that that was the moment where Subaru was supposed to show his true colors and then eventually being confronted with the bad person he is. But apparently I was wrong. That was just Subaru being stressed, so it was okay for him to act like a bitch with everyone. This is bad writing if you make the main character look like he's constantly victimized just to justify his shitty personality (and by that I mean that Subaru is a bad person, not a bad character). He is a selfish kid who thinks that everyone owe everything to him and never considers other people's feelings, that being Rem, Emilia or Reinhard. Shit, I loved Reinhard but he apparently stopped existing because Subaru was frustated and didn't want to talk to him anymore.
And there's nothing wrong in a character being wrong. But he's not punished for the wrong shit he does and doesn't learn from them, and that's not a correct way to develop a protagonist. It's just not fair that he is in the wrong, gets depressed and aggressive because nobody is on his side and in the end nothing changes, he keeps being a shitty person that got over a depression, he's like a shitty kid that gets scolded, cries very loudly and ends up not learning anything.
I hear a lot of people saying they sympathize with Subaru because he suffers without deserving it, but it's not like that at all. He gets killed and go through a lot of shit, but understands where he went wrong and make up for it in the end in the first arcs and that's right, but in the third loop the point is that he can't start from zero and must get over it with Rem supporting him. But idiots never learn, and so does Subaru: he doesn't give a shit about Rem and keeps focusing on Emilia even thought she openly refuses him, and the only thing that changes is that everyone else suddenly becomes 30% more stupid and starts believing anything Subaru says even though it makes no sense at all.
The last episode is hilarious by the way, Emilia suddenly relizes that she loves Subaru out of the blue without knowing that he's even there and all of her character developement becomes meaningless. Now it's her fault for making Subaru said and she rewards him beacoming the trophy. All the act of her being a strong character becomes meaningless because she just wanted a man that can make her cry like a pussy. I was laughing my ass of.
In the end, Re:zero is a potentially good anime that is ruined because of its real BAD main characters. I'm still looking forward for the second season at this point since I overall enjoyed the experience. I hope they won't fuck up next time.
