Liking Re:Zero means accepting rushed plot points that often take giant leaps of logic through horribly incomplete development. It means ignoring the elephant in the room so you can admire the wallpaper. But I wouldn’t write it off completely, because the room called Re:Zero has some pretty fancy wallpaper.
You can tell there was clearly thought underlying the conception of various plot points, but they’re just spliced together in a really unpleasant way. There are so many times when it doesn’t feel like there was a satisfying, logical progression from one event to the next in the story. Perhaps it made much more sense in the source material. I don’t know the answer to that. If only the legions of web novel summary readers were here to grace a filthy secondary such as myself with their boundless and unending knowledge of the intricacies of why a person needs to be killed and revived three separate times before they even realize they’ve died, then perhaps I, too, would see why this anime is a perfect and flawless 10/10 masterpiece. I’m sure they could, but that’s missing the point. The bottom line is that the anime watches less like a proper, stand alone adaption and more like a vaguely interesting summary. Naturally, as a summary, details are left out, and in the case of Re:Zero, it seems that many of the details cut from the show were what held the logic of the story together.
There were a couple of red flags early on that tipped me off that the show would be, if nothing else, extremely careless. For one, Subaru is just way too easy to accept the fact that he somehow walked into a fantasy world. He doesn’t even question it, which makes the writing feel rather lazy. Again, I’m not sure how this was portrayed in the source material, but I know that in the anime it makes him look really stupid. But, all right, I’ll forgive it. I think a bigger problem is the point I brought up earlier.
I’m fairly sure that if an average person were brutally killed and then forcefully brought back to life as they were a few hours ago, they’d at least think something was a bit strange. Yet, our dumbass protagonist Subaru dies and respawns THREE different times before he wonders to himself, “Hmm, did I just die? That was weird.” It takes him that long to have the tiniest inkling that he has some kind of new power, or that something supernatural is occurring. He doesn’t even wonder if he’s imagining things or hallucinating, except for a single throwaway line, the implications of which he doesn’t bother pursuing. Instead, we’re forced to watch him bumble around like an idiot for what feels like an eternity. And it’s not that his memories are jumbled up; that’s simply not the angle presented, and if it was supposed to be presented that way, then the director fucked up big time. Normally a complaint like this would be nitpicky, but Subaru’s entire character (at least at this stage) is based in his knowledge of tropes, which the show leans heavily on for comedic relief. It’s just not believable that someone who has the wherewithal to complain that his “starting gear sucks” doesn’t instantly recognize that he’s respawning. It needed to be clear that his memories were being selectively erased, which was apparently the case in the source material. Otherwise, we’re just led to believe that characters are way dumber than they really are. This becomes a sort of pattern throughout the show, where characters seem unreasonably stupid at times, and it is undoubtedly an insurmountable wall to climb for many viewers, as demonstrated by the backlash toward the Re:Zero fanbase. After all, it’s almost impossible to become immersed if you feel like you’re thinking harder about the events of the story than the actual characters are.
Speaking of stupid characters, the introduction to all the candidates for the throne is rife with some of the worst characterization I’ve ever seen. The positions that the candidates present to the council to prove that they would be the best ruler are so one-note and cheesy: “I’m a greedy gal, I want to be richer and I want my own nation!” “I want you all to grovel at my feet!” “Burn it all to the ground!” The anime just chugs along and expects you to accept these seemingly comically stupid characters. Some of the candidates get a little more character development later, but unless your name is Kaiki Deishuu, it’s very hard to recover from an introduction as terrible as theirs. The source material apparently explains their backgrounds in detail, but the presentation in the anime just comes off as laughable.
The story also has some weird inconsistencies. For example, there’s a point in the early episodes where Emilia tells Subaru in private that her name is Satella, which would never make any sense for her to do so in the first place unless she actually were, since Satella is known to be a fearsome and dangerous half-elf witch. There’s a scene soon after in a different timeline where Subaru hadn’t yet met Emilia, and he naively calls her Satella out loud on the street. The crowd makes a huge scene, leaping to her defence and saying something to the effect of, “Don’t be a bigot dude, she’s obviously not Satella, #NotAllHalfElves.” Fast forward 12 episodes later and now suddenly it’s a huge deal since, “That Emilia half-elf bitch is OBVIOUSLY Satella, just look at her!” even though absolutely nothing had actually changed. I get that the writer was trying to drum up sympathy for Emilia by adding some themes of racism, but I feel like that first scene really contradicted that in a very odd way. (And, no, she wasn’t wearing her magic cloak to disguise herself in that first scene, you can check.)
The humor of the show sometimes lands, but it’s often distracting because of how it usually clashes with scenes that you’d think are supposed to be more serious. In particular, the humor revolving around Subaru’s trope recognition is sure to turn off many viewers because how out of place it feels, even if that might be the point.
I’ve ragged enough on the show; let’s take a look at the what it does well—the beauty of the wallpaper, if you will.
This anime is excellent at displaying raw emotions, even if it might not do the best job of building up to the situations that would genuinely lend themselves to these emotions. If you want to see characters explode in rage, keel over in despair, shrivel in shame and regret, or bask in the ugliness of their pride, you will get it. The voice acting definitely helps to sell these scenes.
The sound design overall was definitely the unsung hero of the show. There are some sound effects that are used to perfection to create tension, such as that creepy chanting that’s sometimes played when Subaru respawns, or when the entrance of the Whale is greeted by the most (intentionally) generic sounding ringtone ever, or, my personal favorite, that choral “Ah!” sound that’s played sometimes when there’s a discovery (it sounds like it was ripped straight out of Diablo 2, it’s great). And I would be remiss not to mention how the show often interlaces the ending song into the show itself to stir the emotions, which would have been very effective if I actually gave a damn about the characters.
And, while often the show seems to leave out too many details to make certain parts of the story believable, there are so many times when it is good at actually being subtle, rather than just abridged. Though not perfectly done, I think the anime does a great job at developing Subaru’s ugly pride as the story progresses, such as when he spouts arrogant and selfish lines that are clearly not meant to be comedic relief, or when there’s a quick cut to him grinning cockily when he convinces himself that he’s the hero who’s going to save everyone. I say it’s not quite perfect because I feel like it’s something that came up rather suddenly after the mansion arc, and it cheats a bit, since he never actually stops being prideful even when the show frames it in a way to try and fool you into thinking that he has changed (“You get a front row seat to seeing me become the most awesome hero ever!” in episode 19), and it seems more like a mistake than something intentionally written into the story. But I admire the effort nonetheless.
In fact, I think that’s really the best part of Re:Zero, how it slowly clues you in on Subaru’s relation to the Sin Archbishops, which seems to be an inevitable future plot point, and because of this, I’m still interested in the final destination of the story, should there be a continuation. But if it continues to have the same adaption problems, especially considering how anticlimactic the ending was (and how it contradicted the whole “pride” theme of the second half of the show), I can’t say I’m excited at all for the actual journey to get there.
