Opera is a very hard medium to get into, and I have never been able to breach the gap into it. Half of this is probably because I’m unable to link the words themselves to the music going on since I don’t exactly know languages like German or Italian. When I look at it from a God’s eye view – the plots are extremely and ridiculously melodramatic. Because I am unable to link the music properly to the lyrics, I cannot jump across into the realm of heightened and overexcessive emotion that it requires. On the other hand, I’m able to do so for English musicals like any of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s stuff.
A plot that does not make logical or psychological sense must, at the very least, make emotional sense. No matter how ridiculous the events are – I am perfectly okay with it as long as it is able to hold that excessive operatic tenor which focuses the raw experience itself. This is why one of my favorite movies is Zulawski’s Possession – a movie that throws out any semblance of a proper narrative for a bizarre sense of overstimulation.
ReZero does not make much logical sense. It presumes that a hikikomori protagonist who self-trains will have great strength (logical) as well as the spatial awareness to manage a wide variety of combat scenarios (illogical). Oldboy has the same premise, but in there it takes the protagonist 16 years – and although that prospect is still quite shifty, it’s a lot less shifty than ReZero. The Oldboy movie is able to counterbalance this by having its fight scenes (especially the hallway one) be raw enough to show that he’s merely pushing his way through by the skin of his teeth. Not so in ReZero.
It also makes little logical sense as to why the heroines would attach themselves so swiftly to the protagonist in such a short time frame. I will not dwell on this point since many people out there have probably analyzed this aspect of the plot excessively.
I was initially intrigued with ReZero given that the first 4 episodes or so were logical in their development, if you can accept the axioms of Subaru being the type of character with the capabilities he has, and Emilia being the type of person she is. The time loop aspect was utilized very well in how it would provide multiple perspectives with regards to a small scenario to create a sense of mystery despite it being merely a simple encounter. The reveals were fair and adequate – he explores every possibility and we get a whole idea of what has to be done. How the conclusion of that arc unfolded utilized a deus ex machina, but it was one fitting within the realm of what ReZero was trying to convey – Subaru’s powerlessness in a world he doesn’t understand.
The mansion arc was where it started slipping, given that they were not as fair with the plot. In the first four episodes, most of the components of the crisis were revealed to us. In the entire mansion portion, it extensively relied on late and sudden reveals usually coming from the ‘know-it-all-but-does-nothing’ character of Beatrice. Furthermore it spent too much time on grating slice-of-life and irritatingly long psychological exposition that bases itself on that kind of ‘fish-out-of-the-water’ story for the character of Rem. The visual novel Shinju no Yakata has a route involving Twins with almost similar plot aspects – but it is done in a completely different manner.
But with all of the above flaws mentioned – does it make emotional sense? This is where the entire power of White Fox as an animation studio comes in. Their animation is crisp and it can create that sense of a fantasy town with a slightly darker feel. A problem is this – for the emotional heights, with regards to characters, they rely too much on the most conventional methods of emotional resonance. A girl standing in the middle of glowing lights. A girl basking in sunlight. A fluttering of doves. Abuse of dusk lighting. Dutch Angles to show unease, mixed with creepy vocal choirs. All of these abused with complete sincerity, without any counterbalance, and without any greater kind of beautiful spin on it. When you combine this with the already unreal characterization, you get a simultaneous sense of emotional resonance and plain manipulativeness. Possession, on the other hand is a film where the camera gets right into the actor’s and actresses’ faces, with sickly backgrounds and a focus on their body contortions and movements.
It took a full 13 episodes before White Fox began to show dignity in their abilities. ReZero is able to pull off a scale even greater than a work like Attack on Titan at times. One of the most operatically overwrought and beautiful moments is the ‘blizzard ending’ of episode 14 or the caravan chase. As the plot builds up, it really mimics that feeling of a world vastly vastly greater than any of its inhabitants – massive beasts, mad cultists in dark dungeons, regal proceedings etc… This is where the aesthetics most match the emotional tone of whatever is happening within the plot – moreso than any other moment.
Some people have characterized this as a non-stop tirade of violence and suffering for the sake of sheer manipulation. That is true, but that is only in the realm of content – but what makes a work like ReZero different (at times, although a lot of it is true blue misery porn) from a lot of other misery porn is that White Fox’s usage of scale allows the plot to orient away, at times, from the smallness of the character’s feelings. These moments, few as they are, creates that kind of perspective that person like Lovecraft was fond of exploring. The cosmic horror and insignificance perspective.
Yet, unlike a work like Evangelion, the problem is that while the animation helps to pull the plot out – the plot is always there to dive back inside the fray a thousandfold – back to those melodramatic moments without any sense of aesthetics or any new take. The widely favored episode 18 is merely a recapitulation of a Shinji type awakening. The difference is that Anno limited the actual Congratulations moment to the last few minutes, and spent most of it in internal doubt and rumination. On the other hand, Re Zero is quick to show that Subaru will be able to get his cathartic moment, and he will get immediate reprieve for it, and then he falls back into his catharsis, and gets reprieve. This is like an entire 15-20 minutes of Shinji being hugged and kissed by the plot. It is also done in a kind of ridiculously stale way full of sunlight and flying white birds. It is excessive in a bad way, and not an operatic way. Think about how the impact would have been if the scene had been shot with no focus on the character’s faces or expressions at all, but only on various different camera angles or body parts – only giving a direct view of Rem at the last moment. Compared to the stretch that came before it, I do not think particularly highly of this episode – even though it provides a just realization to the protagonist and is the most psychologically direct scene in the whole show.
On a personal level, I give this show a 9 – purely due to schadenfreude. I hope this success will mean that White Fox will get to adapt weird things like Katanagatari again.
