Note: This’ll contain spoilers for the Re:Zero Light Novel.
I just stopped watching Re:Zero’s first episode of its second season and I must say that this is boring beyond belief. The first episode just confirmed to me what I suspected when looking up Light Novel spoiler details and learning more about Re:Zero’s supposed lore. I was gravely disappointed and after giving the first episode of the second season a try . . . I think I’ll stop watching it from now on. Prior to this, I had watched and enjoyed the entirety of Re:Zero’s Season 1 back when the episodes were being newly released, but since then I wanted to learn more about its lore and where the story would go and I was deeply disappointed by what I learned. The initial appeal for Re:Zero for me was a main character who was aware of the tropes and used them to his advantage, but later got smacked down with reality when he confused his fantasy adventure for something that should conform to his selfish desires instead of seeing that these people have their own lives and problems. This initially appealed to me because it set-up and knocked down the gary stu-style tropes of most Isekai anime which essentially just become harems where the main character is the strongest and all the main cast of females eventually worship him. Re:Zero provided an alternative take that seemed to be fairly unique from this mold by showing an average person who held onto such beliefs about being the most important person in a fantasy world, but then dealt with the reality of having those delusions knocked flat and slowly becoming a better person. This seemed fine at first, but the flaws manifested almost immediately and Natsuki Subaru just isn’t interesting enough of a person to watch the journey of. I could see this type of anime appealing to self-loathing Otakus similar to Evangelion, but it seems like the narrative issues of Re:Zero are the opposite extreme of the generic Isekai harem anime.
What is the point of Subaru’s journey? That’s the crux of the issue for me. He’s no Edward Elric looking to get his body back, he’s no Goku trying to either get the Dragonballs or fight stronger opponents because he loves the challenge as a martial artist, he’s no Ryuko trying to learn the mystery of what happened to her father, he’s no Naruto trying to work hard to become the leader of his country, he’s no Luffy working to find the greatest treasure in the world while getting entangled in government conspiracies, and it no longer feels like any journey of self-discovery to find himself either. The main purpose of his life seems to revolve around Emilia and I’m sorry to say that I never found it convincing. He had one date with her and uses that as justification to literally get himself stabbed over and over to death. The purpose of his character feels so brittle and forced, but it was somewhat easy to ignore in the first Season. I had expected the Royal Succession arc to probe this deeper, but it never did. The extra material like the chibi show with worldbuilding didn’t help matters when Emilia and Puck mentioned that Subaru had told them that he had illegally entered the country. If Subaru is so in love with Emilia, what reason does he have to deliberately lie to her about coming from another world? His Return by Death conveniently requires him to never tell anyone or they’ll die for some completely unexplained reason by a woman who has supposedly been sealed away for hundreds of years, but absolutely nothing in the anime or extra anime content ever mentioned Subaru needing to keep the fact that he’s from another world quiet. Why lie to Emilia about it instead of trusting her with the truth, if he is so in love with her? It’s amazing how the narrative is trying to force this true love message between the two, but just swipes this very important fact under the rug without any self-reflection on what it means for the honesty of the relationship between the two.
The closest Subaru’s depicted motivations actually come to is Ichigo Kurosaki from Bleach and that isn’t a good sign considering how Bleach declined. If Subaru’s motivation is reduced to simply protecting his friends, then an already formulaic story will be reduced to Subaru making dumb mistakes, then learning to ask others for help or use some basic investigative skills (like with protecting the village from hellhounds) to correct his mistake, and then everyone getting a more positive outcome. Rinse and repeat. The groundhog day formula similar to Steins;Gate and Higurashi will become even more formulaic because there’s barely any mystery emphasized, Natsuki Subaru’s relationships to the fantasy characters (the crux of any good groundhog day style story) seems very weak, the characters aren’t as intriguing in what is a generic fantasy setting unlike the latter two series, and as a result there’s no other intriguing elements like the village myth in Higurashi or the workings of Time Travel in Steins;Gate. Furude Rika and Okabe Rintaro are both fantastic characters with their own deeply personal motivations, journey of perseverance, and selfless love for their comrades. Rika and Rintaro are both in settings where we’ve firmly established that they knew the people around them for practically a lifetime, grow satisfying friendships or love for the new people in their lives throughout their respective story arcs (In Higurashi’s case, by having the main character be a newcomer in the first season to introduce us to the small-town), and they’re working selflessly to protect them. By contrast, the generic fantasy setting of Re:Zero is perhaps its biggest detriment to the groundhog style of storytelling; Subaru barely knows these people, he hasn’t built any long-term relationships with them, and their general disdain in many of his story arcs where he is brutally killed makes it hard for viewers to understand what the payoff of any of this suffering is. Subaru is willing to undergo horrifying amounts of suffering, but it seems like this story can’t answer the basic reason for any of these horrible deaths that he goes through: Why?
The “love” Subaru has for Emilia over one date that she probably won’t ever be able to remember feels like the author forced the character to behave this way. Subaru’s behavior mid-Season 1 where he made an ass of himself in front of the Royal Succession felt like forced plot stupidity. Perhaps it had good payoff in later episodes where Subaru probes deeper and admits his failings, but the initial conflict was still very forced on the character. I didn’t mind it too much then, but as the story stretches on and the same groundhog day set-up is bound to happen . . . what was the point? What was the payoff? Why should we as viewers care when his “love” for his “friends” is so brittle and barely established outside of maybe Rem? Sadly, it seems the swift kick in the pants that Subaru was given mid-Season 1 has only added more reasons why it is hard to believe that this character goes through so much for complete strangers. Even his solution to take down the White Whale consisted of people gaining personal rights to Roswaal’s territory to mine it for resources and not out of genuine compassion for innocent lives lost or to help Subaru out of any friendship. And just when did Subaru get the power to decide what portion of Roswaal’s territory can be mined by a political group that is opposed to Emilia’s Succession in favor of their own Succession candidate? I didn’t initially mind this, but the deeper the story goes, the less this house of cards makes any sense. Crusch’s lie detector ability just so happened to fail when Subaru outright lied about his cellphone’s abilities. All in all, it feels like the author breaks his own established rules to make the story progress and that isn’t a sign of good storytelling.
Memory problems. A major red flag for me about the Re:Zero story is when I read about memory alternation magic such as curses and partial memory wipes. Even if we discount full memory wipes like what the White Whale and other Witch Cultists do, I have to question why it is that one of the Witches hasn’t conquered the world yet since there doesn’t seem to be any defense against memory wipes. There seems to be no limits explained about these curses or magic abilities that wipe people’s memories and it makes me wonder how large city-styled societies like Re:Zero can even work when magic like that goes unchecked. Make no mistake, Re:Zero has failed to introduce any protections to memory wiping and this is a major problem. Not only does there seem to be no real costs to Witches using memory wipes that get rid of the memories of vast swathes of people, but . . . you could make any “revelations” into the story this way without the narrative really doing much to introduce it. That’s the other major problem with the plot of Re:Zero that really bothered me. Theoretically, the story becomes open enough that it could become anything without any build-up, because all that is necessary would be for Subaru to have been revealed to be memory wiped or partially memory wiped. Even events such as his understanding of coming from another world similar to ours could just be memory implants or false memories. Or he could have gone on journeys from thousands of years in the past of Re:Zero’s world and been randomly memory wiped to explain why he didn’t remember certain plot points. In short, everything could become so easily contrived and forced into the story by the author without any proper build-up to future plot twists in the story. Even worse, the author already seems to do this with small-scale material like Crusch’s lie detector and Subaru’s behavior during the Royal Candidate ceremony, so I’m skeptical if he won’t abuse this obvious plot convenience that opens-up far too many questions that he’s failed to address. The use of memory wipes and partial memory wipes opens-up so many plot holes that can be conveniently swept away with memory loss being the cause. It would ruin the tension and build-up for future moments of the story. Perhaps, I am being nitpicky, but his lack of explanation for the limits of the Witch’s magical abilities really doesn’t help matters. I don’t have any faith in the author to not misuse this for forced plot conveniences, when so much of the story already seems rife with it. That’s the major reason why I’ve lost interest in Re:Zero.
There are more reasons, but they seem less important than what I’ve already explained. If you enjoy Re:Zero, more power to you. But for me, I believe the story adds too much plot contrivance and fails to establish any set limits to the witch magic that can prevent abuse of certain crazy memory powers. It is to the point that certain plot holes can only be ignored through the author contrivance alone and it requires too much of a suspension of disbelief that I can no longer ignore. This is on top of Subaru’s tenuous relationships in the fantasy world and his lack of a motivation that doesn’t feel like the author forcing him to behave certain ways. The suspension of disbelief is too great for me to enjoy the anime any longer.
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it’s even worse when the author expects us to ignore these actions since they happened in a failed loop despite their actions CAUSED Subaru to not only fail, but to suffer more trauma than necessary. You basically want us to ignore us all the bad things these characters do, yet in arc 2, subaru remembers the twins holding his hands when he had a nightmare… in a failed loop, mind you. All those cherished memories with the twins like learning how to cook, do laundry and study? Failed loop, yet the story wants us to believe that ONLY THOSE matter and not the abuse.
Subaru is like Kenny Mccormick from South Park, but older… and more of a bitch
I wanted to ask you something… I had read a detailed Youtube comment about this on a Re:Zero review video, but I’m not entirely sure what to think of it. The arguments and fan theories regarding speculation of Subaru’s connection to Satella also seem to connect with this…
So there’s this little-known Yaoi Demon Lord anime, that is kinda funny from a few clips I watched, and basically they argued the plot twists involving this guy was copied to be Subaru’s plot twist in Re:Zero:
https://myanimelist.net/character/1969/Ken_Murata
You’ll have to click “spoilers” to read it, but I wanted your opinion. Some of this did read as eerily similar to the speculation of how Subaru met Satella, which is worrisome to me.
I should clarify, by “connect with this” I mean that that lengthy speculations on Reddit of Subaru’s connection to Satella seem to be almost word-for-word a copy of this anime character’s plot twist with the MC of their anime, which is really troubling… It’s like Tappei lifted it from this anime, if the speculations on Subaru’s connection turn out to be true.
It’s like Tappei lifted it from this anime
If he did… would it really be that shocking or saddening? Re zero isn’t a deconstruction of isekai tropes. It uses those same tropes and basically does shit you would see in ANY shonen or isekai
well, your theory isn’t true, but there’s another theory i think you might be interested in
Is it about the Blond Witch and Emilia?
Is it about the Blond Witch and Emilia?
Actually no. It turns out a one armed character named al is apparently subaru
Was that confirmed or did you just mean the theory?
it’s hard to say. i’m in arc 9, so a reveal like that could MAYBE happen, but i’m not too certain.
Do the details look similar to you though, with what people believe the foreshadowing in Re:Zero is leading to?
sort of. I have seen theories that people make that subaru could be a sage character named flugel that was mentioned in arc 6. Hell, a new female character mistakes subaru for her master… although that was more due to the miasma smell
Yeah, how similar is Flugel to Ken Murata’s plot twist is the real question, I guess.
Yeah, how similar is Flugel to Ken Murata’s plot twist is the real question, I guess.
As of now, i believe that plot point has been dropped at the moment, but it might be brought back up in future arcs.
what’s your least favorite arc?
Hmm.. probably the arc where the plot forced him to act stupid at the royal gathering of the four potential candidates.
yeah. looking back, that arc gets noticeably worse the more i pick it apart
yeah. Also, I HATE the ending of the arc. I don’t mind subaru apologizing to emilia, but it bothers me how emilia is NEVER held accountable for being a manipulative scumbag who undermines subaru’s worth and treats him like a damn child.
“give me a reason to trust you”
Despite him nearly dying for you and for others and handling responsibilites that YOU should’ve handled (or at least helped with like the mabeast battle)
Tell me that quote isn’t manipulative
Honestly, that felt more like Tappei trying to make some hamfisted way to give Subaru a motivation than anything else, Emilia… is pretty lacking in terms of personality in my view.
trust me… in the novels, emilia is much more of a moronic, psychopathic scumbag
hamfisted
funny how you say hamfisted since rem got her memories back, and it’s basically as hamfisted as you can get. Hell, everyone says that she got her memories back for the sake of nostalgia and cheap cash grab, and sales were going down
forced him to act stupid
he’s not the only character who was forced to act stupid
you want forced? Honest to god, the crusch argument was by far imo the most forced moment in arc 3
Completely agree. It was so damn stupid and then she gets conveniently memory-wiped later.
not just that, but her argument at the end and what she said to him makes NO SENSE.
“You never once… said you wanted to save Emilia.”
1. He was willing to throw away emilia’s chances of being a candidate for the throne because he told her emilia can’t become queen if she dies.
2. He was LITERALLY ranting that teaming up to kill the cultists will save everyone.
What part of his rant meant he was okay with letting emilia die and allow everyone to survive? How would that even work?
Good point. Emilia kind of ruined the series, from the looks of it. Every negative aspect that we talk about usually has her involved somehow.
Good point. Emilia kind of ruined the series, from the looks of it. Every negative aspect that we talk about usually has her involved somehow.
it’s not just emilia. It’s the contrived and bullshit ways teppei makes subaru’s life difficult by forced and bullshit means to the point where characters act illogical and stupid just for the sole purpose of fucking Subaru over. It’s not even like i feel bad for subaru. It’s just annoying. The people who hate act unnecessarily stupid and do evil shit because subaru needs to struggle. Even when they like him, they still act dicks to him for no reason. The narrative pulverizes subaru for not being perfect, but god forbid anyone else exhibits flaws that make them evil and be punished for them. Nah, let’s torture and maime subaru for his fuckups and have him gain a fucking epiphany. Let’s have him tolerate everyone’s bs and flaws despite nobody doing the same for his.
Let’s treat giving up as worse than murder, torture, verbal abuse, mental torture, pedophilia, and mass genocide.
It’s the agenda of torturing Subaru that also kills it. It’s the fact that gets punished like he blew up planet while everybody else gets away with their actions or receive a slap on the wrist. It’s old, tiring, and nauseating.
A major red flag for me about the Re:Zero story is when I read about memory alternation magic such as curses and partial memory wipes.
not to mention how repetitive it is
this isn’t a flaw, but i find it hilarious that when the cast hates Subaru they barely die, but when they team up with Subaru, they die like crazy. It’s like subaru’s existence is a double edge sword. He prevents characters from certain demise only for them to face demise when they become his allies. A pretty fucked up irony when you think about it
you want to know something funny (in a stupid way)? Teppei said that in arcs 7 and 8, subaru wasn’t needed in order to win the war. The characters in vollachia could’ve won without him. all he did was minimize the casualty count
i wonder if arc 9 will pull a higurashi
That sounds like an improvement lol
um, are we thinking about the same thing
I was thinking of the murder mystery.
oh… i was thinking about how al and subaru would be a looper vs looper battle. How does higurashi handle murder mysteries?
I can’t go into details without spoiling it. But basically, the story keeps looping because the mysterious killer is very good at hiding their tracks.
nah. we both know teppei won’t be doing that
I can’t go into details without spoiling it. But basically, the story keeps looping because the mysterious killer is very good at hiding their tracks.
i believe arc 7 tampers this idea with a character named todd
I can’t go into details without spoiling it. But basically, the story keeps looping because the mysterious killer is very good at hiding their tracks.
Did they know about Rikas looping power
re zero’s pacing sucks ass. it’s too long for the wrong reasons, especially since teppei adds arcs that weren’t originally in the story and finds a way to weave them into the plot.
I don’t know if i’ve said it before but i’ll say it here. Subaru as a flawed character can work, but he has so many flaws to the point where it’ unrealistic, and either some of them he fixes WAY too fast, or some of them remain the same and get worse over time. Not to mention, a flawed character can work if you overdo their flaws to an absurd degree to the point it makes to show unwatchable (especially since they’re the Main protagonist, a character fans are SUPPOSED to root for if they’re the hero)
Here’s a fun fact for anyone who cares:
The last time Tappei answered questions from fans, he said twice that he liked Subaru’s torment and was trying to make him suffer as much as possible. He also said that what he likes most about ReZero is when fans admire Emilia. He previously said that he works as a butcher, and imagines Subaru in place of the meat he cuts.
Good point. Emilia kind of ruined the series, from the looks of it.
I have a pretty interesting about emilia
i feel like arc 2 was made for the sole purpose of being the cataylst of subaru loving emilia
the author said that if the mabeast incident didn’t happen, subaru and rem would’ve fallen in love. We know subaru’s transtition of his love what a simple crush, to an unhealthy possessiveness, to a more organic love, to… a submissive dog.
without the incident, we wouldn’t have gotten the lap pillow scene and what not and arc 2 wouldn’t have happened, so his crush on emilia wouldn’t have evolve into what it did
Also 200th comment ftw, boys!
Re:Zero provided an alternative take that seemed to be fairly unique from this mold by showing an average person who held onto such beliefs about being the most important person in a fantasy world, but then dealt with the reality of having those delusions knocked flat and slowly becoming a better person.
By breaking his mind while allowing worse people than him be allowed to BE worse people and get away with it. What an awesome way to teach someone. Not to mention unrealistic
Was that confirmed or did you just mean the theory?
I think it was. i saw it on a discord server
I feel like the premise of the show doesn’t work either. How do you write a protagonist who never gives up despite dying over and over again, and label him realistic?
especially one where he never tries to go back home to his parents
The initial appeal for Re:Zero for me was a main character who was aware of the tropes and used them to his advantage, but later got smacked down with reality when he confused his fantasy adventure for something that should conform to his selfish desires instead of seeing that these people have their own lives and problems.
it’s ironic cause these people do the same shit to him without little hesitation or shame. They deliberately ignore HIS problems or gaslight him to believe their problems are HIS fault.
I think Jobless Reincarnation definitely ended-up doing this better. I should probably write more on that in an actual blog… But I’ve been busy.
it’s cool, man. I was just pointing out the hypocrisy of the story
especially when since in mt, not every character is a pyschotic murder/gaslighter or whatever label you could throw at him
i;ve been watching that show recently. Some really good shit
It’s way better developed than Re:Zero, no contest in my view.
way less messy and hypocrisy, too
a lot of heavy and sad shit, and i LOVE it
shit like this is why the series makes me mad and why it’s easy to be hard on the moraity. Subaru is held to some bullshit regard to the point where he HAS to be a saint or an angel, (he’s seen as more evil than roswaal for being human or existing) yet others characters aren’t hold to that same standard, or people just make excuses for them. He’s HUMAN! He’s not SUPPOSED TO BE PERFECT! That’s the point! Why are fans so okay with crucifying an imperfect human being, but with everyone else: “Well, when you look at backstory, you see why they enjoy torturing people or casually slaughtering innocent human beings. Their backstories makes their heinous behavior fine!”
i just found another issue with re zero and it involves rem this time.
In arc 2, the story has her realize the error of her ways with her dependency of ram and how unhealthy and bad it was to put her on this big pedestal and treat her like she’s better than she is due to her past trauma, guilt, and inferiority complex. My issue here is that the story ONLY criticizes for her unhealthy views and love for her sister but never the other way around, when in reality, ram’s love and how she values her sister is FAR MORE detestable and disgusting. It feels like a weird double standard.
I don’t recall if i said this before, but if you’re upset about the forced royal selection incident in arc 3, teppei said he writes characters a certain way for the sake of the plot, even if it comes off as inconsistent. That’s why characters either act like kindhearted people 1 arc, and then the next, they become outright dicks. Not to mention, some characters become smart one moment, and have a single digit iq
what lie did subaru make in regards to his cellphone abilities?
I forgot the specifics, but essentially he said the device itself could predict and track the White Whale’s location as a certainty. It was a complete lie, he could only do that because of Return by Death.
Yeah, the average Joe would ignore a huge part like this. The author sure as fuck pushes the plot forward through the most bullshit means
This is not all teppei’s fault but a HUGE issue with the fanbase in general. They hold subaru to such a bullshit moral standard, yet when you call out other characters for their bullshit like torture, murder, manipulation, etc. they wanna be apologists and make up a thousand excuses.
like they’ll get upset at Subaru for running away in the sloth if despite nobody wanting to help him, and the only ally he had kept dying over and over again. Not to mention, that same ally AGREED to run away with him. Even Emilia kicked him out because she was concerned for his safety. So, if subaru’s wrong, then everyone else is by proxy, but the fans (and teppei refuse to acknowledge
or in the greed if where everyone is sad and miserable, while subaru is suffering from 100 million deaths, and NOBODY in that if EVER asks if he’s okay. Hell, even in that if, he’s trying his best to comfort people whenever they have a mental breakdown, yet nobody in that if besides echidna is there for him. Even then, the main reason the greed if even happens is because everyone is a dick who keeps crying about their trauma. Subaru has to be their therapist like how he and rem were for each other in arcs 2 & 3? Why? He’s no obligated to help with their issues. He’s a stranger. Not to mention, these characters treat him like shit. Like, these fanboys never ONCE put themselves in subaru’s shoes but yet they’ll do it for murders. It’s so… deranged and pathetic.
it kills my experience overall because this story is less like character growth and change and more let’s bully the mc: the story. It’s just that he’s damned if he do and damned he don’t. evil if he saves stranger “inccorectly” and evil if he doesn’t. i hate the fans for this becuase it feels like subaru isn’t allowed to be flawed. They have this unrealistic expectations of being an overpowered protagonist or something, cause the standards they have for morality are bullshit. They ignore the fact that the mc is A FLAWED HUMAN BEING! Yet murderers are forgivable and should be defended for their sins? One mistake and subaru is treated like a terrorist, but every one else, it’s okay. It’s understanable. Their big sad backstory…
this story ultimately boils down to subaru is wrong for existing.
morality in re zero overall isn’t something we should take seriously. It just ruins the story. Subaru was so awful during the royal selection, but we can ignore priscilla ready to butcher a fellow candidate for childish reasons and tell another to apologize for being born. That’s okay by the fans apparently
even when people say “the actions are from subaru’s pov, so course it’s going to look bad”, that argument goes out the window in arc 9 when subaru is captured and people STILL talk badly about him despite knowing his predicament
The anime makes suvaru look worse than he is in the novels
In the novels, julius made a speech that insulted subarus parents. The anime cut this out and it paints subaru as the villain and more pathetic despite Julius LITERALLY INSULTING HIS FAMILY
Subaru barely knows these people, he hasn’t built any long-term relationships with them, and their general disdain in many of his story arcs where he is brutally killed makes it hard for viewers to understand what the payoff of any of this suffering is. Subaru is willing to undergo horrifying amounts of suffering, but it seems like this story can’t answer the basic reason for any of these horrible deaths that he goes through: Why?
that’s another issue i have with this story. What’s the point of these characters murdering subaru? It does nothing and it has no focus on their characters arcs like in most anime. They just feel like cheap methods to give subaru unnecessary trauma.
Even in arc 3, rei hard just stood by and let the duel happen. Guys the strongest and could’ve used his authority to stop the duel