In Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu was really fun to watch but all the questions it leaves behind is rather frustrating. Why is Satella so strongly connected to him? How did Subaru get stuck in the game in 1st place? It almost seems as if someone is actually playing the game and we’re just watching Player 1 go through the motions of beating it. Despite the questions, I would actually want to have this anime on my shelf and I would encourage you to watch it. Here’s hoping for a second season! Is it just a thing that any season that’s 2 cours long has to now be split into a part 1 and part 2? I don’t know if this is a production issue or they want to keep the longevity of the series, but are we really going the route of the 2010’s YA movies? Food for thought. Story:  Following directly from the events of Season one where the White Whale was felled by the alliance group (with Subaru in tow), Subaru returns back to the mansion with a few new things to consider about the situation. A) Nobody knows who Rem is, as she’s essentially disappeared from everyone’s memory as if she doesn’t exist. B) The other villagers that Roswaal took with him to safety have not returned, and apparently reside in a place called ‘Sanctuary’. C) There’s a maid in the mansion with VERY sharp teeth that Subaru doesn’t really recognize. So…another round of suffering? Another round of suffering it is. This being the first half of the second season, it’s hard to parse through it without making note of the fact that the entirety of this first half is setup. Re:Zero is a series that is fundamentally a mystery series alongside its isekai and psychological (suffering) tags. Much like the first season, Subaru is set along a specific checkpoint to which through many, many attempts, tries to find the best possible route in order to come out with the best ending possible. In order to accomplish that, the series does a lot of worldbuilding, this time specifically detailing out the ramifications of ‘Sanctuary’ and any other notable events that contribute to the stakes of the situation. This kind of groundwork is nothing new for Re:Zero, but it’s the thing that I believe to be what makes the series drastically unique from anything in its genre, as Subaru ‘Return by Death’ blessing creates the Groundhog Day situation that’s the sole reason for his character development. That being said, I’m not completely sold on the story still, and my gripes with Re:Zero are even more prominent here because of its storytelling. Re:Zero feels like a mystery series for all the wrong reasons at times, and that comes from the fact that the show is so devoted to not giving the audience answers or giving Subaru non-answers for him to ‘figure out’ that the show kind of becomes tedious to watch. I feel like I went through a cour of episodes and at times feel like I knew less than I did going in. No two episodes play out even remotely similarly, a point made even scarier when the series constantly throws in twist and turns at every possible facet with its cast because each reset needs to be drastically different for Subaru to have at least some significant information for the next reset. And I had whiplash watching this series because of that. However there is one thing that’s consistent with Re:Zero, and that’s Subaru’s suffering. When I watched S1 back when it first aired, I wasn’t fully convinced of the psychological destruction of this poor boy and thought that the medium just wasn’t equipped enough to deal with whatever must’ve impacted him. Boy was I wrong. There are several points in the series (many, actually) that put Subaru’s psyche at such a forefront that I can actually believe that the deconstruction of his mind is happening. The visceral imagery of his various deaths play really well into this, and it’s probably the highest point of the show for me if only because it’s something that’s put at the forefront of the series rather than just a side thing that’s happening compared to the actual plot of whatever puzzle he’s forced to solve. Which again, doesn’t really go anywhere because this half of the season is all setup. However when you combine both the story plot and the ‘Subaru’ suffering, what you end up is a heavy emphasis on one and not the other. I got kind of jaded over time with what I was watching in regards to the story plot because at some point, I gave up at getting any actual answers from anyone that Subaru was demanding answers from. Literally everyone has some kind of secret, and the response is always something like “Figure it out” or accusing Subaru of being nosy/potentially dangerous. Which, fair on that latter point, but from a storytelling point of view, it makes the series feel stagnant because there’s literally no information being expressed. So ultimately, the story is carried by a section of Subaru’s character arc, which ends up being the thing that I both remembered and cared about the most (except the tea parties) because it was the only thing that I felt like actually moved the story along in a significant manner. Characters: As much as I don’t like Subaru, I can’t deny that he’s at the very least an interesting protagonist to be blessed (cursed) with the kind of bullshit he has to deal with. Compared to Season 1, we get a lot more information about Subaru, and really delve (more) into some much needed backstory that makes me feel some sympathy for the boy who just kinda schlorped his way into another world without rhyme or reason. The purposeful attempt to focus on who he is, what he thinks about himself, and the meaningful contributions and sacrifices he’s made over his many, many, many deaths makes him a more sympathetic protagonist, if not a better character overall due to the fact that the story has (currently) put him at his lowest point. Whether or not we get a change to his attitude or way of thinking is yet to be seen, as he’s still woefully brash about his approach to everything, and that on its own kind of minuses a few points because you’d think by the twenty fifth reset, he’d wisen up a bit and be a little more careful. Rem got fridged. Fuck you author, because you basically took one of the only, or the only selfless character in this entire series and just turned her into a plot device. I ain’t a Rem fan, but that’s doing her really dirty. Emilia by contrast is not fridged, and gets a lot more screentime than she did the first season. This time, she’s slightly more expanded upon by having more autonomy in her actions and actually interacts with Subaru in a meaningful way since the blue-haired maid I don’t remember the name of is no longer hanging around him. That being said, Emilia is still kind of a figurehead for Subaru’s actions since his ‘love’ for her is a driving factor of his decision making, and whatever personal stuff she’s dealing with is never even talked about, meaning it’s something that we’re probably gonna get way, way later into the series’s lifespan. This is neither a good nor bad thing, but will become either depending on how the writing goes. Which, if this season is any indication, is really a coin flip. The rest of the cast, including the new characters located in the Sanctuary, all kind of fall into an umbrella of mystery and deceit. They are core to the development of the story and this ‘other world’, but it’s really hard to say much about a lot of them because whatever we’re told here is a small fraction to the whole story. True, the few characters that do reveal things do so with the intent of moving the story along, but it still feels like the series has so much carrot on a stick to drag its audience through the mud to know everything that it ends up being frustrating. Made even more apparent because each loop gives the characters complete freedom to act differently, to the point that sometimes there’s not really consistency with the characters’ actions. My favorite of the lot however comes from the Witches of Sin, who come to light as an eccentric bunch that…still contribute to the larger problem of unknown motivation. Sure they’re witches, but them also being so goddamn cryptic just adds more fuel to the fire because that’s just more information stored away for ‘later’. Aesthetics: You know, with the commercial success of Re:Zero back in 2016 what with the thousands of Rem figures that’ve been made, the popularity of Re:Zero memes that still show up today, Isekai Quartet, and everything else, a part of me thought that White Fox would give this series the ‘SAO’ treatment, since that series has only looked better with A-1 in control. It’s not. Slight disappointment aside, Re:Zero II looks almost identical to Re:Zero I, with the few exceptions being less 3-D models used in certain scenes, and a very flex-worthy spinning scene with Echidna that deserves note because that must’ve took one person probably a couple weeks in order to draw that shit out. If nothing else, the consistency of the series is almost certainly a boon, which is made even more apparent with the sheer amount of torture and pain shots that go on with Subaru since his life can’t be anything other than suffering, and the visceral imagery that they give for each of his gory deaths is really to an uncomfortable degree. Which is actually something worth praising because it’s clear that this shit is really affecting him. It’s gross, it’s unsettling, and it’s great. “Realize” by Konomi Suzuki is a song who for all intents and purposes…really shouldn’t exist. And it’s not because the song is bad; it’s because there’re so few episodes in this season that actually have time for the OP to be slotted in that the effort to make an OP for the series baffles me. Like…less than half of the episodes in this season actually have the OP. As for the song itself, personally I like it less than what S1 has, but it sort of has this…heroic tone to it? It’s an interesting piece (though a little off-key sounding at times?), but I definitely wouldn’t put it above what Myth and Roid did for the series simply because I feel like Myth & Roid’s stuff works better for the tone of this series, and ‘Realize’ doesn’t hit the same notes for me. Nonoc’s “Memento” is, by contrast, a song that pretty much shows up every episode, probably because of how the song’s like and in context to the show’s kind of storytelling. The song itself is pretty much a one-note atmospheric song, so it’s not that outstanding. Which is a note I would make if it was used for anything except for a background track to the ‘extended endings’ that every episode seems to have. Most if not all of the episodes have their runtime extend into the credits where this song is played. So for that reason, this song actually stands out a lot and helps to set up the atmosphere for the next episode (or season). The song is pretty much only memorable to me for only this reason, which is actually commendable because I can’t really pinpoint any other song that has this kind of use anywhere else. Final Thoughts: Honestly, after the whole “Who’s Rem” and “I love Emilia” memes made their rounds, I got kind of sick of Re:Zero because it felt like yet another series that was subjected to the plague of overpopularity where expectations of it were raised so high that its story couldn’t possibly reach the heights that its audience were probably expecting. And this half season shows. Even after watching the season, I still don’t really know what’s going on. The whiplash comment I made earlier isn’t even a joke; the drastic shift of character actions from loop to loop make have made it impossible for me to really be surprised at anything anymore because I always feel like I’m expecting a twist. And that screams ‘bad writing’ to me. The shock factor is pretty much all but gone for me, and I don’t really feel all that invested in the story, but rather Subaru himself. Because at least THERE I get answers or explanations to things that’re actually relevant. With everything else, I get nothing but more questions that need answers, creating a negative feedback loop that closes one door and opens two in return. That being said, I did enjoy Echidna and what the series showed us with the lore and such with the Witches of Sin. Which may have been haphazardly thrown in not gonna lie, but it’s at least nice to know who the girls that the entire world is afraid of are like. Even if I highly doubt five of them are going to have any significant ramifications to the series as a whole given both their designs and their contributions to the series thus far. I definitely would’ve liked more, but it’s at least one step towards some some world building that I’ve had questions about before. Which is something this series could severely use more of. All that being said, I still find the show hard to recommend. It’s definitely not a bad show, not at all. But I wholeheartedly believe that it’s got some glaring flaws that hold back the potential the series could have. The carrot on a stick is what gives the series the longevity it will probably have because audiences want answers. And withholding that information is one way to keep people interested. But because the show clearly doesn’t want to divulge any of that, the most I think you’re probably going to be watching this for is Subaru’s mind breaking down. Which, honestly, is a valid reason for this show. Because if this series is good for anything, it’s suffering. |
