Re:ZERO: Starting Life in Another World - Reviews

3S review no.32 (short simple and sweet/salty/spicy)

Oh boy, where do I start with this. This anime blew my expectations away, so is it good? No, but it’s way better than I expected. I thought I was about to see some Rising of the shield hero level garbage or even worst. You see you have people saying that is anime is great and it deconstructs the genre and the tropes of isekai, then other people say that is just one of the same easily sellable and digestible garbage isekai of our times. The truth, and the weird thing about this show, is that both of these sides, are kinda right. You see it does try to innovate with some stuff, it does try to make the characters more deep than those of it’s competitors, it does try to make the plot non so linear and predictable, it does try to be philosophical, it does… try, but I just doesn’t succeed all that much. But it tries at least and that’s something. Now, for the purposes of this review I asked anime fan Bob and anime fan Betty (totally real people btw and not made up at all) to help me out since I neither hated, nor liked the show.

So, the story is about Subaru Impreza, young lad spending his days doing jack shit like most of us do, when he is suddenly transferred into another world. Typical isekai so far. Then meets a young lady, he really likes her being the horny young lad he is and then helps her find something a mischievous little thief stole from her. Again typical so far. Then shit goes south and he dies, but the he starts all over, then dies again, the starts all over and so on so forth until he manages to find a way out of the shitty situation. Then another shitty situation comes up and then the same deal again. You can argue that even this is kinda typical, kinda like a video game. Save game, try, die, load, try again. Now, that would have been completely boring and predictable, but there are some stuff that kind of make it intriguing. You (same as Subaru) do not really know when or why the starting point or the save point gets changed. Kind of like when you play a game, you always turn auto-save off cause you never know when you gonna do some stupid that can’t be undone afterwards, our young lad plays with auto-save on, he doesn’t know when some shit that go really south, are shit that he won’t be able to relive and redo with a better outcome. You can think that even with the auto-save on, still it’s gonna be really linear, since he’s gonna restart every time, and doing step by step what he learns every time until he gets the optimal result. But it doesn’t work that way, and usually every time goes way different than the last one, cause it is not a game, there aren’t set stuff happening, even the slightest second, the slightest different use of words, the slightest facial or body movement expression create a different outcome. That also drastically changes the structure of the plot and the pacing. Some stuff are replayed a bunch of times, some fewer times, some he starts all over again and some get a mid way save point, some times what he lived the times he failed play a role in him getting a better outcome, and sometimes they don’t mean jack shit cause things happen completely different, or the what seems to be a good outcome, is not really that good cause shit happened away from where the MC is that he couldn’t have known about at the time. Now, anime fan Bob can say: “All of these are just terrible plot mechanisms because the creator isn’t a good story teller and just abuses these shit to excuse every stupid thing that happens and every plot hole that appears and because of that there is no structure in the story and pacing is all over the place because of that. Also everything is just a giant excuse for more ways for the MC to die and show what the people want, more gore porn!” Anime fan Betty on the other hand can say: “Fuck you Bob, you hater, you just don’t like it cause it’s different, you are used to the same isekai linear plot, overpowered character saves girl, trains, becomes stronger, saves village, trains, becomes stronger, saves town, trains, becomes stronger, saves world. You just don’t like it cause you are not used to it!” And they are both kind of right you know.

I mentioned the overpowered isekai character, so lets about characters. Like you would expect from what you read so far, MC is also a weird and contradicting case. He is weak, he is weak as fuck. In terms of what he can do in the world he is, he is probably the weakest MC I’ve seen since World trigger’s MC and he is even weaker than him and by far the weakest character of the main cast and he is not even a genius or anything to compensate for that, a strategic mastermind or good at manipulating people. He is just relatively smart and ties to use what he learns as much as he can. He is also very human, he cares about the people around him, he tries to help them to the best of his abilities, he learns from his mistakes, he does a lot of them cause he ain’t perfect, he cries with his failures and his losses and he tries really hard to make the girl he likes like him back even though she is hard to get, it is also very tragic that he has to relive all these moments watching his people suffer in front him while he is unable to do something. All that makes Subaru a great character, at least that’s what Betty told me. But then again Bob said that what great character? He is garbage, he is just a crybaby, a typical two goody shoes MC that gets his typical isekai harem without even deserving it, and how can he be weak when he has the ability to die and start over? That’s clearly the most busted ability there is and he totally overpowered, awful character. You know what Betty and Bob? You both make a fair point. Betty also thinks there is character development, you know like with Subaru and Rem, he changes her life and she really becomes a different person cause him, and has every reason to like him, and so does Subaru, but they can’t be together and that’s really sad. But Bob doesn’t give a flyin fuck cause it is obvious that MC should like Rem, she likes him and treats him great and the stuff they shared together are 100 times more important than the no apparent reason he has to like Emilia, yet he is just a typical isekai cunt that likes Emilia for no reason at all, just for the plot. Character development my ass. Hm… you both kind of make a fair point.

Bob then continued going on rampage with his runt after he watched the 2nd season (and he watched it strictly to have an opinion about it so he can shove it up Betty’s face (yeah, that’s the kind of person Bob is, truly despicable)). He said that the second season was boring and people did not like it because it didn’t have enough gore porn, especially the second part, was full of backstories for characters no one gives a shit about. Too little too late. But Betty in outburst of confidence thinking that Bob was gravely mistaken rushed to put him in his place by saying that it was a really good season because the plot actually progressed, we got in touch with numerous characters and their backgrounds, we learned about them and about the origin of the state of the world, there was also a ton of development. Then with her eyes glowing like a great eagle when it dives for its prey, she spouted this argument. The reason the seasons were structured that way is simple and very smart, all that gore porn and action at the start, and after that the character and world development. The writer straight off the bat made you interested in his work, then after you were hooked, he really dove into the story and the more important events and plot and character development. I mean if that is not a sign of a great story teller then I don’t know what is. You know what, once again, Bob and Betty, both make a good point. But enough with the both of you, I’m tired of you arguing like immature and kids and also I’ve written too much already, no one is gonna bother reading this shit.

Anyway lets get done with this, animation is average to slightly above average, art style and character design is pretty boring and uninspiring.

Sound ain’t half bad, some tracks are ok but overall I didn’t find them great, same for openings and endings. Voice acting is good though, most of the actors are doing a great job no matter how stupid are their lines. Kudos to them.

So, is it worth a watch? Ultimately I’d have to go with no it isn’t, but it’s worth checking out at least to judge for yourself if you are on Bob’s or Betty’s side or somewhere in the indifferent middle like I am. If anything else it’s an interesting study on persuasion at least, about how you can get people on your side, how you can get things going your way, in case you are still young and you are reading this, you’ll realize at some point that understanding WHAT people wanna hear is unimaginably hard. And then you’ll come to the realization that this isn’t enough, you’ll also have to know HOW they wanna hear it and WHEN they wanna hear. Yup, human relationships are hard people.

Normally I rate animes better than most people, but in this case it's different. This anime started off really interesting. The story was refreshing, the characters were lovable and the setting was great... but somehow starting from episode 13 it just lost its touch and just focused way too hard on extended dialogs of love and other emotions, which just didn't reach me. I do like romance animes, but I simply hoped for so much more than that. (And that *SPOILER* the highlight of the story is him confessing his love to Emilia is really not what I was hoping for from this anime. I mean seriously!) It had so much potential but ended up being dragged out too long in what felt more like fillers than storyline. I do hope that if they make a second season, they start concentrating again on the storyline that hooked me in the beginning.

The story isn't that bad. It's the pacing. In one episode the story rapidly moves forward and in the next episode the story comes to a complete halt. It becomes so slow that it's like wasting time. The story has some nice mysteries, though whenever the story moves forward, it creates more mysteries. I don't dislike it, it's just not good for keeping me engaged.

As far as I watched, the characters don't have that much depth so that I care about them, but somehow the mc cares about them. It's just shitty to me that he loves a character just because she tought him how to peel a potato.

Groundhog day but the character is one of the most infuriating braindead people I've ever had the displeasure of following.

If your thing is watching someone trying not to fail time and time again while repeatedly making the WORST decisions possible and blatantly ignoring the potential behind their power, this sure is the show for you.

But if you're a rational person who can't stand idiots making idiotic decisions (trying to portray itself as a deadly serious, no-nonsense show by the way) then move on.

fuck this show, Rem deserved better