Re:ZERO: Starting Life in Another World - Reviews

Alt title: Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu

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BadAtBowling's avatar
Feb 6, 2019

HOLY CRAP 

This anime is a story that will pull you in and wont let go until you finish. There will definetly be a season 2 as the last epsiode left us on a cliff hanger. I really wish that they finished up explaining some things, "why was he sent into this world?", "who is the witch?", "does mili win the election??", "what is felt doing?", "why have we not seen felix tell his life story for an entire episode??" alll in all 10/10 would cry to episode 20 again

10/10 story
8/10 animation
9/10 sound
10/10 characters
10/10 overall
WolfAngelus's avatar
Oct 9, 2016

Good, but not nearly as great as expected. With 25 episodes, that should have been plenty of time to present a smooth flowing story with a good ending. As the anime progresses, we quickly realize that the first set of episodes don't link up with the middle or end set. The time rewind is a cheap gimmick to manipulate a story conveniently to however the writers wished, but this wasn't very confusing and not the cause either, just a bit redundant. The very dark theme with quite the graphical violence and gore was nice though and overall it wasn't like too many other anime. This is mostly thanks to the rewind mechanic I'd say, although I really dislike that concept because it creates exactly this, too many small stories and ideas leaving behind some of the key ones (Example: Felt).

There are many unanswered questions by the time you reach the end, and a huge questionmark is left behind on what happened to the story taking place from the beginning, up to a few episodes past the halfway point. The specific character that springs to mind is Felt. She seemed pretty relevant early on, made a short appearance later on with what seemed to be some promising chaos amongst an otherwise orderly event. Yet, after the episode (you will know which it is when watching), we never see her again for the remainder of the season. The story just took a 90 degree turn.

This situation happens to multiple characters, such as Ram or even Emilia towards the 3/4 mark. Rem never makes an appearance towards the last episodes and suddenly Ram & Emilia are treated as her replacements. The ending in itself really doesn't offer much, so hopefully there will be a Season 2 to cover a lot of this, but for now it feels far from conclusive in regards to the characters and the relations amongst them. The main characters in question here that have major absencens, their stories left unfinished, or what happened to them are Rem & Ram, Beatrice, Roswaal, Felt, and ultimately what Emilia's decision will be in the long term.

I thought that Rem, Ram, Felt, and a handful of other characters were pretty interesting, but the 2 main characters (Subaru and Emilia) were not. The negative and whining personality from the main character is huge detractor in my view. Emilia follows a bit of a similar scenario and when both of these characters are together, it is clear that their communication skills are very poor which causes frustration. A lot of the created drama would be easily avoidable and I didn't find the drama to be entertaining. The interesting characters were a bit neglected with largely unfinished stories or a "what ever happened to them" situation. A lot more spotlight should have been placed on Felt, and also more on Rem & Ram. All 3 were unfortunately neglected for more showtime later on for characters who were introduced more towards the middle-end point. The costume, color & design for Rem & Ram was pretty epic though, loved their hairstyle and interesting dialogue style when together.

Overall I would say this is worth a watch, but not nearly as epic as the ratings might lead you to expect. The entertainment is there, just don't expect a nicely wrapped up storyline, it has a huge amount of holes and things unanswered. That reason makes it more of a forgetable anime. The main memories here for me will be the ending theme and the one for Episode 14 are both some of the top songs I have heard, and characters Rem & Ram for thier design, coloring, interesting dialogue style. An extra point goes to Rem just because she was super adorable towards the middle and we got to connect more with her as she opened up.

5/10 story
10/10 animation
10/10 sound
6/10 characters
6.7/10 overall
Tylerka's avatar
Jul 29, 2020

I´m really happy about this anime. Because I finally found anime that I actually liked. It was a perfect main characters and I can say that I like almost everybody. I hope I will find another anime like this. If you know something similar, could you send me some good anime? 

Thank you 

10/10 story
10/10 animation
9/10 sound
8/10 characters
10/10 overall
CodeBlazeFate's avatar
May 6, 2018

The more I think about Re:Zero, the more infuriating it becomes. 2016’s tentpole zeppelin is savagely overhyped and beyond the audiovisual merits of this trainwreck, is an absolute sham! It shot for the stars, gave up halfway, and settles for Venus. It had a lofty goal of delivering a message to the audience about their habits, but amidst the laughable, self-indulgent torture of its main character and neat-looking “directing tricks”, it was too scared to commit. It’s The Last Jedi of anime, except even worse. Both start off harmless enough but by the end divulge into a mess, but this show is hateful whereas TLJ is just disappointing. Besides, that one was far better from a visual perspective.

“So, what did Re:Zero attempt to tell us”, you may ask. To that you’d need to understand the main protagonist. You know why you hated him? It’s because he was meant to represent you, the entitled audience who shovels junk down their throat --the junk obviously referring to Isekai and LN anime according to them-- whilst inserting yourself as the MC, feeling entitled to a 2D anime girl of your choice, and thinking that you understand life and even the scenarios these main characters go through. He is a twisted attack on the self-insert, at least for 72% of the show. You see, after the infamous confession scene of episode 18, he stops being antagonized or treated as someone who just doesn’t get things. Now he suddenly is smarter and less desperate than he’s ever been; now he’s going to get the girl and help defeat the enemies who caused him such suffering throughout the early portion of the second half. Now he’s more comfortable to insert yourselves into, and now he is suddenly cool with many of the people who felt disgusted or annoyed by him. He lost the one thing going for him, the one thing that made him better than the rest of the cast.

That’s not to say they did a remotely good job to begin with, however. For one, there are moments in which after the mildest of trial and error, he suddenly knows how to solve a given situation. Afterwards, everyone around him who hated or otherwise didn’t care much for him is suddenly cool. Look no further than the end of the second arc, with the now iconic Rem turning from hating Subaru and wanting him dead, to loving him with the passion of a yandere, in the span of an episode, solely based on him helping her survive even when bleeding badly himself. I get that this is a noble action and that if you hated someone and he did that for you, you’d likely rethink your position on that person, but this is an entirely different character now in the span of a scene or two!

They do still give Subaru the most painful wake-up call in recent anime history, but often through contrived means that are poorly undone. The payoff of Subaru realizing his mistakes, adapting, and improving, never hits, as even with his blood sweat and tears, it was never truly earned. After the relentlessly awful gauntlet of middle episodes, after their insulting attempts at shaming Subaru through pathetic “aesops” and punishments characters inflict that are contradictory to their nature, as well as one of the most horseshit plot ideas I’ve seen in gas that erases your existence but people somehow remember the concept behind your existence, the show can’t handle it anymore and instead opts to play it as safe as all the Light Novels it went against!

This isn’t even going into other reasons why the narrative crumbles faster than Subaru’s first attempts at everything, from the pathetic names of some of the enemies (Mabeasts? Fucking really?), to time loops in which certain events that could not possibly play differently or happen at all somehow do (episode 3 has one with a little girl Subaru and his girl Emilia helped out previously), or how people know the smell of the hidden main antagonist (Satella, the witch) that never appears, despite how they never saw her or smelt her. This isn’t even bringing up the laughable excuse of a finale, the disgustingly executed fight sequences and CGI that add more blemishes an otherwise well-produced and sometimes ostentatiously directed show, or how horrendously defined the checkpoint system truly is. The lack of remotely decent side-characters or designs wasn’t taken into account either --though to add, the villain of the second half is so relentlessly awful it’s laughable, and the cast of Sword Art Online is more interesting than 95% of the characters here--, nor are any of the positive aspects of the visuals or the music taken into account here --though both OPs are fantastic and the first ED is also worthwhile--. This is simply a look into how Re:Zero dropped the ball on what it set out to achieve more so than how it fails tremendously as a show altogether. It was only remotely respectable in its initially shoddy mediocrity, not when it laughably abandoned all pretenses of bravado.

Care to Re:Set for us, Re:ZERO?

1.1/10 story
7/10 animation
7.2/10 sound
2.7/10 characters
3.4/10 overall
KamekoChanUwU's avatar
Oct 18, 2020

In my opinion, the anime became really boring affter while. The story doesn't really make sense but that doesn't really matter. Animation is not bad, i like the background animation in the scenes from the capital

I personally don't like the characters, everything about this anime is one big cliche and i don't really get why is this anime that popular

2/10 story
6/10 animation
5/10 sound
4/10 characters
4/10 overall