B2112's Anime Reviews - Episode 1: Re:Zero (Season 1)

There may be times when you come into a show with no sense of where it came from, nor where it will go. Perhaps it is a show whose story has been established for years via Manga or Visual Novels; but you don't have any particular attachment to the source material. That is how I came into Re:Zero, a show which is an adaptation of the first 9 light novels (of the same name) created by Tappei Nagatsuki. The show received a ton of praise online during its initial run in 2016, and I personally came to it after the zeitgeist had already passed and watched it all at once in late 2017.

The show starts on a fairly relaxed footing - Subaru, a simple Japanese boy, steps into a convenience store sometime in the evening, picking between what kind of snack foods he would like to bring home for his night of doing... Whatever. It's a grounded beginning; but that only lasts a total of about two minutes. As he leaves the store, after just a few blinks of his eye, he suddenly finds himself in a colourful, vibrant, medieval-style world full of many humanoid creatures who could hardly be described as human. Walking, talking lizards; bipedal, human-sized cats selling wares in shops; giants carrying massive clubs; et cetera. Subaru can hardly believe his eyes; but being a fan of video games, he quickly uses his game-sense and logic to determine the rules of the world. For example, everyone around him speaks Japanese, but the written language is something he's never seen before; there are users of magic, as well as spirits and swordsmen; there is no modern technology - everything is as one would expect from a medieval time.

As the episode continues, Subaru finds himself cornered in an alley by multiple assailants. At this point, he doesn't know if he has any special powers, and attempts to fight them in order to discover his abilities. At first he succeeds; but shortly thereafter, he fails spectacularly and receives a thorough beating because of it. As he is nearly on his deathbed, a girl comes to his aide. She heals him with her magic, and stays with him until he regains consciousness. They travel together, and he helps her with her quest. Fast forward to the end of the episode, and we are introduced to the main conceit of the series. As they are finishing her quest, Subaru finds himself exploring a seemingly abandoned shop in the dead of night. As he wanders, he finds the shop's owner dead, with blood spewing out of his face - a recent death. As he turns to make his escape, he finds himself facing the assailant, who quickly turns her blade onto our hapless protagonist, killing him. As Subaru takes his dying breaths, the scene goes black. And then we find ourselves back at an earlier scene, before he had even encountered the girl on the quest, but with Subaru retaining every memory from up until his death.

The show is about time travel. If Subaru dies, he gets reset back to some point in time before a critical decision - think of it like an autosave in a massive RPG. Unfortunately for him, he feels the pain in a very real way with every death, so it is a traumatizing experience if he is about to go back and try again. As the show unravels its story, it does so across tiny reveals that Subaru accrues during each individual lifetime. He uses this cumulative knowledge to stack the odds in his favour, and eventually overcome (what feels like) an inescapable fate. The show presents its stories in discrete arcs, where Subaru encounters a scenario he needs to get past, but sometimes doesn't have enough knowledge to solve the mystery of what is happening before he can enact any change. You, as the audience, see everything from his perspective, so you only know as much as he does. Honestly, the show handles this aspect fairly well, and throws some twists at you that would never otherwise have been expected. It keeps you guessing, which makes it appealing to continue to the next episode as soon as your current one ends.

The story of the show is ultimately pretty good. I would say that every arc has its appeal, but the final arc is the one which carries the most weight. It takes an extremely dark turn, and has moments which will leave your mouth hanging open with surprise revelations, and cruel scenarios for your favourite characters. It does not pull its punches, exposing the viewer to grizzly scenes which show no mercy. I personally appreciate this fact, and though there is some gory violence, it is never grotesque just for the sake of shock value. Every ounce of bloodshed carries weight, and every character's suffering is felt to the bone - even seemingly insignificant side-characters. The show also tackles some really heady topics such as racism, political structure, honour, and loss with appropriate attention given to each topic. Again, the story is pretty good in Re:Zero; but what is most worth talking about are the characters.

Re:Zero has a lot of characters. The main crew are a cast of 3 people, but there are dozens of side characters who you will get to know and adore. I honestly think the characters are the very best part of the show. You have Emilia, the love interest, who is powerful, smart, and dealing with discrimination on a regular basis. You have the twins Ram and Rem, the maids of Emilia and Emilia's keepers - these two are inarguably my favourite characters in the show, their backstory gets explored in a profoundly satisfying way. You have several Knights, there's potential heirs to the throne, assassins, demi-gods, cultists, you have other heroes, strong enemies... I could go on and on. Suffice to say, the characters are what carry this show. With one exception.

I loved this show quite a bit, but the biggest problem was the protagonist - Subaru. The main character is just the worst. He is arrogant, annoying, and without much self-awareness. In the final arc, Subaru acts in a way that is so beyond cringy that I very nearly dropped the show because I couldn't stand him. To be honest, I only continued because of my affection for Rem's character, and wanting to see her story through. There were points where I was celebrating Subaru's death because I'd felt he deserved it, despite how much the show is trying to make you feel sympathetic towards him. Truth be told, he does have a well crafted redemptive arc; but they made him such an unlikable pile of trash that it was hard to even make it to that point. In the end, I didn't despise Subaru; but I feel the show suffered quite a bit due to his terrible character.

Re:Zero is a show which is completely worth watching, though it has the caveat of an awful protagonist. It isn't until the last arc of the show where Subaru's character really becomes intolerable; but if you can make it past that, you are rewarded with a satisfying story and a cast of many other characters you will fall in love with. The themes of the show were not lost on me, and I think it handled some difficult topics in a mature way. The comedy of the show is cute, and the violence of the show is heavy. It strikes a unique balance between lighthearted and scarring, and though time travel is a trope so common to Japanese media that it is nearly a cliché, Re:Zero handles it in a way which leaves it in a class of its own.

I rate Re:Zero: 4/5

B2112's Anime Reviews - Episode 0