[WARNING: SPOILERS]
There is a particular kind of incompetence on display in Re:Zero. A popular 2016 isekai anime in the mold of Sword Art Online, Re:Zero adapts a light novel series of the same name, and indeed its particular incompetence is frequently found in light novel adaptations, though I cannot imagine that it is improved in the original work. It is the incompetence of a story that has no idea what it is about but is determined to continue anyway. Re:Zero is notable for being among the worst offenders in this category of incompetence, because it is not wholly a disaster on an episode-by-episode basis, making its ultimate failures all the more glaring. There are moments of effective storytelling and touching characterisation, but all of them are wasted on this show. There is no catharsis for the viewer, no development with stakes or serious implications. Why? Because Subaru loves Emilia, obviously. At best, Re:Zero tells a story no one wants to hear.
Allow me to explain. Re:Zero is brain-damaged. Re:Zero is staggering semi-consciously into its own hype without any understanding of itself. Re:Zero is a waste of your time because it doesn’t know what or whom it is about or why you should care and by the time you realise this your soul is beginning to hurt.
Re:Zero is the story of two characters lost in the world: Natsuki Subaru, a Japanese hikikomori with a past of inaction and incompetence, who finds himself transplanted into a medieval fantasy realm; and the shy and self-abasing demon girl Rem, who struggles with the shame and fear she carries from a traumatic childhood. Subaru has been mysteriously gifted with the power to return back in time when he dies, and he struggles to protect and support Rem as they defend the manor that they serve in together. Slowly, a deep love and trust develops between them, and they find in each other the inspiration they never knew they needed to build themselves up and fight their darkness; but Rem doesn’t believe that Subaru could ever love her back, comparing herself unfavourably to her twin sister Ram and the distant but beautiful half-elf princess whom Subaru serves, Emilia. Finally, as they prepare to meet a threat to their lives unlike any other they have faced before, Rem finds the courage to make her heartfelt confession to Subaru. His eyes suddenly alight with long-dormant feelings, Subaru replies…
No, wait, that’s not Re:Zero.
Re:Zero is the story of the half-elf princess Emilia and her loyal butler/knight/dogsbody Natsuki Subaru as she advances her campaign to become the next ruler of Lugnica. Intrigue and treason abound as this Game of Thrones-style medieval clash of clans unfolds. Romance kindles between our protagonists despite initial hostility, as they come to rely on each other through all the plotting and betrayal of the sycophants and snakes surrounding them. Subaru learns the competence he always wished to possess, and Emilia overcomes the insecurity that has haunted her since…the trauma of…the deep-rooted fear in her heart whose origins lie with…
No, that’s not Re:Zero either. Sorry.
For those who are out of the loop, Re:Zero is mostly known for delivering eighteen episodes that introduced the world to 2016’s consensus Best Girl and allowed her to worm her way into the clogged aorta of every useless sweaty weeb loser before cucking her mercilessly when the main character completely shut down her heartbreaking confession in favour of a girl who had comparatively no screen time. Best girl, of course, is Rem. But Subaru loves Emilia.
Pause and Select made a video defending the awful writing of Re:Zero filled with their characteristic otaku studies jargon, but their argument can be made without the psychoanalytic language on a purely narrative basis. Subaru is a hikikomori and he wants to be something more than an outsider who doesn’t belong anywhere. Rem is therefore unsuitable for him, as a ‘beautiful fighting girl’, the quintessential outsider archetype in anime and manga. She is an outsider in the world, in the manor, and even in her own family. She is a) a demon, b) a demon twin, which is taboo even among demons, and c) a demon twin with a deeply felt sense of inferiority and guilt towards her more talented sister, who lost her horn and the magical power it bequeathed to her while Rem kept her own. She sees herself as inadequate and invisible, and desperately self-sacrifices to make up for this. Emilia is only an outsider insofar as she is distrusted for her resemblance to the much-feared Jealous Witch, Satella; she otherwise belongs to and represents the ‘symbolic’ world of peerage, chivalry, and wealth that act as gatekeepers between an outsider like Subaru and a place on the inside of society, a place of belonging. Subaru loves Emilia because he seeks integration into the world; a romance between Subaru and Rem would be an allegiance of outsiders who reaffirm each other. In other words, this is Zero no Tsukaima with Princess Henrietta as the main romantic interest. With all that said, this argument does not justify the embarrassing failure of Re:Zero to tell the story it should be telling, because no one came out of this show wanting it to be about Emilia rather than Rem, and there is nothing wrong with an allegiance of outsiders (Welcome to the NHK is a realist version of that very romance). This argument justifies a story that Re:Zero fails to tell successfully.
If you want the audience to appreciate your dumb character, you have to create dramatic tension that impels them to care. In the royal selection meeting where the candidates for Lugnica’s next ruler present themselves, Emilia declares her intention to create a country where everyone is equal. What? This is the only time Emilia expresses any such desire. Later, she says she wants to be treated like a normal person instead of idealised and she wanted Subaru to be the one to see her that way. Why? This is the first we have heard of this insecurity and we still have no sense of this character’s motivations. None of her actions have significance and at best, she is an empty cipher for Subaru’s goals. She’s not a bad character; she has no character. I have no basis to form an opinion on her. There is a great deal more to say about the dog forest. The dog forest, by the way, is the basis for the entire second arc of the show, in which the dog shaman from the dog forest curses Subaru so he has to go and kill all the dogs in the dog forest with Rem and Ram. Nothing that happens in the dog forest has any purpose in the context of the plot, but at least the characters develop. This is the best part of Re:Zero; the show may as well be called The Demon Maid in the Dog Forest.
The love and care put into the Rem character actually makes Re:Zero more painful to watch than a purely useless show. The light novel author Reki Kawahara is responsible for the infamously excretable Sword Art Online and Accel World, both of which spawned similarly aimless adaptations in which little of consequence happens, and both are probably worse than Re:Zero. In all of these shows, characters and plot are set up but maddeningly fail to execute. However, in Sword Art Online and Accel World, it’s easy to imagine that the meandering and overwritten nonsense onscreen is significantly worse than the theoretical alternative. Re:Zero has the indignity to show you a better anime than the one you’re watching and then cucks you out of it in the same moment it cucks Rem.
That Re:Zero is not actually about anything means most of your time spent watching it will be dedicated to useless questions about things that don’t matter. For example, the dog forest. What is the dog forest? Why are there so many dogs in the forest? If they eat humans for their mana and the humans are securely guarded by a barrier, how are there so many dogs in the forest? Can they eat rabbits like a normal dog that isn’t a shaman? There are more dogs than would be in a normal forest even if they can eat rabbits. How many people and rabbits do they need to eat to reproduce at the rate which has filled up the dog forest with dogs? That’s a lot of dogs in the forest. I can’t believe my beautiful angel Rem is developed so thoroughly in this dog forest arc because it is so stupid. These are the thoughts that occur to me as I watch the demon maid sisters fight dogs in the dog forest.
Why do these light novel adaptations get away with being about nothing? Rem gets cucked out of her story because she never gets to conclude it and Emilia gets cucked out of her story because none of it happens onscreen. Emilia wants to be the king of Lugnica but all you see is one meeting of a royal selection committee and then it’s back to Rem getting cucked by Subaru as he tries to save Emilia from a man so mad that he does not believe anybody else could be as truly mad as him (I am not exaggerating).
Speaking of a man so mad that he does not believe anybody else could be as truly mad as him, holy shit does this show completely drop the ball when it comes to characters that aren’t Rem and Ram. All the other characters introduced up until the conclusion of the dog forest arc are underwritten stock types, including an angry loli witch with a vocal tic and the enormous gay vampire clown man who employs Rem and Ram in his manor. These literally whos vanish in the second half of the anime and their replacements are actually worse. Among others, there’s a gentle femdom republican girl in military uniform, a hard femdom ojou with big tiddy, a Kansai-talkin’ industrialist girl, and a gay catboy. I never thought I would yearn to feast upon the narrative fruits of an angry loli witch with an old lady voice and a giant gay vampire clown man, but trying to comprehend the childhood trauma of the writer who decided to make the otherwise forgettable Princess Barielle order Subaru to lick her bare foot in a porny scene during the emotional nadir of his character arc was just about enough to make my blood ache for the soulful baying of the dog forest.
Okay, I didn’t mind the gay catboy.
There is one way this show could marginally redeem itself in a second season. One interesting detail of Re:Zero is that Subaru’s Groundhog Day power of returning in time every time he dies appears to be linked to the Jealous Witch, which potentially suggests that he is being manipulated by said witch to help Emilia reach the throne. If Emilia turns out to be the witch in disguise or in a dormant state, and Rem is the real main girl after all, then maybe Re:Zero will deserve a reevaluation for the bait and switch it played in this season. Subaru will crawl back into the all-forgiving bosom of Rem’s love and she will accept him like the perfect angel that she is.
Nah, it won’t happen. I just played the Hisui route and it ended with Shiki saying he loves Arcueid. Actually, at least Arcueid has a character. Checkmate, Re:Zero.
Ichigo Alternative 