Been watching Re:Zero season 2, and it’s been a blast.
This was a hotly anticipated anime following the huge success of season 1 about 4 years ago.
The synopsis of the story is simple. The story is about a guy named Subaru Natsuki who suddenly finds himself transported to another world. There he meets a silver haired half-elf girl and so life begins in this fun, exciting new fantasy world!
Sounds like a boring classic ‘isekai’ type story. Seen that genre for fantasy story everywhere now – what’s new? Guy probably got granted some unique superpower by some godlike figure and now is going to become the most overpowered protagonist in this world and save it from the demon king yes?
Well.
He definitely got his unique superpower. Turns out though, when the one single power you have is ‘return by death’, which allows you to return to an autosaved ‘save point’ when you literally DIE, life is actually not all that fun.
Return by death (RBD) is a really interesting plot device. When used well, there is so much potential for great story telling. Each time Subaru dies, he goes back in time while retaining all his memories from earlier. Because of this, he gains new knowledge every loop. At the same time however, Subara has no other strengths to speak of. He's very weak compared to other characters in the story, so trying over and over again is all he can do.
It's not so simple to keep trying though. He also gains new trauma because who knew – dying and/or watching people around you die is pretty painful. Subaru isn’t some robotic super calm genius protagonist who is going to use that information to develop a new optimal strategy. Nope, if anything he’s often hysterical because you don’t just go back to life like nothing happened when crazy things happen. The psychological aspect of RBD (the fact you literally keep dying, the fact that you have access to all this knowledge and experience and pain that literally no one else does and you can’t share) is really well written.
So in short, we have a powerless person who’s only ability is RBD – which is totally not a fun ability – and he faces impossible situations. Despite the information advantage he gets from RBD, he still knows so little about the world, other people and their secrets. RBD also takes a huge psychological toll on him.
A example of a story arc may look something like this (just a simplified example not from the story):
First loop – You are part of an army going to battle. The night before the battle, you enjoy a dinner with your comrades, then sit in a strategy meeting after. The next day you go to battle, but the enemy was prepared for you, your army loses and you die a very brutal death.
Second loop – You RBD at a ‘save point’ earlier during the dinner before the strategy meeting, screaming in pain from having just died painfully seconds ago. Everyone else is like what the heck is up with this guy. They think you are crazy, put you on confinement, and go fight the war without you. They get destroyed, the enemy army finds you and kills you.
Third loop – You’re back at the dinner. You try to get a hold on yourself, you do now know what strategy the enemy is using, so you convince your army to switch up the strategy. You fail because why would they believe you, you watch painfully as the same thing repeats itself and you are helpless to stop it. You die.
Fourth loop – You’re back at the dinner. You try another method of convincing the army to switch up the strategy. You succeed this time hooray! Your army goes to fight the war. You realise the enemy also switched up their strategy. What. The. Heck. Your army loses, your team leader deems you a traitor and personally executes you. The last thing you see is the team leader staring angrily at you while your head rolls on the floor.
Fifth loop – You’re back at the dinner. The team leader is chatting casually with you. This man just killed you 5 seconds ago. You excuse yourself to calm yourself down. Thinking back, you realise he makes a point. Why did the enemy change their strategy? Perhaps there is indeed a traitor. You try to find the traitor, investigating that night while everyone is asleep.
Sixth loop – You’re back at the dinner. Wait, shit. That means you died. But how? Last you remember you were investigating that night. You are going crazy at this point but do your best to stay calm because the last time you had an outburst nothing good came out of it. You investigate again at night but do things slightly differently this time. You are attacked again, but this time you manage to uncover who the assailant was – the second in command in the team, and you die
Seventh loop – You’re back at the dinner. Your murderer is sitting beside you. You grab your knife, you really just want to stab him right now. You excuse yourself. You now know the second in command is a traitor, but he has the trust of everyone, how do you even begin to convince everyone else he is the traitor? You realise you can’t do that in one night. But the battle is tomorrow, you need to do something. Is there a way you can change the events of the battle, such that your team will end up winning, knowing that you have a traitor in your midst who is high ranking? Is there a way to trick the traitor with false info? Is there a way to come up with a counter-counter strategy that the traitor would not be aware of?
And so on. There can be more twists, maybe there’s another traitor. Maybe you go back to the battle and try to act on your own to upset the plans etc.
This is just a simple example. The actual Re:Zero story is much more insane. I know because I've been going WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON every episode for a couple of weeks now. It's an absolute treat. I feel like the puzzles pieces are now finally slowly falling into place, and while it's going to be a hell of a challenge for Subaru to resolve this one, I think it will be so so so satisfying.
It helps that Re:Zero is not just one arc but a continuous story, the whole story has much deeper mysteries, characters with motivations you don’t understand and take time to uncover. That really is the best thing of the story.
There are many uncovered mysteries in the Re:Zero world, and even as Subara uncovers new information every arc to tackle the challenges he faces in that particular arc, there is also a much larger story at play as well and that makes it really fascinating. Characters are complex people with complex motivations. Each time Subaru RBDs, his actions change and because of that so do the actions of others in response to what he does. Villains don’t conveniently spill the beans before you die because who does that really.
So yes, it’s an amazing story. Season 1 was pretty good, but it was annoying at times because Subaru was pretty annoying at times (I do believe this was intentional though). Season 1 got better over time though, and season 2 about ten episodes in has been a blast so far. Season 2 will be split into two parts, with this first part ending soon and second part starting in Jan 2021. I’m really looking forward to it, and I think I will switch to reading the source material (light novel) once I’m done with season 2. Unfortunately reading does mean that we do lose out on some great moments that are better portrayed in anime form. Like some of the recent stuff that has been happening in the past 2 episodes. Gave me the chills man. The animation studio has been doing a spectacular job so far for both seasons, and they have been willing to challenge norms to achieve this sometimes (there is this one episode in season 1 that was pretty infamous…).
If there is one unfortunate downside of Re:Zero that still continues, is that it can be pretty gruesome. Again, this is intentional. A big part of the story is about death, and death in pretty painful ways. So yes it can get really twisted in that regard. I would prefer if they toned it down a bit, but I can see why this is the choice – when Subaru dies painfully and is traumatised by it, you feel it too. So be prepared for pretty gruesome scenes.
Or just be prepared in general. After all, Re:Zero is a rollercoaster of emotions of which suffering is chief of them.
There are many uncovered mysteries in the Re:Zero world, and even as Subara uncovers new information every arc to tackle the challenges he faces in that particular arc, there is also a much larger story at play as well and that makes it really fascinating. Characters are complex people with complex motivations. Each time Subaru RBDs, his actions change and because of that so do the actions of others in response to what he does. Villains don’t conveniently spill the beans before you die because who does that really.
So yes, it’s an amazing story. Season 1 was pretty good, but it was annoying at times because Subaru was pretty annoying at times (I do believe this was intentional though). Season 1 got better over time though, and season 2 about ten episodes in has been a blast so far. Season 2 will be split into two parts, with this first part ending soon and second part starting in Jan 2021. I’m really looking forward to it, and I think I will switch to reading the source material (light novel) once I’m done with season 2. Unfortunately reading does mean that we do lose out on some great moments that are better portrayed in anime form. Like some of the recent stuff that has been happening in the past 2 episodes. Gave me the chills man. The animation studio has been doing a spectacular job so far for both seasons, and they have been willing to challenge norms to achieve this sometimes (there is this one episode in season 1 that was pretty infamous…).
If there is one unfortunate downside of Re:Zero that still continues, is that it can be pretty gruesome. Again, this is intentional. A big part of the story is about death, and death in pretty painful ways. So yes it can get really twisted in that regard. I would prefer if they toned it down a bit, but I can see why this is the choice – when Subaru dies painfully and is traumatised by it, you feel it too. So be prepared for pretty gruesome scenes.
Or just be prepared in general. After all, Re:Zero is a rollercoaster of emotions of which suffering is chief of them.
I mean, what the heck this current arc is insane.
Also, the OST is fire.
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