| I'm sure you guys remember that the first bunch of episodes really left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth but thankfully that had been disappearing as of late. Re:Zero has really shown us some competent plot writing, interesting direction choices and great character moments. Before I go into this I want to say that I really enjoy watching Re:Zero, I look forward to each new episode and the past 5 episodes have been especially great. Given the premise, story and directing it could have been a 10/10, and I'm going to try and give a few examples what makes it likely not a 10/10 for me because this episode I once again felt distracted by a number of things. Things that remind me what type of source material we're dealing with. A light novel being meta towards light novels who are on their own meta towards anime which has it's fair share of established tropes. As hard as it it to put into words, It's usually quite easy to tell whether something has a manga/original source or a LN source. 9/10 times the overly specific writing perspective and the way characters are presented just feels different. As if it really wants to cater to the anime watching crowd directly instead of writing a solid, well rounded story first and foremost. This is not a problem in straight parody, comedy or if you like them, battle harems and the likes. But when writing something as serious and in-depth as Re:Zero, it feels off to me. Disclaimer: The following are among the many small things that impacted my immersion and/or viewing pleasure. I am not saying that they are wrong, or objectively bad writing, or fridge logic that can't be explained away. I've also gone over my qualms with Subaru as a character, the kind you could only ever find in a LN, but let's put him aside because he's mostly redeemed himself. So, Crusch Karsten, Finally another character that seems to be more about doing her own thing rather than being a buoy in the wake of Subaru's endeavours. She has a distinct personality and the ability to read the winds of people's lies. She's a master negotiator who prides herself in never having settled a deal that didn't benefit her, cool! Why would she explicitly tell Subaru she has the power to read lies? And then confirm her power by mentioning it again and again and almost toying around with him? I feel that's just really uncharacteristic. And that's just one subject, for a supposed master negotiator she spills a lot of beans for no reason other than exposition. This "tell rather than show" approach oozes from their dialogue which seriously detracts from Crusch's character almost turning her into another buoy if you ask me. Not to mention that when Subaru told her he knew when and where the whale would appear thanks to his "giftia" she did not sense lies in him, while this was at best a half-truth. After all, miss perf- I mean Rem, who is better informed, WAS able to discern this as a lie. Talking Rem, it's hard not to like her right? They've done a really good job on that. Despite the amount of near monologues she gives Subaru I'm struggling to remember a point where she didn't manage to say exactly what she needed to say. It gives me the feeling that on the top of her intended character traits lists there's the word "audience's bestgirl" somewhere. I'm honestly starting to wonder if she's still an in-universe character or some parody. After all it should be very very hard to "completely erase someone from existence". When the whale eats you after you've seen 17 springs? Guaranteed that a bunch of people you were close to are going to have strong memories of you disappear. (minus MC because convenience, and it seems unlikely it's just the connection to the witch because Emilia didn't remember Rem either, ugh my head hurts.) So... how can that not leave a mark? "Who is Rem?", "I seriously don't know what you're talking about." No? Ram? you're certain that you don't have a feeling that something is missing from your memories since childhood? Let alone recent times? Does everything still make sense to you? In order to reach a state of forgetting like that a mere erasure of memories wouldn't do. (how the erasure works in the first place is also kinda... even saying "it's magic" gets a raised eyebrow from me) It would mean either a targeted do-over to the minds of the people who knew her, an alteration to the the flow of time from before her birth or conveying the world into an alternative universe where the person eaten never existed in the first place. Implying these kinds of powers adds a lot of weight to your story and it will cause a lot of fridge logic. But hey, it's cool and dramatic for these few moments so let's do it anyway. All in all, I feel like Re:Zero is full of these small instances where the importance of having something be part of the story is placed before the grand picture. It's actually cool to have some stories be draped in recognisable anime/manga/game stuffs. But in this form it feels like it's the other way round, a world filled to the brim with anime/manga/game stuffs that also happens to have a deep and intriguing story line. Re:Zero chooses to apply the rule of cool on all sorts of arbitrary things. Last example: Giving our hero a ground dragon that is supposedly extremely prideful but the only way we know this is because we're told so. What's the point of upholding a breed like that? And as far as I can see it's actually as obedient as a cute little puppy. Was this really necessary? So. As good of a series Re:Zero is, and really, it is good. The distractions are giving me a hard time taking things as serious, or letting me be as moved by the developments as a certain other groundhog day style time travel drama which I did rate a 10/10. |
It's hard to since I specifically said it's hard for me to put into words, I'll try again but it'll be imperfect. Bottom line, LN's tend to be written by people who grew up with anime and manga as their primary sources of entertainment and... that shows. It's seems to me that a lot of LN based material seems to be metagaming, or just playing around with the staples of anime way more than most shows from other sources do. And like I said I think there's a couple of genres where that can be used to great effect. Re:Zero feels really unique to me because it's the first time I've seen these general LN writing style and design choices being applied to a much deeper and more intricate story. And frankly, I'm doubting if it does the story justice one hundred percent. TheGreatAtario said: I don't believe it's a secret. Each of the queen candidates have magic wind powers of some sort, someone pointed out. At any rate, she couldn't just up and say "sure, I believe you, for no reason". Good point, it is fairly common knowledge so Subaru could have learned about it anyway. Maybe it's just a bit of wishful thinking on my part, I'd have loved to see her being a little more sly, analysing, using only the words that are strictly necessary to convey her meanings in such a way that the other party is brought to a disadvantage. The exposition she gave us on multiple occasions shattered that ideal I had imagined for her. I don't think they had to use spoken word as much as they did to convey the things being said to the viewer. I know I'm nitpicking at this point - because I wanted her to be my favorite character! TheGreatAtario said: Without it, the best he could do would be to vaguely estimate when it would appear on what night, instead of knowing to the minute. This could be the the truth in his mind, and the difference between lying and not. So he's also lying to himself, perhaps that's a limit of the reading the wind of lies ability? Can you fool it by wholeheartedly believing your own lie! Works for me. :D But it is a lie. (or like I said, a half-truth at best) Subaru clearly implied to her that he knew about the white whale's time and also it's location thanks to the cell phone while in reality he knows because he's been there already and returned by death. Rem sees through this while Crusch Karsten the queen of reading through lies did not? That's just what I couldn't help but think at those moments. TheGreatAtario said: Sometimes I don't get you, man. Character does things the way you like → ridiculous unrealistic parody; character does things not the way you like → immersion-breaking blunder. I never called Rem ridiculous or unrealistic, my feelings about this subject are not nearly as strong as to warrant those words. I like Rem's, it's really hard not to. She has a lot of her own circumstances too so the side of the coin I'm lighting here is just that, one side of the coin. On top of that I've only had this thought now, while Rem has been in the show for quite a while. (besides the community isn't helping, can you predict the winner of next year's best girl tournament on /r/anime? I'd rather put my money on how big of a difference in votes it's going to be XD) TheGreatAtario said: Pretty sure this is the mechanic involved, given that Rem's room was devoid of her belongings and so on. Good catch TheGreatAtario said: Quips like this make me think you're not going into things to watch the story, but to smirk at the author's chops. You're never gonna get immersed in anything doing that. I see where you're coming from and you're definitely right if this were the case, but a quip like this originates purely from analysis afterwards. When I start a series I go in to watch it for the story. (unless... some shows deliberately break immersion but I think we can all establish that Re:Zero is not one of those.) However, when something catches my attention, or creates fridge logic for what seems to be not that great of a reason, I sadly can't prevent myself from thinking about it. It was a long wall of text to write, so forgive me this one edgy remark pleeease? TheGreatAtario said: It's obedient and affectionate — to Subaru, despite being inherently prideful. Pride being one of the seven deadly sins, like gluttony (the White Whale) and sloth (Betelgeuse). You don't suppose this will become relevant later on, eh? I'm just saying that the only reason we know it's an extremely prideful breed is because we're pretty much directly told so, that's the only way we know. Anything to show off it's traits before having it behave like that towards Subaru would have given those words so much more power. This is just one of those tiny little things that pop to my attention when I'm watching, I'm not looking for them, in fact I'd rather not think these thoughts. :( TheGreatAtario said: As far as why maintain such a breed, there's gotta be some other quality that makes it worth it, would be my guess. I wouldn't expect someone to stand there and say "well, of course, the reason we have such a breed is…". Nahh, they wouldn't want to go all the way, that one line was enough. ---------- Anyway I write this just to give you guys (but given our history mostly you Aratio) a bit more insight about how I think about series in general. Please don't take this as hostility towards Re:Zero. After all, I think I've made my general opinion clear enough! |
LN's on average take far more inspiration and elements from existing media, often enough these meta elements take center stage. While other works obviously do the same (you cannot escape the meta) they tend to have more real-world inspirations playing a more central role. Just one extreme example would be... exploring the relationship between a father and child versus exploring the implications of what if cat-girls were a common race and all among us! (This one's for you! Incest_Bro) It's more of a trend than a hard fact. And I'm not ripping LN's. Going meta can be hilarious, or shed a new light on things we know and love. It's just... not for me when it's done in abundance. Again, I find it hard to put into words well enough have it do this feeling justice. I once again failed here it seems, as I expected. I don't want to spend time picking apart examples that may or may not be a sign of something bigger. That's not going to get us anywhere so lets's call it a feeling that I can't shake off. A feeling that gets reinforced by the fact that it's often easy to tell, at least for me, when a work is LN based or not. Even when not knowing in advance. TheGreatAtario said: Keep in mind that the words she does use can do the same thing — controlling or guiding the other party. In this case, for example, divulging this power could both take his mind away from pushing to convince her ("let's see what else he has besides this fact"), and prevent him from trying to use lying as a bargaining technique going forward ("don't waste my time"). Not at all impossible, but the little worldbuilder in me is already thinking of how I myself would construct a character like this. It legitimately felt off to me while watching, but I already admitted that I'm nitpicking here. Pls no nitpicking the nitpickerino before we ourselves become meta. (I don't even understand what I'm saying anymore, is this what it feels like to talk like how2io?) Perhaps, there's some strong competition you know... TheGreatAtario said: I take that as part of the definition of the power — detecting lies, not incorrectness. You're not lying if you believe what you're saying. He has quite a bit of psychological conditioning to convince himself that this is truth enough, since even mentioning Return By Death gets him strangled from within or someone he loves murdered. Like I said, works for me! But It's still a bit of a reach don't you think? I guess maybe if it's more a matter of wilfully ignoring part of the questioning from Crusch (how do you know all this?) while tunnelling in his mind on the exact time feature. I find it very hard to believe that Subaru suppressed the idea that it was his return by death ability that allowed him to learn the intel he's presenting in the first place. TheGreatAtario said: Heh. These things can be notoriously hard to call, though. I can easily imagine the backlash/hate train picking up plenty of steam. And the salt will be delicious no matter which way the cookie crumbles. American idioms may just as well be moonspeak to me... FUCK, sorry Atario :( TheGreatAtario said: [Shrug] At the same time, throwing in one instance of it on the spot to convince us would feel like hitting us over the head. And spending any significant amount of time besides that on something this minor would feel like a waste of time in a show that's already packed wall-to-wall. I mean, this is in fact how you would find out this sort of thing if you went to a horse-riding ranch and the difficult horse took an inexplicable liking to you — someone would just tell you. Quite right, but it was Rem, not a stabler who casually mentioned it as a bit of trivia, actually if a stabler had mentioned it instead of Rem this would have been absolutely fine already. There's always a grey area between shoehorning in a mechanic and having a character say a line of exposition so blatant they might as well have said it facing the camera to lampshade it. (please don't actually do this, I'm only joking!) I felt that Rem saying this and nothing else indicating her words as fact was a bit too unnatural. But in the end... It doesn't even matter. (MEMEING INTENSIFIES) I hope that settles this insignificant topic well enough for you! :D I am worried sick! I wasn't planning on spending multiple hours typing here beyond that first wall! But I know the rules, can't leave ya hanging. |
CyclamateAug 11, 2016 6:23 PM
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