The review contains some minor spoilers. I actually watched the whole show but only as a method of self-mortification. Whereas monks used to practice mortification of the flesh, I treated watching Re:Zero as mortification of my mind, patience and my sense of self-respect.
I hate it when everyone is super hyped about a show and I can't for the life of me understand why. And this is exactly what happened with Re:Zero. Everyone was excited about it and called it the best anime or compared it to objectively superior shows. I watched 12 episodes of the show and got bored of it. I also had to
...
pause every time the MC said anything because I couldn’t stop cringing. But people kept saying "dude, watch episode 15, you'll love it!". Well, I watched it. And I didn't love it. But why exactly is the show bad? Let me explain.
Story:
The MC, who is a NEET/shut-in (it's just an informed flaw, he never shows any signs of NEET-ness that can't be attributed to his severe mental retardedness, more about that later) and who gets transported to a fantasy world for some inexplicable reason. Hopefully this will be at least a minor plot point in the future because during the first season it is completely irrelevant. WHY does it always have to be a NEET teleported to a fantasy world? If you need a person unaware of local customs etc. you could think of a multitude of different ways to introduce them in the story without resorting to that awful cliché. And the worst part is that he instantly figured out this cliché but the time-resetting one took him so long that for some time I thought that that time reset damaged his brain (later on I found out that actually he'd been brain damaged the whole time). Thankfully, he had that fucking bag of chips or he would still wander around the alleyways getting killed over and over 25 episodes later.
Anyway, the first 3(4) episodes were not that terrible. Actually, they were the best part of the show. I’d give that arc 6/10 even though I couldn’t see shit half the time because it was so dark (maybe that’s why I didn’t dislike it that much?).
The second arc is definitely worse than the first one. The MC becomes totally unrelatable and we get introduced to more boring, soulless, mindless characters that serve no other purpose than to orbit MC’s dick. The plot becomes a complete joke with overused random “humor” and embarrassingly bad dialogue. Even though I’m a very empathic person, I couldn’t relate to the main character at all, the “tear-jerker” scene (in ep. 8? I think) just made me look at my watch every few minutes which is never a good sign when watching anything. I don’t want to get too much into detail (and there isn’t even that much to go into) but it is safe to say that you could either compress episodes 4-11 into two episodes or, even better, get rid of them completely and the show wouldn’t lose anything important. My score for this arc is 2/10.
Episodes 12-14 is where the show went completely downhill. The amount of cringe was so huge that my body killed off half of my brain cells as a self-defense mechanism.
And what about the famous episode 15? Well, it was ok. Better that the previous 10 or so episodes but still mediocre at best. By this time, I totally hated MC’s guts and actually caught myself rooting for his opponents so I didn’t feel anything when bad things kept happening to him.
If the series just went downhill in episodes 12-14, it crashed to the ground and and made a 10 foot hole during episodes 16-21. Despite that, the show did something actually praiseworthy. Making two action-focused episodes so horribly, mind-bogglingly BORING is a huge feat that deserves recognition. Bonus points for including flashbacks filled with weird emasculation fetish-fuel (what is up with that? The whole show is full of it). In fact, these episodes were so boring and dull that I had to watch the rest of the series at triple speed to somehow ease the pain connected with watching it. I may hate myself but not to such an extent as to watch this show normally. I actually tried to play it even faster but unfortunately I couldn't keep up with the subtitles.
Still, I have to say that this last arc was more interesting than the 2 or 3 previous ones. Of course it doesn't say much since nothing more boring than those arcs even comes to my mind. I know that I watched the show for free and of my own free will but somehow I still considered filing a formal complaint about my wasted time. Watching the show was like watching a trainwreck but even less fun. The only thing that was interesting about the show was wondering how much worse the next episode was going to be and the show never disappointed and always brought a large dose of cringe, stupidity and boredom.
Generally, the time-reset cliché is not used very well and the show suffers from edgeitis. It also paradoxically depends on using shock value and resetting time instantly after, which makes most of it pointless. And please, don’t tell me that this makes the MC slowly go insane or whatever. He’s already retarded. He doesn’t need to go insane as well.
What is more, this series can't decide what type of show it wants to be. It tries to be a psychological show but it utterly fails at it because the characters are retarded and/or one-dimensional. It includes a lot of action but its action scenes are so boring that most harem anime have better action sequences. It tries to be a drama but the only sad and heartbreaking part of the show is the number of people enjoying it.
Taking everything into consideration, the story definitely showed promise but it was presented so poorly that it is impossible for it to salvage the show. It’s all because of the aspect of the show that definitely is the weakest, namely…
The Characters:
Oh boy. I don’t think I’ve ever watched a show with worse characters. The ones that aren’t stupid or boring are stupid, boring and annoying at the same time.
The MC is probably the worst MC I’ve ever seen. It is definitely nice that the author tried to give mentally retarded people some representation in the show but perhaps he shouldn’t have included one as a main character. The MC is completely unrelatable and during the course of the 15 episodes he becomes completely unlikable as well. Again, it is fine to have characters that people are going to despise in the show but please, don’t make them the MC!
The MC is incredibly dumb, can’t do anything right, is a creepy stalker that acts like an obsessive ex-boyfriend and is the cringiest character that I’ve ever seen. Every time he opens his retarded mouth he spews things that instantly increase your autism spectrum. Seriously, I didn’t cringe that much even when watching WataMote and that show was based on second-hand embarrassment humor.
What is more, the MC doesn’t learn anything, like, for example, the fact that he can kill himself to fix the past. He did it once and he fixed everything thanks to that but he never tries it again. However, during the course of the series, me saying "kill yourself" to the main character gradually stopped meaning "go back in time and fix everything" and changed the meaning to "just end the suffering - both yours and mine". Apart from mental retardation, the MC also suffers from a bipolar syndrome. Every time he dies he switches from being a pathetic waste of oxygen wallowing in self-pity to being a super-aggressive and even more supper-annoying avatar of cringe and stupidity, and vice versa. He gets less dumb towards the end of the series but his cringe-factor is still through the roof and you still can't take such an embarrasing person seriously.
Also, the fact that he can’t tell anyone about his time-resetting predicament is a very cheap plot device. If I recall correctly, it had a practical use once or twice but that still doesn’t justify that.
So, to sum it up, the MC is retarded, unlikable and unrelatable and his motives are stupid (he went through so much shit just to save maidos whom he had known for a whopping 5 days or so and who showed almost nothing but disdain for him and one of them actually tried to kill him).
I’ve always thought that there is nothing worse than a bland, beta character without any personality traits but they at least usually have an interesting supporting cast unlike the MC in this show.
I’d discuss other mouth-breathing, soulless and completely bland and cookie-cutter characters but it is actually not worth it (just like this show). There wasn't a single character that I liked when the show ended. I liked the crazy dude for an episode or two but I got bored of him pretty quickly. And I felt pity for the blue haired maid because she was trapped in this show and fell for such an idiotic character. It doesn't mean that I liked her though. Besides being a cheap waifu-bait, she is completely uninteresting and unremarkable.
Seriously though, I don’t remember any show that had characters so terrible. Even other edgy shows like Akame ga Kill had a few characters that I almost liked.
Art & Sound:
The art is ok. A solid 7/10. There is no fanservice which is nice. Character designs are shit though.
There is nothing particularly good about the audio aspect of the show but there is nothing bad either. Unremarkable.
Summary:
Let’s see: the premise was ok but the actual story is bad (to put it mildly), characters are atrocious and drag the whole show down, the rest is unremarkable. However, I actually have an idea how to salvage this show in the second season (if there is one). Let the MC reset time back to the first episode, kill him for good and start again from there.
You probably noticed that I used the words "retarded" and "unremarkable" a lot. That's, of course, because most of the show is retarded and the rest is unremarkable. The fact that most discussions about the show are waifu wars also confirm it. When someone says that the show is great just keep in mind that what they probably mean is "I liked one of the maids/the loli/that half-elf". Even if the best part of the show is waifus, then it completely fails since they're so bland and uninteresting. Seriously, no matter what you're looking for in a show, other shows do it better. If you want to see a good time-travel-related anime then watch Steins;Gate. If you want to watch a good transported-to-a-fantasy-world anime… Well, tough luck. But other anime are still probably better than this one. However, if you are tired of actually good anime and have too much time to spare and/or you are a masochist... then I still can't recommend this show. It would be too cruel. Recommending this show should actually be considered a criminal offense.
Right now, the show is rated 8.77 on MAL which is a complete disgrace. Originally, I rated this show 4. I did so because it was horrible but I still watched it. Unfortunately, it commited the worst sin any show can commit - it became really boring. I mean, it had horribly boring episodes before but episodes 18-21 were so dull that it actually made me think that I'd rather go outside than watch this show and that had never happened to me before when watching anything else. That's why I deducted one point. And, once again, I’m surprised by the fact that so many people genuinely enjoy this show.
I know that everyone is entitled to their own opinion but it’s still a stupid opinion.
Sep 23, 2016
The review contains some minor spoilers. I actually watched the whole show but only as a method of self-mortification. Whereas monks used to practice mortification of the flesh, I treated watching Re:Zero as mortification of my mind, patience and my sense of self-respect.
I hate it when everyone is super hyped about a show and I can't for the life of me understand why. And this is exactly what happened with Re:Zero. Everyone was excited about it and called it the best anime or compared it to objectively superior shows. I watched 12 episodes of the show and got bored of it. I also had to ... 
Aug 15, 2016
This show made me really depressed. Not because it was so sad though, but because I feel like I lost too many hours watching useless, boring filler episodes. I mean, sure, I'm not doing anything interesting or important with my life anyway but when I waste my time I want to at least ENJOY wasting it. I did some research before watching this show and most people said that I should watch Clannad before watching After Story and so I did. And I feel betrayed because only a tiny fraction of episodes was really necessary.
Don't worry, I'm gonna tell you which ones: episodes 1, 2, ... |
