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Re:Zero Season 3 is an odd one.

The animation quality was great, a huge step up from the previous season (which was most people's main complaint about it), and the content of this season story-wise was phenomenal, but after all is said and done, it felt like something was missing.

This wasn't the case for the first few episodes. The element of mystery and tasteful despair really set this Season up to be on the level of Season 1, at least tonally, which was extremely promising; Unfortunately though, something changed part of the way into this Season. Perhaps it was because of the huge number of fights, ... or the large cast of characters that needed attention, but regardless of what the core issue was, it resulted in the majority of the Season failing to properly convey fantastical yet subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) dark elements that Re:Zero is built upon.

After the first encounter, this Season genuinely felt akin to Shonen slop, with the perspective ping-ponging from one character and their fight to the next. At a glance one might assume that this is a given considering the events of this arc in the Light Novel, but what a lot of people don't understand is that parts of the source will always be cut in an adaptation, and in Season 3 they cut things that simply shouldn't have been cut. This is perfectly put on display in regards to a certain greedy guy who has a huge presence in this season. The fight with this figure in the anime is very goofy, which on its own is fine and really plays up this character's pathetic nature; but unlike for instance the Betelgeuse fight in the first season, which was goofy but still carried aspects of underlying horror/threat, this fight had none of that.

I personally left that experience a little bit disappointed, having had great hopes for it; but I relented, assuming that in the source material that fight was the same way... apparently it wasn't?? Supposedly everything that was missing, such as genuinely menacing moments, and monologues that delved deeper into this character and their twisted nature, existed in the Light Novel but were excluded from the anime. This to me is frankly unacceptable from a directive standpoint. It would be different if they simply had too little time to include these things, but not only did they cut the season's contents down from what COULD have been 24 episodes, they devoted a good chunk of that specific fight as well as other ones to flashy moments and fanservice. I don't mind these things, but the fact that they were included while CORE elements of what this season SHOULD have been weren't, is silly. To put it in perspective, it's literally like if the moments where Betelgeuse talks to himself, explaining his logic and twisted sense of love, were omitted. These are core to helping the audience understand this character and their perspective, even if it's almost alien and frankly insane.

To generalize what I've said and apply it to this entire season, it genuinely just needed more time allocated to its characters and the themes attributed to them. This is surely not exclusive to the aforementioned fight, and I have no doubt that there are other moments that fail to carry the energy that they should have. For example, I don't know for certain, but considering how out of place it felt in the anime, Garfiel's character arc definitely had aspects of it cut. To know for sure about any of these things I need to fully read the Light Novel (which I intend on doing), but until then, given Tappei Nagatsuki's amazing track record, I choose to believe that these flaws are all due to a failure to properly adapt the source.

You cant even blame it on budget this time like you could with Season 2 Part 2, because all of these episodes looked phenomenal; It's simply a directing issue and I couldn't be more disappointed. I personally think that they did things in the way that they did in order to attract new viewers (tourists), but I'm probably not going to get confirmation on that.

With all of this being said I love Re:Zero and consider it one of the greatest series ever conceived, so the lowest I can give this Season is a 7. This Season is by no means unwatchable, it's quite a fun watch actually (other than that Liliana episode holy &*#%), but if you appreciate the complexity of the earlier Seasons it will no doubt leave you feeling as if it could have been more. I just hope that the reception is mixed enough that White Fox understands what went wrong and gives the show a full 24 episodes for its next season.

TLDR: Needed more episodes, with time dedicated to complex aspects of characters and tone-building, decided to clip farm with its budget instead.