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Forum - View topicREVIEW: Re:Zero -Starting Life in Another World- Season 2 Limited Edition Anime Blu-Ray Review
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ThatGuyWhoLikesThings
Posts: 1037 |
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The snow was for attracting the rabbits. It wasn't just ordinary snow, it was a large-scale spell casted by Roswaal (that took several days to complete). And since the rabbits are drawn to mana, it was like a magnet for them.
I assume you mean the rabbits in this case and not the mabeasts attacking the mansion, but they were brought to force Subaru's hand as well as put a clock on him. That, plus hiring the assassins to attack the mansion at the same time was Roswaal's way for forcing Subaru to choose between saving either those at the mansion or those at the Sanctuary, to ingrain in him that he has to abandon his humanity and all other connections if he is to be able to help Emilia, which Subaru rebukes. Believe me, you aren't the only one that had trouble following the plot at times. Even reading the novels, it can be hard to tell where characters stand in terms of alignment or motivation at any given point, and not everything has a clear-cut explanation (mostly for the purposes of later developments). To put into perspective how dense this arc is, the first season adapted the first 3 arcs. This season was exclusively the fourth, and every episode needed to be extended by several minutes as well. The harem allegations can be a little hard to deny at times, and iirc they don't entirely go away, but thankfully it is pretty easy to ignore if you don't care for them, unlike many of it's peers. It is still an isekai light novel after all, i would be shocked if it wasn't occasionally a little self-indulgent (next arc does come a little close to testing my patience a bit, but thankfully not enough for me to put it down). |
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all-tsun-and-no-dere
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 660 |
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Haha, yeah. I have a lot going on in my life that can make it hard to give shows 100% of my attention so whenever I have a hard time following a narrative, I have to ask myself whether it's just me or if it's genuinely hard to follow. I asked a couple people who have like Re:Zero from the get-go and they confirmed that it really was tough to tell what was going on for a lot of it! Guess I'll have to watch it again. Oh nooooooo. |
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ThatGuyWhoLikesThings
Posts: 1037 |
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I will say, Crunchyroll's subs sometimes don't do the show any favors. Certain dialogue is sometimes more confusingly worded than it should be, and I recall at least one instance in the first season where a line of dialogue was somehow translated as meaning the opposite of what it actually meant in Japanese, which never got corrected (iirc Subaru's reasoning for why Emilia might want to give out her name as Satella to strangers). So aside from the already apparent difficulties in adapting such dense material and the usual minor cuts that may have helped elucidate certain aspects, there's also that potential issue.
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OrdepNM
 Posts: 261 |
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Technically, the rabbits are attracted by any large usage of mana so Roswal didn't have to create snow, just cast any magic in a large scale. That he made snow was part of his plan to further drive Emilia into a corner and make her completely dependent on Subaru - which he saw as a necessary step in shaping Subaru into the person Roswal believed he needed to be. Emilia is known to the villagers who were being housed in the Sanctuary and ever since she announced her candidacy to the throne, it's a known fact that Roswal found her deep in the unnatural permafrost of Elior Forest. If and when it starts to unnaturally snow in your hometown after the "half-devil" takes residence there, it doesn't take long for the other inhabitants to surmise whose to blame for their sudden tribulations. Also, on the matter of Re:Zero being sometimes too opaque or obtuse, it's worth noting that in book form, it very much rewards re-reading older volumes in light of information that gets revealed later in the story. The writer likes to off-handedly write seemingly inconsequential tidbits into the narrative only to have them turn out to be clues for mysteries it only establishes several volumes after. Alot of Roswal's words and actions have a whole new meaning when you realize he not only knew exactly who Subaru was from the start, but he already read ahead and knows all that's to happen - that sort of thing. The anime does sand off some of this to an extent (real Rezero lore hounds know the main series is just the starting point, alot of important information ends up being dispensed in various side storied, short stories and ain't no way the anime is diving that deep), but the overall feeling of "there's alot happening under the surface that we're not privy to" still lingers even in anime format. |
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tintor2
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Never saw a harem approach in this anime but instead more like a horror especially with how gruesome are some deaths. Maybe that the scene of the witch seducing Roswaal was 18+ content in terms of sex like content.
Something I noticed about season 2 especially in its second half is that the writers decided to drop the amount of deaths and instead focus on scenes where the characters' trials come across mostly as interactions kinda like Persona 4's Shadows. Emilia even seemed inspired by Subaru based on her changes and demeanor. Still, I'm surprised how long is it taking the staff to make a new season. Was the anime catching up with the source material? |
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Blazi
 Posts: 502 |
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It's now what people call the "Re:Zero" effect. Season 1 aired, and there was no plan for a sequel cause they thought it wouldn't be that popular. It blew up. There was an immense hype around it for a second season, and because it wasn't planned and started to being worked on, it took way longer. Also White Fox was having a staff fallout with a lot leaving to make their own studios, Studio Bind and Atelierpontdarc respectively, so that's probably another key factor. |
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OrdepNM
Posts: 261 |
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@tintor2
There are some harem elements to it, specially early on (well, as much as you can call the Rem - Subaru - Emilia situation an harem). It was more prominent in the web novel version of the story, then it got somewhat ironed out in the conversion to light novel, and it got further cut off in the anime adaptation (much to the chagrin of Rem stans I might add). There's also just the fact that Subaru meets alot of people - and quite a large % of them end up being women, waifus if you will, which ends up giving it an air of an harem series, even if no harem elements are actually present. The fact that Subaru did not die at all in the second half of the arc was deliberate. Up to the point where he meets Satella, Subaru's inferiority complex, coupled with the deceptively OP nature of return by death, had lead him to increasingly develop a complex of "my whole worth is to die so I can fix things, my own suffering be damned", which only gets furthered by the impossible maze that Roswal put him in - that's when (in the books, the anime doesn't have inner voice) we see Subaru starting to think in multi-loop terms ie, assuming that getting to the bottom of things will require at least a couple more deaths from him. After he pulls back from this mindset, instead of relying on RBD to brute force things, he relies and trusts those around him - Otto, Ram, Emilia, Garfiel etc, and gets to the solution that was eluding him. That was an important lesson for his future but it won't always go that smoothly and that won't be the dynamic going forward, he'll still die, rest assured. Depending on how much trust you put into insider info and leaks, the long wait between S2 and S3 had most to do with the restructuring that White Fox was undergoing and the unwillingness to move to a different studio. All the material that will be covered in S3 (and unlike S2, it seems we're actually getting 2 arcs this time) was published at the time S2 ended. |
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Juno016
 Posts: 2435 |
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I find it funny that so many people who watched season 2 thought, "Wait, I think I mischaracterized season 1. I need to rewatch it." For me, I thought season 1 was great, but the series didn't solidify for me until I started reading the light novels from the beginning and suddenly things I glanced over in the anime became vastly more interesting and complex than I had originally given the series credit for. It's one thing to introduce ideas or characters super early before the actual arc they appear inーI've seen lots of series do this to some degree and it's pleasing to see some level of planning in a long-running storyーbut in Re:Zero, it is the far more subtle details of each character and their personalities, quirks, words, and behavior that hint not only toward who they are for later arcs, but also why they matter to the story in the first place. Cue season 1 Subaru noticing differences in Roswaal's behavior each loop (sometimes he stays at the mansion and joins Subaru for a bath and teaches him about magic, sometimes he leaves the mansion and leaves it vulnerable to attack, and sometimes he returns just in time to save Subaru) and thinking this means different loops just vary slightly naturally... completely unaware that it is his own choices in each loop that the book is predicting and telling Roswaal to act differently in response to Subaru each time.
And as someone else said, there is a ton of side content to enjoy, and I mean enjoy, because while the author is primarily concerned with telling Subaru's story in the main series, he truly does consider each and every character to have complete agency over their role in the story and to be a fully realized person whose story is worth telling us in their own right. I don't dislike Rem by any means, but I also agree that she is one of the lesser-realized characters by the time of her coma, mostly because it feels like her character arc was in service of Subaru's and it's hard to dettach the two from each other. Of course, once she wakes up, I hope we get to see her grow even more. Also, to the reviewer, did you not notice that Emilia is the primary "waifu" focus of the whole season, and yet she is the only season 2 "waifu" who doesn't get a sticker in the box set? She's my favorite of the girls in the series, so I was a bit annoyed by that fact. Lol |
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Stelman257
Posts: 314 |
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Maaaaaan that’s rough, be real, how bad do they get. Beatrix’s character resolution leading to her just literally sitting in Subaru’s lap for the rest of the season was already pretty bad for me, and I don’t really know how much more of that I’ll be able to tolerate. |
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ThatGuyWhoLikesThings
Posts: 1037 |
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Iunno, "rest of the season" in this case only really meant the last episode, and she was of critical importance to saving Sanctuary in that same episode. The way you word it, it sounds like she was sidelined and did nothing, but that just isn't true. But regardless, 4 arcs deeper into the web novel, and only a single character gets introduced that may or may not be in love with Subaru (and mostly because she reminds him so much of someone that she actually loves). Interactions with other female characters never really rise above casual or playful flirting, nothing serious. |
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5958 Location: Virginia, United States |
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Re:Zero is not a harem tale.
Suburu has made it particularly clear who he loves and wants. There is no romantic room for anyone else, even Rem. That is not to mean that Suburu and Rem aren't close, just that Suburu only has one person in mind and everyone knows it. |
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flamemasterelan
Posts: 497 |
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Her appearances in the last episode also included her finally connecting with Roswaal at Pandora's grave, which Subaru was mentioned during but not present in, and her enjoying herself at the party with other people for the first time in the series. |
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Shay Guy
 Posts: 2337 |
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I know I'm replying late, but things have been rough for me lately, and I kept procrastinating, in part because I knew this was going to be long.
The day this review was posted, I was finally able to find a series of essays on isekai I'd read a year ago, written by one Mo Black (who the reviewer might remember wrote an Anime Feminist piece on MHA a few years ago). It included what I thought were some interesting criticisms of Re:Zero. That section alone is 11,000 words long, and the framing device is gimmicky enough that I imagine it'd annoy a lot of readers, so I'll summarize the main points:
I'm not sure I agree with all the points the author makes -- certainly, I'm not as qualified to talk about race as Mo, or as qualified to talk about gender as Caitlin -- but I could tell a lot of work went into the essays, and I thought the arguments on Re:Zero were at least food for thought. |
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Probablytomorrow
Posts: 165 |
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Subjective experience is subjective, but I didn’t have trouble following the plot in that example. Moreover, I think the lack of specifics and traditional storytelling structure in that example served a purpose. It hinted that this conflict over the insignia, although important in a sense and very flashy and dramatic and twist-filled, was not something we should consider as thematically important. It was not meant to impart the story’s thematic focus. Because if we were considering it as important, we might be considering Subaru to be a scrappy, heroic kind of person rather than someone who’s metaphorically building a house out of bullshit. We are meant to internalize on some level that Subaru’s perspective is narrow and flawed. I disagree with the essay’s basic assertion that Return By Death is Subaru’s power or that he’s in control of it. I think the story means for us to be afraid that he is very much at the mercy of Satella, and that he is being placed at specific moments in time and not allowed to advance forward until he does as expected of him. I think the thing about Subaru’s mistakes in episode 13 is that we are expected to be critical of Subaru’s selfishness. We are also meant to realize that, in a manner of speaking, the plot will not be forcing him to realize what he did was wrong. Subaru continues to interpret the unfolding events as justification for his behavior, but as with every arc thus far, the story is implying there’s always a greater context that he doesn’t have. It’s not until episode 18, when Rem tells him that he’s only capable of seeing himself from one perspective, that he begins to really realize his biases. From the start of the arc, he convinced himself that his perspective is more important than anyone else’s, because Return By Death has made it true in a way. But it’s not a natural perspective, it’s not accurate, it's destructive, and it's self-destructive. I think from that episode onward he is consistently making an effort to be more humble and deferential to others. |
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