Anime: Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu (2020)

The second season continues to remind us why despite the claims of it being a deconstruction of isekai, it’s still a power fantasy. Subaru is constantly hailed as a normal person thrown in an isekai, yet he is a NEET and a dork that the moment he realizes he is in a different world he doesn’t look for a way home and instead runs after waifus. And most of the girls are all over him; even the extremely young ones. Is that what a normal person is like in the minds of delusional otakus?

And don’t get me started on the double standards of the return by death bullshit. Subaru is hailed as a protagonist who differs from other isekai protagonists by not being overpowered, and yet he has an OP power that nobody can counter. And if pain is a lot worse than death, which is why (supposed) he is not using it actively for resetting the plot every time he messes up, then why is he willingly ending himself? The big fuss everybody was yapping about during the first season was how painful it is every time he dies and therefore he does his best not to die. And here he is abusing that power by ending himself so he will not have to suffer through the negative consequences. It’s the definition of a copout.

And even then, why is he not ending himself every time he messes up? Sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn’t. It’s almost as if he never learns and has no specific mindset so that the author can use him however he likes instead of how he should be acting. Or, in a more sinister way, Subaru forgets to off himself so a lot of gratuitous and otherwise needless goreporn can fill half the episodes. There is a hilarious scene he gets eaten alive by bunnies. I repeat, bunnies! L O L, where did that come from? Oh well, it’s something new and completely changes the plot because time resets when Subaru dies. Something he couldn’t do himself by just killing himself. You didn’t see that coming. By the way, those cannibalistic bunnies are really evil, ain’t they? Because of their evil act Subaru is now punished by going back in time when he is fully healed, his friends are alive, and the world hasn’t frozen to death. Man, such evil bunnies, did you see the harm they caused?

And then it’s all that bullshit about his power not being a panacea to every problem because he cannot control the save point. He cannot reset everything that went wrong, such as being an asshole to Emilia or preventing Rem from getting magically forgotten. If that is true, then why has Emilia already forgiven him by abusing the very ability that is not supposed to be a copout? He defeated that whale monster by resetting his progress until he did it right and impressed her. So much for not being able to rely on that, and having to face the consequences of his actions. You can bet your sweet ass the same thing will happen with Rem. He will just keep failing until he has a perfect playthrough on how to wake her up and return everyone’s memories of her. There is no tension. Nothing is at stake. There is no time pressure.

And holy smokes, what happened to plot progression? The entire season is a nonstop back and forth without even a resolution at the end. The story hasn’t budged an inch forward since all Subaru does is dying and going back to the exact same save point. I know a lot of casuals are going to say it moved a lot forward by constantly feeding you with new information and more revelations, even if the actual plot is not going anywhere. It’s building up the setting! It’s unraveling the mystery! It’s digging into the mindset of its characters! Yeah, all those are done through talking. The dialogues are ridiculously long and tedious, and worse of it all is that they get erased every time Subaru resets time. If talking is all there is to the mystery and the characters, then the show sucks.

By the way, it’s insane how this lack of content makes many pretentious overthinkers to write essays that are longer than the show itself. I found 45 minute long videos about episodes where the only thing that happens is waifus infodumping boring shit. The absence of plot lets the pretentious overthinkers to talk about whatever bullshit comes to mind. Because as Peter Griffith has taught us “A boat is a boat, but a mystery box can be anything”. Lesson of the day. The less plot your show has, the more people will talk about it in order to add the plot that should have been there from the start.

Regarding the suffering, dear lord, it’s tortureporn of the highest caliber. It has lolis begging to be brutally murdered by a neet otaku. It has more lolis who control monsters that butcher to death hundreds of innocent people. It has even more lolis, being gutted alive and their insides splattering all over the place. It has people turning to glass and then mercilessly smashed to pieces. It has people being sadistically stabbed in the eye and allowed to live so they can die by the hemorrhage and pain. It has people getting skewered through with hands when they least expect it by those they trust. It has people with their heads getting smashed to pieces when they are defenseless while trying to help someone else. It has people getting chopped to little pieces by killer bunnies. It has waifus turning to psychopaths who let Subaru sleep on their lap as they laugh hysterically and he is dying after his body got shred to pieces.

Of course all that don’t matter since there are no consequences. No matter how many times someone gets brutally murdered, he will be fine when time resets. There is no perma death and anyone who says there is, is a complete retard. Not to mention how half the times he is not even freaking out every time he goes back in time. After a million times of doing it he doesn’t feel a thing anymore. Anyways, if you want to see torture, suffering and brutal killings, you will get them in spades. Extra spice for all the parts where Subaru doesn’t die immediately, because he gets saved by his friends who don’t know of his power, only to suffer and get brutally murdered anyways half an episode later. They try to make it seem like ‘oh shit, he didn’t die right away, which means the save point will change and everybody will remain dead’. Yeah, it’s trying to fool you into thinking his power is not fixing every problem, which is obviously a lie because time resets as normal and everyone is alive and well. Also can we at least admit we don’t care about any of the characters who constantly die and return to life a few seconds later? People end up remembering only the gruesome ways they die instead of their complex personalities and really meaningful actions, that are not undone in every episode. Such as all the good Subaru’s friends do when they save him. Really helpful and didn’t magically erase from the plot. Let’s face it, most watch Rezero for the suffering porn and the waifus.

Speaking of waifus, we have many additions to Subaru’s harem. More maids for serving the supposed ‘normal MC’ and more witches that infodump at the same time they seduce the supposed ‘normal MC’. By the way, some of them are underage, because Japan. Did I mention the female ghosts? Subaru is so normal even ghosts want to have sex with him. And holy crap does the author treat women as objects or what? Every time he doesn’t know what do with a waifu, he knocks her unconscious so Subaru has to protect them. Because that’s the closest thing he has to an objective. Protecting sleeping beauties that, just like in the fairy tale, they will instantly be all over him the moment they wake up. Which is exactly what happened with the half elf waifu. First thing she does when she wakes up is yelling “Subaru is mine, get away from my master”. Remember when she hated him for treating her like shit? Where did that negative repercussion which can’t be fixed by his otherwise not broken power go to? You can already tell what Rem is going to do as soon as she wakes up. Remember when she butchered him to death in an earlier playthough? Thank goodness his otherwise not broken power didn’t negate that so he could make her fall in love with him when just a few minutes ago she chopped him to little pieces.

By the way, I laugh over many tards of the show who are constantly getting worked up over all the progress Subaru loses every time he dies, as if something goes to waste. Why doesn’t anyone complain about all the edgy shit he’s undoing every time he dies? Like that serial box tiger. He saves Subaru’s life in one episode, while in the previous episode he wanted to kill everyone. Why are they not complaining about that getting lost, hm?

And I’ll be damned, what happened to normal traveling? Subaru is now teleporting out of nowhere in weird places. It’s like the author doesn’t know how to make him go there normally and has to use cheap magic so whatever shit he has in mind can happen in any way he likes. Thank goodness these powers are not broken because they would make the MC not to come off as a normal person.

There is a part where Subaru is in a fictional version of his real life back home and we are supposed to think he, supposed, realizes he is not special and, supposed, becomes a better person. Which is obviously a lie, since this is far from the first time Subaru realizes he is not special. It happens every few episodes, when things don’t go his way and he ends up crying on the lap of a waifu. Saying he just realized it now is a lie, because he constantly does before forgetting it and going back to thinking he is special for another three episodes. Rinse and repeat. Also, the scenes with his parents had no build up. This is the first time we see them and therefore there is little gravity behind what is going on. If they were introduced in the beginning of the story and half of what is going on now was established back then or during a few flashbacks, then there would be an actual reason to care about them and their relation with Subaru. Instead of that, we had dozens of episodes of a protagonist who doesn’t have a backdrop or established motivations that don’t go beyond chasing after waifus. Also, his parents are not real. He didn’t actually return to his world and he isn’t actually interacting with them. It’s all an illusion made by a witch. It’s fake, hot air, doesn’t matter. We are literally watching a show where the power fantasy is real and the real world is fake. That’s messed up.

Also, what the fudge do you think is going to happen next? You honestly think Subaru is going to return to the real world and make friends? No, he hates reality and will do his best to run back to a magical fantasy land that has videogame save slots, and where sleeping beauties and maids and ghost witches love him for being normal and with not with broken powers at all. He will go back to chasing after waifus in this fictional power fantasy for ronery otakus. Which was the case since the very beginning. What value is there in his realization if nothing is going to change? That’s the hypocrisy of Rezero that so many are defending. It’s escapism fantasy that pretends to be a subversion when down to it it’s only fooling around with a done to death premise without actually changing anything. It’s the tenth time Subaru realizes he is not special, his supposed development came out of nowhere through characters that were just established, through magic that works however it suits the plot, and through illusions instead of real life.