Are you ready for the suffering?
Impression
I’m actually pleasantly surprised. Re:Zero is pretty interesting. I mean, I do like suffering perhaps a little too much (which is odd, because I also like super cute things a little too much) but I had no idea it would be this grimdark. I initially wanted to pick it up for several reasons. The first was because of the seiyuu – as expected, Emilia and Felt were both great. Noto Mamiko (kind of a cross between Ohara Sayaka and Hayamin) as the semen demon with a lewd outfit was also a nice surprise, I didn’t realize she was on the cast at first. The second is because isekai (‘reincarnating or being teleported to a fantasy world’-type plots) is the future of anime, as I said back when I did that post on Konosuba. I’m still waiting for that Mushoku Tensei adaptation. And a third would be because of based White Fox. I know they didn’t exactly live up to their pedigree with Underwater Ray Romano 2 (although I personally liked it a lot more than I should have) but they have the resources to pull off something good, and it’s working quite well so far. It’s two-cours as well instead of split-cour like literally everything with more than one planned season is these days, so that’s nice. White Fox finds a way.
Speaking of its production, I was really surprised by its pacing and direction in general. The director is a literally who (he’s had lots of support roles in some big-name titles, but he hasn’t headed up a project other than Wakaba Girl) which is a little alarming at first, but he’s done good with this set of pilot episodes. It’s not like this counted as two episodes after all – it was an hour-long special of the first episode split into two parts presumably for the sake of better pacing, which was a great decision. As a result they didn’t have to rush anything, nor did they have to end on a weird cliffhanger at the 22-minute mark. I also liked how they used CG to liven up the city and make it seem like an active, bustling place – it was a little jarring when I couldn’t pinpoint what exactly felt out of place, but it was cool to suddenly realize that the hippo and lizard talking in the corner of the screen weren’t just part of a static background accompanying Subaru, but were actually moving and talking. It’s the power of money!
In hindsight, I really should have expected that a Groundhog Day-style plot with ‘dying’ as the trigger to restart a loop would involve a lot of suffering. Like Hakomari. I also don’t really expect anyone else to be pulled into his loop with him (seeing as he’s the only one from an isekai) so that means Subaru will be the only one to have permanent suffering inflicted on him as he dies again and again. And indirectly, that means we suffer too! No matter how much it might hurt to see the others around him die (I was very angry when Felt was killed, cute lolis are not to be harmed) each loop you despair more at the fact that all the connections Subaru made in the previous loop are now gone. Doesn’t that sound fun? All the relationships and friendships he builds up with different people are reset when he dies. Maybe the green loli will never found by her parents now. His acquaintance with Emilia doesn’t exist any more, even though in the first loop he got to know her and befriend her and she told him to do his best. He got to know the giant dude and Felt in the second loop, but then all three of them died again. It’s like he’s destined to suffer until he reaches the next save point (if there even is one) without getting a bad end.
And most of all, you despair at the fact that Subaru doesn’t seem to have any idea what the hell is even going on. I can’t believe he spent the entire second loop not realizing that he’d in fact died the first time, and that something was wrong with how no-one remembered him. The shopkeeper was angry again, the pawn shop floor wasn’t covered with blood, and most of all the massive wound to his stomach disappeared. Emilia was nice enough to take care of him when he’d merely been beaten up by muggers – there’s no way she would randomly abandon him if he’d been stabbed, not least of all because he’d helped her out so much up until that point. The fact that she was gone should have set off warning bells. For all his supposed RPG smarts he wasn’t very perceptive – it’s not an issue of him being out of it for the first couple of hours, he spent the entire second loop without thinking through things at all. I won’t fault him for not knowing that her name obviously wasn’t Satella though. She clearly did that to test him – to see how he’d react when he heard that name and to ascertain just how little he knew. Might the Jealous Witch be her estranged (and most probably evil) sister? Who most probably has something to do with why half-elves are discriminated against even though Emilia is such a qt?
I have no idea about the insignia though, and we won’t find out any more until we learn who exactly Emilia is and who she’s affiliated with. The moment Elsa knew Subaru was part of Emilia’s faction, she went absolutely batshit on him. Not that we’re ever going to get anywhere with anything until Subaru learns to understand that he’s died before, that he’s stuck in a time loop and that he should use his knowledge wisely to understand how he should play his cards. I love how he was so concerned with encountering generic clichés to help him out, because that’s exactly what I was afraid they’d do to give him an easier time – but if stuff like that happens it’s not likely to matter anyway since his chances of dying from now on are pretty high. Does he even get an ability other than Revival? All he has with him in each loop is some food, his fists, his Keit-Ai, his memories and his mounting despair. I wonder if he ever ends up killing himself to get a free do-over? Are there penalties if he does that? Or a limited number of re-runs if he leaps through time too much?
This’ll be so much fun! I haven’t read the light novels, but if it’s a time loop fantasy isekai adaptation with cute silver-haired girls and lolis it’s well within my strike zone. And it just happens to be written by Haunted. Remember to press F to pay respects.
Possibility of Watching: High
Possibility of Blogging: High
It’s almost as if the universe gave Vantage another chance to cover the show of his “best girl”, except now she’s rocking white and purple rather than red and black snickers
Teasing aside, I’ll be happily along for the ride. I love how it’s Subaru’s initiative that leads to his improvements each time, rather than the realization that he’s been reset (it’s interesting how he took a while to realize) or just some special instinct (no offense Haruhiro, love ya). Now… if only he’ll take Satella this time around to intercept Felt BEFORE she gets into Rom’s shop – it’d totally be fair game. At that point it’s just a matter of mounting a defensive against Elsa… or at least not mentioning Satella this time around. Although I doubt that’ll help in the long run since he’d probably be tracked even if he hadn’t gotten killed. Ah, listen to this viewer spout unpleasantly predictable possibilities~! Haha… Let’s just wait and see (or read the manga, if I can’t help myself come tomorrow morning)
Hahahaha… hey, how come you have “best girl” in quote marks? You’re not an Axis cultist are you? Come and walk the path of explosions with me!
I’m actually going to hold off on picking a best girl here until I learn more about each of them. I don’t think it’d help if Subaru brought Satella/Emilia with him to Felt – all she cares about is that she’s paid, and they’re both broke. Her friendship with Subaru (if it can even be called that) has been reset and it’ll be hard to get her to believe him. And Satella is the person she stole from to begin with, unless Satella manages to take it off her again in a fight. The shop was still trashed during the first loop though (and both Rom and Felt were presumably still killed) so that might be something to watch out for. Maybe Elsa never intended to pay.
The best outcome is not to fight Elsa but also not give her the thing, although that would be screwing over Rom and his shop when she turns up. Your guess is as good as mine, really. I won’t read the source material at all this time, I’ll be going into it blind!
One thing I’ve noticed is that the isekai genre is very popular among Japanese webnovelists – nearly every new webstory is a shameless ripoff of each other, and the MC is either a beta-ish harem lead or a super-alpha a–hole.
That said, there are the occasional few that branch into fairly interesting premises, like the one where the MC (unbeknownst to his friends) is secretly a Fate/UBW-esque modern mage, and his modern magic is far more advanced than the fantasy world’s wizardry (ie. fantasy wizards need a wand and long complex spells; he only needs a finger-snap and at least 1 sentence).
Which is one is that? It sounds like Rudeus and his voiceless incantations from Mushoku Tensei. I guess there’s only so much you can do with deviating from the tried and true method of establishing life in a parallel world with cute bishoujo companions and a unique special power. There was that one isekai series about a librarian girl who died and got reincarnated into a world with no books though, that was a nice change.
I’ve noticed that I usually have to stick with an isekai LN/WN in the long-term before I start really getting into it – my interest in Kuro no Maou dipped after the initial grimdark shock factor wore off for example, and as an epic fantasy Mushoku Tensei had all the time it needed to take care of world-building, character development and plot at its own pace. Tate no Yuusha was an exception, where I initially revelled in the suffering and then the immense justice boner feels before slowly losing more and more interest.
The webnovel with the modern mage is called Isekai Mahou wo Okereteru/The Other World’s Magic is Too Far Behind. It’s already gotten a LN version, and the author’s stopping work on the webnovel to work n the light novel version full time.
Here’s a link to all translated chapters, although it has passed through several different translators – quality differs among them.
http://www.novelupdates.com/series/isekai-mahou-wa-okureteru/
I did read a bit of the librarian girl one – there’s also a few like it which seem to cater for female readers. They read more like shoujo + reverse harem mangas though.
The light novel version of Tate no Yuusha might be more interesting for you, it’s VERY different from the WN with a lot of new and rewritten content. The novel emphasizes action-adventure more, the MC is a bit more understanding, and it introduces LN-original characters and story arcs (the current volume’s in the middle of one such original arc). No fan translations of the LN exist, but there’s an official translation of Tate no Yuusha in English if your’e interested.
Thanks, I’ll give it a go. And yeah, I’ve dipped into some isekai manga with female protagonists (one was something like ‘In Another World I’m Known As the Black Healer’ and another was about a reincarnated loli thinking she’s cheating as a magician because she can see and communicate with the spirits involved in generating magic) and they basically have bishies everywhere. They’re a nice change, though I haven’t gotten far enough in any of them to see whether any classic shoujo angst creeps in.
Does the Tate no Yuusha LN still have that issue the WN had with reading like a play? At times it just had speech for lines on end without any reference to who’s talking, and the translator had to add in brackets after each sentence to make sure we still knew what was going on. I might buy it, it’s enjoyable and rather popular for good reasons. More action-adventure is nice. I lost interest around the time when Naofumi adopted all the loli and shota slaves to work on his land and the plot slowed to a lull. After the Spirit Turtle thing the only real excitement I had was when he found the other three douchebags who’d gotten fucked up by the turtle.
I’m not sure if the LN writing still has the above issues you described – I’ll need to check with other people who’ve read the Japanese novels.
I do know that Naofumi and Raphthalia are adventuring in Glass’s world per the latest LN, I don’t know if the slave thing’s occurred yet.
Have you read the manga version of Tate? I think that follows the LN more closely.
I totally forgot about Glass, she disappeared in the WN after the wave and hasn’t appeared again in the 200~ chapters I’ve read. Adventuring is good though, it’s the greatest enjoyment I get out of reading isekai stories. I thought the second half of the first arc in Arifureta was beautiful, and then dungeon-conquering degenerated into harem hijinks and the whole thing went to shit. Maybe it’s because I wholeheartedly devoted myself to Yue only.
I’ve dipped into the Tate no Yuusha manga to get a better idea of the character designs, but I haven’t read through all of what’s available.
The CG and the fighting was really nice and tbh i thought they might want to censore the sh*t out of the anime because of all the killing
I think he was to focused on getting back the insignia, relief of beeing still alive and the possible joy of helping out “satella”.. and maybe something along the lines of “maybe it was all just a dejavu”
I was so sad when i saw felt getting slashed and the only other thing i didnt wanted to see at that moment was her getting split in two and we get to see more than we liked to
Also I have been reading a lot in the comment section like “just kill yourself and back to the checkpoint” but ppl forget that he is still feeling the pain of dying and not the instant-death one. its funny how so many cry just because they cut themself with a piece of paper but ignore the pain of having your stomach cut open lol
Btw there will be a twist here and there and your questions at the end will be answered since it is part of the play-rules. dont take the play part too serious
Oh and I liked the song at the end but I love that kind of singing in general along with lolis
Deja vu could explain most of it except his disappearing stomach wound, which was the first thing he checked for when he regained consciousness. I don’t know what his thought process in the LN was, but I guess he went for more rational-sounding (and reassuring) explanations in his head instead of immediately thinking it was time travel. Then again he figured out within seconds of teleporting that he’d gone to a parallel world.
At least Felt is alive again (unless Subaru jumps to a new timeline with each death and she’s now dead in two other universes). He can still protect her smile! The song at the end should have been the ED, I know the OP’s by Suzuki Konomi and I don’t think that was her. Both should be great when they’re played properly next week.
It is not really the same realizing that one is in another world and realizing one was just killed a second ago.
The OP is [Suzuki Konomi – Redo] while the ED is [Myth&Roid – Styx Helix] and since I doubt both of them would make such a song, means it was just an insert song which we are not going to hear for a while sadly
Re Zero listed for 25 episodes.
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/daily-briefs/2016-04-04/re-zero-starting-life-in-another-world-anime-listed-with-25-episodes/.100658
Two-cours confirmed! I remember hearing something about Amazon.co.jp listing Re:Zero BD-preorders in a way that would total 25 episodes. I’m glad White Fox are sticking to two-cour shows in an era where split-cours have somehow become the norm.