#thominozero

This is a strange episode because it’s weirdly quite good despite not a terrible amount going on in it. The first part is a 25-minute back-and-forth between Subaru and Rem and the second part is Subaru proposing to Crusch that they go and beat “The White Whale” because he knows when and where it will come.

Primarily this episode is Subaru Natsuki realizing he is a massive swinging chode or at least admitting to himself that he is less than hero. It is a shame that this animé has taken this long to get good but I understand the wait and I also appreciate the rolling of eyes that is happening right now because you’ve definitely heard that phrase before. The main character admits that the secretly enjoys being the center of attention in some ways and has been dealing with his own problems by trying to make everything about him,

The scene between Rem and Subaru reminded me a lot of Pride and Prejudice or traditional English theater because the primary focus was on how Subaru Natsuki wanted to give up on trying to help and elope to a different country with Rem and the crux of why this was impossible, despite Rem admitting it would be nice to start a country life, is fundamentally the principle of abandoning who one used to be rather than the place. Instead of using this idea as a finalé like a lot of romantic tragedies do, it’s used to help the main character realize that he isn’t altogether pointless and has some redeeming features - which is true. Rem’s main motivation is that Subaru helped her realize her humanity and a lot of what is appealing about leaving is embracing her humanity rather than being a demon with closeted anger and a sense of duty. She lists off the idealistic way she wants to live her life with Subaru but decides that she cannot allow it because Subaru is better off being what he wants to be compared to withdrawing.

Writing 20 minutes of pure dialogue between two people is no small feat and to do it well is hard to master as a writer and for it to be directed as well as this deserves plaudits by itself. The show spilled it guts out and it’s about time too because I was going from being mildly irritated by Subaru Natsuki to downright hating him. It goes well beyond the realm of being self-aware to realize your protagonist is annoying to actually crafting a character to be deliberately infuriating and miscommunicated. You are expected to underestimate this show and it is impossible not to. It plays on the genre of Isekais and addresses weeb culture in a creative way. There’s no getting around shitting on this one this tine around, it’s great.

HOWEVER, before I move on, I had to address this fucker.

This happens right at the start of the episode as a direct continuation from where you left off and it happens so quickly that you forget about it almost immediately because of what follows. It turns out it was Puck all along and because Emilia had died, he had to destroy the world because of some contract. It would be nice to know what this contract is so they can get the entire planet insured for damages because the conditions are too risky if you ask me. Puck turns the entire world to ice and makes laughable work of Betelgeuse which bothered me slightly because if you want to establish a good villain character, it’s not a great idea to have him die on screen so early even if it is at the hands of a doomsday moth. I just feel like he is too vulnerable now.

We’ll see.

So anyway, Subaru goes to Crusch and demands her help once again but his trading terms are far more realistic and level-headed. He said he knows when The White Whale is going to show up because he remembers what time it was on his phone when it got there. He also explains that he attracts mabeasts to exemplify is usefulness as opposed to being the Subaru who challenged a champion Knight to a sword fight for no real reason. It shows that he now knows his level, which is nice character growth. (IT’S ONLY TAKEN TEN HOURS).

It is revealed that Wilhem’s wife was the “Master Swordsman” that Otto was talking about who was killed by The White Whale which seems minor in terms of the grand plot but it’s noted that he was the only person to see through Subaru so Wilhelm is best able to notice his character change and appreciate it. They now both have some common ground with settling their demons which is the kind of subtle writing I look for instead of tedious explanations as to what the witches cult is.

Throughout this meeting of minds between Crusch and Subaru, Crusch is constantly flexing her ability to tell if someones lying or not which got annoying pretty quickly. It’s like, I get it you are a human lie-detector, get over it. Because of this ability though, she is able to agree to Subaru’s offer with a bit more leniency than before. It helped that Subaru wasn’t an annoying crying mess with no bargain to offer.

They are also joined by Anastasia and a man called Russell Fellow which sounds like what Japanese people think British people are called. He also looks like an animé Owen Wilson into the bargain. I was utterly captivated when he was on screen because his character is so ridiculous. I don’t even know if they made it clear what he does, I just kept thinking about what would happen if they made an animé version of Marley and Me with this guy in it.

They join forces to tackle the big evil mammal and I enjoyed the sequence when they were traveling to the tree of knowledge because it reminded me of Berserk and I just miss when that was good at the beginning. Everything is really nice to look at and I enjoyed the beautiful bleakness of the scenery which you are able to enjoy now that you aren’t moving at 300 m/ph in Otto Kuwen’s wagon of death.

They wait around for a bit and everyone is all happy again and it makes you realize that no-one in this show has been even remotely chipper in a very long time. Wilhelm talks wistfully about the unfortunate life of his deceased wife so you are able to get invested in his motivations a bit more. Oh, I nearly forgot.

You are introduced to this absolute beast called Ricardo so that’s the furry fetish base covered to make the show universally sexually appealing. You don’t get enough fur in animé so may I be the first to say: It’s about time. I don’t really know what is motivations are but just having him on screen is visually hilarious and I much look forward to what he’s all about in the future but if not, I don’t really care. What solidified him as an S-Tier character was that, despite being a huge beefy canine, he elects to ride a gigantic fox into battle. I am all for a Ricardo spin-off already.

The episode ends on a cliffhanger where the creature shows up in the sky and they all charge into the fight which I can’t wait for because I love a good fight scene with a big monster. It’s where this show is at it’s best in my opinion.

The show ends here and it ends fairly well with a good high note I would say. Re:ZERO does a good job and establishing that grandiose finalé feeling. i have a couple of gripes here and there but we’ll get into it.

Their way of getting around the time issue was bypassing Betelguese and his hideout and going straight to Roswaal’s manor to convince Emilia to convince the villagers to leave. By comparison, this looks like more of a thought-out operation and is directed like a classic heist scene that is reminiscent of a Mission Impossible movie or maybe Lethal Weapon to hammer that home. Everyone is involved doing different jobs that cover all the grounds and the good guys are one step further than the bad guys this time around. I could’ve done without Subaru spelling it out literally though. They tackle the spy and the problem with Betelgeuse’s wondering soui and the encounter with him feels a bit more important.

The problem I’ve had with this guy is that he has never really seemed like much of a threat especially that Subaru is able to see his trump card - the unseen hand - pretty early on. He just seems to evoke images of an edgy scooby doo monster or the old Joker character from the early Batman comics of being faintly maniacal but fundamentally non-threatening. I am aware that him and is gang of spooky dudes go and murder everyone in the village but because you don’t see them actually do it at any point - and the implication is that a lot of it were the hooded members of the witches cult - he never seems that scary. He is easily beatable and the only reason he isn’t in this episode is because they sacrifice a numbers advantage so the others can concentrate on escorting the others out of town and battering the other members of the cult. It’s just Subaru and Julius with their method being that Subaru is going to share his sense with Julius via some spell thingy that again, like everything else in this series, is bloody handy for this exact situation. I’m going to ignore the ridiculousness of his own limbs carrying himself at velocity in the picture above because... it’s just not worth the time. I have so much to pack in.

So Betelguese is killed and immediately possesses Subaru to which he produces a big long tongue when they’re fighting between personalities which is not something he could do in his body, it isn’t something he has done before and it just served to remind me of Genocide Jack from Danganronpa which is... not a positive. Subaru says the bad witch words and vanquishes Betelguese to the shadow realm to meet his goth idol who absolutely airs him which sends him back into his own body? i think? Anyway, that is the matter closed. He knicks the gospel and cheeses it. I was a little disappointed that Betelguese was represented by the current body he has, I thought they would play on the idea that it isn’t his original vessel that he has now. He doesn’t necessarily to have to have swapped bodies before but the intrigue I had about who ‘he’ was was kind of snuffed out altogether. Oh well.

Subaru hits up Otto Kuwen to get him over and out of the woods safely because he is always about exactly when he needs him for some reason. He says he’ll do anything to get a lift from him but it’s not specified what ‘anything’ was so I assume it was too rude for television. They are getting home and dry but there is an unseen hand on the horizon so Subaru heads to the back of this carriage to face it and it turns out Betelguese...

...has become this giant cockroach thing with his unseen hands making up his severed lower half of his body and multiple limbs. He is climbing all over the carriage and screaming at Subaru about Satella and he seems to think Subaru is keeping her from him in his shadow realm cage inside his body. I’m not going to lie, it was pretty cool. I love a well-designed beast and I wish there was more of it but it’s not my show. Anyway, the beetle boy is ripping the shit out of the carriage and absolutely ruining it and at no point does Otto buckle or spin out of control for even a split-second. It’s like it isn’t even happening. Aside from that, Subaru takes the gospel and.. denotorizes him I guess? Strikes his name off the Satella newsletter? He whallops the book behind him to distract his flailing arms then gives him a wee nudge off the back as he is bursting into flames and he isn’t damaging the carriage even slightly. They pull up and the carriage looks a bit crispy at the back but not at all like it’s had an angry tentacled monster all over it. You know what, I’LL LET IT GO OKAY.

They pitch up to the road where Emilia and the kids are hangiing out... I forgot about Emilia in this episode... I’ll sum it up real quick.

Emilia has been shown in isolation in various points throughout this episode thinking about Subaru and being lost in thought. She is tasked with taking the kids away and keeping them company whilst they are being moved away to which she clearly doesn’t want to do which isn’t very diplomatic of her at all and she comes off as kind of unlikable when she is supposed to be the angelic, all-good character in the show. She is zoning out when she is traveling with them because she is just thinking about him all the time even though he is a massive asshole. Said massive asshole is then informed that they have recieved word of a bomb inside the carriage where Emilia and the kids are somehow so his main perogative now is to get rid of the bomb. That is why Subaru needed Otto in the first place. Oops.

So Subaru jumps head on in and finds the burlap sack of bombs straight away and slings them into the cave to dismantle them but escapes by the skin of his teeth and is laying unconscious just beyond the now-fallen tree. Emilia rushes up to get him and waits for him to return to consciousness which I guess she has no magic powers to speed up the process in any way.

Emilia and Subaru engage in a really cheesy conversation where they both admit that they love each other and it isn’t really anything special unfortunately but what are you going to do? It is a token resolution scene but with the important aspect that Subaru actually saved her from something this time and did it for her instead of himself which I guess is supposed to undo all the conniving misdirection he was doing for the first two thirds of the series. A fine ending really but not a great one. Emilia is a trope often found in romance storylines where she is the most conventionally attractive woman at the centrefold of a love interest angle but no-one else really likes her apart from the protagonist because of some contrived nonsense reason. The best example I can think of is Ann Takamaki from Persona 5 where you’re expected to believe that she repels people because she is partly foreign in a Japanese school when in reality, no-one who looks like that in High School is extradited from friendship groups. Emilia just about gets away with it because she is part-elf which people don’t like for connections to the witch and it is apparently distinguishable just by looking. In short, I find her pretty boring as a character but I can’t necessarily argue with it.

So Emilia falls in love with Subaru because he loves her for who she is despite her race and no other reason really which I guess is fine because I can get behind the idea of feeling wanted by someone else being enough. So anyway, the credits roll and that is the end.

Or is it though because there is an after credits scene with Emilia and Subaru in the back of a carriage who act like they’ve been married for ten years and a weird scene unsues where the tiny child is jealous of Emilia being close to Subaru which is a thing that leads nowhere and I had no idea why it was in there. Anyway, Subaru decides it would be a good time to mention that Rem has the hots for him which is a feeling he doesn’t return BUT

Emilia asks “Who is Rem?” because the world has forgotten her again and then the video stops like that was a line played for laughs. Hopefully it doesn’t evolve into a catchphrase that I find myself giggling at like “That’s strange... My watch stopped working” from another animé. I shouldn’t find something so serious so funny like it’s a comedy of errors because despite the shows lukewarm efforts to make you laugh once an episode, it’s a fairly serious melodrama.

Really, I was fine with this episode. The one problem I have is that there was a bit too much talking like in a bit which I haven’t mentioned where Julius and Subaru have Betelguese pinned before they attack him, they just start nattering and talking about how much they are going to beat his ass. This annoyed me because they establish the Archbishop as being someone who takes advantage of opportunities people miss to kill him as fast as possible, hence the whole slothful patter he goes on about all the time. It was too glaringly folly not to mention. It’s a shame because everything else is pretty good. A romp, if you will.

This one is going to be difficult to write about because I find nothing especially bad or especially good about this episode. I do feel at times that there was a bit too much talking but other than that it was just fine.

The plot of episode goes thusly, Beatrice informs Subaru that he is going to die unless he gets shut of the specific dog that bit him to begin with because he is effectively marked for termination so they must go into the forest AGAIN. It is also revealed that Rem is still in the forest doing her demon things so the implication is that the gang just somehow saved her I guess. As always, the episode begins with Subaru, Emilia and Puck dicking about for five minutes.

Subaru enters the forest with Ram (The Pink One) whom thus far has not revealed any specific ability that she is capable of. She reassures him however that she is bloody good at using wind magic and starts slicing all the mabeasts in half with not much difficulty. Subaru plans to attract the mabeasts, specifically the top dog by trying to mention that he can ‘Return by Death’ which is a kind of curse activation. His logic being that it will set off a kind of radar blip. It also attracts Rem who, the animé establishes, can sense the curse via smell.

So one thing leads to another and Ram is exhausted of Mana so another sequence ensues where Subaru is carrying one of the twins who you assume are at least teenagers and is able to outrun the horde of ravenous mabeasts. It should be noted here that Subaru tries to defend himself but doesn’t do very well. They are falling down a cliff edge to where Rem is battering all the creatures which you have to assume as a viewer has been happening non-stop for at least 8 hours at this point because they go back the next day and it’s broad daylight.

Subaru’s solution to stop Rem’s manic outburst is to fire her own sibling at her in an effort to calm her down. They make the point that Rem is in some kind of murderous daze where she can’t recognize friend from foe. It does work to some extent but Subaru is left on his own to deal with the creatures and he then takes it upon himself to launch his sword right for the head of Rem before it fades to black.

The episode takes a long break from the plot to give us a short story of Rem and Ram’s childhood and how the pair of them evolved and came to be. Like all stories of twins, one is better than the other at something so the other one - despite being kind of good at the same thing - feels entirely inferior and useless. It turns out that Ram had ‘the horn of the demon’ to begin with and Rem, who had some power and ability, lacked the horn so was inevitably not as good.

Somehow, Ram transfers the horn over to Rem and... that’s the end of it? I mean, the animation and storytelling during this sequence was so good that I wasn’t really bothered by the contrived plot device so I just accepted it. It was interesting enough that I was never really bothered by it. The sequence filled up about 20 minutes which was a handy place to put the backstory to fill some time. I’m not implying it was ‘filler’, just neatly paced in accordance with the rest of the episode.

Subaru is now running away from the mabeast whilst carrying another human once again and successfully outrunning them. This time, Rem is asleep in his underarm. They have an emotionally nuanced chat whilst she is near catatonic and it cuts to Subaru in bed (from what I can remember) and Rem is at his bedside. The pair have a big philosophical chat to try and dispose of Rem’s inferiority complex and reckless mentality which, interestingly a lecture delivered by a character who is known to be reckless and inferior. Nonetheless, Subaru manages to cheer Rem up. OH! I just remembered...

Roswaal actually showed up at just the right time to save the day as Subaru is tackling the master mabeast which is a short but sweet battle that shows the protagonist’s intuitive side which I like because ‘ordinary’ characters are typically useless in fights. As the mabeast is about to chomp down on Subaru as he loses the upper-hand, Roswaal pitches up and batters it in the knick of time. What I like about Roswaal is that his appearances are fast and fleeting but it’s well-told that he is an important character who is yet to have his story told. The show is taking it’s damned time and I like that it is making me impatient. It’s a good impatience, mind. His appearance is so fleeting that I forgot he was in the episode despite his importance to the plot.

I liked this episode, it told the story of the twins well and exposed the foils of both the characters in an intriguing enough way and it wasn’t tedious or annoying or out of place; it was actually the opposite of all those things. I wasn’t surprised by anything (apart from the appearance of Roswaal) but that isn’t necessarily a negative. It wasn’t tied up in a neat little package but more wrapped up by your younger brother who leaves paper sticking out here and there BUT, it was still wrapped up and I’m pleased with it. A little teaser at the end of the episode revealed a bit more about the dynamic between the twins and Roswaal suggesting to the viewer that you don’t know as much as you think.

A satisfying episode that still leaves you wanting to know more. A thumbs-up. I cannot fault it and I hear that the next one is a doozy.

The following blog post contains subjects and themes that some may find distressing. Please proceed with caution.

I had mixed feelings about this episode initially. There were a lot of good things about it but there were a lot of things that seemed just too outlandish and ridiculous that they came off as silly to me personally despite it being quite a serious episode in terms of tone and plot. There was a lot to take in and I didn’t quite get it at first until I had someone explain it to me. So I admit there may be things I get confused about in this post and that’s on me.

So the episode begins with the main character waking up post-being disembowelled by a mysterious force which he gets over pretty quickly really. He then goes about his day with a lot of internal monologue on how to fix the situation but a lot of this early portion of the episode is largely forgettable. It’s just Subaru dicking about with the magic cat, love interest, librarian and the creepy twins. The one thing worthy of note in the first 15-20 minutes is that Subaru asks to be a guest instead of an employee which I assume serves the logical purpose of giving him more time.

The episode actually begins with Subaru telling a story about two ogres who agree that, despite their similarities and strengths, they are better off apart than together which I’m sure is a vague allegory for something to do with the sisters but I am so uninvested in them as a character trope that, even now as I’m writing this, I don’t know which ones which. (I HAVE BEEN INFORMED THAT RAM IS THE PINK ONE AND REM IS THE BLUE ONE).

He concludes that he needs to go outside on the night that he supposedly dies and returns back to the start to scope out the castle. I guess he thinks that the big bad is only coming from one direction and that the would be able to do something about it. But ruh-roh, the person coming to kill him was...

The... blue... one.

So anyway, Rem thinks he’s a spy because of some jabberwocky about him smelling like a witch, so he must have something to do with a cult of witches. So, heavily inspired by cold war politics in the 50s and 60s, Rem declares that he must be a bad guy on minor circumstantial evidence and tortures him for information before killing an innocent individual.

So what has actually happened here is that the first time and second time he returned by death was to do with some witch cursing him which seems to, not happen every time but instead, transcend the concept of time in this case because he wakes up with it. The implication is that Rem could smell it on Subaru the whole time and was waiting for the opportune moment to break the Geneva convention.

Subaru then discovers that he’s not allowed to tell anyone about his powers because of some black magic shite so he decides to become a reclusive cur to everyone, especially Emilia.

Beatrice plays more of an important role in this episode because Subaru turns to her in his time of need. She educates him on what is going on and then proposes a magical contract in which she is bound to protect him so he spends the entire duration of his foreseeable life reading and cleaning in the library. I can only assume he read nothing of any value because of the events afterwards. Here’s what happens.

Beatrice is summoned so she leaves the library and says she’ll be back in a hot minute in a manner to suggest that he should stay put and not touch anything. Kind of like when your well-off aunt leaves you alone with her collection of potato chips that look like famous celebrities.

What is annoying is that he leaves IMMEDIATELY and then catches danger shortly after. Emilia drags him away with urgency to a room where Rem (The blue one) is mysteriously dead or “died of weakness” which is just... shite. Everyone suspects Subaru just because he is acting a tad shifty and, in this timeline, he hasn’t built a rapport with anyone so it’s fair enough. However, he doesn’t help himself when he approaches the dead body and attempts to touch her hair which is a least a faux pas at funerals and understandly, the remaining sister is pissed off that he would do that. He’s sweating profusely and despite everyone sticking up for him (apart from Ram) but simultaneously, they are accusing him of having something to do with it so he does what any normal person would do and runs away.

Bear in mind, he successfully outruns all these magic dudes who are the monarchy in this land and winds up at a cliff edge where he contemplates jumping off (to which there would be no consequence other than doing the few days again). Ram catches up to him and intends to commit murder before Betty stops her. Subaru stands up for himself, saying that he isn’t going to take the easy way out anymore and that he is going to fix the situation. As soon as he says this however, he then proceeds to take the easy way out by jumping off the cliff and starting again as opposed to utilizing human interaction and diplomacy to make something happen and possibly repair some bridges.

My main problem with this episode is how a series of unfortunate events conjurs up feelings of Marx Brothers plot rather than the heavy melodrama it’s intended to be. I don’t really like laughing at things that aren’t supposed to be funny but are funny to me because the absolute snowball of contrivances and plot conveniences were just too much for me to handle. Firstly, but perhaps the least heavy, is the annoying trope in animé where characters get so greatly attached to those around them in record time just because there needs to be melodrama. Its definitely one of the lesser crimes but it plays an important role here because the situation the protagonist finds himself in an incredibly unfortunate situation TWICE. It’s only ever so unfortunate just because the show introduces new rules and behaviour changes to quantify it and the fashion in which it delivers them just niggles me.

The situation about halfway through where Rem is convinced Subaru is a witch just because he smells like one and she absolutely won’t have her mind changed about it despite him being clearly distressed and confused. You’re expected to believe here that Ram is convinced that Subaru is lying through his teeth but she then goes on to explain the mechanic of the witch’s cult and the scent even though she must think he is well aware of all this already which is extremely handy to clue him in so he could use it in another life? maybe?

It’s also extremely handy that she waited all this time to do it on the precise day where he returns by death which she couldn’t possibly know about AND after he announces he is leaving to go on a journey of some kind. She still follows him anyway after he is no longer a danger to the household. Whether you think that’s okay or not is up to you, I just felt like it this whole sequence was weird and random and it took away from the supposed drama of the situation. I just came away from it feeling bewildered and slightly disappointed.

I’m trying my hardest to be diplomatic about the last scene in which Subaru goes from having a breakdown on a knife-edge before being positively jovial at the idea of suicide and then does a big Mario hop several feet forward, absolutely beaming with cheer. Whilst doing all this, he has time to think about the philosophy of the situation in his own head before he pelts towards the rocks at 300 miles per hour. The whole situation is just outrageous and silly considering what is happening on screen. The point of the ending was to conclude that he is going to do his best to change things for the better because he CAN fix it, by hook or by crook.

Now, Subaru isn’t stupid. He has demonstrated in a short time that he is capable of intuitive and quick thinking on his feet. He is calm and collected in resolving situations as well because he has this tremendous sense of pride and, dare I say it, main character syndrome. It’s also established that he is aware of tropes from his home world and has thoughts and ideas about what could possibly happen next. If he did have any knowledge of tropes at all, he would know that the situation is fundamentally unfixable through one reason or another. I know Steins;Gate was probably being produced whilst he is in this world but I mean come the fuck on.

I liked this episode for it’s movement and constant intrigue but that’s something the show has excelled at thus far so I’m just expecting it now but I’m still hugely favourable of the second episode for its well choreographed fight scene and overall construction. A lot of stuff was taken in here and I’m willing to accept that I could be proved wrong about a lot of stuff and that the show has walking legs that are yet to take full sprint ahead. I’m watching it to the end anyway so we’ll wait and see. I’m not bored, that’s for sure.

I don’t want to put too fine a point on it. This episode wasn’t boring or dull but little-to-nothing happened of any real value to the plot or to the characters. However, a gambit of new characters and scenes were introduced.

Subaru wakes up in this big plush house with new characters: Rem and Ram (shown above), Betty and Roswaal who all occupy the house with Emilia who is pretty much head of the household as it turns out, that is until Lord Roswaal shows up not too long in the episode and is basically a cross between David Bowie in the 70s and Hedonism Bot from Futurama. He does nothing except join Subaru in a bath which is funny because... two men? i don’t know.

This entire episode is basically spent with Subaru trying to weasel in on their inherently massive wealth by asking he get a job as a butler which he is understandably not very good at granted he doesn’t have a BTEC qualification in Hospitality. Halfway through this episode however, Subaru appears to have ‘returned by death’ for some mysterious reason. He wakes up back at the start but seemingly isn’t so quick to have an existential freakout but more miffed that he had arranged a date with Emilia the night before he reset.

There is a strong level of mystery here afforded to the viewer because the protagonist needs to find out two things: How he died/why he was sent back and why that specific point in time above all others to return to. So to solve this problem, he attempts to do the exact same things again but fails - as you would because it was like a six day period. Instead of spending a lot of time with Emilia, he spends time getting to know the creepy maid twins Rem and Ram and during this time, you get brief glimpses into their dynamic but it goes no further than that. One of them isn’t as good as the other one at their job. I can’t remember which but it really doesn’t matter. Oh, and at one point for no reason, one of the twins demands that Subaru start learning this glyphic language to which absolutely captivates the hyperactive incel.

What you do get though is a scene between one of the maids and Roswaal that suggests Subaru could possibly be used a spy of some kind. They fail to specify what possible signs that point toward Subaru being good at spying but it doesn’t include people skills as he fails to pick up Betty doesn’t really like him that much.

Beatrice is a bizarre character because she is just kind of there honestly. Subaru bumps into her first in the house after stumbling out of his room and they have quite an aggravating back and forth in which a protagonist in an animé profusely passes judgement on a random female for no reason and obviously, Beatrice is repelled and annoyed by him every time they cross paths. It’s not very often they do cross paths however because Betty spends most of the time guarding this super duper important library, playing with Puck or just hanging around in the background of scenes with her impossible rigatoni hair like Celestia Ludenberg from Danganronpa.

The episode ends with Subaru intending to stay awake through the night in which he is supposed to return back to the start to see what’s going on. Despite his best efforts, he drifts off and is awoken sharply by some mysterious painful force and is stumbling around the hallway whilst not really trying his hardest to shout for help if we’re being honest. The camera cuts away only to show a massive amount of blood and what can we only assume is his eyeball rolling along the ground - like eyeballs do (?).

As I say, not necessarily a boring episode but an uneventful one. I could never say I was bored during this but I was practically poking and prodding the screen asking for something to happen and at 45:30, something did happen and it was another death for the main man. Did not see that one coming. I’m being facetious obviously; this ending does mean that there is some kind of otherworldly being at play who causes his death and I assume the next episode is Subaru trying to warn them all in the castle about it. There is intrigue in the air, that’s for sure.

I’m not going to have a lot to say about this one. I’ll have a go and see what comes but if you don’t want to bother reading on, I thought it was on the scale of being fine to pretty good.

The first part of this episode takes on a classic western trope in which the main character spends most of his time trying to find anyone who can help him with the task at hand and goes through the list of everyone he knows before it ends unfavourably with the character either having to do it on his own or with help from an unexpected source. Subaru Natsuki demands Crusch Karsten helps him take on the witch cult who he now knows are definitely coming to fuck everyone up. Whilst Crusch is needlessly distant, rude and unhelpful, Subaru is useless at negotiating. At one point, he says something along the lines of “If you help me, I will owe you a debt” which is one of the unintentionally funny lines in the series. Obviously Crusch isn’t interested because she’s the conservative, right-of-centre character in the royal selection who doesn’t want to help the needy unless it is both absolutely necessary and worthwhile monetarily.

He then leaves with Rem to go and see... Priscilla? I don’t know why he bothered but I will read my notes verbatim: He goes to see Priscilla, she thinks he is an idiot, she laughs at him, she demands him to suck his toes, he actually does, she is repelled by him, he is escorted out by her knight, Al. Again, I don’t know why he bothered other than to provide hentai artists with foot fetishes something to work with.

He then bumps into the other royal candidate, Anastasia who is just walking around in the town I guess. A character who, by the way, is so irrelevant and boring I couldn’t find any pictures of her that I could actually use in this post. Her fundamental character is that she wears cutesy clothes but is actually secretly a malignant psychopath. So anyway, they bump into each other in broad daylight then go to a pub or something where they have a big long chat with the end result being that she essentially poo-pooed Crusch into not bothering with Subaru and his demands beforehand. The only person he has yet to ask for help is Felt so who does he go to?

Otto, obviously. They rendezvous with him and the union of taxi drivers to go across to Roswaal Manor and tackle the witch cult which I’m sure is a plan where nothing could go wrong. They strike a bargain where they would buy all the oil off them somehow which is good enough for them. But ruh-roh, as they are crossing over, they are attacked by a giant Moby Dick reference.

Something Otto calls “The White Whale” which is like a kind of land-shark. They are being chased for ages so Rem decides to distract the whale so they can escape. She not just raises her death flag, she takes it out of her pocket and beats you to death with it. She forces Subaru to let her leave by Bruce Lee-ing him in the shoulder, knocking him unconscious.

He wakes up and Rem is obviously dead so naturally he goes mad at the taxi driver, saying that they should go back to help her even though she is halfway through a whale’s digestive system. Mainly though, Otto doesn’t know who Rem is and Subaru doesn’t understand how he can’t possibly know. In the midst of all this, the whale is still following them so Subaru wonders if the creature is a mabeast who is attracted to his miasma. Otto jumps to this conclusion either and forces him to exit his wagon post-haste and nice wee Otto leaves him behind for dead.

But he wakes up in the field and the dragon returns to him completely Otto-less so he completes his mission on his own. Maybe the whale is just into that sort of thing, I don’t know. Subaru arrives before the witches so everything is fine and he collapses in a bloody mess in front of the children, as you do.

He wakes up to Ram who denies that Rem ever existed which sends Subaru into an existential crisis. I love Twilight Zone-esque things like this where someone just randomly doesn’t exist anymore because I love the mystery involved and the sheer weirdness of it. I’m intrigued as to how they are going to explain it though because it’s clearly going to be a new mechanic in the series that the writer has kept secret from you this whole time which is just how this show works. I have drawn this conclusion because Rem was dead in front of everyone earlier in the series and it’s not like her death creates amnesia of her existance in the universe.

Subaru bursts into Emilia’s room and is being completely unreasonable and irrational again in his efforts to get her to leave and escape from danger by just blindly dragging her away with the mindset that she’ll be okay with that when, of course, that’s not how humans behave. He then drops the r-bomb and states outright that he can “return by death” so this time, the witches say ‘fuck it’ and just kill Emilia because I think they think Subaru is doing the witches’ collective head in because of how incompetent he is. The purple hands come down and grope his heart and I’m a sucker for that kind of uncomfortable impossibility and the feeling it gives me as a viewer.

What I expected to happen here was that Ram is going to come in any moment now and batter him because it’s going to look like he killed Emilia in one this series’ classic Curb Your Enthusiasm moments where Subaru is put in an embarrassingly unfortunate situation that is out of his control. But instead, Beatrice turns up and is all ‘lol unlucky bro’ and then shoves him through a black hole with Emilia just because she can.

He is then stuck in the forest and is surrounded by the witches cult in no time. Head frog-man Betelgeuse shows up and laughs at him some more for wishing he was dead. The head cheese springs the big purple arms from his back and Subaru dodges it so ‘He can see the unseen hands’ now which must be because of his incredibly advanced character development. Genuinely, whatever reason they have for him being able to see his magic, I will probably be happy with whatever it is because it’s just one of those story devices that is ultimately necessary: how you get there doesn’t matter. I theorized immediately that he could always see them, he just isn’t paying enough attention to the world around him and even if it that is wrong, it doesn’t matter because it could work either way.

He is about to break Emilia in half like a poppadom - again, he is just having a laugh and being as edgy as possible but then Emilia’s corpse is saved from being cracked open by a big furry boy.

He demands to know what is being done with her daughter. *dun dun dunnnnn*

The episode is done now. I can’t wait for the big explanation episode that is coming up next. This episode was perfectly fine and it was actually pretty good at some points. I appreciated the Moby Dick homage because it showed a bit of class and culture as opposed to just like, naming important characters after astronomical symbols in the sky and vaguely alluding to fairytales.

I was utterly lost by a lot of what goes on in this episode. I found a lot of the content extremely irritating and tedious on all fronts as well as a lot of it being just nothing.

Basically, the premise is that there is some kind of royal collision between Roswaal and Emilia and some other committee. The first half of the episode is a lot of slow development of protagonist/love interest dynamic mixed in with some callbacks on the first episode. They return to the town in which Subaru fell into where all the demi-humans live. He finally pays the fruit seller for his produce (THANK GOD THAT LOOSE END WAS TIED UP) and is told to wait outside whilst Emilia does her official queen business.

Then a bizarre and annoying sequence ensues where he follows a random lady into an alleyway who just happens to be confronted by the thugs from the inaugural episode. He sticks his nose in their business for no reason at all, declares that he knows Reinhard and they all believe it immediately and get sent packing. A completely ridiculous dialogue then ensues between this other woman who just pitches up with this knight dude and Subaru to which the point of chat is that she doesn’t know what Apples are but it just goes on for ages and leads absolutely nowhere. Subaru drops the- sorry, Appas all over the floor and then has them back in the bag unscathed in the next scene I swear to God. Then... Old Man Rom shows up and the scene kind of peters out. I don’t know what purpose the scene served other than to fill time and introduce the Priscilla character in the image below.

Okay the details don’t really matter but the whole point of this episode is that Emilia has stuff she has to be getting on with so she heads back up the road to this committee and tells Subaru that he needs to stay away if he wants her to trust him properly. Subaru accepts but immediately begins stewing on the fact that she might be in danger so goes after her anyway. Conveniently she picks up a lift from the same girl from earlier who also happens to be involved in this committee meeting who lets him in because she think it will be funny. OKAY THEN.

Subaru obviously spends the entire time annoying anyone and everyone and passing judgement on these newly introduced characters that he doesn’t know whilst this big societal info dump is going on and it’s so hard to keep track of absolutely everything here so do forgive me.

Felix is an actual catboy character who is chucked in for no reason other than for comic relief as far as this episode goes. He doesn’t say much except makes cat puns that are somehow worse than Teddie’s bear puns in Persona 4. Priscilla lets everyone know she is the token catty character who both serves ridiculous and unbelievable antagonistic purposes whilst satisfying the domme fetish for the horny masses. You gather that they are deciding who gets to rule the joint and it’s between Priscilla, Emilia, a girl called Anastasia Hoshin who barely says anything, and... Felt?

Reinhard bursts through the door like in a telenovela to declare a last-minute objection and he proposes Felt who he arrested earlier in the series. His point being that this insignia glows her in her hand when she holds it and in this society that is apparently mega-important despite their later disgust when Reinhard reveals she found her on the street, directly ripping off the plot of My Fair Lady. So I guess it doesn’t mean that much about the dragon badge?

This entire scene in the committee more closely resembled the chaos of a town hall meeting in The Simpsons than a believable diplomatic meeting of minds. I know it’s a silly fantasy setting but it’s like none of the characters were remotely prepared for any of this and, especially Priscillia, are interrupting the entire process with their inane banter that this society would deem unprofessional surely because they deem the same thing about Subaru when he interrupts?

Anyway, Emilia demands the floor, clears the air that she is a half-elf to which they are all seemingly uncomfortable because they are racist against elves I guess. She demands equality for all and Subaru is forever sticking his nose in through the whole thing trying to big her up but is obviously dropping her right in the shit and being rude to her contempories into the bargain. He declares himself her knight because he is obviously jealous of Reinhard and has been throughout the series, effectively trying to mirror his can-do attitude in a lot of ways. He is also jealous of this other knight who simply greeted Emilia politely, This same knight calls him out on his bullshit in the most polite and honest way possible. Emilia disowns him in front of anybody and drags him out back because he embarrassed her in front of the cool kids.

Felt demands the floor and outright says she wants to dismantle the government system in favour of either anarchy or socialism. I was cheering for her but I don’t think I was meant to be. Then, out of nowhere, Old Man Rom is underneath the floorboards and, in a brazen act of terrorism and treason tries to blow up the floor with a dynamite of sorts and is arrested immediately with promises of execution as... you know, it is treason which is punishable by death in 99% of societies; real or fictional. But don’t worry though because this is rectified by Felt saying Old Man Rom is her father so it’s fine... TO WHICH THEY AGREE.

Remember that terrorism is fine as long as you keep it in the family. Aside from the fact that Rom and Felt don’t look anything alike, they don’t even look like the same species. This was by far and away the most stupid thing in this series so far and it is so stupid in fact, that I’ll just leave it because it’s not worth it. NOW, Subaru is confronted by the reasonable knight in the back and reacts like a teenage boy who’s crush and kissed someone else in front of him so the knight demands a scrap because, to be fair, Natsuki slagged the entire knighthood off, declaring them all to be old-money pretty boys despite himself practically crushing on Reinhard.

Subaru is then battered within an inch of his life by this knight with a wooden sword and he barely gets any offence in. AH! An important plot device was that Emilia needed Subaru to rest up because he had been pushing himself so hard lately and she specifically said “no magic” to which he disobeys here and shows himself up here.

Look, I know the point of this is that Subaru is way in over his head and doesn’t understand how the world works but fancies himself as the answer to all the problems. But it is frustrating when I can’t get behind the motivations of a main character when he demonstrates being capable and genuinely being in the right on some cases. If he is just an idiot then I’m annoyed as a viewer when the outcome is obvious. I was not on his side the whole way through this, not like it was a character change, I just felt like watching a train derail - except the train is full of people who come back to a prior point in time after dying. It’s been a while since I’ve been a jealous teenager so maybe I find it hard to relate to him on that level. That’s on me for growing up.

Right okay, we’re nearly there (thank the lord).

Subaru gets his ass beat and Emilia arrives in the knick of time to save him again as soon as she hears this fight going down. She is understandably furious with the little scrote for getting her into trouble with the council. This bit is the only real noteworthy bit of the whole episode. Subaru reveals himself to Emilia as an arrogant dick with main-character syndrome. He lists off all the things she’s done for him but then lists off all the things that he has done to which Emilia calls him out on his bullshit because most of it was done for himself and his own survival. It’s about time really because he needs taken down a peg or two. Obviously because he can’t talk about the Return by Death special feature, he can’t provide proof to back himself up.

I’m interested in this because it’s now apparent that the main character is being tested in some way. He obviously suffers from a pride complex and it’s as though his apparent advantage has come back to haunt him and deservedly so. The reality of the situation is that he demands respect and phsyically can’t wait to learn the tools of the trade before declaring himself the master of anything really. I like this dynamic but I am annoyed that it has taken this long for his behaviour to be bought to light by a character on screen.

Hopefully now, he stops being quite so unlikeable because I don’t feel sorry for him if that’s the intended effect.

I am by no means an animé expert. Just want to make that abundantly clear. Part of me doing this blog is a kind of motivational tactic to get me to watch more animé if I can be afforded the time to write about them in this way.

The amount of animé series I’ve seen you could probably count on one hand but I went into this with an open mind and knowing three things.

Re:ZERO is an isekai. A genre of fantasy anime that is essentially defined by the concept of taking someone from an ordinary world and putting them in a fantasy world. The most popular example is KonoSuba.

This animé has a rough start. I have it on fairly good authority that the series has a difficult first start as the first arc in the manga is seen as the weakest by a lot of people and that probably includes me. Despite all this, it is one of the higher rated series in the medium.

I have actually seen the first episode before. In a previous effort from one of my friends to make me watch this show, I found myself repulsed by the entire affair and switched it off as soons as the credits rolled. I hated everything about it. Character behaviour annoyed me, the premise bored me and the action uninspired me. But that was then...

It’s actually fairly new to my overall outlook in life to keep an open mind about media in that, if a lot of people like it and I don’t, there must be some redeeming qualities that make it worthwhile. So I’ll leave my prejudices behind 2020.

The Premise

As a viewer, you are presented with a teenager in a track-jacket whose only defining feature is that he reads manga and eats crisps and then he is in the other world in literally a blink of an eye. Yep. It’s a world thats a cross between Morrowind and the chocolate level in The Simpsons Game with BoJack Horseman-like half-animals.

What ensues next is the protagonist behaving like the most irritating little scrote whilst making tedious references to role-playing games before being battered by Gorillaz lookalikes then saved by a love interest which introduces the concept of magic and I don’t know exactly why the consensus about the first few episodes is generally negative but the plot conveniences here are just too bothersome and annoying not to mention them.

Plot

So, this Subaru guy finds himself in trouble with some thugs and a white-haired magical girl saves him whilst she is in the middle of a pursuit of a nimble assailant who is known only as Felt. She assertains that this fight between Subaru and these three guys is nothing to do with her but she stops to help him anyway for no particular reason, thinks about not saving him and is then convinced by a small cat character to stay by him whilst he recovers. Suddenly, this urgent pursuit is no longer urgent and despite being constantly reminded how important this chase is throughout the episode, she suddenly has a lot of time for the ‘hero’ even though she has disdain for his abilities to quote “hopeless”. What is worth noting at this time is that the girl says her name is ‘Satella’

The duo then stop to help a lost child in the street despite being in a hurry and Subaru stops her crying with a basic magic track in a manner which almost resembles grooming. They then randomly come across the childs mother in the street and returned her and we have to assume that if that didn’t happen, they would’ve just kept the child I guess?

Night falls and only then to they decide to go get back this insignia maguffin that Felt supposedly stole so they barge into the place where she was last seen and everyone is very clearly dead, Subaru then is violently slashed by whoever is in there to which this apparently skilled fighter wonders into the dark room nonchalantly calling after Subaru to which she is then dispatched of. They both bleed out together and then the animé begins proper shall we say.

The Central Mechanic

Subaru then wakes up at his earliest interaction in the world with a fruit and veg seller and it isn’t quantified why this exact moment is significant but I assume this will be explained amongst other things. Subaru then charges all the way out of town to get ahead of the game on this insignia with all of his memories still in tact, including the memory of how to get there because it is implied that they do travel for a fair bit of time.

He doesn’t know the code of how to get into this secret pub but that doesn’t stop him for being allowed entry for reasons that aren’t questioned. Felt later shows up along with the woman who killed Subaru and ‘Satella’ but seems entirely civilised but blatantly ominous. It turns out Felt has bought it here to sell it to the mysterious woman but Subaru enters a bidding war with her in which he wows them with his groceries that he bought over from the other side. He wins it with his 2000′s era cameraphone but admits he’s returning it to the owner which the woman doesn’t like for some reason even though it’s now his property. She opens attack on Felt and the humongous bar-owner and dispatches with them all eventually and the time she took to do so, Subaru could’ve legged it up the road but didn’t and was then killed as well.

The episode closes off with him returning back to the fruit stand, running into the woman known as ‘Satella’ who becomes serially offended at him calling her that for reasons that don’t matter quite yet I assume.

To Conclude...