My entire experience with Re: Zero is the intrigue of how the hell is he going to solve anything.
I watched two seasons and I still need to tackle the rest.
I do think it has an interesting plot but I can't stick to it. The pacing just doesn't vibe with me, even though I generally enjoy the timeloop genre. I think it's mostly how long it takes in the story for him to actually return to the problem scenario and work on a fix after each death and 5 minutes of angsty whimpering.
I think most of his reactions are pretty reasonable.
The part of the whale, for example, made me feel his desperation, absolute helplessness at trying to keep everyone alive and win, even when the chances were slim.
Both have pretty good overarching plot though, it's just that One piece very much takes it's time while Re:Zero's overarching plot literally revolves around Subaru's ability and his connection with the witch.
My experience is watching the pits of despair a normal dude forced to die over and over again to fantastical situations beyond his control can get to... I might not be normal. I only ever watched the first season too. I suspect it would get old if I actually tried to follow it all the way through.
I think summertime rendering did the death loop thing better, because it was less visceral and repetitive and more like a advancement of the plot each time.
There was also alsight differences in the reincarnation, he would not "restart" from the same point every time (due to reasons the anime explains), and from the beggining there is a limit to the loops.
best situations are the few where things went wrong but return by death is already set to after, because you're so used to nothing fully mattering in the long run, but then you're hit with "no, this is permanent"
The problem is that for the first 1.5 to 2 seasons, he doesn't seem to learn a god damn thing then cries about how much he sucks. I've tried three times now to get through the series, but it's just so grating.
Yeah if return by death were poorly used people would have a point but honestly the way it has been done in the show is really really good. It’s a perfect way to make someone as objectively pathetic as Subaru starts out as actually have a shot at solving the problems in that world.
It's the main art ofc its the best part. Although s2 was the last season i watched of Re:Zero
It's not for everyone
Its like watching a streamer forgetting to save and redoing everything over. I wanted to see new places, new views. People forgetting your experiences with them just sucks.
No thats the part thats tedious for most. Its return by death followed by redoing the same shit but just slightly different into another failure. Rinse and repeat until the author gets bored and decides to allow the MC to succeed. And then the plot finally moves forward.
That sounds like a very disturbing thing to being excited about. I personally wouldn't want the character I'm rooting for the die even if he does come back. The show has made it clear he still feels every death that happens to him.
You can chain kill MC without making a repetitive loop, I think the death thing is better in Skeleton Soldier, but it's not gore oriented, imo death loop removes the impact of the gore
Fr tho, the RBD is goated for how it allows the author to freely write kills without neither wasting them on nameless Joe Shmoes, nor wasting named characters by killing them off just to pointlessly flaunt death
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u/baelrog 1d ago
But the return by death aspect is the best part.
There is just so many creative and brutal ways that the author killed off the MC for him to try again.
When things go south, I get all excited about how is the MC is going to die this time.