Re:Zero Season 2

49/100 [spoilers]

TL;DR: the first season of Re:Zero was decent, but this tanked hard. They tried to cram way too many storylines, character interactions, and content into one season and it just did not work.

Synopsis: the gang goes to travel to the Sanctuary to complete a task, but find themselves staying there for a very, very long time.

I was not expecting much from the original Re:Zero beyond being a better version of Sword Art Online, and I was pleased to see that there was more to the hype than met the eye. I had a list of things that I wanted to see from the series: better dialogue, exploration of the resurrection mechanic, and better villains. Did Re:Zero give that to me?

For the most part, no, but this isn’t my issue with the new season — the issue lies in new problems that emerged after the first season ended. The largest being that the sanctuary arc was dragged on for way too long. Going in, I expected visiting the sanctuary to be a three episode detour at the most, but it turns out that it occupied 25 whole episodes. Not because a lot of stuff was happening there, but because a lot of footage was used on character interactions, introducing new characters, backstories, time resets, and fights.

On a related note, they introduced a massive amount of characters here: the blonde beast siblings, the pink haired girl, and the witches. On top of that, they expanded on the backstories of Roswaal, Emilia, Otto, Beatrice and the new characters. The producers could not have cut out those digressions without making the story more confusing than it already is, so they cannot be faulted for this — the issue is the source material.

They tried introducing a more complex political conflict to the story: at first, we are told that the villagers at the sanctuary took our guys hostage and forced Emilia to go through a trial which is necessary to liberate the area. Then it turns out that this was Roswaal’s idea, and somehow the witch of greed is involved too. Some characters do not even want the sanctuary to be free, which further complicates the story. Which is fine, but in practice not enough time was dedicated to this section of the story to communicate it, leading to a confusing and boring viewing experience.

The dialogue, which was already subpar, got worse. At the beginning of Re:Zero, most of the dialogue was characterized by Subaru’s awkwardness, which worked and made the show entertaining to watch; now that he’s not as retarded as he used to be, the author has revealed his inability to write dialogue that is not corny.

In this anime, there seem to be three classes of characters: people who are inexplicably evil for no reason (e.g. cultists), people who are doing what is in their own interest (e.g. Rem, Otto), and people who are motivated by more personal or ideological goals (e.g. Emilia, Roswaal). Fortunately, most of the action has shifted from involving people in the first category towards those in the latter two categories, though I cannot help but feel like the villains of this season are more clumsily written and uncompelling than the last ones.

Overall, this season was a pretty big letdown. A lot of people said the issue was part 2 and not part 1, but I found part 1 worse — nothing ever happened. I almost feel like it was a mistake to defend the series upon viewing the first season, but I’ll double down on the fact that the first season of Re:Zero was mostly fine and it was the second season that was a massive issue. I’m questioning whether I should even bother viewing the third season given how much of a disappointment the second season was.

Also, I miss Rem.