How Re:Watching Re:Zero Made Me Change My Score From 1 to 9

In preparation for the upcoming Summer 2020 Anime Season as well as the return of Re:Zero in the form of it’s long anticipated second season which I will be covering on the Weeb Club (you should subscribe btw), I decided to rewatch the first season for the first time since it premiered in 2016. I originally hated the show, so much in fact that I had it rated at a 1 out of 10. I couldn’t stand any of the characters, I thought the music was irritating and wasn’t impressed by most of what was going on in general. The pacing of the show made it hard for me to sit down and enjoy it, much less like anything about the events transpiring to the point that when important moments of the story had occurred, I couldn’t really give less of a shit. I especially couldn’t stand the character of Subaru, finding his in general incompetence to be hard to stand to the point that I celebrated any time he went through any suffering. But, in the past few years and giving myself time to listen to some of my friends, namely Nunmanji who particularly played a big hand in changing my mind with his incredible Re:Zero video, I was able to see a different perspective of the show. So I decided, when rewatching the series, to keep an open mind and upon doing so, I still wasn’t that impressed. I liked it more, found the characters slightly more enjoyable, and as I went along this journey with Subaru in this newfound world, I came to understand him more and more until the moment that changed my mind entirely hit me like a punch in the gut.

And from that moment it clicked with me. I finally understood what made the series so good.

But, before we get into that, I want to talk about a philosophy I feel very strong about, and something I feel that anime fans, or fans of media in general should probably start to think about, because had it not been for this mindset that I stick to, I would have never been as impacted by Re:Zero the second time through as I am now. So let’s talk about first impressions and the impact of discourse on one’s experience with media.

To put my perception of Re:Zero at the time into perspective, it aired during a time when I was still a little shaky yet very stubborn about my own preferences when it came to what I liked, didn’t like and what people around me were judging me for liking. This was also during the time I was heavily involved in discourse in the critical community, and Re:Zero was the one show in 2016 that no one ever shut up about, with the words “deconstruction”, “subversion”, “deep” and “mature” being thrown around it, buzzwords that in general set off red flags for me as people trying to elevate something in spite of its contemporaries rather than the merits of the media itself. It also didn’t help that the videos that were being made to describe the appeal of the show didn’t do a good job of convincing me at all. I was never really given any explanation beforehand other than it was really good and that I should watch it and that it was different from any of the other “seasonal trash shows” because unlike them it was actually good. The issue was that I had already watched Re:Zero’s first episode when people were pestering me to watch it, and I dropped it…on episode one. I couldn’t get into it and was just bored out of my mind with how it was setting up the world and everything. But I eventually gave in, partly out of spite, and started to dig deep into it, and I just found myself enjoying it less and less, not being impressed by anything it was doing until finally I just couldn’t stand it anymore. The tipping point was the Royal Selection, where the characters stood in a room talking, and talking and talking. It was a bunch of people I didn’t care about talking about things I didn’t care about, ending with Subaru, this character I hated getting his ass beat. What I find interesting now more than anything is that I actually love Subaru as a character now. The same moments I found obnoxious back then I hardcore love the best in the series, but why? What was it that made me change my mind?

To put it in very simple terms: I didn’t get the point of Re:Zero. And, looking back, I don’t think anyone else did either, or else I would have most likely liked the show back then.

A big tip for recommending a show to somebody is how you present it to them. It’s why first impressions are so impactful and why I fight so hard to make videos elevating media rather than putting it down. Because, it’s important to understand Re:Zero before going into it, otherwise you’re left with this perspective: Subaru is some idiot otaku who gets put in the perfect situation with an OP ability that he’s too stupid to use, surrounded by these nasty people who seek to make his life miserable, and you watch as he pushes through the suffering to get the girl. That’s what the general consensus, at least from what I gathered from people trying to force me to watch it, was. But that’s far from the kind of story Re:Zero is. It’s not some power fantasy about a guy who has what he wants but is too stupid to get it. It’s not about “getting the girl.” It’s not about how to best manipulate Return by Death, not about subverting expectations, and not some story about hopelessness. Re:Zero at its core is a story of hope and the journey of one man to break through his own self-hatred and in the process reaching out to others buried in their own sins and self-hate. And that is the kind of story I personally love to death.

I don’t know if I’ve made it any more obvious, but I have a soft spot for stories centered around characters who don’t understand or even hate themselves and are able to move past that by forming connections with other people. Because, as dark and edgy as Re:Zero can be perceived as, there is a very clear warmth that it focuses on. From the very first episode, we are given tastes of Subaru’s personality through comedic means, and with his meeting with Emilia in the first loop, we see them enjoying each other’s company and forming a relationship. It’s a little on the slow side, but it manages to get across a lighthearted tone that is made all the more impactful when it’s all ripped away. This begins the second loop. This warmth that we’re given a taste of and having to watch Subaru get it taken away from him, even worse watching the events that once transpired never happen again the same way in that same comfort gives you that same sense of hopelessness, but what’s important is that he never gives in. He eventually finds a way to reach the desired end where everyone is alive while still retaining his memories of every moment that he failed as everyone remains blissfully unaware. This trauma and his own memories of his numerous failures and the pain of betrayal stick with him through all of these loops as he always searches for the answer as the one thing that he can’t communicate to others and the thing that no one understands distances him from everyone.

At Re:Zero’s core, moreso than the suffering and the failure is this desire from every character to be understood while trapped in their own self-hatred. It’s this idea that they’re worthless while not knowing the worth that others see in them, hating the world as they hate themselves for what they’ve done. Rem hates that she envied her sister and blames herself for the loss of her horn. Emilia feels nothing but the hate that everyone around her has towards her simply because of how she looks–a hatred so great that the people around her often suffer the consequences of simply being around her. And Subaru hates his own inability to do anything of worth and tries to make up for it by justifying his actions for the sake of another. But I didn’t see that in Re:Zero. I only saw the suffering as raising the stakes or a way to make me feel bad rather than the one most prominent idea: these people are wrong.

I realized during my rewatch that there’s this common trait that is shared amongst those who have a dislike towards certain shows and it’s simply a lack of understanding of what the story is trying to do. Oftentimes, when I discuss media with others that I personally like and they don’t, it comes from this fundamental misunderstanding of what the show is trying to do, and oftentimes that misunderstanding is built off of perceived ideas of what the story IS from other people giving bad information rather than the core appeal and heart of a story. For people who have only heard of Bleach through the idea that it’s all about style, cool characters and badass powers, those who don’t appreciate those fairly surface-level things will only understand the series through that lens, missing the fact that Bleach is a character-driven story with immense amount of theming and emotion behind the fights, the weapons and the journeys of the characters. This mindset was prominent in the early days of K-On when people wrote the series off for being a show about nothing but cute girls doing cute things, but it wasn’t until fans of the series came out to explain the microcosm of the fleeting nature of youth that K-On really is that people in the community came to realize that this story of five girls playing music is more than it appears to be, a belief that is far more prominent now BECAUSE of others having that explanation in the forefront of their minds.

I don’t think people understand the effect that first impressions have on a person’s view on media, and even moreso the hearsay of what a show is being stuck in one’s mind. It’s not inaccurate at all to say that I flat out did not understand Re:Zero and much of my hate was simply because I was too blinded by what I thought it was trying to be rather than what it actually was, and I think that’s a problem that needs to be fixed in the community. Too many stories are given these bad reputations born from people perceiving a work as something that it isn’t. The term deconstruction will actively bring into question whether or not a work is doing a good job of critiquing the genre even if the work itself is not making any attempts to do such a thing, but for those who do buy into the idea that a story is a deconstruction, they’ll tend to view other works in the genre as being lesser than it. For me who likes stories like KonoSuba, seeing a story like Re:Zero be promoted as a deconstruction or a subversion of isekai simply because of its dark nature, I was frustrated seeing it have many of the perceived problems that others claim it was critiquing, namely the main character being given an overpowered ability and being surrounded by beautiful anime girls who at some point in the story are drawn to him. But having it being explained to me that him having those things are meant to highlight the fact that he tends to rely too much on the idea that any mistake he makes he can just fix by starting over, not taking into account the traume he receives in every reset and how that very reliance is not going to make him grow if he’s not going to take every loop as serious as he can. He’s surrounded by beautiful anime girls but they don’t understand him because he never makes an attempt to understand them, the exception being Rem who he reaches out to because of her mutual understanding and is intentionally the only one who loves him unconditionally. The idea that Emilia was “the prize to be won” was also thrown around by people trying to convince me of what the show was, but to me that very idea was demeaning to Emilia as a character and made it moreso scummy of the story to even take that approach, but that’s not what Emilia is. Emilia is very simply someone like Subaru who can’t understand him until he makes an effort to understand her, because just like him, she hates herself. She hates that people despise her because of something she can’t control. She hates that she’s given special treatment because of something she can’t control. She hates that everyone around her suffers because of something she can’t control. That lack of control and that self hatred is the same thing that Subaru understands wholeheartedly, and that’s what puts into context the speech in episode 18 all the more prominently.

The amount of people trying to say that Subaru is just a simp or that he should have picked Rem because she already loved him fighting against others who believe that Subaru should pick Emilia because he needs to earn the love of the girl he fights for, in turn “winning the prize” will twist anyone’s perception of what’s actually happening. Rem is just doing for Subaru what he did for her: telling her that she shouldn’t hate herself, that it wasn’t her fault and that she should forget the sins of the past and move forward as a new person. To start from Zero. And those were the same words given to Subaru when he only ever saw the person that he knew he was: selfish, lazy, arrogant and worthless. But Rem never saw that of the hero that changed her–that gave her a chance to start from zero, because all one person needs to move forward is the assurance that they’re more than what they seem. Thus, Subaru’s response that “he loves Emilia” isn’t some tool for shipping or a slap in the face. It was what Rem knew from the beginning because the hero that she loves fights for his own honest feelings, not simply conceding to whatever is easiest, and at the moment of episode 18 that was to run away with the girl who already liked and understood him. So Subaru, after going through trial after trial, slaying the White Whale, forming the alliance and beating Betelgeuse through his own lessons of making an effort to have others understand your point of view, he finally reaches Emilia and does the one thing he never did before: make an effort to understand her point of view and in turn give her what Rem gave to him because of what he gave to her. But I flat out didn’t understand this, and I don’t think a lot of people do. Many in the community still only see the suffering, the shipping, the “I love Emilia”, rather than what is actually going on that made me see that Re:Zero is greater than I ever thought it was, and how stupid I was for ever thinking it deserved a 1 out of 10.

The community needs to be comfortable with a simple idea: the reason why you might not like something is most likely the fault of misunderstanding. Sure, there might still be things about the general production that might bother you. There might still be characters you just can’t stand. There might even be instances where you understand what it’s doing but dislike it regardless, and I know for a fact that these are possibilities, and that’s fine. But understand that there are times when your thoughts might be wrong. Maybe the show you don’t like simply needs a look from a different angle. Maybe you just need to rewatch it with a new perspective. All media at least deserves a chance to be seen for what it is rather than what others malign it to be. But more importantly, it’s the job of us as anime fans to give others that understanding. Some people might not share that perspective you have for a show you love, so it’s your responsibility to give that to them. Take it from me, because had it not been for someone giving me a new perspective and my desire to give it a second chance, I would have never realized how much I love Re:Zero.