Re: Zero - Starting Life in Another World Season 2 review Wallahi, I am finally done...This show is never beating the harem allegations. Have you ever had one of those watershed moments while watching a show or film where you sort of ask yourself "what the hell am I spending my time watching..."? Season 2 of Re:Zero was split into two parts, but I had this realization halfway through the second episode of the season. I then proceeded to aim to finish the whole first part and drop the show, but seeing as it didn't really end anywhere but the middle of the season's story, I decided to just watch the whole of it. Well, here I am, finally having finished the season and realizing watching season one a month ago should have been enough. Against my better judgement at the time, I decided I might give season two a go even though I remember feeling bummed out (after my brother told me) that this wasn't a show with a single season and it was going to continue for several more. In fact, season three just finished airing recently and as the kids say, you can "miss me with that shit" cause I am OUT! Will the anime industry ever rise above its perverted and warped trappings? Honestly guys I am so, so tired. How many more times will decent and potentially good anime (shows in particular but also films) get bogged down by writing that ranges anywhere from fanservicey and perverse to downright paedophiliac (looking at you Happy Sugar Life)? How many times am I going to see an anime show pretend to have "strong female characters" only to shoot itself in the foot by objectifying them to a degree that makes it hard to take them seriously? If they aren't weirdly tripping over nothing to fall on a male character and be put in an awkward position, they are randomly getting the wind to blow up their dress or some other random shit. Hell, even when nothing in the actual story affects them, you end up getting writers and animators that feel a female character's tits have to grow in size every season or some shit (looking at you One Piece and Bleach). Ah and of course people defend it, because they draw arbitrary lines in which one side is for "artistic expression" and the other side wants to police and censor art. You know what, you do you I guess, just don't praise this stuff on one hand and then turn around and tell me that X show has well written female characters on the other hand. Speaking of which... Re:Zero - Setting back feminism in television a few decades How...How many times am I going to see female characters that start out with some level agency, before having their personalities absorbed to a point they are a former shell of themselves by our protagonist or main character (MC)? Do people genuinely find this shit compelling? Is a show just giving people their own fantasies enough for people to then claim these characters are well written? Re:Zero does not have ONE well written female character, and it is frankly insulting that it does the same thing time and time again and it apparently works on people. Emilia, or as she's probably referred to by her drooling stans "best girl/Emilia-tan" or some shit, apparently gets fleshed out this season and she's a compelling character? Give me a break. I am not a gambling man but if there was ever a surefire winner, it was betting on the way the show's second season would attempt to flesh her out. I swear it's like the writers for this show watched a story considered an emotional masterpiece but they slept through most of it, only waking up for moments where characters suffer great trauma and where they cry. I'm sorry guys, but piling a misery backstory on Emilia does not make her remotely more compelling. We need to get over this shit where we think grief and trauma are more compelling than happiness and being content. The show just gives Emilia a tragic backstory, like it does for every fucking person in that world, and instead of making her a more fleshed out character, it makes her even MORE flawless. Her motivation for wanting to be a ruler is "selfish" except it's about as altruistic as they come, and there is nothing in her past that could potentially add any wrinkles to her flawless personality. Emilia is not a character, she's just the idealized version of the most loyal and loving girlfriend every guy unwilling to step outside and feel the sun on their face, can wish for. If you sleep next to an "Emilia-tan" pillow, whatever but please don't try and tell me she's a well written character. How much harem is too much harem? When I said Subaru was collecting these harem members in the first season like they were Pokémon, I was only 40% joking, but he's genuinely on a mission to get every female creature, not just ones resembling humans, to be loyal to him. I know people say this "comes with the territory" but I just can't accept it. When you make decisions that actively make your characters worse, is that really something to overlook? Just how many female characters is our MC going to collect? He has his half elf #1, and then he has Rem (more on her in a bit) as his #2, but that is not enough for good ol' Subaru. He kept stacking them up in the first season, and even when some didn't fall in love with him, it genuinely felt like if he pursued them they would fold in a matter of days. I thought he had enough in his harem but season two clearly tells me I couldn't be more wrong. Older women? Gotta catch em' all! Other women his age? Obviously gotta catch em' all! Little girls? Catch em' all! God damn "Lolis" even when they aren't human? Gotta catch em' all! Witches? Gotta catch em' all! A fucking ground dragon? GOT. TO. CATCH. EM'. ALL! I reached a point where my astonishment at how bad these female characters were written crossed over into admiration, because anyone who can write characters this shallow, pathetic and dependent on the protagonist and still have their show praised, must be a genius. Seriously even a relatively interesting character (let's ignore the Loli shit and giving her quirky dialogue like saying "I suppose") like Beatrice, by the ending of the season is essentially tamed and now lives for the MC. That actually brings me nicely to the worst of the lot... Rem, you're the really unwanted third wheel in a love triangle I feel sorry for Rem, because after her confession in the first season was immediately countered with the single most tone-deaf confession of love from who she confessed, I felt the writers would struggle to find what to do with her. She was a much more interesting character than Emilia, and this created a big issue. It felt like the writers noticed this, so explicitly had Subaru tell her who his #1 girl is, but instead of them noticing she was already dead in a ditch, they decided to keep her around. It's like her only reason for living was Subaru, and this would be difficult to write around in a second season so...What do they do? They...They put her in a damn coma...They really did the coma "arc" or trope, and from what my brother told me, it is only going to get worse for her because she might have to ALSO experience the "amnesia" arc. This poor unfortunate sap has SLEPT THROUGH THE ENTIRE SECOND SEASON and it's not going to get any better? What are we doing show? Was this all really worth it? Don't even get me started on what the hell they are doing with her sister because that's just more perverse shit. No wonder these two are sisters, they are just desperately dependent on male character to love. Can I justify the time I'm wasting on this show? Bloody hell, we used to have anime shows like Fullmetal Alchemist, Monster (still saving it) and Death Note stretching over 30 episodes and now? Now we have this. How can I honestly keep watching this? Sure, I enjoyed the first season despite all of its flaws, but something has just snapped in me. This show is simply not good enough to run for what will potentially be over 100 episodes. Everything that I sort of held at bay in the first season, continued in the second and it grew so frustrating I found myself shouting at the show to just get on with it at points, especially the last 5 or so episodes. Like every damn one of this anime shows, we get some sort of exam/tournament arc with the Sanctuary arc, which grew more and more boring the longer it went. You can tell in this particular arc, that the source material simply went into more depth with so much covered here, as this show rushed through a lot without fleshing it out much. The show's idea of fleshing stuff out is to just have characters explain it to us or show it to us, as though just seeing something unfold is compelling in and of itself. It puts more interesting storylines and characters to the side and introduces all these other ones that I struggled to find worth being invested in. I realized how little of this show left an impact on me when I spent 20 minutes after the first episode going back through the first to remember certain things, and I doubt these new characters will stay with me. Not a single one is interesting enough to justify how much time we spend on them and their arcs. How much more torture porn for characters can I stomach? All the suffering, edgy blood and gore and all the deaths in the first season apparently were not enough, and we get even more this time around. Yea sure show, seeing kids dead for the 200th time will be more shocking than the first. I'm sure seeing characters go crazy from trauma will hold more weight. I'm sure seeing people go through the absolute ringer and get even more tragic backstories (seriously Emilia's mother's fate is needlessly edgy) will apparently make them more compelling. As I said in my review for the first season, this is the kind of writing that teenagers would find insane and "peak" but I'm not a teenager. There are only so many more times I can watch characters suffer before I cease to care. There are only so many more times I can watch characters cry their hearts out before I even forget why they were crying. There are only so many more times I can hear characters say the perfect thing to cheer others up or reaffirm their love for another, before I lose total interest in the stakes of the scene. I tried, I really did, but clearly Re:Zero is not remotely good enough to sustain multiple seasons of the same repetitive shit. I don't care about all the witches, all the archbishop shit, I don't care about Roswaal's random ass master plan that will obviously be thwarted. I don't care about seeing God damn Lolis everywhere. "Oh, actually Remy they are not little girls, that one is hundreds of years old-STOP!" They are God damn Lolis and we both know it. Can't these shows just have normal women in it? Must it be God damn 10-year-old assassins (yes there is one about that age), 10-year-old "maids", 10-year-old but actually hundreds of years old elves? Why can't they just be like 25 or some shit? Oh right because then you'd actually have to rely on writing them well enough instead of relying on them looking adorable or "kawai" or whatever guys who need their hard drives confiscated and checked, would call these Lolis. Matter of fact, the writers/creators should be put on a monitoring list. I need to get better at dropping shit that isn't worth my time. Re:Zero was still a little bit entertaining, but this second season just magnified all of its glaring flaws and what I found entertaining about it initially, slowly dissipated over a season I ultimately found a chore to get through. I gave "Isekais" a try (really only tried 2) but I think my very limited exposure was clearly a wise decision, this is "arguably" the best of the genre and it isn't anything better than mediocre. I will sleep soundly knowing I dismissed the entire genre.