The quote “I didn’t hear no bell” might be the only remotely decent thing to come out of the film Rocky V. Despite the movie sucking, the phrase conveys the relentless drive some protagonists have, the drive that compels them to keep getting up and fighting until they either emerge victorious or can literally no longer stand. Natsuki Subaru is “I didn’t hear no bell” taken to the extreme – even if he dies, you can bet he’s going to keep coming back and continue the fight.
Re:Zero is a two-cour, narrative heavy isekai that tells the story of Subaru, an eighteen year old who doesn’t seem to have much going on in his life. One night while going to the convenience store Subaru finds himself transported into another world with nothing more than the tracksuit on his back and some snacks. Right away the series begins to subvert the most prevalent isekai trope of the overpowered protagonist. Subaru may be in another world, but he’s just a fairly fit eighteen-year-old, not an insane spellcaster or legend with a sword. Subaru soon finds himself helping Emilia and Puck, a half-elf and a spirit who saved him from getting robbed (or worse) in a back-alley. While in the process of helping them Subaru is disemboweled, but instead of his story ending he finds himself where he was at the start of the day, very much alive. Not only is he alive, but only he is aware of the events that transpired; Subaru may not be a powerful spellcaster or legendary fighter, but he does have the ability to “Return by Death”.
Eventually Subaru manages to work out a “best ending” path to help Emilia and she takes him in. Emilia is staying at the estate of a noble, Roswaal Mathers, who lives there with two demon maids (Rem and Ram) and a librarian (Beatrice). Over the next ~twenty episodes, Subaru will face murder, demonic beasts, infighting, a giant flying whale, and a cult comprised of those who worship the “Witch of Envy”. As I mentioned before, Re:Zero is pretty heavy on the narrative – there is a lot that happens. However, this isn’t narrative for the sake of world-building or narrative for the sake of the characters needing something to do – this is narrative designed to give the characters chances to develop. Because of the nature of Return by Death, Subaru might end up trying to do the exact same thing three or four times. How he approaches the same event over and over, how his choices impact those around him, how his mental state is impacted by what he endures; at the end of the day, what keeps Re:Zero fresh are the characters.
Over the course of season one, Natsuki Subaru goes through three distinct phases that mirror the traditional Hero’s Journey pretty closely. At first Subaru is “selfishly selfless”. Subaru is still treating the new world he’s in as if it’s still fantasy - that’s not to say he’s callous or cold to the inhabitants of the world, but he seems to view his role in it as that of a “hero” from a game or movie. On the surface he’s doing all of the things a traditional hero should be doing: he sacrifices for others, both materially and physically, he’s good with kids, etc. At this point it seems like Subaru is a likeable, albeit bland, protagonist. And while there are character moments during this phase where the seeds of development are sown, Subaru doesn’t really change all that much. Yes, he struggles, and yes, there is hardship, but it’s not enough at this point to make him realize the error of his ways. This skin-deep selflessness is only fully explored and deconstructed with his inability to consider the feelings of Emilia. Subaru’s infatuation with Emilia and his predeveloped notions of the “right thing to do” ultimately fail to consider the wishes of those around him, leading to alienation and events transpiring that lead to Subaru hitting his lowest point.
The second phase can really only be called “despair”. He’s already quarrelling with Emilia and teetering on the brink, but when the Witch’s Cult attacks the estate and she ends up dead along with everyone else, Subaru begins to lose himself. The depression just gets worse – Return by Death gives him the chance to go and save his friends, but failure and trauma lead to desperation, and his desperation leads to other characters finding him deplorable. They can’t understand his mental state or the severity of the situation. The only one that will even give him the time of day is Rem, who he will eventually have to witness being tortured and mutilated by the Petelgeuse and the Witch’s Cult on one of his attempts to stop them. Subaru is shattered and nothing is going his way. If we’re sticking with the boxing metaphor, at this point Subaru is down for the count and the referee is about to call the fight.
I’m just going to straight up yoink what I’m calling Subaru’s third phase from the Hero’s Journey – “rebirth”. Subaru is eventually driven to the point where he just wants to run away with Rem and give up. This is when Rem drags him back from the brink. All of the traits that Subaru was pretending came naturally to him – the motivation, the unrelenting drive, the desire to help others, the selflessness – to Rem those are the best parts about him, why she fell in love with him. And even though Subaru’s self-esteem has been shattered, Rem picks up the pieces and refuses to let him give up on himself and the things that made her fall for him. What was utterly destroyed over the course of four episodes is built back up in what is easily one of the best episodes of any isekai I’ve seen, and while Subaru is still by no means perfect he’s raring to go and save those he loves. Rem was in his corner the whole time, and not only is the fighting spirit back in him, but this is a version of Subaru with much more confidence in himself. This version of Subaru is not a teenager copying a hero from pop culture, this version has failed, suffered, and with the help of others has emerged as an actual hero.
Although I talked in depth about Subaru, and despite that really didn’t manage to do the character justice, the reality is the character writing of Re:Zero as a whole is phenomenal. Emilia and Rem represent two sides of the Subaru “love interest” coin, with one being idealized by him and the other idealizing him. Emilia has to deal with the ramifications to looking exactly like the Witch of Envy, leading to her being unable to form any kind of close relationship with most people, while Rem is dealing with an inferiority complex stemming from the circumstances of her birth so severe that she has no idea how to even begin forming a sense of self-worth. A good portion of the story is devoted to helping both Emilia and Rem overcome these fatal character flaws, but I think it’s also worth noting what an interesting contrast they are to Subaru. Almost 100% of the challenges Subaru faces this season are ramifications from his actions, while Emilia and Rem are forced to confront issues that they never had any control over. Their problems create an interesting situation where Subaru has to help with their past trauma while at the same time working through whatever disaster he is currently starting down the barrel of.
It is also impossible to talk about this season without mentioning Petelgeuse, the “Sin Archbishop of Sloth” with the Witch’s Cult and the primary antagonist of the season. While I’m normally opposed to antagonists who really are just evil for the sake of being evil, I think that Petelgeuse has to be one of the exceptions to this rule. Everything about this character is insidious and insane, from the overpowering desire for “love” from the Witch of Envy to the way he uses his own followers as “fingers” for him to reincarnate into. Petelgeuse is so easy to hate that the audience doesn’t need to know anything about his backstory to hate him, especially after he forces Subaru to watch as Rem is contorted, tortured, and ultimately murdered in front of his eyes; he is utterly irredeemable with nothing positive about him. Because Petelgeuse as a villain is so easy to hate and wish dead, you can’t help but feel immense satisfaction when Subaru does, once again, manage to find the “best ending” and Petelgeuse is defeated.
White Fox, the studio behind the animation of Re:Zero (as well as another personal favorite of mine, Girls’ Last Tour), certainly deserves to be commended for the insanely high production value. The animation quality is consistently superb, though it should be said that the action is perhaps a little more grounded than many other shows. I obviously say that with a grain of salt as its hard for a fight against a giant flying whale to be grounded, but Re:Zero does a fantastic job of visually conveying the weight impacts have, making the action feel very raw and visceral, as well as not relying too heavily on a complex magic system as opposed to more close up, hand-to-hand action. I think equally noteworthy is a stylistic choice to go in for a lot of extreme, often wide-angle, closeups of characters. Its something you'd expect out of horror moreso than a show like Re:Zero, and it’s a risky move as it can be really off-putting. Honestly though, it worked here in achieving the tense, high stress and uncomfortable atmosphere that these kinds of shots were trying to convey.
The sound design of Re:Zero also deserves a shout-out. While the openings and endings were solid (in my opinion the first OP in particular, Redo by Konomi Suzuki, was great), and the insert music contributed massively to key moments, the voice acting was honestly just mind blowing. This is a series that has some very lighthearted, comedic moments mixed with incredibly dark, depressing moments, and the characters definitely required quite a bit of range to pull off successfully. Whenever I see Inori Minase, who voices Rem, I know it’s going to be a quality performance and Rie Takahashi makes a relatively subdued character, Emilia, come to life on screen (with both contributing to the soundtrack as well). I don’t think I can emphasize enough, however, just how good the performances from Yuusuke Kobayashi as Subaru and Yoshitsugu Matsuoka as Petelgeuse are. When he needs to Kobayashi can sell Subaru as either an average eighteen year old messing around with friends or the most emotionally broken man on the planet, and Matsuoka’s performance as an unhinged lunatic sounds just as deranged and psychotic as any version of the Joker that I’ve seen.
There is nothing incredibly complex about boxing. It’s a one-on-one fight between two people, and the first one to either have their body give out loses. Things are not nearly that simple for Natsuki Subaru in the world of Re:Zero. If he wants to consistently save everyone he’s not going to get the luxury of a clean one-on-one fight, and as strange as it may seem he’s not going to have the luxury of his body giving out and stopping him. Subaru is going to have to fight everyone in his way, as many as are in his way at once, and is going to have to deal with seeing those he loves die over and over, as well as experiencing his own death countless times. Subaru’s barrier to happiness and the “best ending” isn’t physical at all, its purely mental. And this man, who can die repeatedly until he accomplishes the impossible, isn’t capable of hearing a bell.
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