This is a review of the third season of Re:Zero. This review has spoilers, because logically you’ve probably already watched the anime if you’re reading a third season review anyway. If you haven’t watched it, then: skip to the end I guess, if you feel like it.
Re:Zero is one of my favourite anime of all time, and has been one of my favourites since I first watched it almost ten years ago as I started to immerse myself in the medium of anime. So, when it was officially announced that it’d be getting a third season I was pretty excited about it to say the least. My policy of generally avoiding fandom spaces meant I didn’t know what to expect, what new obstacles may present themselves for the main cast, and what points of growth or commentary this next phase of the story would provide and I was looking forward to being able to take it all in and make sense of it weekly, in the same way I’d gotten to experience the second season. With this third season now concluded, and another phase of the story wrapped up, the only feeling I’m left with is,,,, indifference? As weird as it felt in real-time, and as out of character as it feels to write this out after all the years I spent defending and highlighting this show, this new season of it landed with all the grace of a wet sock, and the main reason underlying that fact for me is: its lack of any self-awareness.
I want you to consider what made this show so memorable for you, if you’re someone who also enjoyed essentially all of what came before this point, the moments in the story that were as difficult to watch as they were essential for developing Subaru’s character and the audience along with him. His argument with Emilia after he’d been absolutely humiliated trying to fight Julius, Rem’s confession and rejection in the phase of the story after that, Subaru’s encounter with his parents and his past life during the Sanctuary’s trials. All of these moments forced him to confront the ugliest, most cowardly aspects of his own character, forced him to confront inconvenient truths that made it clear that no matter how great he perceived his own suffering to be, it gives him no excuse to disregard anyone else’s wants or struggles. Over the course of two long seasons of death and rebirth, breaking down and being built back up again, he learned to value those around him for the actual humans (or demons,half-elves, etc….) they are, rather than as his own one-sided image of them, and has started the quest towards valuing his own life and role without the baggage of the alternating entitlement and self-isolation that made him unable to form genuine bonds at the start. I felt like I gained a new perspective on myself, on the world at large, and on isekai (and other escapist anime) in general, through watching his story unfold. And that’s what made Re:Zero so great to me. Now with all of that said, where is Any of that in this third season? Before you dismiss this review for just having raised that question,,,, hear me out a bit.
Subaru doesn’t need to be put through the psychological equivalent of Takeshi’s Castle on permanent loop for me to derive any satisfaction from keeping up with his story, he doesn’t need to die over and over again or keep being broken down as a character. The general absence of those sorts of moments for most of this season is not necessarily where my issue with this season comes from. If I were to take a specific example, the confrontation with Regulus that took a bit more than half the season to clear, you’d see where the writing here starts to fall apart a bit. In casual conversation with the most dear and cherished person on earth to me, I’ve expressed the view that Regulus is essentially an amalgamation of every harmful trait/stereotype you typically associate with incels. And that’s not me saying his inclusion in the story is somehow problematic, just for the record, it’s only an assessment of his character. He has an obsession with purity, asking Emilia about her virginity as the most important, and first question before embarking on his plans to marry her, and also not wanting any of his wives to express themselves at all in ways that he found offensive. They were to be chaste, modest, quiet, and pretty much only dolls for his admiration and use. All of this notwithstanding, he failed to understand why it was that he was so emotionally isolated, and why nobody truly cared for him.
In some respects, I feel like Regulus being an incel is a mirror of where Subaru was two seasons ago, or where he could’ve ended up if circumstances permitted. The lack of emotional maturity causing him to alienate himself from others, the disregard for the individuality or human worth of the women in his life, the vindictiveness, were all reminiscent of the version of Subaru we saw around his confrontation with Julius. Worse, obviously, but similar in spirit. But rather than this being a moment for self-reflection or commentary, or a moment to truly demonstrate personal growth, the show kinda just lets that opportunity fly past, because I guess that’s not what it’s interested in? And fine, not every part of every story has to have a greater significance, but the significance of that omission stands out in a context where other parts of the story start telegraphing the same sort of worldview/mindset and trying to frame it in an even vaguely positive light. Which brings me to: Wilhelm.
Wilhelm has always been an uncomfortable presence for me in the story, even at the height of my days as a fan of this series, because his core motivation is his love story with his long deceased wife, Theresia, which could not possibly be more of a “women belong in the kitchen” moment if it Tried. If you’re reading this review, I figure you’ve already watched the anime and already know what it is I’m referring to, but on the off-chance you’re here out of idle curiosity or you watched previous seasons Years ago but haven’t started the third one yet, the long and short of it is that Wilhelm believes that Theresia, despite holding the title of “Sword Saint”, should not be wielding a sword at all, because she’s too pretty for it. He spends most of his life training and fighting to make her a stay-at-home mom, which, with the full context from the flashbacks this season, doesn’t come across quite as bad as it seemed in the first season in all fairness, but also absolutely does not exist in a vacuum. It’d be one thing if Theresia happened to not be interested in making war, and therefore not as suited to her title and role as we know Reinhard to be, in a story where the women involved otherwise have enough agency to not constantly get sidelined in the way that she essentially was for Willhelm’s character development, but it’s another thing entirely in a story where her story is example 1 out of 100. It’s almost impressive that Tappei Nagatsuki, the original author, managed to once again contrive a set of circumstances where Emilia needs to be rescued by Subaru, and continue the path set in season 2 where Beatrice’s entire character revolves around him, and give Subaru a chance to avenge (or save) Rem, who’s also obsessed with him, and on and on and on, all at once. Heck, we even get a new sin archbishop, Sirius, whose entire personality revolves around the now long-dead sin archbishop of sloth, Petelgeuse, who she has a one-sided fixation on. Under those conditions, with the women in the story continually being used as tools to give motivation or depth to the men in the story (Subaru getting most of that), it feels a lot less incidental that the story didn’t really zero in on Regulus’ relation to his “wives” to the extent that it could have. And that undermines a lot of what the previous seasons laid the groundwork for, in my opinion.
That was all a lot of negativity though, and it’s not like I hated watching this, or like it only had negatives to offer. I had a lot of appreciation for the newly introduced sin archbishop in the witch’s cult representing lust: Capella, as well as for the sin archbishop of gluttony who got much more of a spotlight this season than their previous cameo. I love that Capella, for all her bluster and taunting, for all her spite and venom, is very clearly someone who’s been through a lot of hurt, only trying to inflict that hurt on others in return. We don’t get very much of her backstory but we get enough to piece together that the dragon blood she uses to poison a couple of members of our main cast is something she wishes she could be free of herself, and paired with her resentment for people whose love only goes skin-deep, and her fixation on love, you can presume that her past may involve having her loved ones turn against her due to her cursed blood and the shapeshifting she’s capable of thanks to it. Of course, having said that, it’s Maybe possible that the shapeshifting has to do with the authority of lust,,,, I choose to believe that lust’s authority is restricted to instinctively knowing what other people desire, which by coincidence fits her pre-existing abilities quite well, as it lets her torment people in the form of their loved ones. It’s somewhat similar conceptually to the sort of fuckery that Envy from Full Metal Alchemist got up to, but it’s never gonna be a “no” from me.
Gluttony is a much less sympathetic villain, because they (all the different persona’s that make up the sin archbishop of gluttony) quite clearly revel in evil for the sake of evil, no matter what ass-backwards justifications they may happen to spout in the process. You might say the excess is unnecessary, but that’s exactly what makes it gluttony, right? The confrontation between Otto and his nameless besties and the unhinged (occasionally literally) Gluttony somewhat surprisingly became a highlight of the season for me, even though I don’t have a whole lot to say about it. The fight was a bit reminiscent of the subjugation of the White Whale in the first season, but even though it’s a rehash in that respect I still love the concept of having your numbers progressively whittled down without having any way to keep track of it because your own memories are actively rewritten to omit each of Gluttony’s new victims, and if you ever do realise it’s bound to be too late. And unlike the whale, Gluttony is all too happy to mock you using the memories of those now lost to you forever, which adds another dimension to their character that I personally appreciated.
Now, the length of this review has kinda gotten away from me a bit so I probably won’t end up talking about everything I wanted to bring up, but this is the obligatory part of the review where I mention that the professionally produced anime was, in fact, professionally produced. From an “objective” point of view, the animation this season was better than it has ever been, and there are some genuinely unbelievable cuts of animation, including Garf’s big fight in the second half of the season, which, just for the record, I Loved for reasons beyond just the visuals. It was genuinely pretty hype in a way that I don’t think this anime has managed to be in the past, and it’s not the only moment that made me feel that way. Reinhard had a couple even though you could argue his very existence takes away a lot of the tension/stakes in any fight he’s involved in, and Emilia knocking the stuffing out of Regulus was incredibly satisfying too (tangentially related to that point: I heard subsequently that they animated one punch for each individual bride that Regulus had kept captive, but I don’t know how true that is because I didn’t go frame by frame or anything). In terms of pure spectacle, White Fox fed us more this season than we may ever get again. But even with that, there is a caveat,,,, this season takes place after a bit of a time-skip, and like any good anime time-skip it is accompanied by several redesigns, some of which seem to apply retroactively for the purpose of making more expressive character models. I’m going to be blunt and say I don’t think the redesigns or the shift in artstyle went well in every instance, and as a major Pandora enthusiast I was a bit unhappy with the appearance she had in her cameo this season. There’s also certain cuts or even entire episodes that you can tell were put on the backburner compared to the rest of the season, but that’s almost always going to happen anyway so it’s more just an observation than a complaint.
And that, the spectacle of this season, reflects a possible deeper shift in priorities. Maybe the first two seasons were more set-up than anything else, laying the groundwork for precisely an arc like this, and the focus is now more on the action and on narrative payoff than it is on building up or saying anything more about our established main cast (with at the very least the exception of Garf). But if that is indeed the case, I can’t help but feel that the remainder of the show, for as long as it continues, will be carrying on without any of what set it apart from the rest of an already arguably oversaturated isekai genre anyway. Lord knows there are better escapist power fantasies out there than this, and for a time it seemed that was the furthest possible thing from what Tappei Nagatsuki aspired for this story to be anyway. But now? I’m not sure there’s such a meaningful difference between an anime that unironically does the whole “flat is justice” bit and gives its protagonist a full harem replete with the most suspiciously designed “legal lolis” on earth, and an anime like this, which takes that same trope, and maybe makes one or two jokes about it in the process as the full extent of its self-awareness. For the handful of my fellow elitist snobs out there, how many degrees of separation are there between Re:Zero at this point, and a show like Mushoku Tensei? Rudeus and Subaru aren’t the same character, obviously, they don’t react the same way nor do they face the exact same conditions to react to, so don’t misunderstand. I only mean in terms of the spirit of where the priorities are. For me, this show has gone from a cut above the rest, with lots to say and lots of uncomfortable lessons to get across, to another name in an endless sea of isekai unconcerned with how and why its audience turns to the genre for an escape and commenting on what that says about them (or: us, I suppose). You may be fine with that, which would make this season maybe as high as a 9 out of 10 for you, especially since it gave us the exact kind of cliffhanger the original version of season 1 deprived us of at the end. But for me? It’s gone down a few notches.
With all of that said, this season had a fair bit I did not like, and a few things and characters that I did still appreciate, meaning this was not a complete waste of a season or anything nearly so dramatic. It’s just one of my favourite anime suddenly seeming to fall far short of “perfect” the longer it goes on. With that in mind, I figure a score of around 72 out of 100 seems fair enough to reflect my experience with this season. Unambiguously more good than bad, but with a lot of room for improvement that I honestly doubt we’ll see going forward anyway. Maybe you agree with most of what I said, or maybe you think this was the worst Re:Zero review in the history of the earth, but either way if you made it all the way down here then thank you for bothering to read this needlessly long re:view. If you somehow Still have an appetite to read more of my thoughts on isekai in general, then check out this Re:Zero inspired post from a few years ago.
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