Let's Review — Re:Zero Season 3

 

Re:Zero's third season, adapting the fifth arc of the story, just finished airing. Re:Zero, and Arc 5 in particular, have a bit of a special place in my heart, not to mention this was one of the biggest productions of the winter season; naturally, I have to write a review on it.

As mentioned above, I have a special connection with RZ and Arc 5. Like most fans, I found the series through the incredibly successful first season of its anime adaptation; after season 2 finished airing, I began reading the web novel, with Arc 5 being the first portion of the story I fully read. By the time I caught up with the web novel, the story was around the end of Arc 7, and I began working with a certain fan translation group as a proofreader, hence why this series holds such a special place for me. For reasons I won't get into the details of, my work with that group led me to become particularly intimate with Arc 5, and watching it get adapted as I was working on it was an interesting feeling.

I think the quality of Re:Zero as a series goes without saying, and numerous other reviewers have already said everything there is to be said about the first two seasons and about the anime's quality, good and bad. Rather than just reviewing season 3 on its merits as an anime in a vacuum, I instead want to focus more on critiquing it as an adaptation. Thus, this will likely be a bit shorter than my other reviews, and I won't be going in-depth on the characters and plot—you don't need me to tell you RZ's character writing and plotting are top-notch.

Finally, I'll take this chance to inform my lovely readers that this article will, obviously, contain major spoilers for season 3/Arc 5, including information that anime-onlys won't know due to it being excluded from the anime. Without further ado, let's begin.

Re:Zero — Season 3 (Arc 5)

Full name: Re:Zero - Starting Life in Another World From Zero

Feeling Rushed

Season 3 runs for 16 episodes, and while that's a respectable amount for the modern era of anime, I can't help but feel the production would've benefited immensely from one or two more episodes to give it more room to breathe. Those 16 episodes are covering 81 chapters worth of story, which comes out to about 5 chapters per episode.

That sounds like a lot, but while writing this point, I did the math, and seasons 1 and 2 also cover about 5 chapters each. It's no secret that the anime has cut quite a bit of content, but the cuts in season 3 felt particularly severe to me. For this, I have come up with two potential explanations, one or both of which could be true:

• The format of Arc 5 led to a large number of important fights featuring different characters, on a scale well beyond the previous arcs; many of these fights had entire episodes dedicated to them despite only comprising 1-2 chapters, thus setting the season behind schedule and making the other episodes feel a bit rushed.
• This season's pacing isn't actually any more rushed than previous seasons, nor did it have significantly more content cut or brushed over; rather, this is simply the first season where I've personally been able to notice those cuts, since this is the first arc that I read before seeing it adapted to the anime.

Regardless of whether or not this season is more rushed than previous seasons, I can confidently say it was, in fact, a bit rushed, and the rapid pacing had consequences for the production as a whole. The rushed pace was most noticeable to me in the very beginning of the season and in its conclusion.

The first episode of season 3, while at a premium movie length, blitzes through nearly 20 chapters worth of content in order to end with the reveal of Sirius. I can absolutely understand why the showrunners made this decision—they wanted to end the first episode with an enticing hook, and Sirius was the obvious choice—but the cost is that much of the buildup and character work found in those early chapters is brushed over; we'll return to that point later.

As for the conclusive episode, it felt less like a real conclusion and more like rushing through a checklist of things they needed to show and characters they needed to check in on in order to end the arc and set up for Arc 6/season 4. This is largely because the first half of the episode was still full of action and major reveals, leaving only the latter half to actually wind down; even most 12-episode shows nowadays know to properly dedicate an entire episode to their falling action.

I believe the worst consequence of this particular episode is that the reveal of Rui simply wasn't treated with the gravitas that it deserved—she just kind of showed up and left without leaving much of an impression. Considering how incredibly important she is for the next three arcs, I feel that her reveal was really owed a bit more time and respect to really make a proper impact. All that said, the conclusion wasn't all bad—I think the slow build-up to seeing Julius and revealing he'd lost his name with that cheery music playing was a perfectly executed moment and exactly the cliffhanger the season needed to end on.

No Time for Rest

One major side-effect of the quick pacing of season 3 is that it blitzes through what very little "rest time" Arc 5 has. Once Sirius is revealed, the arc becomes a nonstop run of action, characters recovering from near death, and planning & strategy for how to take down the Witch Cult; the only time that we get to slow down, take a breather and really spend some quality time with the characters is the beginning of the arc, its conclusion, and a short section with Garfiel as he goes on his individual adventure with Mimi and meets his mom.

The former two of these breaks are cut down a lot, with all of the initial build-up, character-building, and worldbuilding of the first ~20 chapters packed into the first episode and bookended with Sirius's reveal. This has the effect of making the season as a whole feel rather unbalanced, as we get basically no break time throughout once the story gets started.

Horror & Gore

One of the most unique aspects of Re:Zero as a story is that it can kill its main protagonist, or any other character, off at any time without having any permanent consequences for the story as a whole. The author, Tappei Nagatsuki, takes full advantage of this fact to depict scenes of incredible horror, despair, and gore throughout this work, and the unique and horrific ways in which he kills off Subaru are a sight to behold.

One thing about season 3 that disappointed me was how it glossed over a lot of the most iconic moments of horror and gore throughout arc 5. There are two specific scenes I'd like to bring up for this point.

The first is one of Subaru's deaths at the hands of Sirius early on in the arc. During one of the early loops, he attempts to sneak into the clocktower and save Lusbel himself, only to be caught by Sirius. This leads to one of the most memorable and brutal deaths in the series, with several entire pages of description as Subaru is caught in an endless feedback loop of fear, despair, and pain until he eventually dies of shock.

In the anime, this death is even more brutal than in the original text, with Subaru being hanged in addition to suffering from the infinite fear, but the scene passes by so quickly. I do think what we have of it was executed very well, but it didn't invoke the same visceral reaction from me as the original text did, to which I believe its brevity is the main cause.

Another moment of horror that I was disappointed to see went completely unadapted was one of Regulus's most iconic moments. To be more precise, it wasn't that the moment went unused per se, but that it was majorly changed to such a degree that I didn't realize it was the same scene when I first watched it.

Anime-onlies may remember a scene during the battle against Regulus where he used his ability to lift up a huge volume of water, which he then used to bombard the city. I regret to inform you all that this same scene was way cooler in the novel, where Regulus instead swung around the corpse of a water dragon, bombarding the city with its blood. It's a bit saddening to know that the opportunity has passed and this scene will likely never be animated in its original form.

All this isn't to say that the show does a poor job with its horror and gore—it's quite the opposite, really—but that there were quite a few specific moments I was looking forward to which either got cut or watered down. I believe this is another consequence of the rushed pacing and further evidence that the show could've really benefited from another episode or two.

Action

My critiques have been mostly negative so far, so to assure you all that I did actually enjoy the season, let's switch things up a bit and talk about something I really enjoyed: the action. I think the season did an amazing job with the action, and there were a few standout fights with particularly amazing animation. The obvious highlight was Garfiel vs Kurgan, which had some beautiful visuals.

I believe the action is actually one of the few ways in which season 3 actually improved upon the source material. Going back to read Arc 5 after Arcs 7 & 8 really illuminated just how much Tappei had improved when it came to writing fight scenes—which is to say, the Arc 5 fights, while not bad by any means, were a bit rough around the edges. The anime did a wonderful job at taking some of the less interesting or glossed over bits of choreography throughout the arc and refining them into truly engaging fights.

Questionable Choices

Here's a major story beat that anime-onlies won't know: Al is also from another world, and he also has an ability that allows him to rewind time upon death (though his works a bit differently than RbD does). This fact was revealed quite early-on in the novel, but for whatever reason, the anime chose not to include it.

While Al's fight with Lust presented a perfect opportunity for the showrunners to rectify this error and at least reveal Al's ability, they ended up passing that by, as well. It begs the question: when will they reveal it? Will they attempt to write around the audience not understanding his ability throughout Arcs 7 & 8? Will they wait all the way until Arc 9 to reveal it when there's absolutely no room left for stalling?

Al's identity and powers aren't the only major reveal to be excluded from the anime. A major plot point that was revealed in Arc 5 was the existence of Eridna—an artificial spirit created by Echidna, which accompanies Anastasia and disguises itself as a scarf. This is a pretty big deal, but for whatever reason, this plot point is completely skipped over in the anime.

Eridna being excluded is particularly odd since, unlike Al's powers, which could theoretically be written around until Arc 9, Eridna is incredibly important to the plot of Arc 6, the anime adaptation of which has already been announced. Why stab themselves in the foot with something that's going to be immediately relevant?

What makes these exclusions even more puzzling is that the anime went out of its way to introduce a completely original concept and dedicate some of season 3's limited screentime to it: the Witch's remains. The anime provides new lore stating that the remains of a Witch are hidden beneath the city, guarded by the mysterious Council of Ten, and the Witch Cult makes the location of the remains one of their demands. Both the remains and the council that guards them are completely nonexistent in the novel, calling into question whether or not this is canon, and what purpose it serves to the story as a whole. Will the anime include more original content based on this setup later, or was it just thrown in for the hell of it?

Conclusion: 8/10

I spent most of this article voicing some of my long-winded critiques of the anime as an adaptation, and most of what I had to say circles back around to my very first point: it really could've done with another episode or two to give the story some breathing room. Even so, I enjoyed this season a lot, despite its flaws. The art and animation were great, and Re:Zero's story and characters are good enough that it'd take a lot more to make the show unenjoyable.

Don't get me wrong, the anime definitely suffers from some pretty severe flaws as an adaptation, but as a show in a vacuum it does quite well for itself, and I believe that is definitely the more important metric. I can't really justify giving it any lower of a score than this.

Season 3 is a good watch that I highly recommend—and while I have the chance, I must point out the obvious that the OP, Reweave, is an absolute banger. That said, I also highly recommend that any fans of the anime also check out the web novel or light novel. I do think that the story is best enjoyed in its original form, and you'd be surprised just how much extra nuance and detail is packed into its chapters.

I'm very much looking forward to season 4. Arc 6 is genuinely peak fiction, so I can only hope they do it justice and learn from some of the flaws of season 3.