Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu 4th Season

"You are an Amazing guy Natsuki Subaru" ~ AmnesiaBaru

What a season. What a journey that was. The larping, the aura, the hype, the plot. Everything was peak. Literally an unforgettable experience. 11/10. When people will talk about the best anime season, Re:ZERO will always be mentioned.

Following Re:ZERO Season 4 was prolly one of the best moments of me watching anime. Every week felt like an event. You'd finish an episode and just sit there thinking about what the hell you had just watched. The amount of tension this season managed to build was insane, especially during those moments where Subaru was constantly pushed past his ... limits.

And SPOILER WARNING man, seeing Natsuki Daniel was something else. AmnesiaBaru was genuinely such a weird but fascinating experience. Watching him try to piece together who he was, what had happened, and why everyone around him seemed to know a version of him that he himself couldn't remember was honestly heartbreaking. Seeing Subaru without all those memories made you realize just how much of his identity had been built through everything he'd gone through. And somehow, even without remembering it all, he still ends up showing those same qualities that make him Subaru. I will never forget the aura monster, Natsuki Daniel and his will to keep climbing the stairs even if they were endless.

The RBDs were also brutal as hell. Re:ZERO has always been good at making deaths feel horrifying, but Season 4 somehow made them feel even more impactful. The brutality wasn't just there for shock value either. Every death carried weight, and every failure made the next attempt feel more desperate. There were so many moments where I genuinely had no idea how Subaru was supposed to get out of the situation.

The second cour especially went crazy. The atmosphere, the character moments, the reveals, the fights, the absolute chaos. Everything just kept escalating, but it never felt like the story was losing itself in all of it.

And Shaula... man, what i fell in love. She was somehow both completely unhinged and incredibly lovable at the same time. Every scene with her had this chaotic energy, but underneath all of that there was something genuinely sad and memorable about her. Definitely one of the characters I'm gonna remember from this season. Oh and remember its SCORPION TAIL NOT PONNYTAIL!

And obviously, Ram.

Nee-sama was genuinely one of the highlights of the 2nd cour. Her moments were some of the ones I looked forward to the most, and seeing her finally get that kind of attention was so satisfying.

And that ending...

I wont say anything to avoid spoilers because everyone deserves to witness it first hand. But wow. That was something. i wont mention a certain someone either but you guys know.

Re:ZERO Season 4 was hype, painful, brutal, emotional and just ridiculously entertaining. It had that feeling where you aren't simply watching a show anymore. You're living through it with the characters.

Absolutely unforgettable season. 10/10. But sadly this is it. Goodbye guys until we meet again!

Tremendous improvement over the easy-going shonenslop with the ultimate NTR villain that was S3. The tone and mystery are closer to S1 and parts of S2, even if there are ample shonenisms later on. S3 was tamer and light-hearted compared to other seasons because there was minimal use of return by death. The author's trashiest writing tendencies tend to reveal themselves during lighter moments or when he foregoes resets to reshuffle the plot in new and unexpected ways. There are two main factions within the Re:ZERO fandom: those who want Subaru to suffer more and those who want him to suffer less. S3, the outlier ... thus far, epitomizes the latter faction, while S4 and much of the rest of the series align with the former faction. Luckily, our favorite NEET otaku punching bag is again getting spanked and suffering non-stop, spilling his guts and screaming bloody murder (even if his insufferable VA is convinced the series is called Re:YELL and endlessly shrieks to the point of inducing tinnitus).

The "Got Milk?" cowpoke-styled bartender scene is a weird cliche joke to throw in at the beginning and seemed a red flag, but once Subaru and his troupe of lolis, bimbos, and some guy I forgot the name of are venturing through the unforgiving desert in search of the tower, the atmosphere is equivalent to S1 and has the presence of a location in a gothic horror, like the castle in, say, Nosferatu. There's plenty of tension and numerous unexpected, gruesome deaths once everyone finally loses S3's draconian battle shounen plot armor (it's a heinous crime to not murder Subaru at least every 1-2 episodes!). The claustrophobic tunnel scene goes full-on snuff-fest denpa. So far, so good. Then Shaula appears and smothers the atmosphere under the weight of her DD boobs. Just what we needed, another bimbo.

Shaula, with her skimpy Halloween-orange-and-black capeshit attire, obnoxious adderall speed-talking (unfortunately, she delivers a lot of subtle details about the tower that are difficult to absorb because of this), total bimbo with excessive otaku pandering and genki airhead persona, and slimy deredere sucky-sucky advances, is among the worst additions to Re:THOT's cast in the entirety of the franchise's run (even worse than the songstress monkey from S3). She is the queen of simping and adores Subaru from the second they meet because he "smells like her master," so it seems that Subaru never taking a bath finally paid off (at least he changed out of his tracksuit). There's a scene with conflict between her and Subaru, where she's like, "but I wuzs you, otaku-kun" that cues Re:WEEP piano music, but the relationship between them is underdeveloped, and she is a shoddy character typical of trashy LNs, so this scene is forced. Everything about her character is embarrassing, but she at least functions as a source of tension because of her relation to the tower and is at her best in an adversarial role. The last thing we need are more blobs sucking Subaru off; give us more Rams! Similar to the factional split over Subaru's suffering, there is the divide between preference for blobs who act as ball-fanners or ball-kickers! Only Ram and Meili have anything close to a firm kick.

Given Meili's character arc and backstory, which she needed as a result of having had few scenes prior and a brief role as an antagonist, it seems obvious Shaula would have benefited from the same treatment. The conclusion of Shaula's arc is pushed to the end of the season, and what is supposed to be emotional lacks impact; all details indicate she was the same irritating genki airhead character 400 years ago that she is at the start of this season, and she has no development by the end. The author wants to keep her past with Flugel mysterious for now, and her loneliness is shown, but that's mostly all there is to contrast her rabid comic relief/fanservice/pandering. There's a callousness and indifference that she shows in relation to one character dying that could have been explored further, which suggests that everyone other than Subaru is expendable to her or her friendly relations with some of them are performative. Since the Gluttony trio are present, as an example, she could have been manipulated by them into some kind of reflection of her darker desires, resulting in a yandere taming event where she's killing the other party members to have Subaru to herself or something like that, with Subaru having to provide a resolution, as he does elsewhere. Something along those lines or some other kind of 1-3 episode aside could have added more depth to Shaula, given her enough time with Subaru for their relationship to be somewhat more believable, and allow the sappy moment to feel closer to being "earned," rather than her being the usual nice blob stroking the self-insert MC's ego that's so common to animanga.

Since the previous paragraph focuses on a waifu fished out of a dumpster, this would be a fine time to pivot to another weak link that carried over from S3: Emilia is still dull dereblob eyecandy who now has a catgirl hoodie draped over her ultra-tight cameltoe suit and is begging to have another Satella mindfuck to add interest. She's no longer purely a damsel in distress like she was for most of S3, skulking around a castle in a game of hide and go seek with the Archbishop of NTR, but her main roles are 1. Kiss Subaru's booboos. 2. Create ice sculptures during the battle shonen segments. The only other additional comment for the house bimbo is that her milkers (which seem to get bigger every season) get pinched by chopsticks and bounce around in an :O moment; It lacks the sting of the Archbishop of NTR scenes back in S3 for Subaru, but it's still further than he has ever gotten with either of his waifus. At least Emilia is not annoying like Shaula.

Then we get to the first battle shounenish tower exam arc; despite this season suffering from apparent time crunches and rushed material, the fight unfortunately eats up a whole episode or more, and Re:ZERO is at its best when it avoids shounen spectacle and leans into something more puzzle-like or creative. Reid is always catcalling the bimbos with stuff like, "Hey, you're a hottie/babe" or whatever his equivalent is of "dat ass." Cringey, thoughtless LN/YA writing, and he's the typical I'm too cool/strong badass who flexes on his opponents by fighting with chopsticks. Part of why Julius is paired against Reid is because he is a mighty ancestor of Julius' rival Reinhard. The focus is more so on Julius' wounded pride and lost identity as a knight rather than mining the drama of the rivalry and more of the latter could have made the dynamic stronger, not that Reid is the most dignified foil. Started to think this should be named Re:YAOI when Subaru was carrying a boobooed Julius on his back, and that would be the next addition to his harem. S3 consisted of gag-inducing banter between the two, but their manly man friendship is, on reflection, surprisingly decent for an anime, where most dynamics are about otaku-kun x waifu, yet Julius' bitter, whiny, self-loathing cryfest is a bit overdone, and his inferiority complex next to Reinhard has never been explored at any depth, aside from a brief flashback and a few short lines. From my understanding, Julius internal conflict was expanded in the LN, so the feeling of compression is another adaptation hurdle. They really retconned the scene where Julius shamed Subaru in S1 to indicate he was deeply moved by his tenacity or identified with him on some level rather than thinking Subaru was a pathetic loser who should be skinned alive and slow-roasted over a fire? Yet it works to parallel Julius and Reinhard's rivalry and his similar inadequacy next to the current foe.

One of the most controversial arcs in all of Re:ZERO must be Subaru developing amnesia because it's said to overwrite his development or is a reiteration of past events when Subaru was first isekaied. Amnesia is a trope that people love to hate. In part, that's warranted because many writers use the trope in a lazy way, but there isn't anything inherently wrong with it; much like how any time there is gore, there is always a refrain about gore being unnecessary, but there isn't a special reason to believe "less is more," which is becoming its own cliche bandwagon. Sometimes withholding information is more effective for the way your imagination tries to fill in the gaps, but it lacks the visceral impact of being shown the gore. It's an aesthetic choice, and we need to quit pretending that showing less necessarily makes your production any better; not that gushing fountains of it everywhere makes your production good either. Re:ZERO has always struck a fine balance, and there isn't any obvious problem here. Once we get to the amnesia, which is probably the goriest section other than the tunnel scene, not pulling any punches makes more sense because Subaru is going through the same harrowing process of learning about his unique destiny.

To begin with, the tower is a mysterious and ominous place, and the library, with its books of the dead, is an endlessly expanding Borges-esque device. We also know from the OP that the Gluttony trio are present. Amnesia is not too surprising of a development as a result, with the full extent of different memory-oriented powers of the Gluttonies not being fully understood (Rui's is especially confusing without some reflection and not as clear-cut as Lye or Roy). Since Subaru is physically weak but capable of trial and error and plotting out grand strategies because of his powers, wiping his memory is a natural way to defeat him. This leads to a much more anxious impostor syndrome, where he feels like a liability to an unfamiliar group of people who appear to care about him, as well as a more pronounced identity crisis than he'd ever had prior. Much of this overlaps with Meili's arc, readings of different books of the dead that alter Subaru's consciousness further, what resembles a schizobending closed-room murder mystery, different approaches by Subaru such as hiding his amnesia and revealing it, the suspicion that party members might be plotting to murder him, and then suspicion of his own self.

It's an extremely dense plot for a long stretch of the series, until we get to the more shounenish set of battles that close-out the series. Amnesia is a disturbing experience, and it complements the darker, more horrorish, side of Re:ZERO well. Quite a few of the characters are in some way dependent on him. Subaru is the only one who truly remembers Julius, and Ram, despite being a ball-buster, has a similar connection to him in relation to Rem. In a way, it's kind of a small reflection of the sorrow that emerges from, say, the personal and familial experience of Alzheimer's or dementia, just turned into a dramatic, complex story. What a lot of criticism misses about this being a lazy retread is how reciprocal the arc is; it's not Subaru wallowing in solipsism but involves the whole party in a novel dynamic, reaffirming both Subaru's identity and the various bonds that he's forged, as well as why everyone mommies and ball-fans him all the time. The execution might not always be ideal: The conclusion to the arc is a tedious Best Gore recap of Subaru's deaths; as much as I love seeing Subaru get murdered, I could rewatch the old episodes if I wanted to see that. Additionally, the direction is too simple for a setting as minimalistic as the Corridor of Memories (but wouldn't be an issue in an LN). This doesn't work too well unless he has a loli accompanying him to crack jokes about him having a smol Peepi, while he gets dismembered, making sure to also humiliate him by replaying any of the NTR events that threatened the chastity of his cherished mommies. The self-love and motivational speech is about as corny as Subaru x Rem's pep talk episode way back during S1 or Subaru's speech during S3. However, the attempt is otherwise admirable and represents some of the better looping, mind-bending, dark suspense fiction in anime as of late.

As the story progresses, it's blatant that vegetable Rem's better half will take it upon herself to Ram TNT down a certain gourmand's cornchute, and Re:ZERO returns to cramming a bunch of battle shounen in the latter half of the series rather than anything creative. The fights are entertaining, but some of them, especially Ram's, meander on for too long and are filled with mean girls-esque "talk to the hand" one-liners. What's with all these shonen asspulls? Subaru can buff other characters without the slightest foreplay? Julius starts looking even more fabulous by summoning his twinkle rainbow star powers, yet he couldn't have done this until it was convenient for the plot, with Reid allowing him to chew scenery for several minutes? Ram has a convenient flashback mid-battle that leads to her becoming a bad bitch. Her viciousness and vindictiveness know no bounds, but the staff resort to poorly paced droning sakugaslop over more important scenes, in what is already an adaptation with lots of rushing and compressed content. Ram takes a grueling death-by-a-thousand-cuts approach, when one must be thinking, "get on with it! Your opponent could have been killed ten times over in the stretch you spent monologuing." Julius x Reid was a better paced example of fight choreography and animation--Chansard's cut is creative, less restrained, and distinct key animation like this create powerful shifts in mood or tone, though one may question why Ram couldn't have gotten special treatment from a different KA. LN readers might object to some of this being called asspulls, but it's resolved in the typical shounen way of the characters realizing some special power or "finding something within" to resolve conflict.

At the least, many of these "asspulls" aren't built up to well, which is probably a result of compressed or cut content from the LNs. Such liberties have long hurt the Re:TRIM adaptations, and a common view seems to be that White Fox are lately condensing greater amounts of content in ways that aren't always ideal. However, the greatest weakness continues to be that plenty of emotional beats are weakened or tarnished by trashy dialogue, and it's hard to tell whether that is the direction or scripting of the studio or a product of the source material, but the answer is most likely that it's both. You have Subaru cracking jokes all the time and saying weird stuff during a tense series of events, such as the bizarre "Your hair's so soft, and it smells so nice! Are you using a new shampoo?" to Emilia. There has to be more meaningful dialogue that could be expressed between them at a moment like this late in the series. Especially gag-worthy is Julius and Anastasia's long-awaited reunion, with the cringey milady/my fair maiden/white knight dialogue from Julius or Anastasia's "I get everything I want, and I'm gonna make you mine, you incredibly good-lookin' man. One look at you, and I knew I needed to make you mine... ~_^" The conclusion to Shaula's arc for the season is maudlin, but with a character this obnoxious, it's hard to expect anything else. If not for the adaptation issues and juvenile aspects of the source, then this series could be extraordinary, but it's still better than the vast majority of isekai, though that's perhaps not a high bar.

The worst season so far; the amnesiac Subaru arc was unnecessary and very annoying to watch. The fights lack the excitement of previous seasons, and events seem to unfold haphazardly and inconsistently while trying to force you to make sense of a completely messy plot. I’d say it was worth watching for maybe three episodes, but after that, I couldn't stand it anymore. Don't waste your time on this; I doubt the other seasons are any better—I think the author's writing has gone downhill. That inflated rating is just down to a bunch of fans who will watch anything Re:Zero—even if it were, say, a ... whole season of Subaru studying history and geopolitics, they’d still rate it highly just because. This last episode just made me even less interested in watching future seasons.