"Tl;dr — This series continues to leave me with mixed feelings. This time it's REALLY dragged down by Captain Ahab — I mean, Wilhelm — and a few questionable choices that I really don't think HAD a particularly good excuse. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ↻ || 𝐕𝐢𝐬𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐬 — 𝟕/𝟏𝟎 || ↺ ↪ The fight scenes are animated well enough. The art style remains what it has been for the past three seasons — no surprise there. ↪ The ED/OPs are what one might expect from a popular anime visually.↪ The sea dragons are cool, I suppose.
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↻ || 𝐒𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 — 6.5/𝟏𝟎 || ↺
↪ Once more, the OPs are skippable.
↪ The sound track and sound effects work well enough. Nothing particularly noteworthy, but also nothing egregiously wrong.
↪ The voice acting . . . varies. From the side of the women/girls is very shrill and same-y, unfortunately. When she isn't being oversexualised, Priscilla definitely stands out to me in terms of voice, as do a couple other characters. Overall, how well they emote is relatively consistent, but whether or not I feel the voices fit or are just there to add to a loli/baddass aesthetic and nothing more, that's where it depends on the character.
↪ As SUVaru more or less points out, that voice is SO wasted on a dragon.
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↻ || 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 — 6.5/𝟏𝟎 || ↺
↪ Otto attempts a carriage analogy to comfort Emilia (?), I think . . . in that first episode but completely leaves out Patrasche, the one that actually has to drag the carriage. Still, there was that bit where the carriage went off course, which was admittedly somewhat amusing.
↪ Of ALL the songs that Barusu could possibly like from Liliana, and despite him calling her lyrics bad just moments ago, he LIKES the age-difference song? Really? Considering everything else that's creepy about this season — namely the loli figures and the gross kiss between Priscilla (who looks and - mostly - acts like a grown woman), and Liliana (who looks and acts much younger and seems to look up to Priscilla) and the fanservice/sexualised moments between them (asides from the kiss, there is also Liliana inexplicably watching and getting all hot and bothered over Priscilla dressing herself and seeing her cleavage) . . . that just makes SUVaru more sus, if you ask me. I thought this anime was supposed to SUBvert tropes, not PERvert them.
↪ It was interesting getting more on the family of Garfield, seeing Subaru training, etc.
↪ I wasn't really fussed about some of the battles and backstories in this season. I certainly didn't need more of Re: Captain Ahab, his benevolent sexism or his emotional repression. (“The whole time you said it in your own special way.” His wife's words, definitely not mine. Yeah, his own special, emotionally repressed way.) Nor did I care for the story from his wife's side — this may be an unpopular opinion, but her reinforcing this idea that she should not have to live up to obligation like anyone else would, that their love was oh-so-romantic ("love at first sight" — her words, not mine) despite being clearly toxic and non-communicative from Wilhelm's side . . . only makes both of them a) more annoying and b) more a sexist stereotype. It also pushes this idea that if our grandparents' relationships were toxic, it's still cute and wholesome and romantic and we should just not criticise it because it was a different time and those were different people and hey, granny's fine with . . . because she's never known any other romantic relationship. Don't get me wrong, bad father/grandfather figures exist in plenty of stories, and development/redemption is possible, but frankly this storyline felt undercooked. I won't even entertain the idea that a 15 y/o should be held guilty for their grandmother's death or that this somehow is an excuse for the grandfather AND the father to treat him like they have for YEARS. Also, Wilhelm's portion of the battle was just . . . uneventful. A sword-saint should've had a far greater battle than this.
↪ Priestella is a weird name that feels more like it was chosen as a connector to the archbishops — because, you know, "priest"-ella?
↪ However, the city itself is somewhat interesting, reminding a little of venice and other towns and cities on water. Despite the European-style architecture the food and clothing aspects draw from Japanese culture, which maybe I should've guessed would happen . . . That said, it is also suggested by the MC's thoughts that there might've been another person like him truck-kun'd here centuries prior. (Or maybe carriage-kun'd?) Magical items (metiers) are brought back to explain away the functioning of the city, which is neat.
↪ There is some interesting world-building reveal and that's that the sin archbishops' names are connected to the names of stars and such and that it hints at their abilities. Granted, it does give the world a "small world" feeling, but it also leaves them connected. Though, how impressed you will be by that depends on how on the nose or realistically random you prefer character names to be.
↪ Now that Julius has been forgotten, we know what's going to be part of the driving force behind SUVaru's revenge in the next arc, I suppose. He just got Rem'd. Or Crusch'd. Maybe his name should just be changed to Juliana and he should become another spare waifu for Barusu.
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↻ || 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 — 6.5/𝟏𝟎 || ↺
↪ Wilhelm continues to be the benevolent misogynist, written in such a way that plays the whole trope of the emotionally repressed man whose wife has to do all the emotional work for him COMPLETELY straight. Not critiques, no push-backs, no nothing, for a second season in a row. It's actually made worse by his wife playing into it. You know what really gets my goat though? This man criticises his wife's obligation to go into battle at around 50, but years on from there he does the. exact. same. thing. OLDER. Also, the fact that the magic sword makes you younger is such an anime thing; especially the part where it specifically works that way on a female user. By the way, I'd bet my hat that if his wife HAD come back he'd have just kept putting off telling her he loved her.
↪ I cannot believe for the life of me why that guy got his moment to shine while Rem was shelved. What, because SUVaru needed the development? The fuck would Rem need to be unconscious for that for? What, because she's an additional love interest that gets in the way of Emilia x Subaru? Idgaf about her "love" for Subaru — just have her encounter another man who leaves her feeling like Subaru does if you're seriously going to have her whole story arc revolve around a man, now that it's no longer around her sister — and get her ass back into battle.
↪ Otto is certainly an impressive merchant, even if he fumbles a little in battle.
↪ How the hell is Emilia THAT naive? Even if we only look at her mental age, 15-ish is too fricking old to not know what "virgin" is in a world were various groups seem to value it quite highly. And after EVERYTHING Regulus has done, not just to her, but to so many other women, all this gal can muster up is a half-arsed "I hate you". I want my female rage and I want it yesterday, Re:Zero. This is giving men writing women.
↪ Mr Steal Your Gal / Little Prince Marry Me's twist of having so many wives is just . . . so lame. It turns him into another Dante Zogratis. Been there, seen that . . . try something new. It feels like he was expressly written to make Subaru look like a better guy for Emilia in comparison, rather than being a full-fledged character. He has his moments where he's interesting but . . . in this season? He's just the evil polygamist who ultimately dies.
↪ My assumption is that Lugunica's kidnapped princess might be Felt.
↪ The Fly Archbishop of Lust's only job is to be ultra mega gross. Wouldn't be surprised if she were inspired by the kind of gorefest that brought about The Human Centipede.
↪ Patrasche's short reaction to the water dragons was pretty amusing, I will say.
↪ Reinhart is quite amusing despite it likely being unintentional on his part — at least when it comes to his, Subaru's and Emilia's fight against Regulus. Also, the way he's casually over-powered and it grates on other people's minds . . . (the blessing of the phoenix and other ridiculous abilities only make him funnier.) Plus, unlike his gramps he speaks from his heart, and unlike his father . . . well . . .
↪ I wasn't a fan of Crusch essentially getting the Rem treatment but worse. Felix also wound up ultimately being attached to Crusch and thus not getting much of a part in any of this.
↪ I can't tell whether they were playing Priscilla straight or if she's supposed to be a subversion, because frankly, she seems like she's supposed to be a semi-villainess figure that has her own moral compass (and world view) and is oversexualised for the audience's sake more than the subversion of any one other trope. Also, there's having a tragic backstory that feels realistic and there's somehow being only 19-20 and having 8 former husbands, all of which are deceased, and the two named ones of which were 50+. Since and evaluation is best done whie considering the impact on and of the real world, it is blatantly obvious from the discussions surrounding Re:Zero characters that Priscilla, among others, is supposed to be a waifu. Even with the fact that she's a badass in battle which admittedly wasn't on my bingo card. So are many of the characters. That's how they were designed, marketed, sold in execution and no matter how it's defended, they are supposed to be there for those who are sexually attracted to women. It's extra sad considering it was somewhat hinted at that Priscilla did have additional layers way back when Subaru asked her for assistance and she refused him specifically because he was willing to humilite himself in front of her to get her help, but even that could've arguably been an excuse for foot fetish fanservice. The ambiguity is not nuance; it's a shield against criticism.
↪ Also this double-standard of women/girls getting away with perving on other women/girls is deeply frustrating. By the way, was Priscilla going to kiss all those other civilians too if Liliana's music didn't work or is she just into under-aged looking girls (that perv on her)? (I mean, she's supposedly 21, but she does. not. look. remotely. like. that. (And in such a short span of time it's unlikely Priscilla would have known that considering Re:Zero seems to be against characters communicating with one another unless Barusu is involved and has died at least once in that arc.
↪ Still on the topic of Liliana, her backstory was just so . . . bland? She ran from home because she couldn't get through to her parents in order to change the way they did things. Okay, but how is that supposed to wow me when that story's been somewhat done already with the likes of Hiccup (HTTYD), whose reasons carried a lot more weight and who ultimately chose to stay having successfully convinced his father that sometimes traditions/cultures need changing. This is like a watered-down, low stakes version of that, mixed in with the story of Lucky Clover, which again, is far more impactful. If you also consider that the music isn't all that grand, neither is her style and nor is any element of the anime medium used to help make anything more emotional, you get a very basic backstory that could've been skipped over. I am SO much more interested in Crusch, Priscilla and Felt. Also, how did it take her so long to realise "this is a song" . . . there is nothing to suggest that in that moment there was anything that could trigger enlightenment there.
↪ Sirius is insufferable. It gets worse when all it takes is Barusu's magic to share like one thing in common with Petelgeuse's and she's suddenly heads-over-heels for him. I get that she's insane, but also . . . you'd think she'd be more competent.
↪ Completely random thought, but: imagine if Perviana and Beetlejuice had a rap/song battle. I have no idea where that came from. It's just it's one of the few things that made me laugh this season — the idea that if he were alive he's be unhinged enough to maybe humour her with the right words.
↪ Did Rachins get development/a redemption arc off-screen or what? Either way, I don't think we see much (if any) of him after this at all. What a waste. Also, now that I think about it, a violent maniac winding up joining some knights . . . is that not the Spade Arc with Rades, though? Their names even start the same.
↪ Felix did say he was kidding, but I'm not so sure he was joking about thos ulterior motives with a look like that.
↪ Unsurprisingly Garth is related to the blond woman and her children. Of course, she doesn't remember anything at all from her past. It's a little sad, but because we were never shown that much of Garth's relationship with his mother, and there isn't much done audiovisually to make the moment more emotional I didn't end up feeling as much as I maybe would have. On the topic of Garth, I hope the creator wasn't trying to set up an actual relationship between him and Mimi.
↪ Given that Jeepers— uh, Garth— and that blond haired woman looked similar and ended up being related, now I'm wondering if Priscilla and Felt are, as well as Julius and Anastasia.
↪ In case the mind-control, kidnapping, murder, mass-murder, humiliation and very apparent delusion weren't enough to make it obvious that this archbishop is Sirius'ly unhinged, she's also an eyeball licker.
↪ Of all the dumbest things that I'm pretty sure people have been told NOT to do, Julius happens to give his entire frickin' name to the one person he shouldn't have. Dumbass. Did you want to give him the address of your private residence too, Jules?
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↻ || 𝐄𝐧𝐣𝐨𝐲𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 — 6.5/𝟏𝟎 || ↺
↪ I didn't feel as much as I probably should have. For all the time we've spent with the characters a lot of it just . . . didn't do much for me. And I get emotional preeeeetttyyy easily.
↪ There were a couple surprising/fun moments, but those were rare.
↪ The best part was probably the world-building and some of the side-characters (sometimes).
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↻ || 𝐎𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥𝐥 — 𝟕/𝟏𝟎 || ↺
Rounded up to 7, since 6.5 is not an option and the visuals were 7. Outside of a few characters, many of which got benched, are more incompetent, are dead, etc. I wasn't as wowed by this series so far as others are. It's not a bad series, per se — otherwise I wouldn't have watched three seasons of it — but I genuinely don't think it to be as subversive as it's made out to be."
