Hello there, I am a Re:Zero(anime only) hater and so I want to understand why it has gained so much popularity and appeal with a wider audience.
So, I watched Re:Zero S1 when it first came out and I thought the first arc was good and that the rest of the arcs were mid to awful garbage. Then season 2 part 1 was consistently utter trash but was incredibly funny and enjoyable to watch as opposed to season 2 part 2 which was both bad and boring. The movie was fine, whatever and season 3 has my favourite fight in the series, Regulus vs Reinhard, however overall it was still pretty bad and poorly written. Now, I have started season 4 and I saw that it was rated above FMA:B and I thought to myself, ‘the world is ending’, and in watching it everything leading up to the tower was actually ok, I mean some of it was kinda dumb and unexplained and the characters continued to make terrible decisions and do things that they have never really been shown to do before or completely change personalities in between seasons but it was actually ok. Then when the Sage showed up it went back to utter garbage and I hated watching it so much.
It has so many fundamental issues such as: awful writing, inconsistent pacing, terrible and unlikable characters, leans so insanely into obnoxious tropes, character assassinates most of the not awful characters
For some examples -
Garfiel bribes Otto into not helping Subaru in S2 and Otto, like a complete moron, refuses the bribe instead of taking it and just ‘betraying’ Garfiel meaning that Garfiel should obviously know Otto will help Subaru and yet, like a complete moron, he just accepts it, leaves in a strop and does nothing to stop Otto from helping Subaru.
Subaru figuring out Regulus’ power and exactly how it works is so bad. He makes so many assumptions and leaps in logic and fully just lucks into getting it perfectly right.
The checkpoints for ‘Return by Death’ are so annoying since they are so blatantly just used to perfectly push the plot along with no explanation of how they work. In fact, ‘Return by Death’ is one of the primary factors I consider this show terrible because I think that ability is mishandled so badly and the way that it is handled gives the show no stakes; for example when Ram, Subaru and…Echidna?…try to kill each other it’s such a boring scene because we all know he’s just gonna die and then come back to life and they’ll all be fine and of course the checkpoint has suddenly changed to be super convenient for the plot.
90% of the characters who are relevant are just Subaru glazers. I don’t even remember their names anymore but episode 1 Emilia was kinda interesting, Prusche(?)…Krusche(?)…the green queen candidate was pretty enjoyable, the purple knight was very based but at this point they’ve all just become Subaru simps with almost no personality other than that. Episode 1 Emilia lied about her name and picked Satella, something she later is revealed to despise being called for a multitude of reasons, and that’s such an interesting first impression of her character, it’s just unfortunate that decision doesn’t line up at all with her character from like episode 3 onwards
To sum it all up, I think ReZero is a bad show but not particularly terrible for an Isekkai, however I do think it is the most overrated piece of media known to man and I genuinely cannot comprehend how other people can enjoy it. And I don’t mean, ‘well I dislike it and thus it’s bad’, I mean I literally can’t find any positives to the story that even come close to outweighing its negatives. The only things I personally think make the show not absolute trash are:
A few good characters like Regulus and Reinhard, decent animation, solid soundtrack and voice acting and that is actually it.
Also, for reference, before you ask, no I do not think Subaru is one of those good characters; he is one of the most unlikable main characters I have ever seen. He acts completely illogically and inconsistently, jumps to wild conclusions with no reason to, is willing to kill himself multiple times for people he doesn’t know including Rem who has killed him at least 3 times by then, is canonically a massive fucking idiot and yet pulls out Rampo 10 billion IQ moments whenever the plot demands it AND DESPITE THE WHOLE POINT OF RETURN BY DEATH BEING ABSOLUTELY MISERABLE FOR HIM HE LITERWLLY STOPS CARING ABOUT DYING MID WAY THROUGH SEASON 1!
TL;DR - I am not here to dunk on this show, I simply want to understand why people like it and kinda specifically if anyone here thinks it is an objectively better show than Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood(based solely on its higher MyAnimeList rating at a certain point in time I don’t actually know if it’s still higher tbh)