Re:Zero - Episode 18 (Review)
By: TheJewphin
***SPOILERS AHEAD***
[yasr_multiset setid=11] This week on Re:Zero, Subaru and Rem talked a lot. Rem proved she is the most eligible bachelorette on the show and Subaru finally learned to hate himself as much as the audience hates him.The show opens on Puck being a bona fide badass. Even when Betelgeuse uses his magical invisible hands to twist Puck into a heap of bones, Puck just breaks out and freezes everyone to death all while explaining that at least a thousand shadows are necessary to take him down. Suffice to say, Betelgeuse is not happy with this development. Though he at least gets some joy at the fulfillment of his purpose, the death of Emilia, before he becomes a green-haired popsicle.Now it's just Puck and Subaru. Before Subaru dies, Puck resumes his awesome beast form from a few episodes and explains to Subaru all his failures. Breaking a promise to Emilia is apparently a way bigger deal because Emilia is a spirit arts user. In addition, leading the bad guys to them, such as the Gluttony, aka the white whale, was a bad idea. Also, Subaru failed by killing Emilia, a fact he's probably already aware of. Then Puck decides that without Emilia, all that's left for him is to destroy the entire world. A noble goal.
In the five minutes with Puck, we are really given the meat of the episode. You learn a lot about Puck, Subaru, and the enemies of Emilia in a very short period of time, which is good because the rest of the episode is spent with the longest conversation between Rem and Subaru. Seriously. Subaru wakes up in front of the appa vendor, grabs Rem, runs her over to a building, then talks to her for the rest of the episode.It's difficult to write a synopsis of a conversation, specially one that is mostly exposition. Subaru started with his best plan yet - to run away and just stop dealing with everything. After failing so many times (three times), he just wanted to give up. While I think this could be a great plan, it's really only a great plan after you've tried a way larger number of times. He gets as many restarts as he needs and he's whining over three failures?
Rem is a no go on the runaway. I mean, she's happy to leave with Subaru and start a life with him. Which she explains. In incredible detail. But only if he's doing it to be happy with her - not running from something else. And this is why Rem is amazing.From there the conversation spirals into Subaru talking about how terrible he is and Rem telling Subaru she believes in him. This goes on for a while until Subaru finally decides that he can start over from zero (hey look, it's the title!) as long as Rem is with him.
While it's nice that Subaru is going to reset because it hopefully means we won't have to deal with him being stupid and whiny every single episode, it is also extremely annoying. It was annoying initially when they completely reset his personality to make him into a whiny, self-absorbed child instead of the selfless loving character he had been not two episodes prior. The fact that he is now going back to that is not a step forward for the show. He hasn't shown any character development. All he has done is reset himself back to where he was when he started this series.Except now he has a completely devoted Rem at his side. Who he completely and utterly rejected. So... yay for that I guess? Right now the best reason to keep watching is to see how the other story lines progress. The differences in the rulers, the fight with the cultists, and generally the character development of Puck and Betty keep this show interesting. Subaru has mostly just become an annoyance and I'm not sure I am ready to welcome him back with open arms.
