I started watching Re:Zero and I fell in love with it. The whole idea of the main protagonist being summoned to another world after browsing through some manga
at a convenient store is really creative. His name is Subaru Natsuki and he is a 17-year old that slacks off and plays games all day. As he leaves the store there seems to be flashes of him in events that he has never experienced. He believes that his eyes are messed up from playing games, holed up in his room all day. The animation of the series is so good. Especially when it shows Emelia’s magic abilities.

Subaru rubs his eyes and one minute he’s on the street and then the next he’s in the center of a city watching humans and demihumans walking around. Felt is introduced around this time where she is running rooftop to rooftop, and her little mischievous giggle reveals she’s up to no good. In her hand she’s holding onto a shiny insignia, which ends up being something important.

Subaru in the meantime had run into three street punks Chin, Ton and Kan who pretty much start to beat him up to steal his stuff. Felt dashes through, causing the fight to stop…briefly. You can’t help but feel sorry for Subaru because he can’t read any of the language, he doesn’t have any money and he has no idea where he is. Not knowing anyone doesn’t help him at all. And annoying a food merchant doesn’t either.

Felt disappears, obviously happy with what she stole, and Subaru is left to fend for himself. It obviously gets pretty bad and Emilia comes through the alley trying to find the person who stole her insignia. She stops the three punks, but because she thinks they were the ones who stole it. She shoots magic towards them and before her spirit animal comes out, the punks threaten to kill both her and Subaru. Puck appears and that’s when they run away.

Emilia tells Subaru not to move. It’s obvious that she is suspicious that he could have been the thief. Subaru looks away and she sees this and accuses him of having a guilty conscience. Puck on the other hand sees it differently and tells Emilia Subaru doesn’t have any malice in him.

The characters that are introduced so far are actually really good. I haven’t come across any really annoying characters yet, but so far the first episode is full of content and plot. It also has the perfect amount of dialogue. So it’s all balanced with everything needed to make a really enjoyable series.

Puck and Emilia debate whether or not Emilia will help Subaru or leave him alone on the streets. Puck knows Emilia best, so he knows what she will decide. When Subaru wakes up, he realizes his head is resting on someone’s lap and he makes the comment about girls’ legs being so hairy. It is actually Puck! He can change his size apparently, and Subaru is completely surprised by this. While he was asleep, Emilia had healed him and had waited until he woke up to get answers from him.

Subaru tells her he has no idea who it was that took the insignia, and happy with his answer, Emilia leaves. But she stops to warn him not to walk down dangerous streets by himself. After she leaves, Subaru chases after her. Once he catches up to her, he offers to help her. She asks him how he could help, and he tells her that he had seen Felt’s face.

He tells Emilia that his goal is to achieve one good deed a day, and Emilia doesn’t seem to buy it at first. Again, Puck tells her he doesn’t see any malice in what Subaru is saying and that she should accept his help.

The three look throughout the city, and as they stop to rest, Subaru realizes just how big the city actually is and that it would be difficult to find something as small as the insignia. They seem to get along fine and getting to know one another slowly but surely. Emilia finds Subaru to be quite strange with the things he says and how he acts. This is when Puck realizes that they hadn’t even introduced themselves to one another.

Puck throws himself towards Subaru after his introduction and hugs him. Emilia seems surprised by this and says its unusual for someone to touch a spirit so casually.

Emilia approaches Subaru and realizes he’s broke and can’t read and that he is actually in a worse predicament than she is. She does tell him he seems to come from a respectable family, his fingers are pretty and doesn’t have live like a peasant. Subaru asks for her name, and for some reason Emilia gives him a false name “Satella”, which startles Puck. So obviously he knows that name is not good.

Subaru discovers that Emilia is half-elf and he is delighted to hear this. He tells her that was why she was so cute. So it seems since he first met her, Subaru had started to like her.

They continue to walk around the city and Emilia finds a girl crying. She tells this to Subaru and thinks they should help. Subaru is hesitant, seeming more determined to get Emilia’s insignia back. Emilia however wants to help the little girl and says thank you to Subaru for helping her before.

The little girl continues to cry as Emilia talks to her, and so Subaru comes over and does a coin trick for her. The little girl is happier at this point. Subaru and Emilia take her hand in hand and try to find her mother. It didn’t take long to find her, and the girl runs to her mother.

This is a really long review so I will leave little details out. The food vendor ends up being the lost girl’s father and when he discovers it was Subaru and Emilia that helped reunite her and the mother, he offered them anything. Subaru asks if he had seen a girl named felt (showing a picture) and the scene cuts to Subaru and Emilia walking through the slums of the city.

Puck is drained of energy and needs to rest; Emilia tells Subaru that they didn’t need Puck, but she could talk to lesser spirits. It’s getting darker and pretty much, being in a poor area like they are in…it’s leading up to something that is going to go bad.

Emilia talks to the lesser spirits and Subaru watches in awe. Anything she seems to do around him, he is amazed by her. But then again, as they began walking in the slums he admitted to himself that being alone with Emilia was the first time he’d been alone with a girl since grade school.

They reach a dark, unlit house, which I don’t understand how Subaru could not recognize there was something off about it instantly, but if he did, he just shrugged it off. He told Emilia to stay outside while he took a look inside.

It’s destroyed inside, as though there had been a huge fight at some point that day. Subaru looks around and suddenly there is a splashing sound. Subaru looks down to see he had stepped into a big pool of blood. He goes into shock and looks up and finds a body nearby.  It’s not too much longer that there is a voice and suddenly Subaru is knocked to the ground. He looks at his hand and realizes it’s his blood. He realizes he’s going to die, and he hears Emilia come in. He yells for her to run, but she keeps walking in. She gets slashed as well and lands next to Subaru.

He grabs her hand and wants to come back and save her. Subaru is so determined with Emilia, he’d die over and over to keep her safe.

It is revealed that Subaru has the ability to return to life, but the whole day he had experienced, is reset and no one knows who he is, including Felt. This time he goes back to the same house he went to with Emilia but on his own.  He meets Old Man Rom, who turns out to be the person Subaru had seen murdered. Felt does arrive with the insignia and Subaru wants to negotiate. He shows both his phone, and catches their interest; even more so when he takes photos of them. And then in comes the other party for negotiation on the insignia.  Her name is Elsa.

Long story short, the negotiations go bad. Watching this event, Elsa is the one that kills them all. This time we do see Rom get killed, and Felt as well. It should not be a big surprise that Subaru dies again. And his life is reset once again. Once that happens, Subaru finds himself in front of the food stall again, and ends up collapsing.

Regarding the series as a whole, everything is so good. Its been mentioned before that the characters are all really nicely done. I think the only one that irritated me at the end of the episode was Elsa. But it’s not such a big deal. I just didn’t like the way she spoke. The tone of voice was just a bit too much. But the others are very good.

Also you can feel for the characters. Subaru definitely because his life was crap back home, and now he has to deal with dying and coming back each time. But he has a good heart and he cares about everyone.  This is a really enjoyable series and I’m very happy that my friend recommended it to me.  A review for episode two will come up soon.