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Episode spent with introductions of characters nobody cares about or likes? Check. Meaningless, boring tournament arc spaced out by really dumb backstories? Check. This anime fell off the shounen drivel tree and hit every cliche on the way down, completely burying any sense of intrigue the premise had and showing no signs of promise to improving. This anime also has a horible sense of humor very reminicent of Fairy Tail, it isn't as bad as Demon Slayer's where loud=funny, but instead quirky=funny. Yes, this anime is formuleic, and yes it's full of stuff you've seen time and time before and executed in mediocre fasion. But what really bothers me about it is the complete and utter lack of any and all thematic depth or substance.
(Minor spoilers will follow from here, as it is near-impossible to discuss an anime like this without revealing anything. )
I have seen many people compare Re:Zero to Steins;Gate in the months since its airing. This is a great disservice to Steins;Gate. Where Steins;Gate spent nearly half its runtime developing the setting and its characters before asking the audience to empathise with and feel for them, Re:Zero does so immediately and does not ever ask for consent. It never develops its setting in any meaningful way-- about all you know for the duration of the story is that it is generic fantasy-land where people hate witches and bad things happen all the time-- and it throws death and gore at the viewer from the very first episode, when nobody even knows or cares about who Subaru is. It is shocking to see major characters die within the first episode, to be fair, but it no longer feels shocking the second, third or eleventh time.
If there was any consequence to these events, it is immediately brought to nothing by the show's contrived gimmick of rebirth and time-travel. It doesn't really matter if someone does die, as time will conveniently bend backwards for Subaru's sake-- never to the beginning, and always to the last major event in the story. There is no cost and no meaning to anything that happens. Subaru's mistakes are immediately erased upon rebirth, and he can go on about his day with nothing but his own guilt holding him back. He is the God of his story and the world is his playground.