Re:Zero Season 3 The series premiere feels like it’s mostly filler
Re:Zero Season 3 made its world premiere at Anime Expo 2024. The first episode of the upcoming third season debuted at the convention with a full-length first episode. With how impressive and solid the first episode of the series is, Frozen Bonds The movie is, I expected this episode to be longer. However, for the most part it fell short of expectations.
The Re:Zero Season 3 premiere is the anime equivalent of “this could be an email.” Without going into spoilers, this season starts with a quick meeting with the main characters. We see a bit of the aftermath of Season 2 and the return of some fan-favorite characters. For the most part, though, it feels like a light recap material.
The real problem with this episode comes from how it feels like a filler episode. The characters get together and then travel to a faraway city they’ve never been to. A lot of the story focuses on the city itself and how interesting it seems, giving off these serious filler vibes.
There are occasional moments of substance throughout the episode, especially when Wilhelm returns to the plot. However, they are few and far between. Aside from a few scenes with Wilhelm and the actual final scene of the episode, nothing feels too essential to the plot.
For this reason, I was wondering why this episode was basically the length of a movie. It could have been a regular 23 minute animated episode and it would have been much better overall. The pacing, more emotional moments, and introduction of new characters would have been more interesting this way.
Instead, my mind started wandering quite a bit throughout the film. This was especially the case when it came to the new singer in town and her particular backstory. Subaru and the others stumble upon her in the middle of her singing on the street. It all felt unorthodox in the animation style and dragged on longer than it needed to.
The abundance of these comedic moments overwhelms and overshadows the show’s more heartfelt and darker scenes. Overall, I think there’s a huge disconnect in the tone of the first episode of Season 3. This issue stems largely from the sheer length of everything.
It might be fine if this was your first time watching the series, but this is season three and we pretty much know where Subaru’s fight with the Witch’s Cult is going, so when it finally gets to that point, it almost feels like an afterthought instead of the main event it should be.
Thankfully, the ending is as abrupt and horrifying as you might expect from the series. It holds nothing back and once again delivers some neat grisly action to keep things shocking. From here, it looks like Season 3 could get pretty interesting, but it shouldn’t take that long to get there. Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait until the Fall 2024 anime season to see the series continue on Crunchyroll.
Re:Zero – Starting Life in Another World Part 3 will air on Crunchyroll in October 2024.
