17 KiB
[DC] The Anime "Re: Zero" Shares Some Aspects of Popular Rational Fiction
-
Author: u/natron88 Ankh-Morpork City Watch*
-
URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/4uj9fe/dc_the_anime_re_zero_shares_some_aspects_of/
-
Score: 4
-
Created: 2016-07-25T15:49:20
Post:
Subaru Natsuki is surprisingly summoned to another world. With no sign of who summoned him he soon befriends a silver-haired half-elf girl. When he and the girl are mysteriously killed, Subaru awakens and discovers that he has the ability "Return by Death" enabling him to reverse time by dying, though only he remembers the events of the previous timeline.
Here are the concepts in this anime that are relevant to this subreddit:
- A time loop
- Antimemetics
- Problems that cannot be solved by shouting at people or running headfirst into danger.
Of these, the protagonist's use of the time loop is the least impressive. He has yet to exploit the time loop mechanics in the manner of other stories that are shared here, preferring instead to bravely fumble around and pretend not to have PTSD until things work out. The story does give some reasons for this, namely that dying is extremely painful Anime Spoilers
The antimemetics have only shown up recently and it's not yet clear how important it will be to the story. I still find this notable as the first anime I've seen this particular concept featured in.
The third concept is the most relevent-in-execution to this subreddit. Subaru is in many ways a deconstruction of a typical "summoned to another world" anime protagonist. He speaks loudly and rushes headlong into danger with little regard to consequences or his own safety. Like many other animes of this type, this works for a while. This strategy stops working as well when the story shifts into the main arc, where it turns out that shouting platitudes at a bunch of politicians whose culture you know almost nothing about has mostly negative consequences.
The other characters in this story are significantly more rational than the protagonist.
I was convinced to share this by the most recent episode. [Episode 17](#s " I was frustrated by Subaru's reaction to the horrible mental pain he experiences when trying to tell people about the time loop. I wanted him to at least try ways of getting around it, such as having the other party write down parts of the message piecemeal at spaced out times, so he doesn't say the entire message at once. In Episode 17 it is revealed that he is being observed by a malevolent intelligence, which interferes at it's discretion in an unpredictable manner when someone might learn about the "Return by Death." This solved my frustration with the lack of trying to get around the censor, and the strangeness of what I thought was a magical effect parsing language so well.")
Comments:
u/alexanderwales [+21] Time flies like an arrow (12 hours later)
I don't really agree with this recommendation. That is, I'm watching Re:Zero and enjoying it, but I don't think that you'll like it if you like rational fiction.
Yes, it's a deconstruction, but it's not a rational deconstruction. The main character is a stock shonen protagonist who gets put into a world that's superficially similar to a fantasy adventure world ... but it's not a deconstruction of a fantasy adventure world, it's just a darker version of a fantasy adventure world than it would first appear.
As far as the individual tropes go, it's not enough for them to be present, they have to actually be used in the correct way. I would expect wish-granting genies (or variants) to show up often in rational fiction, since they provide a nice parallel to some hard problems in AI, but if the wish-granting genie shows up and the protagonist wishes for something dumb and obvious, that's got basically nothing to do with rational fiction (other than that it's something rational fiction tries to avoid).
Subaru is basically everything that I hate about most shonen protagonists; he rushes into things without thinking them through and tries to win through pluck, determination, and yelling. Only in Re:Zero, there are problems where this approach doesn't work and Subaru keeps trying it anyway. Normally there's some leeway, since the stupid things protagonists do actually work out for them, but things rarely work out for Subaru and he keeps trying the same things. He's the worst.
u/archaeonaga [+7] (14 hours later)
Subaru being the worst is the point, isn't it? The show certainly never rewards him for that shonen nonsense, anyway, and I think it does a good job grounding his mistakes in realistic motivations.
u/alexanderwales [+6] Time flies like an arrow (21 hours later)
Yes, it's the point ... but that self-awareness doesn't save it until and unless he (at some point) becomes not the worst, which hasn't happened at the in-progress point of the anime. If you watch the anime now, you'll see a lot of conflicts that could be solved in two minutes of talking. (I have not yet been spoiled on what happens later on and in any case don't think that's a good argument for watching it now.)
u/archaeonaga [+5] (22 hours later)
Uh, "until and unless"? I'm not totally sure why you'd doubt this; isn't the narrative pretty obviously pointed in a direction where Subaru reaches some level of self-actualization? I haven't been spoiled either, but at some point, he'll have to stop pretending he's a manga/LN hero and start taking things seriously or the story will end with him just repeatedly dying like an idiot.
And sure, I imagine a hefty percentage of conflicts in fiction could be solved by better communication. It's just a boring solution; who wants to read about a bunch of responsible adults dealing with their problems responsibly? The problem is when the lack of communication feels contrived and unrealistic, none of which really applies here.
It's obviously not "rational fiction" or "rationalist fiction"; if that kind of thing is important to anyone, they should read MoL instead, as it scratches the same sort of itches from that perspective. But it's been a fun ride so far, and even though it fails to live up to the artistic heights of the works that inspired it, I'm still enjoying it.
u/alexanderwales [+4] Time flies like an arrow (a day later)
Well as I said in my first post, I'm enjoying it too, but I disagree with the logic "if you like rational fiction you'll like this".
u/archaeonaga [+3] (a day later)
Eh, I don't know if I agree with the OP's reasoning, but I bet there's some considerable overlap. Deconstructive genre fiction has always been at the heart of this burgeoning "rationalist" genre, after all.
u/natron88 [+3] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (a day later)
How about a less ambitious claim?
"Given that you like anime, you will likely enjoy this anime, and if you also like rational fiction you might notice more trope overlap than in other popular anime."
u/None [+2] (a day later)
To be fair, Subaru did try the whole "sit down and talk like adults" thing in episode 16, and it completely backfired because he was using modern world morals with medieval-era politicians. It showed that you needed more than a calm voice and rational discussion to solve problems.
It was why he didn't even bother trying to tell Emilia about what would happen; he knew she wouldn't believe him or would try to stay and help. The moment in episode 17 where he started insulting and deriding himself was when he realized how hopeless his situation was.
u/None [+2] (20 hours later)
Yeah. We're only on Arc 3. Subaru is an idiot right now because we're only about 15 percent of the way through the actual story, according to word of god. He gets better quick, all things considered.
u/Anderkent [+14] (2 hours later)
Problems that cannot be solved by shouting at people or running headfirst into danger
Only because Suffaru does not have enough BRUTE STRENGTH
u/gabbalis [+15] (2 hours later)
Should've taken the red pill.
u/natron88 [+6] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (3 hours later)
Well, to be fair, he was able to beat up three street punks.
He has slightly above average fighting ability in a story where most important people are able to bend reality to their will.
u/Faust91x [+8] Iteration X (10 hours later)
I like the premise but I'm not sure it can be accounted as rational, maybe someone more knowledgeable on it can give better judgment.
Mainly on the way the protagonist doesn't try to make use of the knowledge he already has to build up strong strategies.
He's defined as a neet and so far he hasn't displayed any understanding of gamer strategies (ex. On KonoSuba the protagonist decides that the first thing to do on an RPG is to check his inventory to see what tools he has to work with and go to the main guild to get acquainted and get a job), or try to explore and exploit the advantages a magical world provides over those of ours (ex. he doesn't try to learn more magic or study the culture of that specific world so that he can finally be useful and not mess up as badly).
I think it fits more as a deconstruction of the "stuck in a fantasy world" themes and the plot is certainly entertaining (so far its the only one I'm following this season).
I like the idea of the Re:Zero and currently I've been trying to think of a way he could reveal it without triggering it. I'm very tempted to make a fic based on this premise.
I've been recommending it on every Re:Zero discussion but if you haven't, check Mother of Learning, its almost the same premise as Re:Zero with a very rational protagonist and Mother of Learning.
u/elevul [+3] Cyoria Observer (3 days later)
He's defined as a neet and so far he hasn't displayed any understanding of gamer strategies (ex. On KonoSuba the protagonist decides that the first thing to do on an RPG is to check his inventory to see what tools he has to work with and go to the main guild to get acquainted and get a job), or try to explore and exploit the advantages a magical world provides over those of ours (ex. he doesn't try to learn more magic or study the culture of that specific world so that he can finally be useful and not mess up as badly).
Precisely. The main issue with Re:Zero is that the characters are not consistent with their characterizations. Especially Subaru, as he goes from Neet to "Cool Guy" to broken piece of shit in a continuous circle of insanity, with effectively zero self-reflection.
u/natron88 [+2] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (a day later)
Mother of Learning is indeed a very good story.
u/gabbalis [+3] (5 hours later)
Antimemetics
- Every third post on /r/Re_Zero
u/tactical_retreat [+4] (10 hours later)
Technically I'm not sure that it counts as antimemetic. Like a meme an antimeme spreads, editing/deleting memories and thoughts instead of strengthening/creating them.
This seems more instantaneous; it's not clear that a vector is involved. Additionally, physical circumstances seem have retroactively changed to fit the absence of the deleted subject.
Better to describe it as a more consistent balefire from WoT in that memories are destroyed as well (except for the one exception for unknown reasons).
u/Aexis_Rai [+3] (4 days later)
Like a meme an antimeme spreads
The only sense of "antimeme" I know is from qntm's stuff on SCP. There's a bit of leeway about antimemetic effects there, they don't all quite fit that.
Is your definition from somewhere else in particular?
u/tactical_retreat [+2] (5 days later)
No, that's what I'm referencing.
By spreading I mean 'the effects need a vector' (words, image, speech) to propagate. In general they seem to need to encounter a sapient in order to expand their reach. The various cults are the best example of this.
edit: added more about re:zero and spoiler tagged 2nd spoiler as also re:zero
u/Aexis_Rai [+3] (5 days later)
Ok, that's fair. My take was that the central idea of qntm's antimemes was they are preventing propagation of certain information or actively removing it, rather than propagating a disappearance of information. That is, they're agents that are aware of who has certain information. Memetic hazards propagate knowledge of themselves, but "propagating" non-knowledge didn't seem to make as much sense to me as a description - if only because it didn't adequately describe all of qntm's antimemes.
[Re:Zero](#s " My model is currently that the Witch has meta-time powers; the curse moves his mind/soul out of his body at the point of death in timeline A and uses it to overwrite the one at the restart point in timeline B, which is identical to A up to the restart point; meanwhile the Whale does not exist outside time but just has a forward effect on the current timeline at the instant it eats something - the "easiest possible deletion" as you suggest - except on Subaru, whose mind/soul is marked 'don't touch' by the Witch. If Subaru's restart point was before the Whale ate Rem, I would expect her to exist again in the next timeline, because the effect isn't actually retroactive. Perhaps she is alive and removing her from inside the Whale would reverse the effect.")
I haven't read the Re:Zero source material, only following the anime.
u/tactical_retreat [+3] (5 days later)
Ah, you could be right. I like your explanation, it does fit more of the examples than mine does.
I had most of the same thoughts as you regarding the whale. Unlike myself, you had the self-control not to watch the preview for the next episode :)
u/Nighzmarquls [+3] (17 hours later)
I am going to second that the protagonist is not rationalist.
But the other characters tend to be associated with it are at least rational, also a lot of him doing the classic shonen thing leads to horrible repercussions that make sense in context.
u/None [+2] (4 days later)
The only time looping story I've seen recommended here is Mother of Learning. Would you mind directing me to the ones I've missed?
u/natron88 [+2] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (5 days later)
Time Braid is the only other one I can think of off the top of my head. Note that it has an M rating for a reason.