Re:Zero season 4 takes back Subaru's progress to go back to the series' roots

After trying to move away from its gimmick, Re:Zero goes back to the start in season 4

If a “gimmick” is too strong, it can be challenging for a story to keep going without over-relying on it. Throughout the show's first three seasons, Subaru demonstrated a lot of personal growth as he came to better understand how to utilize his power and not rely too much on it. However, after years spent moving beyond the gimmick, the show did a full reset for season 4. Re:Zero had to take a page from Christopher Nolan’s movie Memento to go back to its roots.

Produced by White Fox and based on the light novel series written by Tappei Nagatsuki and illustrated by Shinichirou Otsuka, Re:Zero follows Subaru, a Japanese NEET who gets spirited away to a fantasy world. Like in most isekai, he receives a special power, but in Subaru’s case, it’s hard to call that a blessing. “Return by Death” lets him go back in time to certain established “save points” every time he dies. That’s it. He cannot use magic, is terrible fighter, and has no “skills” to upgrade. He’s also dropped in the middle of a bloody contest for the succession to the throne.

This means that Subaru dies. A lot. But he soon finds a way to turn this into a useful power. Like in a roguelite game, every “failed run” leaves Subaru with experience and knowledge he uses to influence events, making sure he, Emilia (his crush and a candidate for the throne), and his new friends get a happy ending. However, the series doesn’t treat Return by Death like a mere cheat code: Every death is painful, gruesome, and tragic. Subaru’s power comes at the cost of incredible trauma — at least in the first season.

By season 2 of the show, that balance starts to shift. There are still plenty of gruesome deaths awaiting Subaru, including being eaten alive by a horde of carnivorous rabbits, but he starts to die less and less. It’s an understandable and needed change: No matter how strong your premise is, once viewers become used to it, having Subaru die too many times dilutes its shock value, making each new death mean less.

Season 3 marked a full paradigm shift. Subaru found ways to be useful that don’t require him to die: He wields magic through his connection with the spirit Beatrice, and he can even use an Indiana Jones-style whip with decent skill. The season focuses on a big battle taking place in the city of Priestella, with many characters both old and new taking the stage. As a result, Subaru “only” dies three times, a walk in the park compared to his six deaths in season 2 and 11 in season 1.

When season 4 started airing in 2026, I was curious about the direction the show would take. With the diminishing shock value associated with Return by Death, Re:Zero had to rely on its plot and characters to keep viewers entertained, as it successfully did with season 3. However, that proved not to be the case. Watching the first seven episodes of the season felt like a chore: the pacing is excruciatingly slow. One plot sees Subaru and friends exploring a mysterious tower to find a cure for the Authority of Gluttony (a power that erases the existence of its victims from the memory of the world). That story just does not provide the same stakes and tension as the invasion of Priestella. Re:Zero had become a regular fantasy anime, and not a particularly good one either.

Everything changes at the end of episode 7. Subaru mysteriously loses his memories of the new world, including his knowledge and acceptance of Return by Death. Soon enough, he is killed by a mysterious assailant and comes back, triggering a sequence of traumatic deaths and returns that eat away at his sanity. Subaru is back to square one: Not only does he have to learn once again how to trust the people around him, but also to come to terms with his terrifying power without going mad. At the end of episode 9, Subaru discovers he has carved a message on his arm, similarly to how Leonard Shelby, who suffers from anterograde amnesia, tattoos important information on his body in Memento.

The twist finally makes season 4 entertaining. It’s like watching Subaru’s first steps in the new world again, trying to solve a murder mystery where he’s the victim, with every failed run pushing his sanity closer to the breakpoint. But this also means that Re:Zero gave up on its attempt to distance itself from its premise.

The series always leaned towards the sadistic by torturing Subaru repeatedly, especially in the first two seasons. However, over time, the anime has justified this by showing his personal growth. Subaru didn’t just go through hell for our guilty pleasure as viewers; he overcame it to achieve his goals, in a not-so-subtle but effective metaphor for the growing pains of real life. By bringing him back to the start, Re:Zero tells us that, in fact, it was all for nothing. Coming after a disappointing start for season 4, the message is that the series cannot excel without torturing its protagonist or relying on its gimmick.

Even without looking at what happens in the light novels, I’m pretty confident that, by the end of season 4, Subaru will recover his memory and keep moving forward on his path. Still, the decision to resort to a “full reset” sounds like a step back from season 3.

Re:Zero suffers from having a premise that’s at the same time too good not to be used and also too reliant on shock value to stay fresh for long. How the series navigates this conundrum will ultimately determine if it will be remembered as a truly innovative fantasy anime or just another isekai that lost its spark too soon.