#or why his knights - unlike those in the third image - are barely old enough to be squires?

[supermassiveshot]

CELIA: As it happens, I have that book right here. "King Arthur and the Knight's Apprentice."

[electronicdelusionstarlight]

Anyway, finally the game is stable, and I’ve finally gotten my core followers, time to flesh out what will be hopefully be my Dragonborn for the foreseeable future.

Ayerin the Perplexing.

She’s a Altmer Mage, or at least that’s what she claims to be, Goth-Coded, and I’m gona write her on the Autistic spectrum cause I’m on the spectrum so that’s basically half the work done, and the second she learns she’s a dragonborn she’ll start experimenting on her dragon blood, discovering a way to taint it, strengthen it and her soul so that she’d be able to do the impossible, bear both Molag Bal’s and Hircine’s curses at the same time. The way to do so, however, is still long and distant, and necessitates of a third curse, to balance the two, and allow her to survive both Vampiric and Werewolf transformations, by rendering her mortal if long lived mortal shell, immortal and undead first, before even ascending as a vampire.

She’s a Seeker of the Arcane Arts and a Mage. Her dad is a follower of the old Altmer pantheon, specifically Syrabane, the God of Magic, an Aldmer ancestor who ascended to divinity through his own efforts, and has transmitted to his daughter the same devotion to the so called Apprentice God, whose favor is obtained by the constant and tireless research of magical knowledge. He used to be a lecturer for the Arcane University, but after the war the faculty decided they didn’t exactly need his services anymore. They moved to Bravil, where he became a lowly illusion tutor in the local chapter of the mages guild, his career effectively put to a halt.

Her papa, on the other hand, doesn’t care much for gods. He’s a soldier, a legate for the Imperial Legion, stationed in Cyrodil, or at least he was. He lost a arm during the great war, as he attempted to stop the atrocities the Aldmeri Dominion, their own people, were committing in the Cyrodilian Countryside, missing the siege of the imperial city as a result. He’s bitter and angry, but he’s glad he and his loved ones are still alive as a result, even if they are being ostracized for being different, as if they didn’t just fight a war against people who were ostracizing others for being different from them.

Ayerin grows interested in magic as a result of her dad’s influence. Under the supervision of her dad, she tried to gain access to the Arcane University, but was found too curios, too interested in... forbidden lore and knowledge, even expressing some perplexity over the banning of necromancy, a now time honored tradition of the mage’s guild.

That’s when she gets her moniker. The Perplexing. Or maybe, more fittingly, the Perplexed. Always searching for knowledge she ought not to search, for powers that better be left alone, in all 5 schools of magic, baffling and perplexing her peers as much as their “irrational” reactions baffle and perplex her.

The local politics also confuse her, perplexed over why should wizard start squabbling over petty court politics. She never really understood politics in general really, she took from her Papa that way, everything had always been very straightforward for them, always a black and white issue, no matter how much people tried to paint it otherwise, and she didn’t understand why other people couldn’t see it that way.

It was only logical after all.

Her dreams are weird, black voids with white smoke, filled with still images of people, monsters, beings, objects, a weird voice, probably belonging to a old man, giving her advice, some times good, some times just weird, talking about events before her life, as if he was there, as if he knew who was there, mentioning the gods, and talking about the divines and the daedric princes as if they were old chums... or bitter enemies some times.

It’s weird, but strangely illuminating if she managed to decipher his rants, a constant companion of her nights, and she assumes it must be a Daedra working for Vaermina, or maybe one of her demiprinces, especially given how... weirdly fond he seemed to be of the nightmare mistress when he talked about her, but still, she wasn’t that worried about this, it wasn’t like a major daedric prince had decided to set up camp in her dreams after all, she could handle some minor heckling mixed in with some genuine good advice or history lessons about the history of Cyrodil, surprisingly well done and serious in tone, as if they were 2 completely different persons.

At 25 years of age, abandoning her attempts to join the Mages Guild, she decides to move north, to Skyrim. She has heard of a long forgotten cult, attempting to create a true lich for themselves, and also that the college of Winterhold seemed more open to the prospect of its members researching forbidden lores and crafts, no matter how blasphemous they might seem, and she’s all for that, finally, a place where her genius will be recognized!

So, with her blessing of her Dad and her Papa, sad to see her go but glad she’ll be able to leave the nest and follow her dreams, with enough magical research to allow her to cast at least 2 spells for every school of magic, if still really novice ones, she crosses the border into Skyrim...

And gets captured in an Imperial Ambush.

It’s almost mechanical what happens next, going with the flow as if it has happened countless of times already. She’s almost executed, but a Dragon saves her (Usually, it’s the knight that saves the princess from a dragon, not the other way around).

She flees the fort with the awkward soldier who tried to be nice to her, and failed miserably at doing so. She might have hold against him mistaking her for a Thalmor spy (And she spits on the ground at the thought, startling her new companions as they watch her give her daily prayers to Syrabane), but she always considered herself as a excellent judge of character, and of the two men that offered to help her flee, one was simply running for his life, the other had almost given his life to save a young child from the drgaon’s breath, as most other imperial soldiers were doing at the moment.

Which meant only one of them was noble enough or dumb enough to position himself between her assailants and her sparks, and that was the dumbass thought sending her corpse to a country she had never set foot in would have comforted her in her final moments.

At least he was easy on the eyes.

They leave the fort, she finds some junk, a rusty old ceremonial sword among them, and contemplates just how competent those Stormcloaks actually are if their armor and weaponry consists in some strings of leather and scraps of metal barely held together with spit and hope, she even manages to find some spiffy new robes for her, still no boots tho, forced to wander the place just with some wrappings at her feet. It hurts like hell, but she’d rather wear that than... ugh... light armor, uncomfortable and itchy as it always made her feel.

They flee the fort and he offers her to give her shelter to the near Riverwood, Hadvar’s, that’s the hot dumbass’ name, home town. It’s pretty close, and along the way they find the so called guardian stones, old pendants hidden in the hole within them. She was born under the sign of the mage, so she activates the according stone, but Hadvar mentions that unlike her birthsign, the stones do not bind her to just one sign, much to her befuddlement. She doesn’t press him, noticing his barely veiled... judgement at her choice of stone, and notices a door down the slope the Stones are perched on, embed in the mountain as she leaves, wondering what it must have been.

What follows is a whirlwind, she meets Alvor, Hadvar’s uncle, and finds herself almost stealing all the food he had offered her, starving as she found herself, eating chicken eggs raw and stockpiling potatoes for the incoming trip. She’s supposed to got to Whiterun, warn the local Jarl of the dragon attacks...

Gennarino tells her to go to Falkreath instead. It’s as close as Whiterun, and she needs to find someone there.

Gennarino is her oldest and most devoted friend. A traditional Direnni name according to her Papa when she mentioned him, it also happened to be the name of the assistant of a great Aldmer sorceress, during the war against the Sloads, obsessed with gold, who ended her days living in a remote island, at the foot of a slumbering volcano, her name lost to time.

Gennarino also happened to be a Raven. Her Raven. Who oh so happened to be invisible to anyone but her.

Or, well, almost anyone but her. She was pretty sure other animals could see him just fine, as could some of the kids she used to play with, before she was considered too “weird” to be played with, as well as one (1) drunk Argonian in the Imperial City, green and sad and screaming against the heavens in the rain, complaining about friends dying or disappearing after becoming gods and leaving him behind with all the golds and riches that he’ll never be able to share with them, while also complaining about the loud crow giving him a headache.

Still, invisible Raven, followed her all her life, his advice has always been followed by her, how would she not, he’d always been right, even more so than her, and she might be stubborn and curious but she also know the old stories, the old fairy tales about strange little creatures following strange advice to be followed to the letter, a clear, easy way for the player and the author to justify her sudden detour in the middle of such a important situation.

Anyway, she leaves for Falkreath before long, apologizing to Hadvar and the others, who take it better than she expected, before trying to buy some more spell tomes from the local trader, delighting herself in the sudden new variety in the new land (”Uh, death hound, never heard of that conjuration summon, and what is this? “Lamb of Mara”? Is this a religious spell?”). On the way, she visits the door she spotted, finding alarge, sprawling room, filled with altars to anything but her god.

She pledges herself to be a follower of her own mind, something Syrabane would probable appreciate, before inspecting the other altars. The Hermanus Mora one (Already whispering sweet knowledge to her starved mind, as she resists to its pull... for now) has a variety of books as offerings, among them a spell she had never seen before.

She prays for her god there, and leaves for Falkreath. She finds no trabel along the way, only corpses and a traveling bard, with whom she concludes her journey to Falkreath.

There, she finds Lucien, an Imperial, so easily flustered, so eager to follow her to their death, a fellow seeker of knowledge, as they say. He asks her to become his bodyguard, she who can’t even defend herself, and she accepts, both for the money he’s offering, and for the prospect of her research to gain something from their sudden collaboration...

Also because despite everything she really needed a meat shield. And something tells her that if her crow has told her to go for that one, inexperienced and incompetent as he might seem, there seemed to be a reason for that.

She’s not eager to test this concept, and decides to leave for Whiterun this time, as Lucien also suggests, to warn the Jarl of his impending doom...

Except then Gennarino grabs at her Map, a gift from her dads, that she managed not to lose in the ambush, and tells her to go to Riften instead, where another valuable assets lies. Its very insisting, more so than when he told her to go to Falkreath, so she leaves, resigned, Lucien puzzled at her sudden change of destination midway, and there, finally, meeting Inigo.

Now, they are here, a Mage who has just started her journey into the mysteries of the unknown, a Half Naked Khajiit that mistook her for someone else, a inexperienced “Milk drinker” donning imperial armor in a rebel stronghold filled to the brim with bloodthirsty Stormcloaks (Why, she just witnessed their lot violently suppress a small Imperial assault, barely 4-5 soldier, that’s where she got one of the armors before the city guard stopped her from looting the other corpses by tossing them in the river), her talking, maybe there maybe not crow, cawing at her that now, yes, she can go to Whiterun, finally...

And who knows what their future holds for them?

[fmdnamwoo]

✘ deadly dull

synopsis: this basically describes in great length how namwoo deals with the progression of his grandmother’s disease post-debut (aka anything after what’s mentioned in his bio); alternatively: a collection of memories of his family from 2012 to 2019 word count: 2806 warnings: Alzheimer’s disease is mentioned in name or symptoms a lot, brief allusions to death (though no one’s died yet)

April 2012 When Namwoo calls home the first time after his official broadcast debut, his grandmother tells him she has food on the stove. Dakgaejang – his favorite. Her voice and the mental images her words conjure up paired with the mix of elation and utter exhaustion he carries underneath his skin are almost enough to make him tear up, so he gladly allows her do most of the talking while he only hums at appropriate times to let her know he's still listening; he always is. Nothing would ever be quite as relaxing as the weathered voice of the woman whose arms had held him when all others had pushed him away, and her steady ramblings about the impossible state her garden is in (even though he knows it looks immaculate because there's never been a time it hasn't) have almost lulled him to sleep when the blaring of an alarm on the other end startles him back to attention, back into a sitting position like it was somehow his responsibility to intervene.  “Grandma?”, he asks cautiously, as if even the slightest change in intonation, the faintest trace of tension in his voice could harm her. “Goodness, I got so caught up in my story, I forgot all about the food. Silly me!”, she replies with such pointed collectedness, Namwoo has to pause to listen for any holes in her composure and still discovers only a slight irregularity in her breathing pattern that he has a hard time interpreting one way or another. Had he not known any better, he might have chalked it up to the many things his grandmother has lived through that made her into the woman he knows today – that nothing can rattle her so easily because she's seen it all a hundred times before. But he does know better. He knows that the reason this doesn't faze her is because it's the third time this exact thing happened – the third time this month. (Two of those, she doesn't remember.)

July 2013 This year is busier than the last, and Knight's career has at no point been anywhere near slow, so Namwoo is beyond grateful he gets the evening off to visit home despite their impending comeback, just days away now. Anticipation burns in the tips of his fingers as he taps them against the stark white wall of his grandmother's house while he waits for her to open the door, which is taking her surprisingly long. Not that Namwoo ever really counted, but he does have a rough number of heartbeats he remembers passing every time before the door swings open with too much force for so small a woman to exude. Eventually, it does open – slowly, almost tentatively, like there's something to hide he could spot if the gap was too wide. “Namwoo? I didn't expect you! You should have told me you were coming over,” his grandmother greets him as her features light up just as slowly, just as tentatively, and that's all it takes for him to realize what she's hiding. For a moment, he entertains the thought that she might be playing around with him, that this is all part of a grander surprise and he is about to fall for it, but the light he sees in her eyes is subdued by a smudge of grey fog he's come to know all too well, so he smiles as if to make up for it – here's all the warmth and light I have; take it, you can have it. I want you to have it. I need you to. I need you. “Do you know what day it is?”, he asks and finds that a carefree attitude is so hard to fake, the effort is almost enough to make him forget where the pauses between his words are supposed to go, like language and lies were two separate things – one a pristine art, the other what's left of it when everything that made it beautiful goes up in flames. “Tuesday? Why are you asking?”, she replies, in equal parts confused and agitated, and Namwoo can't bring himself to say anything in return. A gentle shake of his head is his only response, tongue wetting a bottom lip that isn't dry because she knows it's a sign of nerves on his end when he bites down on it and he doesn't want to worry her any further, so this is the closest he can get – because it's wrong, all of it.  He did tell her he was coming. It's Thursday. And it's his seventeenth birthday.   (Gone are the days he could pretend the memories she let go of were of little importance, that there was a conscious filter to what she kept and what she dropped. There is nothing fair about this.)

September 2015 It's been a long time coming. For years, he's known that something's wrong – something beyond his grandmother being a little ditzy, a little clumsy; something beyond the old age she used to complain about but stopped as soon as she saw the fatigue mirrored in his eyes. Sometimes, he wants her to complain again – to forget that he's busy and tired, that he might not be alone, and tell him all about the difficulties she faces in her day to day life so that he could at least somewhat be a part of it still. But she doesn't, and he knows the harder he pushes her for it, the stronger the walls she puts up – because his grandmother is more of a warrior than he'll ever be and she's fought too many battles to lose one to him. There are things she won't concede even as the small, everyday disputes with her own body turn into an all-out war. Therefore, it doesn't surprise him when it's not his grandmother who calls him when she needs him but the hospital, because at least he is her emergency contact despite it all. They tell him on the phone to stay calm, that nothing serious happened – she simply got lost and someone was kind enough to take her to a hospital to make sure she hadn't gotten injured prior or somewhere along the way, but Namwoo can't control the frantic rhythm his heart beats into his ribcage like it's searching for its way to get lost as well, like it has a right to be with her even when the rest of his body is busy working late. He doesn't dare asking a manager to drive him, doesn't even trust his voice to speak more than an explanation he wrote in his head before so he only has to read it out now because he knows he's incapable of forming coherent thoughts when people look at him with pity they don't even have the decency to conceal. Instead, he takes a cab and pretends his hands aren't trembling so badly, he struggles to open the door for a few moments. This is what the life of an idol has prepared him for: to wear his smile like a curtain and pretend there's nothing hiding behind it. The doctor is kind and takes his time to explain to the both of them the diagnosis – Alzheimer's disease –, and what that means 'for the family'. It's painfully obvious that he's handled multiple cases before and is going off of that; that usually, he deals with concerned children who ask their parents to move back in when they develop the first signs, and not some idol grandchild who lives in a dorm with far too many people and can't promise he can be home more than once every two weeks. What he takes away from it is this: there's no cure, there's no hope, only a vague time frame and stages of progression that will haunt him until they finally arrive and rob him of the family he has left. Still, Namwoo smiles and pulls his grandmother into his chest because she is crying and he can't remember a time she ever did so in front of him, which further cements his belief that it is now up to him to be the strong one, to be the grown-up, and look after her as she has done for him so many years.

That night, with his back pressed to the headboard of a bed he hasn't slept in in months, Namwoo dials a number he hasn't called in years. His father's. “It's me, Namwoo,” he reminds him as a way of greeting, because he isn't sure he'd remember him by voice alone. It's unlikely. “Grandma is sick. It's Alzheimer's disease. She isn't going to get any better, so I just wanted to let you know – maybe you should come visit sometime.” His father hangs up on him wordlessly and Namwoo swallows back disappointment barely there because he expected nothing else. When the next morning comes, he hasn't slept a wink but he's browsed every page on the internet Naver suggested, and the knowledge he's acquired has formed an iron weight he now carries on his chest every step that he takes, but as soon as he walks into the kitchen where his grandmother sits and scribbles down post-it notes for things she doesn't want to allow herself to forget, he puts on his smile again like it's just another part of a choreography he's memorized and perfected long ago. Fear was replaced by an eerie calm that surrounds him when he has something to keep himself occupied with, so he soon sets out to talk to the neighbors he used to see often when he was a child and still lived here – the ones he knows he can trust. An elderly couple with no children of their own seems almost glad he's come to them with this request, and they promise they'll stop by his grandmother's house at least once a day to check up on her whenever Namwoo is too busy to make it – so, realistically, most days. His grandmother is overjoyed he isn't sending her to a nursing home just yet, as the doctor offered.

January 2018 Even through his blurry vision – his level of overexertion is at an all-time high –, Namwoo can make out the newly formed creases in his grandmother's clothes where they used to fit her but don't anymore. Gradually, much too quickly, she's been losing weight and he's come to investigate why. Again, as always, his smile is in place and unwavering, because that's what he's vowed to be for her and he's never been one to break a promise, even if no one but him was witness to it.  “Who are you?”, she asks him wearily, not loosening the chain that keeps her door locked to most visitors nowadays, and Namwoo takes a deep breath as if those words didn't just rip something in him apart. Every memory of theirs she forgets tears a hole in the pictures he keeps like polaroids stored in his brain, and they bleed happiness until he forgets what it felt like. Was it like this, too? An illusion of strength he bears himself with that he means no more than lyrics a stranger thrusts into his hands to deliver to people who don't want to listen, only watch – with too much conviction and too little heart? “Namwoo, your grandson,” he replies, his tone light and easy. Nonchalant, almost, for he's certain she won't remember all the ways to see past appearances he puts up.  “Right! Namwoo, my boy. You changed your hair again, didn't you? That must be what confused me.”  “That must be it,” he humors her, though he hasn't changed it in months.

It's not hard to find the cause of her weight loss – a single peek into the fridge tells him she doesn't eat the food her neighbors bring over, or what he buys for her when he goes grocery shopping because she no longer can without getting lost or forgetting why she left the house in the first place. All containers are labeled – dates, every day of the week a different color –, and only random ones were opened, most not touched at all. There's only one conclusion this leads him to: she no longer remembers to eat. Has it already progressed this far? When he steps into the living room to confront her with his findings – gently, carefully, a mere inquiry instead of a possible accusation, though she doesn't take well to either anymore –, he sees her grow increasingly frustrated with the TV station that just won't change despite her animated button-pressing on the device in her hand.  “Grandma, you're holding the telephone,” he says and is surprised at the softness of his voice and how clearly fear shines through yet again. Her eyes dart from him to the phone in her hand and back to him before she dissolves into sobs and tears that don't stop until his shirt is soaked with them – and he still doesn't let go then.

That's when he makes the decision that something needs to change. It's simply no longer safe to let her spend most of her time on her own – not when she's no longer capable of taking care of even her most basic of needs reliably –, and yet he knows she'd prefer death by starvation to a nursing home, anyway. Hence he searches his recollections of all the pages he's browsed and remembers a particular service that he'd already taken into consideration back then: personal caregiver. Of course they're costly and it's not guaranteed his grandmother will take well to a stranger walking around her house like they belong there, but for someone who's all out of options, it's the best thing he can offer. (Does it make him a horrible person that he doesn't even consider trying to get out of his contract to care for her himself? It does, in his opinion, and he reminds himself of it every time he tries to fall asleep.)

Once more, he attempts to call his father to inform him of recent developments because Namwoo thinks he has a right to know – it's his mother, after all. Should they not be able to relate to one another at least over this – over the woman who raised them both slowly slipping away from them like a light flickering out, and with every flutter, they can only wonder if it might be her last? But he's barely a few seconds into his explanation when his father interrupts him with an angry huff. “What, you want money now? You earn plenty of it yourself.” “That's not what this is about at all,” he tries to reason, but at this point, he's only talking to the dial tone. Again.

April 2019 Whenever Knight get a break, the first thing Namwoo does is visit home. When every day could be his grandmother's last, he wants to spend as many as he can at her side and etch them into his memory as if filling his head with images of her could make up for the fact that her own is emptying out everything.  A gasp falls from his lips at the silhouette he spots on the porch – one he doubts he'll ever forget, even though he hasn't seen it in years. It's his father, in the flesh. When he turns around and their eyes meet, Namwoo expects him to spit venom again; he expects anger or not being acknowledged at all, because that had always been his fate (and infinitely worse), but what he sees instead is the same fear he's come to know so well as a permanent resident in his heart, and he realizes then he won't see his father come back again. The woman who opens the door wears a smile much like his – pasted on as a perfect façade to make sure no one spots what is beneath –, but she's pleasant enough and she manages to deal with his grandmother's mood swings while he isn't around, so Namwoo is eternally grateful for her efforts. It makes it easier that neither of them is willing to show emotion when she tells him that his grandmother has to wear diapers now; that most days, it takes her forever to form a sentence because language no longer comes together naturally. He's beyond glad she doesn't expect a reaction from him, because he doesn't know what to say or do. Acceptance feels a lot like burning oneself on a hot stovetop – it's numb in the moment, but ripples of pain continue to spread for a long time after, and Namwoo continues to smile through all of it.

[paulisweeabootrash]

First Impression: Re:ZERO - Starting Life in Another World

It's time again for Paul is Weeaboo Trash!

Today's topic: Re:ZERO - Starting Life in Another World (2016)

Review based on 6 episodes.  Or 5 if you count two two-part beginning, episodes "1A and 1B", as one.

The characters are plastered all over everything at conventions!  It keeps getting casually mentioned in reviews of other shows!  Rem is apparently everyone's waifu!  And yet... I knew absolutely nothing about the actual details of this show.  I think I might understand why after the first few episodes, because it seems like one of those things you can't really discuss properly without resorting to spoilers, so people evade mentioning them.  Or maybe the things I'm calling "spoilers" seem so obvious to other people that they don't think they're worth mentioning.  Or the spoilers may be “common knowledge” in the weeb community so people don’t think they’re worth explicitly describing.  Whatever, I'm notoriously dense when it comes to picking up foreshadowing, and often "anticipate" different twists than the ones that end up happening.  I'm the perfect rube for twists.  I didn't know the twist of The Sixth Sense (a movie which, incidentally, I still haven't seen) until The Lonely Island mentioned it in a song nine years after the movie came out.  You’ll see what I mean soon, hopefully, because I think enjoying this show is very dependent on the audience learning what’s going on along with the main character.

Anyway, my point is that all I had heard that this was an unusually good isekai, a genre which I have somehow avoided reviewing up to this point even though I've enjoyed some isekai quite a lot.  The idea of being transported to another world has been around for a long time, even being a key feature in the archetypal “hero’s journey” story format.  In its current anime incarnation, it tends to be set in medieval-flavored fantasy worlds and be very action-oriented, but there is some nice diversity out there in the scenarios and spins different works take on the general concept.  It has even been inverted and descended into total absurdity.  But there is a shadow over the genre: a shadow cast by unpleasant and overpowered characters and escalatingly-stupid writing.  And it is that kind of world our, er, hero(?)... well, main character at least, Subaru, expects.

Subaru, you see, is a shut-in gamer who suddenly finds himself transported to another world while shopping.  One moment, he's on a deserted city street at night in our world.  The next, he is on a busy city street in daylight in — surprise — a medieval-flavored fantasy setting.  And he is very familiar with what that means: he has been summoned here.  Plucked from his mundane life, he must be a superpowered protagonist, about to find himself on a grand adventure!

Ha.  Nope.  Try as he may, it seems like the only power he has is above-average strength from working out (but no real skill at using that strength to fight).  And he doesn't even have normal functioning here otherwise.  He's illiterate in the local language, comes off as insane to everyone he meets, and almost immediately finds himself being beaten up by muggers he thought he could heroically take on by himself.  Rescued and healed by a magical mystery woman and her cat-like familiar spirit, Puck, he knows right away: she is the superpowered protagonist, and beautiful to boot!  She too has been robbed, and he will help her recover what was stolen!  Ha.  Nope.  Subaru soon finds that his situation is far stranger than he expected.

See, Subaru and his new magical mystery companion search for the woman who robbed her of her item, described only as a jeweled insignia.  On the way, he learns that she is a half-elf and her name is Satella, and that although he treats her like a stock tsundere, she both isn't one and doesn't understand why he expects her to act like this.  And I appreciate this, personally, because realistically we should ask: what does he expect?  They've known each other for only a few hours, after all!  They track the thief, a professional named Felt, down to a bar in the outskirt slums of the city run by her fence, Old Man Rom, and Subaru enters to find it full of merchandise but no sign of people.  Then he finds the corpses.

Because of how the first few episodes unfold, it will be necessary to go into some things you might want to leave as spoilers even though they happen so soon in, because there's really something to be gained here from being confused and surprised with Subaru, and maybe even seeing your own expectations contradicted along with his.  If you don’t want spoilers but are intrigued by the summary so far, go skip ahead to the Weeb Ass Shit ratings and then watch the show.

If not, now we're going to finish episode 1A, and go onward from there, okay?

Okay.

Subaru and Satella are quickly killed by an unseen attacker, the same one who already dispatched Rom and Felt before they arrived.  At this point, we remember that back in the very first scene of the episode, before Subaru was transported, the camera cut back and forth between Subaru shopping in a convenience store and a hand reaching out weakly as the voice of the person to which it belongs talks about saving someone.  Because now we see that the hand was his, and he was reaching out for Satella.

And then he's back in the city, right where he first appeared.  And apparently also right when he first appeared.  Was it a dream?  A premonition?  He certainly thinks so, and wants to use this knowledge to help Satella.  So he goes to Rom's bar, finds Rom alive and working, and tries to negotiate to barter for the stolen insignia.  Felt shows up, as does Elsa, the woman who hired her to steal the insignia in the first place, who turns out to have been the one who killed him in his premonition.  And she kills him again.  And then he's back in the city, and the same time and place.  Oh no.  It's not a premonition, it's a Groundhog Day-style time loop.

After a third death and reset, he has learned three important things: first, that Satella's name is definitely not Satella.  Second, that much to his relief, there is some sort of police force in this world, although so far the only part of it he has encountered is Reinhart, a single off-duty knight.  Third, that this insignia is worth much more than Felt is being paid for it and has some significance he can't yet guess at.  Oh, and also he has decided this loop must be his “power”, and has named it “return by death”.

That gets us up through episodes 1B and 2.  After that, he makes (and survives this time, albeit just barely) a fourth attempt to recover the insignia from Felt, and to keep it and all of the people involved out of the hands of Felt's murderous employer.  Emilia — who called herself Satella before as what now seems to have been a sort of off-color joke, due to her resemblance to the real Satella, whom we have yet to encounter but who is clearly Bad News — brings the wounded Subaru home with her.  He wakes up to find himself fully healed and in a bed at Emilia's palace, attended to by maids who look like near mirror images of each other.  Maids?  Palace?!

Yes, it turns out that the country Subaru has been transported to, Lugnica, is undergoing a succession crisis, that Emilia (sponsored by the flamboyant Margrave Roswaal L. Mathers) is in line for the throne, and that the insignia is a sort of proof of her authority that she must possess to be eligible when the new ruler is decided.  Subaru asks to work for her, and the twin maids Ram and Rem (aha, now we meet everyone’s waifu), struggle to teach him the basics he needs to survive here, like cooking and reading.  At the end of an unspecified number of days of trying but failing to learn to work alongside them, Subaru speaks to Emilia alone, and they seem to be getting along very well.  He very badly attempts to explain the concept of a date to her, and successfully asks her out on one, and goes to sleep happy...  And he wakes up to find Ram and Rem waiting at the foot of his bed... just as they were when he woke up here the first day...  Yes, it turns out that somehow he died in his sleep and has been “reset” again.  But he has at least obtained a new "save point", as it were, with his power, and must now work out what happened to him this time — and how exactly his power works, since he went back multiple days this time.

You know what?  I'm not even going to go onward in my summary into the sixth (fifth) episode.  Those of you who have seen the show will notice that my summary is getting more and more cursory, but it's because I don't want to just recap the show for you, I want to provide enough overview so you know what kind of show it is.  There is so much to enjoy and appreciate that I haven't gotten to.  Here’s an assortment of highlights:

- Subaru's interactions with Emilia and Beatrice (the librarian who I didn't even get around to mentioning in the summary above) are particularly nice because he treats them with otaku-y genre-savviness and they respond not just with some moe twist on confusion but with actual annoyance.

- I find it interesting that we can't be sure whether nobody knows about his power yet or whether they just aren't letting on that they know (although it sounds like Beatrice might know something), even though it doesn't make that much sense to me that Subaru has not tried to explain it, or the fact that he's from another world, even though he has established that magic is downright common here.

- On that note, I love that it sounds like there may be a thought-out, maybe even "hard", magic system that the people of this world know as a normal and understandable part of their environment and not just ad hoc contrivances.

- And I love that Subaru hasn't adapted well to his power, unlike many fantasy characters who, upon obtaining magic, take to it seemingly instinctively.  He behaves just as you might expect from someone who (1) has never experienced magic before and (2) has a power that is clearly horrifying to experience.  He even has difficulty not talking about things that happened previous times through, constantly confusing people in ways that are sometimes dramatic and sometimes just plain funny.

Much to my surprise, this also seems to be one of the very few shows I can watch more than three episodes of in a row without getting restless and wanting to go do something else.  Even shows I love, I can not usually binge watch.  But Re:ZERO sets up and uses its cliffhangers excellently.  Some shows have clear self-contained stories in each episode.  Some seem like they try to end in a way that at least sets up the next part of the story, if not necessarily do so suspensefully, but they choose bad places to break up the ongoing story.  Some shows end in ways that practically obligate you to keep watching because a single episode is so unsatisfying (and maybe they should've made a movie instead).  But here, I both end each episode having watched a useful and well-paced unit of story and it leaves off with open questions that keep me interested in what will happen next.

I am looking forward to the political intrigue or succession war or both that will presumably happen because there's no way "will Emilia take the throne?" doesn't become at least a main plot line.  I am looking forward to finding out why everyone loves Rem so much.  I am looking forward to seeing if (and how) Subaru ever matures and adjusts to his situation, and what his relationship to Emilia ends up being once they really know each other.  I’m just overall very excited and optimistic for the future of this show.  And I will be very upset if it unravels.

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For scoring on this review, I'd like to try something a little different.  I think I would like to add two things to supplement the Weeb Ass Shit scale, and I'll try this new approach for a few more reviews before deciding whether to keep it.

First, I was inspired by Yuri Reviews, which breaks ratings down much more specifically than the W/A/S, into Story, Characters, Animation, Sound, Yuri (of course), and Total Enjoyment, most of which would be merged incoherently into “Shit”.  Keeping in mind that combining unrelated features was exactly my problem with the "Shit" scale in the first place, I will try breaking down my evaluation roughly into writing vs. everything else.  That is, although I’ll still provide a single summary “Shit” score, I will try to explain it more thoroughly by having a category for things like characters, story, and translation (if egregious enough that even I, with almost no knowledge of Japanese, notice problems — I'm looking at you, Full Metal Panic!, with all your subtitles that keep trying to insist that "Teresa" is spelled "Teletha"), and another for character design, animation, sound, and anything else I feel like commenting on.

Second, given how "sexual content" can mean anything from risqué jokes to non-sexualized nudity to fanservice to depictions of sexual violence and there is no way in the W/A/S framework to evaluate other aspects prospective viewers should know (e.g., the surprise pivot from stylized violence to disturbing violence in R.O.D.), I will now provide "Content Notes" that, although not necessarily warnings in the "trigger warning" or "viewer discretion is advised" sense, highlight some things I think viewers should know about when deciding if this is appropriate for themselves or others.

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Deluxe W/A/S Scores: 4 / 3 / 2

Weeb: Although he announces what he means fairly explicitly, Subaru's dialogue and assumptions probably make more sense with some background knowledge on other isekai, especially the ones with bad reputations.  The genre isn't totally unknown to Western audiences, especially in the English-speaking world, but it's more common to see it with magical artifacts or wishes being the triggers for the transportation, not just leaving it as a mysterious force or reincarnation.  These are not well-known things to non-otaku American audiences.

Ass: Elsa’s costume is, er, quite revealing, and a few shots of Felt and Emilia are framed in fanservicey ways, but so far it's also hard to think of this show as titillating.  There is some barely-covered male nudity later on, too, but in one scene and not explicit.

Shit (writing): The characters who we encounter more than once are mostly interesting and have some depth and motivation to them, except for the gang that repeatedly mugs Subaru in the iterations of the first day.  The surprises surprised me, but as I said at the beginning, I'm dumb as a brick when it comes to twists.  So I'm not sure whether that's good writing or me being oblivious.

Shit (other): It's well-above-average-looking in terms of consistency and detail, and the designs of characters and places just consistently appeal to me.  I have a vaguely-formed idea I can't articulate that this seems very... well-framed, I think the word I'm looking for?  I don't know cinematography, but I know what gets my attention and leaves an impression.  I also want to bring special attention to a nice touch in the sound in episode 1B: when Subaru tells Felt, Rom, and Elsa that his occupation is "unemployed", the music pauses momentarily along with the action on-screen, emphasizing the other characters' awkward silence.

Content Notes: As might be expected in a show where the main character repeatedly dies, some of the violence crosses the line from stylized to unsettling and maybe even into disturbing.