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unseenhand1997 · 4 months ago

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This is a very well written post that puts into words a lot of my thoughts on Emilia and Re: Zero as a whole. The thing about love is, as Re: Zero itself has put it many times, that you can only love something if you acknowledge it's flaws. Emilia is like that for me. There have been many points in the web novel, light novel, and anime where Emilia's characterization has disappointed me. I think that she could have had more to do in arcs 7 and 8, and that there are points where Tappei's love of the character gets ironically gets in the way of her development. But despite these things, Emilia is a character that means sooooo much to me, and it pains me that there is some really baffling bad faith criticism surrounding her. I've come to a point where I've accepted Emilia's flaws while loving her regardless, because her story truly moved me.

On Emilia, Fandom Double Standards, and Summary Culture: A Thread

*Some Unmarked Arc 7 and 8 Spoilers ahead.

To preface this, my rambling will be a lot less structured with fewer screenshots of supporting evidence than I usually provide. This is more just my stream of consciousness edited down into something readable. When it comes to Emilia, I also fully admit to having a bias.

Her character struck a chord with me when I read Re: Zero for the first time, and I don’t hesitate to admit that. Alongside Otto and Subaru, I felt many of her issues reflected some things from my own life as an autistic person, even if it was perhaps unintentional.

The struggle with social interaction, the difficulty with maintaining friendships, the inability to stand up for oneself in fear of burdening others, etc. Even how she was treated by society kind of matched up with that, even if the discrimination was more analogous to racism.

Now I’m just me. My interpretations are just extensions of my experience. My self-indulgent rant here is me merely commenting on my perspective of quite a bit of ongoing community discourse I just find tiring, often feeling misguided at best and actively bad faith at worst.

My general frustration with Emilia's discourse is that I feel a lot of it blows the worst aspects of her writing out of proportion, actively ignores her best writing, and/or makes statements about the content the person fully admits to not having read.

The latter in particular irks me, as it seems to be representative of a bigger issue in this community, that I will cover in more detail later.

In a lot of ways, Emilia’s treatment kind of reminds me a lot about how female characters are treated in Shonen's discourse.

Sure, the narrative doesn’t always treat them the best, but anything positive is buried under a hyper-focus on negatives even if they take up a fraction of screen time. People judge them based on out-of-context panels or summaries without ever touching the scenes themselves.

If they are too competent, they’re a boring “Mary Sue” or whatever buzzword people are using that day, while if they don’t solve everything instantly they’re a useless burden on the plot who are carried by “plot armor,” or once again whatever buzzwords people are using that day. Often, many female characters have been ascribed both labels, without people stopping to consider how contradictory these elements.

And this kind of discourse, this contradictory mess based on hearsay and summaries, is the kind of thing that frustrates me.

I think the best example of this in regard to Emilia is how people discuss her flaws. All too often, people act like her flaws don’t exist or are “stupid,” something that comes off frustratingly ignorant for someone who's been in many of the same places she’s been.

I knew what it was like to realize you needed to cut friends out of your life who treated you as less of a person. I knew what it was like to have to be forced into growing to stand up for yourself, moving away from a parent who infantilized you just because of who you were.

I knew what it was like to have to fully address things about myself I wanted to bury and act like didn’t exist. To act like these experiences weren’t real like they were things no one ever went through, is such a strange thing. Perhaps they aren’t handled the best in places, something I feel is fair to discuss, but of course, nuance can’t exist in these discussions. Or how about the way people talk about Emilia in other arcs?

While I don’t like how Emilia is handled in WN Arc 5, I think the LN highlights how she’s developed in a similar way to how the same arc is used to highlight how Subaru has developed. She stands up to Regulus, beats his ass for the women unable to stand up for themselves like she had once been able to, and resolves to save them despite the impossible circumstances just like how Subaru often does. She refuses to give into despair and wait to be rescued as she once did, being core to Regulus' defense. Yet, of course, none of that is focused on.

Instead, we have to deal with inane discussions about a few sentences in the totality of her arc, throwing out hyperbolic statements about how a random shitty joke “ruins” her character or something. Her role as a narrative foil to Regulus?

How her focus on names in the arc tie into themes of identity? Her breaking of fate by freeing the wives? Nah, she's little more than a "Mary Sue" because she achieves something against Regulus/she doesn’t do anything despite literally being one of the main reasons they won.

Similar things apply to Arc 6. It’s an arc not focusing on her, but it does go out of its way to showcase her development. Her relationship with Ram? Her perseverance in the face of an enemy she can’t do anything against in Volcanica? Her helping Subaru in the same way he helped her, fully swapping roles with him? None of that matters in the face of a 10-sentence scene where Reid pokes her tits.

Arcs 7 and 8 are perhaps the most egregious showcase of these issues. In general, the Vollachia saga does not focus much on the Emilia Camp. Hell, some of them contribute nothing. Yet still, Emilia gets a fair bit to do. She’s able to read people like Vincent, within seconds of discussion and connects down to the root of who people are quickly.

She cuts through the bullshit of people like Priscilla and Vincent quickly, forcing them to meet her on her level rather than act all high and mighty. She forces her way into the hearts of those who refuse to see reason like Madelyn.

More than ever, she showcases her true merits as a member of the Emilia Camp during high-stress situations like Vollachia. She’s a lot like Subaru in that way… Which brings me to my next point: Fuck, do people understate how similar her and Subaru are.

In a community that will analyze every little detail to find even a hint of parallels between Subaru and other characters, to the point of sometimes actively ignoring existing characterization, Emilia seldom gets highlighted. She goes through a similar arc of regaining self-worth, a similar of grappling with heroism, a similar arc of really figuring out who exactly she wants to be to others. She does the whole “wanting to believe she’s giving her full effort so someone else will tell her it’s alright that she failed and then gave up” thing in Arc 4 that matches what Subaru himself did in Arc 3. Hell, even her parental figures in Fortuna and Guese are written to be close parallels to Subaru’s parents (though with Fortuna being akin to Kenichi and Guese being akin to Naoko), something I’ve seen highlighted maybe once ever by someone other than me despite her backstory with them being in the SAME ARC.

It’s just a weird double standard, with people displaying an unwillingness to give her the same level of engagement they give other characters.

On the other hand, she also suffers from the same thing as many other Re: Zero characters where she gets reduced to ONLY her dynamic with Subaru. She has a lot of relationships with other characters around her like Puck, Ram, Otto, Priscilla, etc. that rarely receive attention. This is not unique to her of course (don’t get me STARTED on Julius, Reinhard, and Otto’s treatment by the community) but it is notable with her when the story itself goes after Subaru for ignoring her own autonomy separate from him. This is something people love to point out in regards to how it helps Subaru as a character, but when it comes to Emilia, many engage with her through the exact same kind of thought.

Because Subaru is the only character who matters.

Because anything beyond Subaru only exists for him. Even if an arc has nothing to do with him, even if a character is actively used as more of a foil for someone else, it all has to tie back to him. The world revolves around Subaru.

And it’s not like I don’t get it. Subaru is fascinating. He’s literally my 2nd favorite character in fiction. I’ve gone at length talking about all the little things I love about him so, so, so many times because doing so just fills me with joy.

I just want characters to be able to exist, interact, and do stuff outside of him without everything having to immediately loop back to him.

Going back to Emilia though, I do want to make it clear at this point that I don’t think Emilia is perfect or anything. I guarantee you that many of the things that frustrate you frustrate me a HELL of a lot more. I do think she should have a bit more page time in certain arcs, I do think Tappei has the narrative treat her weirdly sometimes, and I do think she is infantilized often. I will be the first to point out scenes I think undercut her development or treat her like a child. I could ramble all day about a few scenes I dislike throughout Re: Zero and I have gone at length about my issues with how Tappei fetishizes her.

I just think it’s kind of disingenuous to have this be the only discourse around her. To many in this community, a character must be perfect with no flaws or trash that ruins the narrative. Nuanced discussion, analyzing a character for their negatives and positives, can’t exist. Instead, we’ve got to mention the stupid Divine General joke even in the in-universe narrative that seems to disregard it for the 10th time. We have to talk about the snarky one-liner from Otto that is so strangely mean and condescending it feels out of character for him.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t discuss it, but the overwhelming amount of focus on these singular moments as compared to other characters who get the same treatment narratively can be frustrating. We loop back to these singular sentences repeatedly that people saw in a summary or screenshot rather than reading the arc because that’s the only way half this fandom engages with anything anymore.

And once again, I think that’s really what irks me. I think I would be a lot more fair towards the general discourse if I felt like it was coming from a place of good faith; from people who were reading the thing they were talking about. But that’s not exactly what’s happening, is it? Instead, you see people quoting AI translations about as good as a 5-year-old’s book report, you see the same screenshot shared by those who “haven’t read the arc yet, but,” and you see the same wrong information someone said in a summary months ago pop up repeatedly.

It’s such a gross way to engage with media to me. Reducing it from art—something to experience—to slop to shovel down one’s throat. It’s the kind of lazy, unengaged behavior that has led to series being entirely engaged with through Wikipedia summaries and YouTube video essays. Why let yourself get invested when you can just learn everything there is about the basic plot in 10 minutes? Why let yourself be surprised by the twists and turns of a tale when you can just look up the secret beforehand? Why view something as a work of art instead of simple content to be discarded as soon as you know everything there is to know? And if you know all about it, why bother listening to the analysis of anyone who actually engages with the source material, providing quotes, when it’s all just coping and reading into things too much?

There’s an arrogance that comes from that specific kind of media ignorance, and it applies most to female characters. Subaru’s a victim of that slop content approach to media too of course, but it seems to be most prominent with the female characters who surround him. All too often in the anime community, people overcorrect in response to any issues in a female character’s writing. They see a flaw and go “Guess this character is awful,” before proceeding to ignore every previous and future aspect of that character, good or bad.

And the failure to apply a holistic analysis of the merits of Tappei’s character writing is not limited to the shitty gags he writes for Emilia. Pretty much every character in this series has one, and often way more, scenes where something similarly shitty is done.

Priscilla has a gag about being creepy to children. Al makes weird comments about women, some of them being minors. Rem’s love for Subaru is played up to rapey extents in certain side stories. Otto’s struggles with someone who tried to have him killed are reduced to a gag. And who can forget the holy grail of infantilization, Beatrice? The character the story itself calls Subaru’s mother figure, whose entire character arc is predicated on exercising her autonomy, is constantly treated like a child for the sake of comedy. Arguably, she’s subjected to infantilization far more than Emilia ever has been.

Yet, these gags are often ignored, written off as the shitty attempts at humor they are. They still exist and are frustrating, but they aren’t the only pieces of discussion about a character. After all, many people have had to realize at this point that Re: Zero isn’t immune to the same shitty tropes as the rest of the genre. It is subversive of many of its tropes, but it utilizes those same tropes as it pleases, picking and choosing what it wants to deconstruct. As someone who adores this series, I feel like it would be disingenuous of me to claim otherwise.

Yet even acknowledging that, I think Re: Zero and its characters are some of my favorites in any fictional work I've read. When it comes to characters like Al, Priscilla, Rem, Otto, and Beatrice there’s just so much to analyze and admire about them. They tie into the story, the themes, and the characters around them in such fascinating ways that people have written literal essays about them.

Some of it may not be intentional. Some of it may just be my own experiences being projected. Some of it may just be connections that exist only in my mind...but that’s how art works. You are supposed to look at it with bias, whether it be yours, the author’s, or someone else’s.

These are interpretations I can make about these characters, regardless of what anyone else thinks. The author’s intentions, by virtue of not being directly stated to the audience, aren't the only way to read a story. It’s my prerogative as a reader to look at a story through a lens that works best for me.

Ultimately, much of this fandom’s disingenuous treatment of Emilia’s depth as a character is the result of people refusing to have their own opinions and takes on Re: Zero. Rather than reading the story, engaging with it, and interpreting it through their preferred lens, they borrow the rhetoric spouted by others without any critical thinking involved. That’s not to say this applies to everyone who dislikes the character.

You can dislike a character for many reasons, after all. You don’t have to justify it. If they just don't interest you, fuck them. Think whatever you wish and be whoever you want.

But if your reason is that you saw an out-of-context screenshot or summary from someone —if your reason is that you hold them to a standard that does not apply to other characters—that feels rather weak, doesn’t it?

In the end, all commentary on art is subjective. There’s no right way to read a story or watch a show. But there are definitely lazy ways. The only way to counteract this kind of thought is to read, to watch, and to think about the things put in front of you. Truly look at a story for what it is, good and bad.

When I did that, I found a character that I was able to connect with. Maybe you won’t, but that’s just how I feel about Emilia.

#re zero #re zero kara hajimeru isekai seikatsu #emilia re:zero

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