Trivia / Re:Zero

• Acting for Two: In addition to Satella and Emilia sharing the same voice actress in every language, there are several in the English dub:
  • Erica Mendez is Puck, Petra, and Mimi.
  • Erika Harlacher is both Crusch and Meili.
  • Faye Mata is Priscilla and, in her season 1 cameo, Frederica.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Aldebaran was voiced by Keiji Fujiwara in Season 1, but due to his declining health in 2016, Tomokazu Seki replaced him for the game Death or Kiss, and later became his permanent replacement after Fujiwara passed away on April 12, 2020.
  • Frederica Baumann's cameo appearance in Season 1 had her initially voiced by Faye Mata, but after becoming a major character in Season 2, she is now voiced by Dawn M. Bennett.
  • Wilhelm was initially voiced by Marc Diraison, but he was unable to reprise the role for Season 2 and has been replaced by Brock Foster Powell.
  • Julius was originally voiced by Chris Niosi for the first season. Since the second season, the role was recast with Alejandro Saab. Niosi gave his best regards to Saab for it.
• Playing Against Type:
  • In Japanese:
    • Yoshitsugu Matsuoka, the guy who has become known for his voice acting as harem protagonists like Kirito or Bell Cranell, was chosen to voice Betelgeuse Romanee-Conti. To say this fits is a massive, massive, massive understatement that needs to be seen to be believed.
    • Yuka Iguchi is well-known for voicing young or teenage girls with high-pitched voices like Index or Tsukihi. In this anime, she however voices Crusch, who is not only an adult but also possesses a very deep voice compared with the characters that Iguchi normally voices.
  • In the English dub:
    • Erik Kimerer usually voices Unlucky Everydudes and Nice Guys. Lye is anything but these.
    • Kellen Goff usually voices villains. Here, he's playing Kenichi, a decent father and a Nice Guy who gives his son Subaru life advice.
• Role-Ending Misdemeanor: Due to Chris Niosi's admissions of abusive behavior and sexual misconduct, he stepped down from the role of Julius Euclius and it was handed to Alejandro Saab for Season 2.
• Schedule Slip: The second season of the anime adaptation was originally planned to begin airing in April 2020, but was pushed back to July 2020 due to production complications because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, the season was meant to air all of its episodes in one go from April 1 to September 23, but the delay meant the season had to be split into two cours and thus aired in two parts in Summer 2020 and Winter 2021.
• Screwed by the Network: The American distribution of Re:Zero's anime turned into a disaster after its initial broadcast airing was completed. The physical disc release of the series was poorly marketed by Funimation and more importantly, had serious visual quality problems with the footage to the point that Funimation went so far as to offer a trade-in for dissatisfied customers (the first time in the company's history it had done so). On top of that, the dissolution of the then-partnership between Funimation and Crunchyroll meant the show was unavailable on legal streaming services for quite some time. The damage this caused to the viewing statistics was so severe that Subaru's English voice actor revealed in a Reddit AMA thread in May 2020 that he believes it is entirely possible the second season will not get dubbed (adding on to the fact that at the time of this thread, the OVAs had been announced for a dub but he had not been contacted to reprise his role). These fears turned out to be unfounded after Crunchyroll launched a dub of the second season in August 2020 with all the main cast reprising their roles.
• Sleeper Hit: While the anime did gain a lot of attention before airing in Japan, not many people were expecting much out of it in other countries since the original light novels didn't have any official translations at the time, as well as the fact that the manga adaptation covered less than three episodes' worth of material before the first episode was aired. The initial reviews were mixed with critics saying the first episode was So Okay, It's Average for a seemingly overdone plot, but stellar production values. However, the continual rise in quality, as well as an extremely impressive Wham Episode of Episode 7, made Re:Zero become one of the highest-rated anime of Spring 2016, beating out highly anticipated shows from the first season like My Hero Academia and Kabaneri of the Iron Fortress. The popularity and praise that this show would receive would only skyrocket as it continued its run. Episode 15, in particular, is considered to be one of the most shocking episodes of any show in years, to the point of many comparisons with End Of Evangelion, Madoka Magica Episode 3, or the Eclipse from Berserk have been made, only increasing the love and interest for the show even more.
• Star-Making Role:
  • While he's done voice acting before, and still being relatively new, Yūsuke Kobayashi's performance as Subaru has been praised immensely and will probably be a career-defining role for him.
  • Inori Minase's role as Rem made her as popular as many other mainstay voice actress.
  • For the English dub side of things, Sean Chiplock as Subaru Natsuki can definitely be seen as this for his anime voice roles since this is his first lead character in anime, as many of his previous anime voice roles were secondary characters.
  • Same can be said with Kayli Mills as Emilia.
  • Echidna is this to Anairis Quiñones. While her take on Mirko gained a lot of attention, her performance as Echidna has cemented her career as a voice actress.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Rem and Ram's designs were supposed to be more Japanese inspired, and their names simply "Left" and "Right" respectively during the planning stages.
  • The second season was originally scheduled to air in Spring 2020 continuously with no breaks, with its first episode premiering on April 1 and its final episode ending on September 23 (which are Subaru and Emilia's birthdays, respectively) but the broadcast delay threw this out the window.

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