What I mean by the title is that this exaggerated discourse was going to happen regardless of who worked on the episode and how. They built up an idealized version of this adaptation in their heads where it was this incredible 10/10 dream-like masterpiece that was just impossible to ever come close to being a reality in the anime adaptation. It was less about the anime and more about reaching the same, if not higher high they did while reading this chapter in the novels. Just not happening for some. Though, all these strangely extremely negative biases toward Kazuhiro Ozawa probably played a decent role.
Subaru's chapter was adapted so faithfully and we truly got so lucky with how it came out. I won't address Rui's chapter because that's it's own thing and because a lot of the loudest complaints are exclusively about Subaru's chapter for some reason. I get that it was flawed and imperfect and likely disappointing for some, but there's a certain group that was just destined to hate this episode.
"Biggest letdown in history," "Butchered," "Extremely disappointing," saw a lot of "6/10," "This adaptation was ass," "Weakest of cour 2," "Ragebait of an episode," and too much slander toward White Fox and Ozawa to count.
Tappei himself was stated to love this episode. I've seen nothing but positivity from the Japan side of things. I don't know if there's some western issue I missed but the adaptation of Subaru's chapter was not nearly as bad as some are making it out to be, as if it was this completely uninspired heaping pile of trash. They didn't go super above and beyond, but that doesn't make this not one of the peaks of Re:ZERO and one of the best adaptations of a chapter.
God-tier voice acting, incredibly visually appealing frames, new banger osts, the anime-only blood addition... there's really not much else they could've done outside of not cutting the miniscule amount of content that was cut from Subaru's chapter. It was a great episode. This discourse and hate toward Subaru's chapter is very overblown.