Miscreant
FoolISH
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^Actually, for this season, one that I've been enjoying much is Thunderbolt Fantasy, the new weird project of Gen Urobuchi with the team of Taiwanese puppeteers. Not actually an anime but you can't really classify that with anything else.
From your list, I've been following 91 days and Alderamin on the Sky, which I find enjoyable but on a level below the ones I mentioned before. My SO enjoyed Re: Life, but that wasn't really for me.
To be honest I was only refering to the current season, Re:Zero is probably the only show up there with Erased and One Punch Man from this season, although I'm a sucker for romances and have a lot of faith in Orange, if your SO liked Re:Life get them to try Orange if they haven't already.
Also honourable mentions for best 2016 should go to Kiznaiver and Hai to Gensou no Grimgar, they were both brilliant shows but just not quite good enough to beat Erades or Re:Zero.
Is the Thunder Bolt Fantasy the show with the animated puppet/figures? I gave the first episode a go,couldn't really get into it, but it's definitely a unique approach, it kind of reminds me of when I was a kid and used to try and make films with our action figures with my mate on his dads camcorder, but done like 1000x better.
Re:Zero pretty much wants to just kick the crap out of Subaru, and even when other characters die, the only thing that would really turn heads is what's done to him. The show is pretty nice to its waifus, minus the deaths, they aren't prolonged torture like done to Subaru.
While I agree with the majority of what you said I do feel that Rem gets her fair share of brutal deaths, especially in this latter part of the series the biggest difference being that unlike Suberu she doesn't remember them or suffer from PTSD, but you are right in regards to the rest of the cast.
I definitely agree that Gantz and Berserk are a peg above Re:Zero in terms of brutality, the difference being in Gantz that I wasn't really emotionally invested in any of the characters, so I didn't mind the deaths so much so in this sense Re:Zero was able to leave a lasting impression emotionally. On the other hand I was very invested in the characters in Berserk, and that famous scene was nealy Red Wedding (GoT) tier shit in how it hit me emotionally.