This episode’s title, Re:Life Starts In Another World From Zero, which is also the title of the series, is a callback to Episode 3’s title, Life Starts In Another World From Zero, with both of them pointing to how Subaru and amnesiac Subaru were inspired by Emilia, someone he hardly knows, to do his best to live on in this fantasy world. Subaru seeing how Emilia was still gifted the flower on her outfit by the girl who was separated from her mother, the wife of the appa shop man, made him realize how consistent Emilia was a person regardless of him not having interacted with her in that loop until they were at the loot house. It was the turning point that resulted in Subaru joining the Emilia camp and finding a new home for himself in this world, much like how he has chosen the group at the tower in Ep. 77 to be his family. He also asked for Emilia’s name in Ep. 3 whereas Emilia asked for his name in Ep. 77.
As for the callback to the Memory Snow OVA, which took place after Ep. 11 but before Ep. 12, Puck said that Subaru has a lot of scars for doing all he could for Emilia and that she shouldn’t forget that, which was quite rude to Emilia. but nonetheless, it served a very important point in that it was one of the reasons Emilia decided to cut ties with Subaru in Episode 13 due to how he’d repeatedly get hurt/endure harsh things due to involving himself with her, such as getting humiliated at the ceremony for the initiation of the Royal Selection and his getting beaten badly by Julius, in addition to him saying those entitled, ugly remarks to her. While some people who are less informed may believe it was only ’cause of the entitled remarks, they’re wrong as Emilia literally said that Subaru had done enough, showing she was concerned about just what extent he’d put himself in harm’s way ’cause of her.
And how this this episode was a callback to that OVA is that Emilia noted herself all that Subaru had done before, showing she gives a lot of weight to how hard and how often Subaru has worked to save her, a thought Puck had ingrained into her. Even if she was trying to give Subaru confidence, I believe there’ll be more on this subject in the future of this series as part of the reason Emilia felt like she was useless in Ep. 40, A Reason To Believe, is likely not just ’cause she was unable to pass the first Sanctuary trial but ’cause she’d internalized all of Subaru’s achievements, including him having passed the first Sanctuary trial while she struggled, and compared her achievements to his, which is why she had such a strong negative reaction to Subaru approaching her in the tomb, requesting that he tell her how useless she is.
And despite Emilia becoming more and more capable in battle as time goes on, which we viewers have seen. she may in a future arc or spread out across multiple arcs perceive an increasing gap between her actual skills and Subaru’s achievements, which keep growing in number, in part due to her not knowing about Return by Death and how she serves as such a vital emotional support to Subaru, leading to her feeling increasingly insecure about Subaru’s accomplishments relative to her own, which could cause some friction between her and Subaru or at least result in Emilia eventually having an emotional breakdown, and I believe this is more likely to happen than not since Tappei is very skilled at planning for the long game of his story and usually doesn’t introduce ideas to be one-and-done content.
In Ep. 18, From Zero, Subaru had reached his then lowest point and considered giving up on everything due to how his failures had reinforced in his mind how he was a piece of trash who’d never accomplished anything, and pointedly, he was rejecting the version of himself Rem saw in her eyes, much like how he was rejecting the Natsuki Subaru Emilia and the others knew in Ep. 77.
Similarly, Rem and Emilia sharing their loves for the Subaru they saw were what snapped Subaru out of his spiralling, and for this episode in particular, Subaru having hoped that this would be the last life he ever had so that his misery would end. Even though Subaru was considering giving up on helping others he’d grown fond of completely in From Zero, it’s still an accurate parallel given he was considering giving up a core part of himself in abandoning the people close to him compared to him considering giving up on life entirely.
As for the callback to Ep. 40, A Reason To Believe, Emilia was struggling with her identity due to the flood of memories coming back to her as well as her failure in passing the first Sanctuary Trial, all of which were major blows to her self-esteem, and in Arc 6, amnesiac Subaru was struggling due to all the past issues he had on Earth, such as his inferiority complex centered around his dad (him calling himself a piece of shit was a callback to that even if we didn’t see him thinking back to being compared to his dad) in addition to his being a pale imitation of pre-amnesiac Subaru who everyone looked up to with high regard, and the situation was very similar in how both Subaru and Emilia helped give the other the strength to believe in herself/himself respectively.
While Emilia specifically needed a kiss in A Reason To Believe given she knew that people can lie with their words such as how Subaru had promised that he’d stay with her throughout the night and reneged on that, it still doesn’t change that Emilia requested that amnesiac Subaru use the name, Natsuki Subaru. Due to all the history they had together that led to her falling for him, in addition to all the kindness she showed him, such as in always being attentive of him after he’d lost his memories and even approaching him and encouraging him to confide in her in Ep. 76, showing that she wasn’t angry at him for being different, that name served as proof that Subaru is indeed loved, however much he tried to deny it, much like with his parents and the others that came to the tower, and it snapped him out of his newest low, similarly to how Emilia was snapped out of her lowest moment.
Re:Zero is at its best when it delivers on the emotional moments, and even though Emilia’s interaction with amnesiac Subaru was simpler compared to the scenarios for From Zero and A Reason To Believe in that she mainly focused on saying what Subaru did, asking for him to give her his name, and confess to him, sometimes simplicity can be very potent, and I can see why fans really enjoyed this scene/episode.
Feel free to share your thoughts on this.