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Kusuriya no Hitorigoto (The Apothecary Diaries) Episode 32 (Season 2 Episode 8) – Analysis + Important Details

Posted on March 7, 2025 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

The episode leads with Maomao being assigned to the storage shed as punishment for scaring Yinghua with the salamander tail she caught. It flashes back to a hilarious sequence of Yinghua, after regaining consciousness, saying that one day Lady Hongniang will force Maomao to move into a storage shed if she keeps misbehaving. Of course, Maomao absolutely loves the idea since the storage shed is bigger than her room and allows for her to make noise at night since she’ll be far away from everyone else’s rooms, and she decides that they must hurry back. It then flashes forward to later in the evening when she has redecorated the entire shed, and when we’re back to the present, Maomao wholeheartedly thanks Hongniang, and it was really amusing seeing Maomao’s enthusiasm for her new lodgings.

Later when all the Jade Pavilion ladies-in-waiting aside from Hongniang are together, the others think Yinghua told on Maomao, but Yinghua reveals it was Maomao who approached Hongniang to her transfer to the shed approved. Yinghua then tells Maomao to stop collecting insects, and Maomao swears she’s not doing that with her thinking to herself that it must be Shisui since she’s the only who would collect insects while laughing with glee. Maomao decides it’s a serious issue if she’s being confused for someone else, so she sets out to ask Xiaolan where Shisui is with her replying she can be a bit of a phantom. Xiaolan then approaches some other laundry workers in the area, and they’re hesitant to give out info, especially after seeing Maomao, with Maomao rationalizing that they’re wary of her for serving directly under a concubine, and so she dangles the handkerchief Jinshi gave her in Episode 30 as a gift for reliable information since most of the girls are obsessed with Jinshi, learning that Shisui is usually out in the thicket on the north side, which is where she ran into her last time as well.

Out in the thicket, Maomao thinks she should have brought mosquito repellant since she’s getting bitten, and then she sees some white blossoms. When she was little, she used to collect their seeds with the courtesans to make an abortion drug, and that’s how Maomao came to know what she did in Episode 30. She thought that it wouldn’t be out of place for Shin to avoid perfume since it can cause miscarriages, but she wore it anywhere to hide the fact that she was making an abortion drug, which led to Maomao correctly reasoning that Concubine Lihua is also pregnant. The abortion drug the courtesans she went out with made with in the past also included ingredients such as lantern plant, peony, balsam, and mercury, all of which, aside from mercury, could be found in the rear palace, which demonstrated that Shin had no knowledge of medicine, and that’s why she bought the items from the caravan, showing that someone specifically taught her how to make that particular poison, and Maomao concludes that that person is probably still here in the rear palace, which I reckon is a good conclusion to come towards.

Shisui then makes an appearance as she appeared to be scrambling all around to collect a species of a small black insect, which made Maomao insulted that she got confused with her, and then Shisui sees that same insect on the top of Maomao’s head, attempting to catch it but instead getting insect guts on Maomao’s head, which needed them to head back to civilization to wash out Maomao’s hair. Maomao asked them if that was the type of insect she was hunting today, and Shisui started spazzing out about that species, leading to Maomao wishing she hadn’t asked that. They then get a glimpse of the current Empress Dowager, and Shisui wonders if she’s headed towards the clinic that was a focus of the Episodes 29 and 30. Shisui shared that the Empress Dowager was the one who founded that clinic back when the previous Empress was around, so that’s why it wasn’t made the official medical office. Shisui also shared that the Empress Dowager was the reason they eventually banned slaves and the surgery for making eunuchs. Maomao believes that banning slaves was a good idea from a humanitarian perspective, and draw parallel between slaves and courtesans, who sell their bodies to make money although it’s legal and considered employment. She thought although slavery is officially banned, it still exists under a different name. Maomao then wonders whether the Empress Dowager is visiting due to what happened at the Crystal Pavilion the other day and reasons if she’s on the case that there might be a big reform in the medical system coming to the rear palace, and if that’s the case, Maomao indicates she’d love to listen in, but the thought of the other ladies-in-waiting’s angry faces led to her deciding to head back to the Jade Pavilion after Shisui asked if she wanted to check in on what’s happening. If the Empress Dowager has a big influence on the current Emperor and Jinshi, that was probably the reason Jinshi started a school for servant girls since they’re working towards making that clinic the official medical office with some reforms.

Back at the Jade Pavilion, Lady Hongniang is making the others work really hard, leading to Maomao wonder if someone is coming to visit. With all of them present, Lady Gyokuyou tjan greets the Empress Dowager, Lady Anshi, and Maomao notes that Anshi knows that Gyokuyou is pregant, so she must be trustworthy. Maomao notes that the dynamic between Anshi and Gyokuyou is more akin to two friends a few years apart rather than that of a wife and a mother-in-law. Anshi addresses Maomao directly and indicates she knows of Maomao ’cause Suiren, Jinshi’s lady-in-waiting, had said a girl worth training had gone back to the rear palace and that Suiren herself used to be her lady-in-waiting. Anshi then gives Gyokuyou a look, and the latter immediately got the hint to remove herself from Anshi’s presence so that Anshi could speak with Maomao in private. Anshi says she hears Maomao goes around solving problems with Maomao replying that she solves them using the limited pool of knowledge she has since what she knows is far less than that of Luomen ’cause she’s the type to manage the expectations on her. Anshi is fine with that answer and says she wants Maomao to do her best to look into something for her with her uttering whether she might’ve cursed the previous Emperor, and that explains why the first shot of the episode had Anshi looking intently at a room as it’s obvious she wants something to be done and over with.

Later, Maomao remarks that she’s only heard people speak poorly of the previous emperor, such as through the terms, “foolish Emperor”, “idiot ruler”, and “puppet of the empress” with the most notorious one in the rear palace being “pedophile”. The previous Emperor specifically chose the youngest girls available, so that’s why the current Empress Dowager has a scar on her stomach as she wasn’t mature yet, meaning they had to perform a C-section on her. The eunuch who helped with that surgery was Luomen, Maomao’s adopted father, so it’s a small world out there. Thanks to those sacrifices, the current Emperor grew up strong and healthy, and the Empress Dowager allegedly gave birth to a brother who is supposedly one year older than Maomao is when she was 30 years old, meaning she was no longer very young, which didn’t suit the pedophile emperor’s tastes at all, making Maomao question whether the imperial brother really is the Emperor’s brother, a callback to Maomao’s previous theory about there being a baby swap. Maomao then immediately squashed that line of thinking with the thought that if she were to say that out loud she’d be beheaded. I can’t fault Maomao’s reasoning there given the previous emperor’s penchant for young girls that it doesn’t make sense for her to bear him another son at the age of 30 for no reason.

Anshi then invited the four high-ranking concubines to a tea party. Maomao said that Lady Gyokuyou was getting sleepy often, which is a sign of pregnancy. Yinghua questions why they’re meeting in the inner court since they usually stick to the rear palace, especially since Lady Anshi knows that Gyokuyou is pregnant. They have no idea what the other concubines will think. Maomao thinks Gyokukou’s pregnancy is an open secret, but there could be a more direct probe about it during a face-to-face tea party. She reasons that Lihua wouldn’t be the one to do such a thing since she is pregnant herself and a proud woman who wouldn’t do that to others. Lishu might speak up if some of her ladies-in-waiting urged her to, but her head lady-in-waiting, the former taster, likely won’t step out of line due to what happened in the past and since she’s more professional than the others. And that leaves Concubine Loulan as the one to stir up trouble with Maomao remarking Loulan is strangely free of rumours aside from the one about her flashy fashion, which I believe is a ruse that allows Loulan to live a double life that Maomao hasn’t caught onto yet.

Hongniang then requests to speak with Maomao alone, sharing that she, not Maomao, will be the taster, which Maomao reasons is to show their trust in Anshi by not using a separate taster. Hongniang then says the Empress Dowager would like Maomao’s help with something, which Anshi did bring up initially earlier in the episode, and we find out now that she wants to speak with Maomao elsewhere, so this tea party is a pretext to meet with Maomao regarding the request she made of her. Hongniang then scares the bejeebers out of Maomao with a wall slam, warning her not to betray Lady Gyokuyou ’cause she wants to maintain a good relationship with Maomao, most likely ’cause she’s starting to become famous for her deductive reasoning skills. Hongniang is the head lady-in-waiting for Gyokuyou for good reason given her incredibly loyalty to her.

Maomao then rushes over outside to a lady-in-waiting of Anshi’s, who notes that this place currently served the function of the rear palace before it was built, and Maomao noted that the cleaning of the place was impeccable. The lady-in-waiting stops them at a room where nobody, not even the cleaners, are allowed to enter. It was during the time of the current Emperor’s grandfather that a court lady who became a low-ranking concubine lived here, and she was the empress at the time. The late emperor was also raised here, and it was where he passed away. After moving to a different room, it was then revealed to Maomao that during the final years of the late emperor and his mother, the acting empress, spent a ton of time in that room, as if clinging to their memories together. The late Emperor, perhaps due to his weakened spirit, drew his last breath in that room shortly after the empress died as if he was chasing after her. After a bit of prodding from Maomao, the lady-in-waiting revealed that the late Emperor was old enough to be described as dying a natural death, and she revealed that she tried to talk down the talk about a curse, but Anshi insisted she was the cause of his death due to how she wished for his death nearly every night. The true reason Anshi can’t shake the belief that she was the reason the late emperor died was that after his body was placed in a mausoleum for a year, which is the custom, his body was in nearly identical condition without significant decay in contrast to the empress, whose body was in a horrible state. Maomao noted in her mind that it is indeed unusual since every corpse should rot, death being the equalizer for all people, no matter one’s status. The lady-in-waiting then tells Maomao that the mausoleum will be torn down soon, so Anshi wants her to investigate it before that happens, and the episode ends with Maomao having one request to make before she starts her investigation, and knowing Maomao it’s likely that the request is something that will aid in her investigation.

I’m curious about what the exact nature of the request is, but that should be revealed soon. I know Maomao obviously doesn’t believe in curses, and her knowledge of medicine and biology should be useful in getting down to the bottom of this, so it’ll be interesting to see just how entertaining the next episode will be.

Re:Zero Episode 62 (Season 3 Episode 12) – Analysis + Important Details

Posted on February 28, 2025 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

This episode was more straightforward than most Re:Zero episodes, but there were still some very interesting details in it, including Subaru honouring a fallen foe and a very important detail regarding Petelgeuse.

The episode opens with Emilia rushing to the chapel where the wives are, and it flashes back to Subaru whispering to her that the key to defeating Regulus lies with his wives and that they are the key to his little kingdom. Upon arrival, Emilia pleads to Regulus’s wives that they’re going to defeat Regulus but that they’ll need all of their help. Given Emilia knows that the wives have been beaten down, she acknowledges that she knows winning or losing a fight isn’t what determines who’s in the right and indicates if she loses here that she knows Regulus will trample over something precious to her. Emilia looked across the room to see if anybody reacted, and then Wife Number 184 asked if that precious thing is her life? Wife Number 184 then replies that for them life is really are there is after Emilia suggested there was more to life than just life being precious and that they don’t dare wish for anything more, showing just how fearful they are of Regulus. Emilia then changes her approach and asks for Wife Number 184’s name, saying that she doesn’t know anything about her, so it was selfish of her to ask for a favour, which noticeably affected Wife Number 184 if you had a look at her eyes. But still, Wife Number 184 responds that she has nothing further to say to Emilia as she is not even their husband’s bride anymore, so she’s different from them, which prompts Emilia to say that she’s a half-elf since she wants the wives to know that she has faced hardships even if their circumstances are different, sharing something they did have in common with their like of daisukiyaki. When pressed about what she’s trying to say, Emilia responds that they’re different, and that’s fine, again asking for Wife Number 184’s name and sharing that her name’s Emilia and that she’s different from them in many ways but is confident she shares things in common with them as well, which is a good way to try to connect with someone and build bridges with them. When Emilia puts it out there that she wants to help them, Wife Number 184 responds in frustration about why Emilia would go to the trouble of making them feel human after all this given that as long as they keep him satisfied, he won’t kill them, which is what they have believed all this time is the way they should be approaching things, prompting her to ask Emilia just what she even knows about them. Emilia responds confidently that she knows that they’re kind, that they’ve been trying their hardest, and that they’re all crying for help, saying everything about Wife Number 184 was pleading, “Help me”, both through her eyes and voice, so she’ll help them, but first they must allow themselves to be saved. It just shows how much kindness and compassion that Emilia had that she could soften Wife Number 184 like this.

This leads to Wife Number 184 asking if there are any of them among Regulus’s wives that love their husband, and none of them do, with most of them having disparaging things to say about Regulus, and Wife Number 184 finally reveals that her name is Sylphy and says that they all hate Regulus’s guts but didn’t have the courage to speak out and proclaims that they will help Emilia after all the effort she put into understanding their plight. After an offscreen talk in which Emilia explained the situation, some of Regulus’s wives questioned whether they really are the key to his kingdom as they doubt he’d entrust something like that to them, and when they put it out there that she may be mistaken, Emilia has full confidence that Subaru is right on matters such as this. Emilia then draws out one of her lesser spirits, which goes though Sylphy’s body, and that gives her the idea to listen to Sylphy’s heartbeat, which confirmed the existence of a second heart belonging to Regulus that he affixes to those he considers his brides. It then flashes back to Regulus and Subaru, who underestimates Subaru so badly that when Subaru reveals he knows that he is using his brides as his Authority, Regulus reveals that he has total confidence about the situation as even if his wives wanted to betray him, they’d have to stop the hearts of all his wives to defeat him. Clearly, Regulus is toying with Subaru since physical domination is not enough, and he wants Subaru despairing before he kills him.

Back to Emilia and the wives, Sylphy is emotional after having learned what Emilia found out, and she reached for a piece of glass thinking that killing herself is the only way to defeat Regulus since their hearts need to be stopped. She scraped herself thinking that that wound is proof of her freedom, and when Emilia posits that there must be another way as otherwise Regulus would have even more victims, Sylphy responds that there’s no way he’d give them an out as the only one Regulus is capable of loving is himself, and the rest of the wives also pick up shards of glass with the intent of killing themselves, leaving Emilia to think quickly to freeze them, saying that she can stop all their pulses as she herself had the experience of having been frozen.

At the same time that was happening, Subaru had gotten up and stopped pretending he was close to death, taunting Regulus about how he’d be the type to monologue against a dying opponent, which infuriated Regulus and got him attacking Subaru again with him dodging the attacks since Regulus just throws attacks straight at him with no regard for strategy. Subaru and Regulus then see that Emilia has frozen the chapel, and Regulus starts freaking out how normal humans wouldn’t do something like taking the lives of all those innocent brides, and Emilia having arrived, launches an attack on him, telling him to consider that the divorce paperwork from all his wives. Regulus then breaks free from the ice and starts taunting them as his Authority is still working as normal, so he thinks Emilia may have miscounted the number of lives she took or something, but it was really that Emilia had Regulus’s heart in her own chest since he still considers her a bride with all his yapping about not suitable for a bride and such in a previous episode, which shows he still considers her one of them. Regulus still thinks nothing of the situation and believes that Emilia and Subaru have checkmated themselves, and he then taunts Subaru, suggesting that he kill Emilia now to see whether his heart will have anywhere else to go. Emilia then makes an ice blade, which gives Subaru the idea that Emilia is going to kill herself, but he was probably mistaken, and she was planning to freeze herself as well, which is likely why she said, “But”, before Subaru interrupted her. Subaru was completely out of ideas, but then Regulus continues taunting him, saying he recognizes Subaru as the one who made the broadcast about having killed a Sin Archbishop and that killing a failure like that doesn’t mean he could kill him, and Subaru finally gets the idea after thinking back about how the shadow hands could phase through objects that the issue of Regulus’s heart will be solved by using Invisible Providence on Regulus’s heart. It appears he called it Unseen Hand this time to honour Petelgeuse as a worthy opponent given how much suffering he had put him through instead of disrespecting him as Regulus does given he has called it Invisible Providence every other time before this.

Regarding why Emilia said so that’s where you were, Geuse, when Subaru used his Authority of Sloth, we know Subaru’s entire body resets when he dies, so this means the soul is the seat of memories in Re:Zero. Given Satella can read Subaru’s mind and know whether he intends to reveal Return By Death or that he has lived more than one life, perhaps it indicates that Satella’s soul is the vicinity of Subaru’s soul, and that is how she reads his mind due to close proximity.

We’ve seen in Episode 8 in Season 1 when Puck used Shamak on Subaru that Subaru saw himself in a dark world where Satella was grabbing his heart, which was a memory from when he tried to reveal RBD to Emilia. You have to pause to see this as it doesn’t linger on this for long. Episode 20 also had Satella whisper “Aishiteru” to Subaru when he tried to reveal Return by Death, and that was also likely ’cause she froze the time of the world and pulled Subaru’s soul to where hers was so that she could whisper that to him. Satella being able to his read Subaru’s mind and thoughts suggests that her soul might currently exist in a pocket dimension in the vicinity of Subaru’s soul, and the closeness of their souls is what allows her to do that and also pull him into another dimension.

So if my hypothesis is correct, Petelgeuse’s soul may be currently in this dark world/dimension, and that is how Emilia sensed his presence, not ’cause she recognized Subaru’s Authority to be Geuse’s. This indicates Petelgeuse didn’t completely die and that his soul is where Satella is in the pocket dimension within the vicinity of Subaru’s soul. This explains why Sirius was convinced that Petelgeuse had returned after Subaru used Invisible Providence in Episode 53, and it’s ’cause, like Emilia, she also felt Petelgeuse’s presence. I would never have guessed that that moment in Episode 53 was foreshadowing, but I guess this is Re:Zero, and you can’t rule out something like that being foreshadowing. I would never have thought that Petelgeuse would actually get his wish to be with Satella after he was defeated. I’m glad he got a chance to be happy after he was driven insane by Pandora.

Anyway, as Regulus yaps, he doesn’t realize that his feet are wet, and Emilia starts attacking him, leading him to ask what they’ve done to his Authority of Greed as it’s clear Crunchyroll botched the translation with its text asking why they have the Authority of Greed. Subaru then responded that Regulus got counterattacked by an enemy he took too lightly, which shows he indeed was showing respect to Petelgeuse on this occasion by calling it the Unseen Hand instead of Invisible Providence since he got the inspiration to use his Authority on this occasion ’cause of Petelgeuse. Emilia then gives Regulus 53 punches for all of the wives that suffered under him, and then when she launched an Al Huma on behalf of herself, it was revealed he can still use his Authority by stopping his own heart temporarily to maintain some invincibility like before but with a time limit. The reason he was completely invulnerable before was that since his heart was gone from his body there was no need to stop it since it was if he had no heart in the first place.

A battered Regulus then suggests that Emilia and Subaru are playing unfair by ganging up on him. He then spouts a whole bunch of contradictions, which makes Emilia pity him, and as Subaru sees Reinhard descending from the sky, he suggests Regulus can get the 1-on-1 fight he wishes. Reinhard then arrives in fiery fashion while any normal human would’ve died from re-entering the atmosphere like he did. Regulus messed up royally by sending Reinhard to the moon instead of outward to the stars since that allowed him to come back. Reinhard then sends Regulus up into the sky, and Regulus then does more of his unhinged rants and then pictures in his head all his wives laughing at him in their final moments as an act of resistance to him, showing what a truly pathetic man he is, before Reinhard sends him down to a pool of water at ground level, breaking the ground and resulting in a vertical shaft being made as Regulus uses his Authority to prevent him from dying from being crushed by the impact of the rocks. As the water starts filling the shaft, he remembers that the Wife Number 79 position was originally meant for someone else and that Emilia was the one Fortuna and Pelgeuse adored. He said that the thought of Emilia getting to avenge them makes him want to vomit. Emilia can’t quite put where she has seen Regulus before as she is sure she has before, which she also thought in Episode 51. Regulus then intermittently uses his Authority to avoid drowning quickly, and this guy just never stops talking/thinking, and then finally the colour from his eyes fades, and he dies.

Previously, I put it out there that the reason Emilia might not remember Regulus was due to trauma and also ’cause she actually saw very little of the fight with Regulus in the first Sanctuary trial, and given she could remember Fortuna dying by Petelgeuse’s hand, it probably wasn’t due to trauma but that she saw so little of Regulus and also ’cause what little she saw of Regulus was when he was with Pandora, and given Pandora erased herself from Emilia’s memories, that affected what little she remembered of Regulus although she still subconsciously recognized him.

At the end of the episode, Emilia unfreezes all the wives she put in suspended animation, and she said she hopes everyone’s all right with Subaru remarking that’s what Reinhard is for. It then flashes to the Wilhelm and Theresia and Garfiel and Kurgan fight with Garfiel emerging out of the black mass in his beast form, so now we know what the focus of the next episode will be.

It’ll be interesting to see how that fight goes, and I very much look forward to seeing next week’s episode. I thought it was satisfying seeing a guy as terrible as Regulus get his just deserts and how Emilia won over the wives, and I’m curious how this Petelgeuse reveal will be relevant in the future. If you have anything to add, feel free to do so.

Kusuriya no Hitorigoto (The Apothecary Diaries) Episode 31 (Season 2 Episode 7) – Analysis + Important Details

Posted on February 28, 2025 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

While this episode was less eventful than the previous ones, there are a number of interesting things introduced in it, and it retained the very high quality of this season’s episodes.

The episode starts off with Jinshi dreaming of a memory from his youth when he is playing with a ball, and an old man who approached him appeared to want to bump fists with him, only for his mother to stop him. An old woman who everyone deferred to appeared and told the old man to go back to his room with Jinshi’s mother having the look of someone who wanted to murder someone in cruel fashion. Jinshi wondered why she had that look on her face, and while that man was being dragged back to his room, he dropped a piece of jewelry that Jinshi reached for, and then he abruptly woke up, calling it an awful dream, which I surmise is ’cause he got punished for picking it up and was about to remember the horror of whatever he experienced on that day. He was later told that the old woman was his grandmother and the old man his father and that the man, the current Emperor, who he had always believed to be his father, is his brother.

If you recall from Season 1 Maomao speculated that there was actually a baby swap and that it was actually Concubine Ah-Duo’s child that survived instead of the Empress Dowager’s, and that would be why Luomen, her adopted father, was fired for not catching that that had happened. Although she mused that it was unlikely, maybe she had actually arrived at the truth, and the reason Jinshi was so close to Ah-Duo was ’cause kin sensed kin. Jinshi and Ah-Duo did share many of the same physical features after all. We know just from appearance that there is a large age gap between the current Emperor and Jinshi, and if the current Emperor was the most prominent male figure in his life, it would reason to believe he actually is Jinshi’s father, and Jinshi was just fooled by the people who told him otherwise. We learned in Season 1 Episode 20 that the previous Emperor was a pedophile who exclusively sought young girls, and given how young the one Jinshi believed to be his mom was in the dream, she may have been the previous Emperor’s former child bride and actually his grandmother rather than his mother since Ah-Duo being his mother would actually be a secret. I’ll come back to this topic later in my analysis.

Jinshi thought that Maomao seems surprisingly dull in strangely specific instances, such as when it comes to him, and believes that she’ll come to realize what he knows (that he is the Emperor’s brother) soon or that she may already know. He believes that he would be put at ease if she knew as he stay quiet about it forever as it’s a burden on him. If you recall, also from Episode 20, Jinshi wished that the current Emperor’s first son had survived, not knowing that is likely him, ’cause he didn’t want next in line for the throne, which is why he said all the Emperor needs to do is make himself a new prince. Jinshi probably wants to confide in Maomao how he feels about his situation as it’s not something he really desires. Whether he’s the brother of the Emperor or his first son, he’s the immediate heir to the throne, and he’s not happy about that.

The next day, Maomao is observing the school for servant girls that Jinshi set up and hears from the teacher’s lecture about how in the distant past this land was inhabited by a different group of people, which was mentioned in a previous episode. That teacher then said that those people had no leader, but a noble woman from a distant land eventually arrive and became pregnant with the child from the heavens who would become the first emperor of Li. Maybe I’m mistaken, but I believe this might be the first time the name of the country was mentioned in the anime. The teacher then continued and said that woman, whose eyes could see even in the darkest of nights, later became known as the Mother Royal. Maomao understood it to be fable of this nation’s founding. There’s a bit drawn from Christianity in this story with how the Mother Royal gave birth to the child of the heavens like how Mary is believed to have given birth to Jesus although the Mother Royal in this story seems to have a special status in Li with her being tied to the story of the founding of this country and perhaps the land she originally came from.

Jinshi then creeps up on Maomao, and she tells him to be careful, or they’ll see his face, which will get the students distracted since almost all the girls and women fawn over Jinshi aside from Maomao. When Maomao remarks that there are about twenty students, Jinshi indicates they were hoping for more with Gaoshun interjecting that they started out with ten, so the number is increasing. It seems Jinshi really is hoping they can make a good crop of doctors from this endeavor given they’ll be short-staffed in time with the surgery banning eunuchs stopping more from joining their ranks and with only men being permitted to make medicine at this point in time.

After Jinshi and Gaoshun have taken their leave, Maomao got Xiaolan’s attention during the class’s break, and Xiaolan revealed she has only learned a few characters and still has to learn more from the teacher. She revealed she sometimes goes directly to the teacher for help since he’s close by in the building next door, and Maomao noticed a shrine on their way there. Inside, Maomao notes due to the features she sees that the shrine must be divided into quite a few rooms due to the distance between pillars being quite short and the shape of the building. The teacher revealed the shrine was built by the people who originally lived here, and that when she moved here, the Mother Royal didn’t denounce the old religion. She told her that son that the one who rules this land must pass through that shrine with only those who can choose the correct path being fit to rule. He said that the capital city was moved to this city ’cause of this shrine, which calls back to when the old lady of the Verdigris House indicated that when their town was chosen to be the capital city it was still underdeveloped and had no lodging for the special envoy, which is why they chose the area close to the ruins in the rear palace to be the site of the special performance. He wondered whether it would ever be used again though since it’s been many decades since it was last used given the previous Emperor’s older brothers all passed away from an epidemic, meaning the rite of passage to determine the heir wasn’t needed. He’s glad that someone is taking an interest in the shrine since it’s been a while since that happened. When prompted by Maomao, he said that a quirky doctor would wander around the rear palace whenever he had the time, and Maomao asked whether it was Luomen, resulting in the teacher asking her if she knew him, which Maomao didn’t actually want to answer ’cause she doesn’t want to get too involved with the Imperial family if you recall from Season 1’s premiere her belief that the less she appears to know the better her chances of getting out of there before she draws unnecessary attention. But since she had already let the cat out of the bag, she shared that Luomen is her adopted father who began working as an apothecary in the pleasure district after he left the rear palace. The teacher smiled upon learning that, which prompted Maomao to wonder whether they got along with each other.

Back to the Jade Pavilion after Maomao finished doing her duty of tasting for poisons, the Emperor declared she is to accompany her to the Shrine of Choosing. Jinshi was also asked to tag along and asked the Emperor why he’s doing this all of a sudden, but he didn’t get a reply. To Maomao’s surprise, they were greeted by the school’s teacher, who told the Emperor that he might get the same result again, but if that’s acceptable, it’s fine when the Emperor asked for another shot at going through the Shrine of Choosing, which Maomao thought was a very casual way to address the Emperor. When inside there were three doors (green, red, and blue) with a message to not open the red door. After the Emperor chose the blue door, the teacher remarked that he again spoke very casually to the Emperor, remarking that he wished the Emperor paid more heed to the ones tasked to maintain this place as it goes unused for so long before someone suddenly wants to use it, and the Emperor merely apologized for his troubles, showing he’s a very even-tempered chill guy given how the teacher is addressing him. The next room again had 3 doors, green, brown, and light blue with a warning to not choose the brown one. The Emperor chose the green one, and after much maneuvering through the many doors, Maomao had lost her sense of direction and thought about why the Emperor brought her along, hoping that this would end soon since she clearly didn’t enjoy the experience. The final selection had blue, purple, and yellow doors with a warning to not enter the blue door. Maomao also noted there was another door leading to this room, suggesting a separate path converged to that room. The Emperor chose the yellow one, and it led to a room with the message, “child of royalty, yet not child of the Mother Royal, which Maomao took to be a rejection of sorts. The Emperor noted that he got the same result as before, and Maomao wondered why Jinshi had such a serious look on his face. The Emperor remarked that he must be incapable of deciphering the will of the heavens, and the teacher disagreed immediately, speaking in favour of the Emperor for once by saying when he wisely chose to include this shrine to be part of the Rear Palace he became the sole person to manage this place, asking what value could there be in the will of the heavens since he had really wanted the job.

Outside, Maomao observed that the Emperor appeared to have followed every direction without making any mistakes, yet he was still unable to reach the correct answer, so she wondered whether there was some other intent behind the Shrine of Choosing with her thinking the number of rooms or the colour of the doors chosen as possibly being the key to the test. The teacher then jabbed at Maomao a bit by saying Luomen probably would’ve figured it out. Maomao said that it’s true that her adopted father had an astonishing amount of knowledge of but being told that she can’t do it is annoying. She thought Luomen’s knowledge was exceptionally advanced in the field of medicine and wondered whether that had something to do with it. When the Emperor asked the teacher if he has any idea what “not child of the Mother Royal” could mean, Maomao thought back to the founding fable of Li with only the Mother Royal appearing without any mention of a father. She thought that given the story, one would expect this country to use a system based on a maternal bloodline, but their nation uses a paternal hereditary succession system. She then thought about what would we be the best way to carry on the Mother Royal’s bloodline, and sprung onto Jinshi the question on whether the previous Emperor’s brothers were all born to the same mother, and the Emperor indicated that the mothers who gave birth to the princes were sisters, to which Maomao responded by saying they were of close bloodlines. She then asked for permission to speak freely, which the Emperor allowed. Maomao asked whether several of the previous Emperors had poor eyesight, to the teacher’s surprise, and the Emperor confirmed that that was the case, but he also noted that the previous Emperor could see perfectly well. Maomao then declared her interest in going through the shrine again, and the teacher remarked that only princesses and concubines had been allowed to go through the shrine in the past to opine on the doors. That led to the Emperor musing that he could make Maomao one of his concubines although Lakan would give him grief for that, which Maomao thought had to be a joke, and Jinshi said with outrage while also sounding pleading about what the other concubines would think, and then he told Jinshi to take Maomao as a concubine, but Maomao literally had no thoughts about that and showed no reaction whatsoever to hearing that, as if she literally doesn’t want to think about things like that, merely ending that interaction with he’s being playful.

I’m not going to go through all that with the doors again as it’d be tedious, so I’ll mention only the final room, which had purple, white, and green doors with a message to choose the red door. The secret was that Maomao knew that many in the western region have red-green colour blindness, and the Mother Royal and her servants from the west created the Shrine of Choosing specifically to choose people who would continue to have the red-green colour blindness trait that runs in the Mother Royal’s family with sons going through this rite of passage with concubines closely related to them if they couldn’t pass the test themselves, allowing for the Mother Royal and the west to infiltrate and take over the entire country, which she didn’t spare speak out aloud, only revealing to those in-person that it was meant to select for that trait to continue her bloodline even though the test doesn’t guarantee that the test-taker is not a descendant of hers. The teacher indicated that in the past, only women with the right blood would partake in the test, but this time someone else did. Maomao reasoned that the Mother Royal married into the leadership of the country since it’s never easy settling into a new land, and the paternal succession system was followed to honour the leader at the time. She thought to herself that’s how the Mother Royal became the origin for the founding fable since after some time, the people who knew the truth would’ve passed away. Maomao then put it out there that that might be how the brothers passed in an epidemic ’cause of too much inbreeding. It was said that the Mother Royal possessed a rare intellect, and the teacher suggested Maomao be added to the bloodline to thin the bloodline while also warning that many do not favour the introduction of new blood, and the Emperor joked that Maomao needs to have at least 15cm more in the chest for him to consider it. But we see from the teacher, he was actually directing that remark at Jinshi, and Maomao still doesn’t get it, saying some things are better left unknown, which shows she has a defense mechanism preventing her from realizing the truth by pushing uncomfortable thoughts away, and it’s unclear how long this defense mechanism can keep doing its job.

After watching this episode, I believe it makes sense why the Emperor looked deep in thought at the end of Episode 30. It makes sense if the Emperor was using the Shrine of Choosing to test Maomao to see if she would be a good partner for Jinshi, and if that’s the case, Jinshi is most likely his direct heir rather than his brother. That would be why the teacher directed his remark to Jinshi, and it’s ’cause he understood the Emperor was testing Maomao’s fitness to be Jinshi’s mate. That would also explain all the teasing the Emperor made, as it was just like a family outing in which he teases his son and daughter-in-law.

If you also remember from the start of the episode, the old woman appeared to have more power than the old man, who may have been the Emperor at the time, who had to defer to her when she told him to go back to his room. Perhaps the epidemic that killed the previous Emperor’s older brothers was no real epidemic and was actually a mass murdering of the Imperial family ’cause that woman had some sort of leverage over the youngest son. That could explain why she had such great power despite being far past the age one would expect her to hold such power.

Re:Zero Episode 61 (Season 3 Episode 11) – Analysis + Important Details

Posted on February 20, 2025 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

Although this episode wasn’t as well-animated as last week’s, I did appreciate it for making me like Liliana given I found her somewhat annoying before and ’cause of some interesting details that may be relevant later, character moments I enjoyed, and ’cause of this episode’s most important message. I’ll go into topics such as child abuse and what it means to be tolerant and accepting of others’ beliefs, the latter of which made this episode of Re:Zero my favourite of the season.

First off, we see a flashback to when Liliana was younger, and when her mom smacked her on the back of the head for biting her tongue and continuing to speak anyway, I rooted hard for Liliana to get away from this family. Although Liliana’s mother had a beautiful voice, and her whole Masquerade Troupe was competent, I immediately got the impression she doesn’t make for a particularly good mother even if Liliana exaggerated the issue when she bit her tongue. The proper way to teach Liliana not to do that would be explain to her what is professional and what isn’t since she is an aspiring performer herself. With that aside, you can see how in awe of her mother’s singing Liliana was during the performance in the small town they were in when Liliana stopped shaking her maracas, and it’s clear she loves music.

Back when the troupe has made camp for the night, Liliana is struggling to play her instrument, and she gets inspiration looking at the stars when she sees a group of them resembling a guiltylowe’s fang and came up with a song on the spot much like she does in the present although it was a pretty poor song. The next time, Liliana’s eyes sparkle at seeing the big city, but they choose to go on a different since her mother’s troupe only performs in small towns ’cause they don’t like following the rules in big cities and want to do things exactly the way they like, which isn’t exactly the best way to earn a living or raise a child for the matter. When Liliana enthusiastically suggests singing the song, “Reid the Sword Saint”, next, her mom just taunts her saying it’ll be a good ten years before Liliana can pick their performances, which is again very bad parenting. If her mom had clearly explained that Liliana doesn’t have the experience to know what song to pick for what audience, that would’ve been much better than the smug response she gave her child. On top of that, Liliana’s father said he’s not sharing the rabbit he caught with such an impudent brat, which shows he’s going out of his way to give Liliana less food, which no respectable parent would do. Perhaps the reason Liliana is so short ’cause she was malnourished due to her parents holding back food from her. Given they only performed in small towns, it wouldn’t surprise me if money was an issue. Liliana then splashed her parents with a bucket of water and declared her intent to leave the troupe and become the king of bards, which isn’t surprising given this probably isn’t the first instance her parents did this to her with their mocking her openly. On the surface, it may have seemed as if Liliana was being a petulent brat, but I got major bad vibes from her parents. Some people should not be parents, and I believe this applies to them as I believe all children should grow up in a warm and encouraging environment, not whatever that was.

Back to the fight with Priscilla and Sirius, Priscilla immediately recovers from the blow Sirius dealt to her, and apparently, Priscilla has an ability that lets her have items valuable to her take damage in place of herself, which is extremely handy in combat situations. I wonder if this is limited to precious items or people she loves as well. Priscilla gets mad once again when Sirius mentions “Iris and the Thorn King”, and Sirius asks her to not be so angry since she considers wrath the most detestable emotion there, which has parallels with Petelgeuse, who hated sloth and was extremely diligent and rewarded his followers for being diligent despite being the Sin Archbishop of Sloth, and Sirius also bleeds from her eyes (shown in Episode 53) much like how Petelgeuse would get hurt from using his Authority in Seasons 1 and 2, which likely shows that Sirius is also incompatible with the Wrath Witch Factor. Sirius believes that people’s hearts should always be filled with joy, which is why she uses her Authority to open their hearts and have everybody share in the joy and understand each other, which she believes is the first step to love, and Liliana rightly trashes that line of thinking and believes Sirius is disgusting for suggesting the mind-controlled people are in a state of mutual understanding.

Enraged by hearing this, Sirius aims to strike Liliana with her chain, which Priscilla blocks, leading to her taunting Sirius by saying that she finally showed her true colours, that she wanted to silence Liliana for not falling under her control a second time, which sent her into a rage. Priscilla said that’s what Sirius’s cheap wrath amounted to, which enraged Sirius further as she said her wrath is what her husband gave her, so she doesn’t want it to be made out as something so tawdry. Priscilla shines even more by taunting Sirius about how it’s laughable that the only gift her husband gave her was anger when she has had eight husbands with each of them giving her one gift after another to attract her interest. This seriously irked Sirius with her remarking how she had to spend so much time forming a connection with one man, leading to Priscilla saying that she wonders whether the poor man she loves so much even sees her, which was very likely to be true given Sirius went into a rage in Episode 52 about how the half-devil (Emilia) is the one you’re really after after she deluded herself into thinking Subaru is Petelgeuse, and this shows that Petelgeuse’s extreme focus on Satella probably enraged Sirius since he wouldn’t give any other woman aside from Satella the time of day, and this could be how Petelgeuse “gave” her this wrath that she treasures as ridiculous as it may sound, but the Sin Archbishops ARE messed-up people after all. Priscilla having had 8 husbands up to this point also seemed strange to me, and I suspect this happened due to her fall from grace as royalty, her royalty status being something I speculated about last week.

All of this taunting leads to Sirius becoming extremely rageful and launching some powerful attacks at Priscilla, which her 2 remaining precious jewels and necklace protected her from. Priscilla then gives Liliana the opening she needs to get inside the tower by using the flames from her Yang Sword to override Sirius’s flames, and since those flames only burn that which Priscilla desires, Liliana is safe even if the flames are still hot. Inside the tower, Liliana indicates she had only been running for a short while and is exhausted, which she reasons is due to Kiritaka and the rest since her days travelling from town to town had ended, but that’s exactly why she can’t lose heart since she has people she cares about. When she has reached the top of the tour, she loudly declares, probably with the help of the Divine Protection of Telepathy, that she intends to perform “As the Sky Overtakes the Dawn”.

It flashes back to when she made her declaration earlier to be the king of bards, and things are rough as she nearly dies from starvation living life rough on the streets. She was taken in by a group of merchants who helped her until she was able to earn some money due to her own performance for the first time in her life after honing her craft for a while. As she continued on with her life as a struggling artist, she saw her parents had a new kid and didn’t have the courage to face them, though I doubt that they’d care given how poorly they treated her as a child and given they replaced her with another child. Liliana reasoned that this is the way a bard should be, walking side by side with music, living together with her song. During one particularly bad struggle when she nearly died from dehydration, Liliana said that no hero would die at a time like this, but she’s no hero and that this sort of thing wouldn’t happen to Reid or Flugel. Liliana indicates she’s just been taking the liberty of telling people others’ stories, making her no more than a thief, so she has an existential crisis before passing out. About those mentions of Reid and Flugel, if you don’t remember, Flugel is the name of the wise man from centuries ago who planted what was known as Flugel’s tree that the White Whale extermination force burned down to trap the White Whale. Reid was revealed to be a previous Sword Saint when Liliana asked her mom if they could sing a song about him. Given how important the time period 400 years ago was with Satella, the dead witches, and the legendary hero, sage, and dragon that sealed Satella, perhaps Flugel and Reid were from that era.

When Liliana woke up in the flashback, she rushed towards a lake she saw and had her fill of water since she was so parched, and after seeing the beautiful sight with the bird singing, the flowers, and the sun slowly rising, she had the inspiration for her first impactful song. Back at the city, although the cityfolk have their reservations about Liliana, likely ’cause of how awful she looked and probably how horrible she smelled as well, she won them over with that new song, and maybe that moment when she saw the sun rise was when she awakened her Divine Protection of Telepathy since there was no previous indication that she had it in the past. It’s a lot easier for people to appreciate your singing if you can literally tell them how you feel. Part of Liliana’s strength comes from Kiritaka, who saw the wonder of her voice and wanted her to be his songstress while not monopolizing her voice since it’s so captivating and can bring happiness to everyone. She then breaks free those in the vicinity of the tower who were under Sirius’s control, and Priscilla remarks that she was not mistaken in her evaluation of her as being the one she should take with her to fight Sirius. Curiously, Priscilla says that a simpleton, which Liliana is, is not the same as a fool, with a fool having no right to live while a simpleton can at least be amusing. Priscilla then notably says Liliana has proven her worth as far more than amusement and implies she will reward her by defeating Sirius.

That remark about fools having no right to live might be hinting that Priscilla knows that Subaru and Al do not stay dead when they die, which is why she refers to both of them as fools. Given Al hinted in last week’s episode that death is not the end for him with how he warned Capella to get out of there before he dies, perhaps with Al you can physically see him being unable to die unlike with Return By Death, and that’s how Priscilla may know what Al’s power is and intuited something about the nature of Subaru’s power. That would explain why she cut open a wound on Subaru’s leg in Episode 56 and poked a hole through his neck in that same episode, and that’s ’cause she doesn’t believe he will remain dead if he did in fact die due to blood loss. Priscilla should believe that Subaru has SOMETHING given how weak he is, and that would be one of the reasons she came to believe that he doesn’t stay dead. Given Al uses the Japanese term “kyoudai”, which means “brother” to address Subaru, and Al and Subaru were talking about having come from the same hometown in Re:Zero Breaktime Season 3 Episode 5 to avoid talking about being from a different world, Priscilla may have outright been told by Al that Subaru is in a similar position to him with how he was originally from a different place (Earth) and that they’re in fact from the same hometown. Although I literally believe Subaru and Al are actually brothers, I wonder what Priscilla herself believes about their relationship. Episode 60 introduced the concept of certain bloodlines perhaps having special properties with Capella remarking about how Crusch’s blood couldn’t overcome hers despite being quite noble itself, and maybe Priscilla believes a special magic runs in Subaru and Al’s family that allows them to defy death.

Sirius is enraged that the cityfolk have been freed from her control, and she mutilates herself to temporarily increase her powers, again, much like Petelgeuse used to do, resulting in her causing the top of the control tower to slowly fall off and Priscilla’s hairpin to be destroyed, and hair down Priscilla is really beautiful, what a sight to behold. Liliana is then revealed to be okay and still singing as that part of the tower falls. Sirius says to love is to become as one while Priscilla interjects that to love is to tolerantly accept each other despite your differences. Everyone facing the same direction, thinking the same things, and feeling the same way is revolting. Priscilla then destroys Sirius’s chains and says that it’s over, but Sirius uses yin magic to pull Tina out from wherever she was hiding her, intending to use her as a hostage, and Priscilla just charges straight at Sirius, breaking the chains that bound Tina and dealing heavy damage to Sirius. Sirius then asks Priscilla if she understands her pain, probably ’cause Priscilla seems so on the mark about everything, and Priscilla simply roasted her again by saying that she doesn’t care and that she can die while embracing her falsehoods, knocking Sirius into the water and saying that Sirius should count herself lucky since her sword ran out of power. On whether Sirius is dead, that’s hard to say. She does have elven ears, so her body might be stronger and more resilient than the average person. The cityfolk search the waters desperately for Liliana, and Kiritaka comes in to save Liliana just as she is about to drown, which was a nice moment for the two.

On that point of tolerance Priscilla brought up, I believe the U.S. has a serious problem with people lacking empathy and the ability to tolerate others’ beliefs, and this is not limited only to intolerance from Republicans but also the Democrats with the extreme amount of shaming Democrats due to anyone they perceive to support someone they dislike or hate. Tearing into people of colour for voting for Trump despite what it’d mean for them in having less rights and opportunities is not the way to win over people and only serves to make them double down on why they voted for Trump as humans tend to be emotional creatures first before logical. Showing people you understand why they did what they did and where they’re coming by having honest, nonjudgemental conversations with them is more likely to result in mutual understanding (over a long period time since you have to show time after time again that you care as if they don’t believe you care about them they won’t care about anything you have to say) than demeaning everyone for not feeling the same way you do, which is why this episode of Re:Zero resonated so strongly with me since Sirius’s Authority forces everybody to feel the same way and doesn’t truly lead to societal improvement. Positive, lasting change happens by increasing mutual understanding and building a consensus over time, not by forcing things through.

This is not just an issue in the U.S. as it’s starting to creep into Canada, where I live, as well. The social media giants and their algorithms drive people to get more and more political and radicalize them with the “us or them” mentality, which is a scourge to the world. People are ending ties with their family members over their support for the current U.S. president even if his supporters don’t necessarily have racist or misogynist views. If you want to know their beliefs, go and actually talk to them instead of prematurely judging them. This is a problem that’s contributing to the breakdown of society. The oligarchs and monopolies in the U.S. and Canada love and want people to be fighting each other all the time instead of the corporations that are conspiring to race prices across the board, depress wages, and take away everybody’s freedoms, and we need to do something about it before our countries completely unravel, such as with laws heavily restricting the amount of political content that makes it onto people’s feeds or creating a national holiday for everybody except students and teachers (mandatory school day whether you are in Kindergarten or a post-high school educational institution that can impact your marks for skipping without a valid reason, and religious exemptions shouldn’t be permitted) so that’s there’s a specific day for teaching kids to engage with each other respectfully.

My point isn’t about tolerating ANYTHING (like Musk doing a Nazi salute), but showing empathy to your fellow human beings. When people are not making a decent living and their family situation sucks, it’s easier to fall for a bald-faced lie due to them being in turmoil. We need to show people that we care about their well-being and where they’re coming from as people who think that you don’t care about them won’t care about what you have to say. We need to have their backs time after time again and not cut ties with them so easily unless they are so clearly beyond help that there’s nothing we can do about it. I believe this is the sort of message we need at this time.

At the end of the episode, Subaru reveals that all of the Sin Archbishops are named after stars from his world to Regulus and that their Authorities are based on the origins of their names. That’s how he knows Regulus’s ability isn’t invincibility but the ability to stop time for things he wants, which is why he can make his body not take damage or get wet ’cause he stopped time for it. Regulus then interrupts him to say he has no interest whatsoever in your thoughts after previously indicating he would listen, showing he deems Subaru as a threat for the first time since meeting him and starts attacking him, and Subaru starts running away, hoping that Emilia can figure out how to free Regulus’s wives from his grip, thinking that there must be a limitation to Regulus’s Authority, whether it be the number of wives, the distance from his wives, or something else.

Anyway, I hope I was able to clearly explain why I enjoyed this episode so much. I loved very much Liliana being able to make a name for herself after her terrible childhood in which she was abused and the message about love and tolerance from Priscilla, the scene-stealing queen.

Kusuriya no Hitorigoto (The Apothecary Diaries) Episode 30 (Season 2 Episode 6) – Analysis + Important Details

Posted on February 17, 2025 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

This episode leads with the woman from the clinic who showed Ailan a room she could stay in last episode, and we find out her name is Shenlü later in the episode. The first scene shows her looking at a letter someone sent her (which I will come back to at the end), and this suggests that someone else suggested to her to approach Maomao later in the episode when Ailan returned the next day to say that a court lady wanted to see her, which Ailan apologized for since she reasons she should’ve taken the medicine Maomao prepared for her beforehand so that Shenlü didn’t see it. When Gyokuyou wondered whether there will be repercussions, that’s when Ailan spilled that that court lady wanted to borrow Maomao for a while.

When Maomao and Yinghua went to meet Shenlü, Maomao noted that Shenlü has green-tinted eyes, meaning she is likely from the same region as Lady Gyokuyou. She said that yesterday Shenlü gave off the vibe of a tough mother hen, but in this calm setting, she gives off a wise reserved impression. Shenlü then apologized for yesterday since she had no idea Maomao worked for the Precious Consort, which is Lady Gyokuyou’s title with all the high-ranking concubines having a specific title (Lihua’s the Wise Consort. Lishu’s the Virtuous Consort. And Loulan’s the Pure Consort if I recall correctly). Court ladies from outside the 4 pavilions often use these titles. Shenlü requests for Maomao to make some medicine to treat a servant girl in the Crystal Pavilion who has a bad cough that she last saw half a month ago. Shenlü had met the girl at the laundry area a number of times, eventually telling the girl to get some serious rest, but she went missing the next day and didn’t even visit the clinic. Maomao surmises that the head leady-in-waiting at the Crystal Pavilion must have denied the servant girl’s request to go to the clinic after Shenlü put it out there that the higher-ups might not have allowed to come to the clinic.

Once they’ve left the clinic, Yinghua says that she knows these types of things catch Maomao’s eye, so she told Maomao outright to get the right permissions first to do anything about this situation as Maomao has a bad habit of diving into things head-first, a callback to when Maomao went to sniff the servant girls and ladies-in-waitings at the Crystal Pavilion. Maomao mentally notes she needs to be patient and said she’d get Jinshi to make the introduction. She then saw a salamander and caught its tail, which reinforced Yinghua’s point and freaked Yinghua out, as it appears she’s afraid of critters like those, which I thought was pretty funny. Maomao wants to study how they grow back their tails due to her wanting to figure out how to regrow testicles. Oh, you devious girl.

Back at the Crystal Pavilion, we see there’s a girl that’s dying, and a servant girl tries to check up on her but was rebuked by Shin since it isn’t part of that girl’s duties. Shin then gets notified that the quack doctor from the medical office is here, and nobody is happy to see him given how he couldn’t save the prince and when Shin outright says that Lihua doesn’t want to see him, he produces the letter showing he is here by Jinshi’s order after Maomao in high heels whispers something to him as Shin wonders whether she has seen this “tall” court lady before. The doctor says he’s sure Lihua has great helpers, and Shin replies of course since all who work at the Crystal Pavilion were born and raised in noble families, so they truly deserve their spot in the Emperor’s service, which we all know is not true since they’re the laziest workers around due to their background. Lihua mentioned that Lihua is born from the imperial lineage and thought to herself why she wasn’t a concubine with her thought being interrupted with Maomao having caught sight of a shed that is out of place and directing the doctor to ask about it. When Shin says it’s just for storage, the doctor just as planned asked if she did any gardening recently to draw her attention away so that he could sneak up to the shed while Maomao distracted her, saying that Shin is wearing perfume today among other things.

Maomao then quickly gets to work treating the sick servant girl wondering why she’s being treated like this with Shin interjecting that it’s common sense to quarantine a sick person to make sure an illness doesn’t spread, but Maomao says the girl will die if she keeps getting treated like this, not that a death of a single servant girl would get Shin in any trouble. Maomao then says coming to the Crystal Pavilion made her think back to what happened here before when Lihua was sick, and Shin was burning incense as if to hide the scent of the sick. This time, she feels the opposite, that Shin put a sick person here to hide the smell of incense. Maomao remarks that the ladies of the Crystal Pavilion have too many secrets with how a basket full of banned goods from the caravan were found here, and she asked why Shin is trying to make an abortion drug, which unnerved Shin.

After Maomao has washed herself and changed into fresh clothes, Jinshi, Maomao, Lady Gyokuyou, and Gaoshun confront Shin, and I just absolutely love how Maomao was so in your face and aggressive with Shin, destroying Shin’s faulty logic about how the goods aren’t hers when one of the flasks has the same scent as she does today. That resulted in Shin scratching Maomao’s face, and that results in Lihua taking control of the interrogations with how she surmises that Shin never saw her as a concubine and said it came down to the wire about which of them would be chosen as a concubine, and Shin breaks down due to having perceived Lihua to be talking down to her, saying how she’s better at Lihua at at most things with Maomao thinking that Lihua’s breasts are why Lihua won out since she had more ‘caliber’ as a concubine. Maomao also observed that Lady Lihua wore the same outfit as Lady Gyokuyou before she started wearing outfits that would hide her pregnancy, thinking that ladies-in-waiting here are no good and were deliberately selected by Shin specifically ’cause of their upbringings. Eventually, Jinshi wonders whether what Shin said about her being raised from birth to be Empress amounts to a confession, and Shin completely loses it and throws all the scented oils at Lihua to try and cause a miscarriage, but she was stopped by Gaoshun. Maomao, still in a feisty mood, then puts out that Shin covets the position of Empress while Lihua just loves the Emperor in general, which rattled Shin further. Lady Lihua then punishes Shin with a huge slap to the face and was posed to also punch her too with her dramatics giving her the cover to give Shin a lenient sentence in merely just being banned from the rear palace, and she appeared so dignified unlike when she was sick, nearly to the point of death.

Outside, Jinshi asked Maomao how she knew the servant girl was in the shed, and Maomao said she had an idea beforehand since the girl would be somewhere out of sight, away from the bedrooms of the others. As a callback to earlier when the quack doctor asked if Shin had done some gardening, Maomao indicated there was an clue with flowers that were planted next to the shed being white when they were usually red ’cause in feng shui they say that green and white is a combo that brings good health. She said it was ironic that whoever planted them chose the white blossom though ‘since the white powder in the seeds of white blossoms can be used to induce an abortion. Jinshi reacted with alarm, and Maomao that they’re harmless otherwise unless you specifically have the knowledge about the abortions much like the scented oils. Jinshi asks her whether someone is deliberately spreading the knowledge about the use of scented oils for abortions, and she indicated she’s unsure, but you can never be too careful. Maomao then has an encounter with the girl who was trying to help the sick servant girl, and she was the one plating the white blossoms. Maomao let her know that she’s getting proper treatment away from the rear palace, thinking that Lihua is paying for the treatment herself since she felt responsible. It was just so wonderful to see this girl light up with the news, showing that there is at least one good person serving under Lady Lihua and the goodness of humanity in general.

At night, the Emperor visits Lady Lihua and casually remarks that Maomao was here again, and Lihua says he must know everything and that she has done nothing but save her. The Emperor looks deep in thought, either ’cause of all the threats to his concubines, ’cause this incident is having him think of making a request of Maomao he wouldn’t normally make, or maybe even both those things. Back to my thought at the start of the post that Shenlü approached Maomao after receiving a letter, it wouldn’t surprise me if whoever wrote the letter has some nefarious plans in order. Maybe this person’s request specifically involved Maomao saving the day to increase her profile for whatever reason. In retrospect, Episode 26 had Shin make an evil face upon reading a letter from the clinic, which perhaps suggests that she had a co-conspirator at the clinic, and that person may be Shenlü, who herself is conspiring with someone else with Suiren being the first to come to mind due to her expansive knowledge of poisons. The episode ends with an ominous shot of a building, and I wonder what it’s significance will be.

A Re:Zero Theory: Something horrible is happening to Al based on Re:Zero Breaktime Season 3 Episode 6

Posted on February 16, 2025 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

In the short Episode 6 clip, Al indicated that knowing that Subaru exists stopped him from going insane. This has been bothering me ever since it was released 4 months ago. The reason being that in a lot of isekai stories, the main character is the only person who was summoned, and since Al was explicitly revealed to be summoned from Japan in the previous Breaktime episode, Al should be familiar with the isekai stories from our world.

It didn’t drive Subaru insane that he didn’t know of there being someone else like him out there, so why would it drive Al insane until he met Subaru? This indicates to me that something tangentially related or even directly related to Subaru was the cause for Al nearly going insane.

I have two proposals for what may be happening to Al:

Al personally feels all of the pain from Subaru’s deaths, so a phantom pain of sorts that sporadically happens ’cause Satella transmits the feeling of Subaru’s deaths to him. We know that since Subaru’s entire body resets he dies that the soul is the seat of memories in Re:Zero, so Satella’s soul could be lying in a pocket dimension in the vicinity of Subaru’s soul. Perhaps this also applies to Al, and Satella’s soul also lies in the vicinity of Al’s soul, which means Al’s soul is close to Subaru’s. That would be how Satella would be able to transmit the pain of Subaru’s deaths to Al, and why meeting Subaru would be a eureka moment for Al since he’d have found out why he was randomly feeling somebody else’s deaths aside from his own.
Satella transmits certain memories Subaru has to Al using the method I described earlier, which makes Al question his sanity about why he was experiencing that. Upon meeting Subaru, it would be his eureka moment. In my main theory, Al was Subaru’s younger brother by blood and the previous iteration of the hero of the story in the previous iteration of the world before Subaru was, and most of the characters in Subaru’s world should also have been in Al’s, and that would by why Al would question his sanity. This could explain why Al said in Re:Zero Breaktime Season 3 Episode 5 that he knows all too well that the only person Beatrice would let call her Beako is Subaru, and it’s not ’cause Al is Subaru but because he had some of Subaru’s memories. These memories could be used to allow Al to help Subaru in the future.

For the links to the respective short videos:

Breaktime Season 3 Ep. 5: https://twitter.com/i/status/1851218364317761852

Breaktime Season 3 Ep. 6: https://youtu.be/VvXaWBb_aRg

KakoeiSbi provides most of the translations for the Breaktime episodes in the comments section of Youtube.

Re:Zero Episode 60 (Season 3 Episode 10) – Analysis + Important Details

Posted on February 15, 2025 | by anicritic | 2 Comments

We start off this episode with Capella back the government office. Apparently, Felix and Anastasia prepared a ruse for Capella with Felix’s hope that Capella would tell her how to cure Crusch, but Capella herself doesn’t know how to heal a body that has given in to dragon blood as she wishes she knew the answer herself. Capella also remarked that Crusch’s blood couldn’t overcome her blood even though it’s noble herself, which suggests that some bloodlines may have special properties. We know there was an Emerada Lugunica that existed 50 years ago was beautiful, intelligent, and feared by all. Could Capella be Emerada who was resurrected by black dragon blood? Or did she see herself in Emerada’s story and took on her name? After it is clear that Capella doesn’t have the answer to what they want, Anastasia gets out of bed and hits Capella with yang magic (Season 2 revealed that yin and yang are the two other elements aside from the four primary ones with shadow from Season 1 appearing to be a mistranslation) and activated her trap, which broke part of the floor, revealing that they had already dug a tunnel down to a lower floor as part of their prep for this encounter. Anastasia had worn a wig and wore bandages to mimic Crusch’s condition, which was very well-played, and then used the same magic from before to knock Capella to that lower floor, where she encountered Al, who warned Capella to get out of there before he dies. This indicates that just like for Subaru, death is likely not the end for Al, which was something Elsa hated about Subaru’s eyes since he clearly didn’t see death as the end of the road.

Theory crafting the specifics about Al’s powers outside of it involving time seems to be an impossible endeavor given how many things it could possibly, so I won’t bother doing that. Instead I will reiterate that I believe Subaru was summoned to bring the world to a free future and stop the cycle of the world being destroyed/reconstructed. I propose the key is to have Subaru be born weak and improve Subaru’s self-esteem so that he isn’t conceited like past heroes I believe existed in the world. Al and especially Subaru were perhaps both born weaker compared to previous heroes to give the world a chance to end the cycle of the world being destroyed and reconstructed by making it so that their lived experiences were different from that of the previous very strong and conceited heroes I believe existed in the past with both of them probably having been summoned by Satella. For more on my main theory, read one of my previous posts here: https://thoroughwatch.org/?p=36

Afterwards, after Reinhard tries to follow one of Subaru’s plans, which ends in failure with Reinhard being knocked probably across the whole town, Regulus says that he is a perfect, complete human and that he’s entirely fulfilled with there not being such a thing as more or less for him. Emilia has a great moment where she calls him out by saying that has been coming out of his mouth has been “I want this” and “I want that”, citing that he’s an incredibly selfish person. She says that if he’s fulfilled then he should take better care of his wives. Sounding very hurt, she mentioned how Regulus tied his wives down and made them give up, and then she realized that she absolutely hates Regulus on every level, which pissed Regulus off so much he started picking up huge portions of water into cubes and accelerating the water once he stops having them stay in place.

After that, an ice chase ensues as Emilia freezes water as they try to escape Regulus with Regulus in hot pursuit of them since he can walk normally on ice and doesn’t need to skate like Emilia and Subaru do. Emilia then suggests handing Subaru one of her lesser spirits and asks if he can hang on by himself, to which Subaru replies that as a kid he was called the “Ice Princess”, which suggests he either cross-dressed or cosplayed as a girl frequently in his youth while skating for whatever reason, possibly as a way to avoid being compared to his dad due to him being desperate to get out of his dad’s shadow. Subaru having an inferiority complex was a plot point in Episode 29 (Season 2 Episode 4), and I thought it was the best episode in the series for the subject matter it touched upon, which explained Subaru’s behaviour throughout the first season and up to that point. There is no filler in Re:Zero, so whether it was cross-dressing or cosplay, perhaps Subaru will be forced to pull out a trick from his youth.

I’ll stray from the scene order now to focus on Priscilla. Sirius again does something to make herself the center of attention. If you recall from Episode 51, Sirius’s antics at the clock tower in Episode 51 and 52 were meant to get people’s attention on her specifically given her power allows her to nudge people’s emotional states to what she desires after first getting their attention. In this recent episode, Sirius makes a fuss about how she brightened up the place since it was so dark, and this led to Liliana falling under her control. Priscilla, being the scene-stealer she is, decided to give Liliana a passionate French kiss to free her from Sirius’s control, which was not a bad idea since she already knew Liliana had some level of attraction to her. After that, Sirius directs a whole bunch of people from the city who had fallen under her control towards Priscilla and Liliana, which led to Priscilla using her Yang Sword to create a line of fire on the bridge leading to them, which stopped those under Sirius’s mind control from advancing. She then tasked Liliana with breaking those people from Sirius’s control, putting extra stress on Liliana by emphasizing that all of their lives are depending on her voice. This reminds of earlier this season in Episode 58 (I didn’t include that in my analysis, which was an oversight, I guess) when Priscilla said something that appeared to demean Liliana which motivated Liliana to do her best to live up to her family name. Perhaps Priscilla has the habit of saying something that is demeaning or stressful to the recipient of her words so that she can draw out a person’s best qualities. This was again shown in a more extreme fashion when Priscilla tested Subaru’s strength of character with her proposal that Subaru lick her foot in Episode 16. Priscilla had intended for Subaru to reject that offer, but Subaru was in very poor shape mentally to consider that was what she was gunning for.

Priscilla then engages Sirius and is definitely a match for her in combat, but Sirius appeared to taunt Priscilla with the mentioning “Iris and the Thorn King”, “Teleos’s Rose Knight”, and “Magritzer’s Gibbet”, which provoked Priscilla into becoming enraged. Whatever these three terms are, they clearly have a personal significance to Priscilla. I have an idea of why Priscilla had such a strong reaction based on previous content. Clearly from Episode 12, Priscilla must’ve come from a very high-class background given she had no idea that appas have red skin. Given “Iris and the Thorn King” and “Teleos’s Rose Knight”, whatever they are, involve a king and a knight, Priscilla may not be your average noble and might be royalty, and given it’s clear that Priscilla is not from Lugunica’s Royal Family since everyone would recognize her and ’cause Lugunica’s Royal Family perished, she might be royalty from a different nation. When Priscilla remarked in Episode 13 that Felt must’ve remained a slum dweller ’cause she can only manage tedious conversation, that might not have been a random insult but a hint that Priscilla went through hardship and lost her status as royalty at some point. I always thought the way Priscilla spoke to Subaru in Episode 16 at points made it seem like she was a queen or empress given the sort of inflections the voice actress used, and perhaps that was intentional and just phenomenal voice-acting.

Also of note and relates to the stuff with Priscilla is that I missed something for last week’s write-up. I had noticed that Julius looked surprised after Roy said something to him, but I was unsure of what to make of it, so I rewatched Episode 59, and Roy addressed Julius by “Nii-sama”, meaning Crunchyroll botched the translation, showing that Roy knew Julius is an older brother, and that is why Julius seemed taken aback. We know that Sirius did not know Priscilla personally yet said the perfect things to unnerve her, so it seems the reason Julius didn’t stick with the original plan to not use your real name if you encounter the Sin Archbishop of Gluttony is ’cause Roy probably said things that made Julius believe Roy knew info about him. We know Sirius didn’t actually seem to know Priscilla at the start of their encounter, so either the Gospel gave her instructions, or there was some other tell we’re not aware of. Perhaps Sirius and Roy both had instructions from their Gospels to say what they did or had good info from the Witch Cult’s spy network, and that’s the main reason Julius abandoned their well-thought out plan.

After many failures regarding penetrating Regulus’s seeming invincibility, Subaru asks Emilia for a hint by asking what happened to her after she was taken prisoner. Emilia responded by saying that he asked her if she’s a virgin, that he calls his wives by numbers, and when she said that that makes him seem like an evil king, one of them (Wife #184) called him “Little King”, which Subaru knew as the Latin name for Regulus, and he stated that it has another name, which is implied later in the episode to be “Lion Heart”, and I will get back to that at the end of my post, but I first I have to leave it out there that the Memory Snow OVA hinted that Subaru is a star nerd since he knew his own name was referring to a star cluster in that animation project that happened in the off years between Season 1 and Season of Re:Zero. Subaru then asked Emilia what Regulus’s hand felt like when he was strangling her, and she said it felt like nothing, which prompted Subaru to ask Reinhard to find out whether his heart is beating, which Reinhard confirmed it wasn’t to Subaru as he was being sent flying into the moon. This leads to Subaru beating Regulus at his own game at yapping by saying that Regulus has a right to hear about how he’ll lose since he’s all about his rights. Regulus, who says he is merciful, will allow Subaru to talk, and Subaru first says that Regulus’s power is the ability press the start button in the middle of the game, maybe ’cause when you start a game there’s a rush of momentum with all the animations starting up and everything, and that’s how he can launch dirt, air, and even water as we see in this episode at very high speed. Subaru says his ability is Lion Heart, the ability to stop time for his own body, and Regulus’s face shows that Subaru nailed it.

As I have noted in a previous post of mine, I have been looking up Re:Zero names ever since Episode 22 of Re:Zero, “A Flash of Sloth”, in which there were several instances of sloth that impacted the story. I had already looked up the names of the Sin Archbishops before, but it appeared my initial search was not enough with how Subaru was able to draw conclusions about Regulus’s ability when I couldn’t, so I expanded my search to more star facts and even mythology.

Betelgeuse, the name Petelgeuse is based off, is a star, in particular, in the constellation of Orion and the ninth-brightest star of the night sky. It’s called “Orion’s hand” in Arabic, which is almost certainly why Petelgeuse’s Authority was the “Unseen Hand”.

Baten Kaitos meant “belly of the sea monster” in Arabic, and I reasoned after Season 2 that that must be about Lye’s eating ability, but after seeing that Alphard is referred to in Arabic as the “backbone of the Serpent”, Baten Kaitos is most likely hinting at the White Whale while Alphard refers to the Black Serpent, the last of the Three Great Mabeasts. Lye Batenkaitos had called the White Whale “our pet” when he and Regulus attacked the White Whale extermination force on its way back to the capital. At the time, I thought it may have just been a pet in general of the Witch Cult, but since Season 3 shows that the Sin Archbishops of Gluttony have a speech quirk in which they speak as if they are more than one person despite being individuals themselves, Lye probably had direct control over the White Whale, and that’s why he personally came to avenge it. Interestingly enough, on names.org a user-submitted meaning indicates that Lye means “fog” in a Native American language, and this may be how Tappei decided to have the White Whale emit a dense fog.

The ancient Greeks observed that the appearance of Sirius as the morning star heralded the hot and dry summer and feared that the star caused plants to wilt, men to weaken, and women to become aroused. Owing to its brightness, Sirius would have been seen to twinkle more in the unsettled weather conditions of early summer. To Greek observers, this signified emanations that caused its malignant influence. All people perceived to be suffering from its effects were said to be “star-struck”, which may be how Tappei decided to make Sirius’s Authority involve people falling under her control and feeling a sense of closeness to Sirius. Sirius means “glowing” or “scorching”, and the glowing part could be referring to how she makes herself the center of attention while the scorching part could be how Tappei decided to make her a fire-magic user.

Capella means “little goat” in Latin. In Greek mythology, the star represented the goat Amalthea that suckled Zeus. It was this goat whose horn, after accidentally being broken off by Zeus, was transformed into the cornucopia, or “horn of plenty”, which would be filled with whatever its owner desired. Perhaps this is how Tappei decided to allow Capella to transform into anything she desired. Since she took the Royal Family’s name, “Emerada” could be a perversion of “Emeralda” much like “Satella” is a perversion of Satellite. “Emeralda” is a variant of “Emerald” with emeralds symbolizing rebirth and wisdom, which may be why Capella is good at reading people and why she might have been resurrected by that black dragon blood in her body.

The Arabic meaning of Regulus is Lion Heart, and that should be part of how Subaru figured out Regulus’s power. Regulus is a fixed star, and fixed stars are luminary points, mainly stars, that appear not to move relative to one another against the darkness of the night sky in the background. Due to their immense distance from Earth, fixed stars appear to move so slowly in the sky that the change in their relative positions is nearly imperceptible on human timescales, except under careful examination with modern instruments, such as telescopes, that can reveal their proper motions. Hence, they can be considered to be “fixed” for many purposes, such as navigation, charting of stars, and timekeeping even though they do move but not to an extent that the naked eye can detect such movements. This should be how Subaru concluded that Regulus’s Authority freezes time for his own body since a fixed star seems frozen in time. As for how Subaru concluded that’s what makes him invincible, the Nemean lion in Greek mythology had impenetrable fur, and that should be how he figured that Lion Heart had something to do with Regulus’s actual heart.

Re:Zero Breaktime Season 3 Episode 5 is a must-watch since its shows unequivocally that Al was summoned to Earth much like Subaru was: https://x.com/LoremIpsumVerb/status/1851218364317761852?mx=2

Now I will explain how Al factors into this and why I believe he is Subaru’s brother and a previous iteration of the hero of the story. Although I posted the link to my main theory, you might not have time to read it, so I’ll post mainly the Al portion of my main theory. Subaru means Pleiades in Japanese, and Pleiades is referring to a star cluster in the Taurus constellation. Al’s true name, Aldebaran, is a star in the Taurus constellation that follows the Pleiades star cluster in the night sky. In Arabic, Aldebaran means the follower for that reason. While some of the Arabic meanings for Sin Archbishops hint at their powers, perhaps it would be better to consider Al’s name in relation to Subaru since Al isn’t a Sin Archbishop.

Since Aldebaran follows the Pleiades star cluster, perhaps he was given that name because he was Naoko and Kenichi’s next son after Subaru, which showed a fixation from at least one of his parents on their first son who disappeared. Al told Priscilla not to call him Aldebaran in Episode 16 of Re:zero, and that might be because that name is a constant reminder that his parents loved Subaru more than they loved him.

Since names have power in Re:zero, Aldebaran as a name could very possibly mean that Aldebaran would be the next person to be summoned after Subaru was. Aldebaran is pretty much guaranteed to have been summoned to Re:zero’s fantasy world since at least one of the carriage driver, Priscilla, or Al recognized Subaru’s attempt at hitchhiking when hitchhiking shouldn’t exist in a medieval society, meaning Subaru’s attempt to catch a ride should’ve fallen flat on his face, since Al literally knew what Subaru meant by the Kansai dialect when he was exasperated about hearing it in Episode 12, since Priscilla used the English word “chance” knowing Subaru knew the word (and given that Priscilla doesn’t know what apples are, she probably isn’t from Earth since pretty much every grown adult on Earth has at least seen an unpeeled apple before), which shows that she did so knowing Subaru was from the same world as Al, and since Mimi was eating cheeseburgers, which shouldn’t exist in a medieval society, meaning someone from Earth has previously invented them in Re:Zero’s fantasy world. This means Al is either formerly a Japanese citizen, an immigrant who had not yet become a Japanese citizen, someone whose work brings him to Japan sometimes, or a fan of Japanese culture.

Now, I have to say that Re:zero is a logical series. Unlike tons of poorly made isekai series out there, all characters in Re:zero have their own underlying motivations. Something like the isekai protagonist of other bad isekai stories would be made to look good for being self-righteous against Lugunica’s knights, but Subaru got his shit kicked in ’cause Re:zero is a serious story not meant to solely be wish fulfillment. It’s clear that Re:zero is a story where there are actual consequences ’cause of this.

Where I’m going with this is that there are time travel stories out there that posit that all of time is happening at once, meaning there are no real rules and almost anything can happen with it being a matter of the writer’s discretion. The bootstrap paradox commonly featured in time travel stories is also highly illogical and only exists “just because” rather than there being an actual legitimate reason for being used that can be reasoned through logic aside from the author said so.

‘Cause Re:zero is a highly logical series, I posit that time is linear in Re:zero, and I think the main reason Al was summoned to the fantasy world to a point before Subaru’s arrival at Lugunica’s Capital is that Subaru was transported to somewhere in Re:zero’s world or a place that was a limbo between worlds where his body never aged even the slightest before he suddenly arrived in Lugunica’s Capital in Episode 1 of the series and that this period where that happened was before the time Al was summoned to Re:zero’s fantasy world. This is why I do not believe Al is a future Subaru.

Kusuriya no Hitorigoto (The Apothecary Diaries) Episodes 28 and 29 (Season 2 Episodes 4 and 5) – Analysis + Important Details

Posted on February 12, 2025 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

These two episodes were a lot more straightforward than what came before and focused primarily on four things, Gaoshun telling Maomao about a story regarding two women, one of which who escaped a building while under the watch of men, Jinshi and Maomao handling the request of the two special envoys who are blonde women that want to see a moon fairy, Maomao pondering about the dynamic in the rear palace and about who taught Concubine Jin about the poisonous mushroom, and Ailan falling sick, requiring for her to be taken to a clinic. As it would be incredibly boring and tedious to simply recount everything in the order that it happened, I won’t be doing that.

So the two mysterious women from a foreign land who were seen at the end of Episode 25 are named Ayla and Aylin, are the two special envoys, and they actually get shown again the start of Episode 28, and Ayla, whose has red ornaments as opposed to blue with Aylin, actually met with Shishou, Concubine Loulan’s father, at night, and he had his daughter become a concubine that appears to be a different person every time the Emperor visits her due to her outfits and makeup varying wildly, which I believe is most likely a plot to allow her to live a double life as Shisui for some sinister reason. I wonder what the pair discussed although if I had to hazard a guess, it might have involved becoming one of the Emperor’s concubines given what happens later in the episode.

The special envoys had mirrors delivered to all the high-ranking concubines, and I’m not sure what the point of doing this was. Maomao thought it was done with the hopes of making a big business transaction, but she also considers that it might have been a provocation after seeing how Ayla acted later on it the episode. Regardless, shortly after, Gaoshun tasks Maomao with figuring out how two women who were under surveillance managed to trick the men surveilling them after telling a peculiar story about two daughters who looked like. They were located in a separate building attached to the main building through a corridor on the west and were watched through the east and south windows of the building with one man watching one woman from the third floor of the main building and the other from the first floor of the main building. Maomao realized that they had a very limited field of vision and reasoned that there was a large mirror placed specifically so that it appeared that the two were in the building at all times due to the embroidery looking different in a reflection, when in reality, one of them could escape at any time, and this. During this scene, Gaoshun mentioned that the ox bezoar that Jinshi promised to give to Maomao as a reward is hard to procure due to the demand for them suddenly going up, and Hongniang commented that Jinshi has been gifted many rare medicines from all sorts of people as rumours have been circulating that he is very passionately looking for an ox bezoar. In the meantime, Jinshi had Gaoshun deliver her a dried bear’s gallbladder, which is valued for its use in medicines for the digestive system. Jinshi intended to give it to her personally couldn’t due to his workload, but Maomao still has no idea what he feels for her. Gaoshun had stated that one of the daughters one day had become pregnant, but Maomao suspects that she was carrying a bigger secret than that, which is true since Ayla had snuck out to meet Shishou. I wonder what exactly Shishou’s role is as we know nothing about him aside from him being a favourite of the previous Empress Dowager. There has to be some reason Ayla approached Shishou of all people when she snuck out.

The biggest focus of these two episodes is a request from the special envoys to see an otherworld beauty who sheds pearls as tears he called a moon fairy. Ayla and Aylin’s grandfather told them the story about that when they were young repeatedly since he was the special envoy roughly 50 years ago. It was how he described a female dancer who had lights dancing around her as if she were being blessed. Jinshi said she was a courtesan from the pleasure district, and Maomao thought of the old lady from the Verdigris House. Maomao said the envoys know she was seen 50 years ago, so why can’t they just show her a different beautiful woman, but they had already tried during their welcoming party, and the envoys just laughed it off due to being very beautiful themselves. After Maomao had the old lady brought in, the old lady shared that the main reason she was chosen to be the main dancer at the time was probably ’cause of how tall (175 cm) and curvy she was and that a lot of the performance had to be improvised with them being made aware of the phases of the moon, having obstacles removed to give the envoy a better view, and picking out all the insect larvae from the orchard. She also revealed that people tampered with her outfit by rubbing insect carcasses on it, and after Maomao had a talk with Shisui next day, who was gathering the same insect larvae previously depicted, which is awfully convenient by the way if you ask me and made me suspicious, Maomao figured out that the pearls were actually moths sparkling in the moonlight attracted by carcasses of moths of the opposite sex, so she took the matter to Jinshi and the Emperor, who prepared heavily for the upcoming banquet for the special envoys and for the special entertainment to be given to them on that day. Maomao did her part in making sure that only Ayla and Aylin saw Jinshi dressed up as a woman dancing while being surrounded by little lights, and Ayla was so shocked that she went up to Maomao and asked whether the woman disappeared to, at which Maomao replied by saying, “Diana”, the name of a moon goddess in a western legend. Given Loulan’s father was important even 50 years ago, he may have been involved with the entertainment for the special envoy in the past, and that is how Shisui was able to give Maomao a nudge in the right direction.

During the bout of entertainment the Emperor had prepared for Ayla and Aylin, which took place before they had seen Jinshi, Ayla stepped out of her carriage to directly approach the Emperor and seduce him. She was very bored by the performances they were seeing, and Maomao had noted that Ayla gives off the energy that she believes herself to be the most beautiful person in the world while Aylin is the quiet type, which is not untrue given Aylin stopped Ayla after she interrupted the performance to approach the Emperor, and Maomao figured they were bored ’cause they both believe that there can be no woman more beautiful than themselves, which is why Jinshi’s performance came across as such a shock to them. After Maomao met up with Jinshi back in the building they had made preparations for his makeup and everything, Jinshi was pissed and had Maomao dry his hair since he had swam all the way to the opposite shore while in his heavy outfit as part of their plan to avoid him being seen so as to keep up their moon fairy ruse. And back in the building Ayla and Aylin stayed in, Ayla was fuming about how the Emperor didn’t visit her, and who knows whether she has some alternative plans in store for them.

The next day, Xiaolan shared with Maomao that she was going to school and proud to be part of the first generation of servant girls who were partaking in vocational training. Maomao was then bored and thought about how the problem about who had brought in the dangerous scented oils that when combined could seriously impact a pregnancy and who taught Concubine Jin about poisons, who she believes might have been Suirei. I have a thought about this as after Maomao finishes her pondering, she sees some members of the Crystal Pavillion, and Shin is among them. Maomao specifically noted that Shin was the only one from the Crystal Pavillion who didn’t smell of scented oils and thought that there’s probably always someone like that, but I find it extremely odd that Shin was the only woman who was serving Concubine Lihua that didn’t smell of scented oils. Perhaps Shin didn’t smell of them is ’cause she knows the harm those scented oils can cause and avoided involving herself with wearing those scents in case something happened to Lihua’s fetus, giving herself some plausible deniability and an alibi for why she isn’t at fault should something horrible happen. That she issued a complaint against Maomao might’ve been an act of self-preservation to avoid Maomao coming back to the Crystal Pavillion. While Shin might not necessarily directly threaten Lihua’s pregnancy, she might be hoping that someone else, like a servant girl or another lady-in-waiting, causes Lihua to have a miscarriage. Given that the title of the next episode is “The Crystal Pavillion for the Third Time, something is definitely suspect at the Crystal Pavillion.

In the last part of the episode, Yinghua tells Maomao to take Ailan to the clinic after she makes some medicine for her cold, and apparently it’s not the medical office with the quack doctor. It’s also located on the north side of the rear palace and is close to the washhouse, which is convenient for washing clothes and rugs often. Ailan says to Maomao tell Lady Gyokuyou that she’ll be back tomorrow since she wants to stay overnight just in case for Gyokuyou and Lingli’s safety. This clinic is full of older court ladies, and Maomao reasons that the reason there are older court ladies here must be ’cause they need clinic workers to have experience and knowledge. She bumps into Jinshi, who tells her to not let anyone find out she is making medicine as only mean are not allowed to be doctors and make medicine, which is why this more professional clinic isn’t the main medical office. Since the current Emperor banned the surgery for making eunuchs, they need a way to have more doctors, and that might be the purpose of the school since they’ll soon be understaffed when people become too old to continue serving the Emperor. When we flash back to the room Ailan is staying in for the night, the older court lady who arranged for her to stay in that room notes that Ailan has medicine on her since Ailan had taken it out for use with the court lady saying that she smelled medicine on the servant girl and said in an accusatory fashion that Maomao must be secretly making medicines. I’m sure this will lead to more conflict, and this week’s episode should be a blast.

Kusuriya no Hitorigoto (The Apothecary Diaries) – Episodes 26 and 27 (Season 2 Episodes 2 and 3) Analysis + Important Details

Posted on February 10, 2025 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

So the caravan that was brought up at the start of Episode 25 is coming in advance of their banquet for the special envoy from a foreign land, and Maomao indicates it’s probably exciting for the rear palace given no shopping happens there and the lack of entertainment in the rear palace. Yinghua mentioned that Lady Gyokuyou will give them an allowance, which gets Hongniang furious as she’s doing too much chatting instead of working. It’s obvious that they will get a chance to go out there and buy clothing since Maomao and Gyokuyou’s other ladies-in-waitings were told that it’s time for a wardrobe change and since they organized so little to keep for themselves, the caravan would be the opportunity to stock up on fresh designs.

Back at the Crystal Pavillion, Lady Lihua directed Shin, her head lady-in-waiting to pass out a message, and Shin flatly says if she wants shopping at the caravan done that she’ll have one of the ladies-in-waiting do it. There is a strange close-up of the lower part of her face, which is probably intended to make us believe that there is something important about this interaction. A servant girl then tells Shin about a message they received from the clinic, and Shin breaks into an outright evil look after reading its contents. This does not look like someone who is benign in nature.

Maomao then has a talk outside with Xiaolan, who asked her out for the last day the caravan will be around as she might get some time off, and Maomao reasoned at the time that as a bottom-tier servant, she’s not allowed to start shopping ahead of Gyokuyou and her ladies-in-waiting. Maomao notes the rear palace is a peculiar environment as it it would appear if disease broke out in the rear palace that it would spread uncontrollably due to them only having 1 quack doctor, but she states the sanitation level is really top-notch with an underwater waterway carrying out waste flowing directly into the great river without ever going into the moat, which is the main source of water they use. I wonder if this will result in someone tampering with the waterway in the future to selectively cause an outbreak. whether it’s to explain why there aren’t widespread outbreaks, or whether they’re introducing filler info about the design of the rear palace, but given the sort of series Kusuriya no Hitorigoto is, it is more likely to be the first or second reason.

When Lady Gyokuyou and her ladies-in-waiting have finished with their shopping, Maomao notes that several robes and skirts are present with tight belts underneath the chest, which incidentally would easily reveal a pregnancy, and it gets her wondering whether this was done intentionally since Lady Gyokuyou’s pregnancy shouldn’t be public knowledge yet. As a precaution, she remarks to Lady Gyokuyou to ask whether the merchants have outfits with tight belts around the waste, which would obscure a pregnancy, and Gyokuyou and Hongniang did get the message with Gyokuyou asking the latter to directly ask the merchants that when they shop the next day.

On the final day, Maomao buys 2 hair ties for Xiaolan, and they run into Shisui, the girl who caught the cat, making this her formal introduction. Shisui has an orange highlight in her eye much like Concubine Loulan does. After missing that Suirei and the blue-eyed “man” who suggested to the younger brother of an official to kill his older brother with salted seaweed and who overdosed Kounen, the man with a sweet tooth who lost his ability to taste salt, with salt, I’ve been observing the eye colours of the characters more closely, and that’s how I realized that Shisui and Loulan both share that orange highlight in their eyes. If you recall from Episode 20, which I brought in my write-up of the previous episode, Loulan appeared to be a different person every time the she was visited by the Emperor, which confused him mightily, and that might literally be the reality with her ladies-in-waiting pretending to be her while Loulan is living a double life as Shisui. And if you also recall from Episode 17 of the first season, again from my write-up. it is possible to ingest substances that alter the quality of your voice as shown with Jinshi, which could allow Loulan’s ladies-in-waiting to have voices that can pass for Loulan’s. I have more to say about this at the end my article. Maomao brought back jasmine tea to the clinic, and apparently, Shisui is nerdy like Maomao is and into shrubs and insects and told Maomao there were tons of them on the north side of the palace, informing her there’s a weird smell coming from that side of the palace. The quack doctor thought that it might have been a waterway that was clogged, but given how every detail is important in Kusuriya no Hitorigoto, there might be something more to it than that.

After that, the show moved on briefly to someone who was coughing who had opened a basket carrying tons of flasks of who knows what they are. I don’t know if those items are the cause of his sickness or if they’re what he’s taking to relieve his symptoms.

Maomao then discovers after the caravan left that scented oils became all the rage in the rear palace, and she noticed that there were multiple scents that could negatively impact a pregnancy, which led her to her visiting the Crystal Pavillion, which is most vulnerable to fads and trend-chasing, and she revealed to Jinshi, Gaoshun, and those at the Jade Pavillion that there were multiple scented oils, spices, and teas that could negatively impact a pregnancy if they were used for something other than their standard purpose with mustard even being used for abortion medicines, which could be chilling given we have two pregnant concubines in the rear palace right now. Maomao reasoned this incident is similar to the face powder poisoning incident that nearly took Lingli and Lihua’s lives and killed Lihua’s newborn son where multiple coincidences converged together to become an outright inevitable conspiracy. She advised for all the concubines to be notified immediately and thought to herself about the extent of the reach of the people who tried to assassinate Jinshi.

After Maomao played a rancid joke on Jinshi when he kept pushing about wanting to try the same tea as her, Jinshi received news from Gaoshun that middle-rank Concubine Jin had passed away with the cause suspected to be poison. The next day, Hongniang told Lady Gyokuyou about Jin dying from food poisoning with Gyokuyou mentioning that she heard Jin had been bedridden for a year now. Jinshi hurried to visit the Jade Pavillion, and when Maomao returned, he requested to speak with her in private away from Lady Gyokuyou ’cause he was investigating the Jin case with the Jade Pavillion being the prime suspect for carrying out Jin’s poisoning out of revenge for the previous poisoning of Gyokuyou during her first pregnancy, which Maomao found out later on her way to paying her respects to what was believed to be Concubine Jin’s corpse due to Hongniang’s deep feelings of resentment towards Jin. Jin was apparently a nasty piece of work who would verbally abuse people and even physically assault those who were of lower class than her, and she had poisoned Concubine Son, a low-ranking concubine who was sometimes visited by the Emperor, and Son was the one who trashed the venue out of spite for Concubine Jin due to her belief that Jin had poisoned her.

Maomao then went foraging for a very particular poisonous mushroom having connected all the dots and presented her reasoning to Jinshi that the corpse at the ceremony most likely doesn’t belong Jin since her hands were clean, and there was inflammation on her face, meaning she didn’t accidentally kill herself, and the corpse had recently been rubbed on by the mushroom, which prompted her to have 3 capable eunuchs come to find the real corpse of Jin. Maomao reasoned that it was a court lady, Tao, who she had heard about from the quack doctor, who had taken Jin’s place and that Jin had actually died a year earlier and had been regularly abusing Tao due to jealousy since Tao had found love while she couldn’t even get a visit from the Emperor. Maomao found out that Tao looked very similar to Concubine Jin, and that was probably why Jin’s lady-in-waitings used her to cover up Jin’s murder before Tao’s rapidly approaching marriage crept up up on them, resulting in them killing her as well, which would explain why Jinshi couldn’t tell that why Jin seemed to have become completely different overnight.

Back to my previous point, I wonder what Shisui’s motive is for telling Maomao about the smell on the north side. If I’m right, and Shisui is Loulan, she specifically wanted Maomao to solve the case regarding Concubine Jin, perhaps to lower Gyokuyou and maybe Lihua’s guard about the risk of being poisoned during their pregnancies. Concubine Jin and her ladies-in-waiting had to have learned about the very toxic mushroom from somebody else due to Jin’s high-class upbringing, and maybe that somebody was Suirei. Shisui may intend for it to be a cased closed sort of thing, but maybe Maomao will connect the dots later.

Alternatively, Suirei is directing Shisui to act this way as a direct intellectual challenge to Maomao like with Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes. It’ll be interesting to whether one of my two theories is correct or whether the truth is something else entirely. Every detail in Kusuriya no Hitorigoto is important as is the case for Re:Zero, and stories like these are among my favourites, and it’ll be a treat to see how everything unfolds.

I couldn’t find a good spot to inject this into my post earlier, but earlier in the episode, Jinshi told Maomao about the school he planned on building for servant girls when he pulled her away from Concubine Gyokuyou and after getting Maomao’s opinion, she suggested the north side since even though the southern courtyard is a convenient spot for delivering goods it happens to be by the main gate, a popular spot for high and mid-ranked concubines to gather, and some of those concubines are very prideful and might not like the idea of having the servant girls educated, which made Jinshi settle on the north side as Maomao pointed out that that area isn’t well-maintained and has many abandoned buildings that can be renovated. Maomao told him to call it vocational training and to offer a snack every now and then as positive reinforcement since nobody gets addicted to a gamble that pays off every time. She reasoned that Jinshi asked for her opinion ’cause he might overlook some things due to his high-class upbringing. It’s clear this is Jinshi’s plan to improve the literacy rate in the rear palace.

Re:Zero Episode 59 (Season 3 Episode 9) Analysis + Important Details

Posted on February 8, 2025 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

Re:Zero is back after 2 and a half months, and it had some very interesting details that will probably be relevant to the plot in the future, and details like those are why I love series such as Re:Zero and Kusuriya no Hitorigoto (The Apothecary Diaries) since I adore series with very strong long-term planning and foreshadowing. The first two important details are that Priscilla doesn’t completely trust Al since he keeps a lot of secrets from her when Liliana put it out there that she must trust Al a lot since she was leaving him to defend their stronghold at the government office and that Anastasia was keeping secrets of her own from Julius, which has been leading to him increasingly feeling an unseemly guilt from Priscilla’s perspective, and of course, Anastasia retorts that Priscilla shouldn’t make it sound so nasty, showing either a lack of empathy for Julius from Anastasia or a playful jab from Priscilla to get the attention off of herself due to her trust or lack thereof in Al being highlighted. While it may make sense to think that Priscilla was talking about something regarding Anastasia’s arrangement with Kiritaka, I’m more inclined to believe it is referring to something else, which may be brought up again either during Arc 6’s adaption, which is rumoured to be 22-episodes-long after this 16-episode adaptation of the Priestella arc, or a fourth or fifth season. As I’m not a source reader, I don’t know when Tappei intends to flesh out this reveal.

After that, we see the introduction of several of the groups and who they run into, and aside from Wilhelm confiding in Garfiel about his deceased wife, which was probably meant to inspire Garf and motivate him to fight at his best, the two most relevant pieces of info are that Theresia’s soul is being warped and that Priscilla knew that someone got ahead of the Witch Cult’s plan to learn the details of Typhon’s corpse by slaying the other nine members of the Council of Ten aside from Kiritaka. Why the point about Theresia’s soul being warped is important is after Wilhelm slashed off the hood of Theresia’s outfit, the face we saw was that of a young Theresia despite her having died when she was middle-aged when Reinhard was young. In some other fantasy series, modifying or changing someone’s soul can result in that person’s physical appearance changing, which mostly confirms Wilhelm’s belief that her soul is being warped. Back to Priscilla, the Witch Cult’s plan was most likely to kill some of its members to get the remaining members to talk, which the cult can no longer do after the slayings. Priscilla spoke as if that person wasn’t herself, so it was likely either Al or a close associate of hers after the process of elimination. The only named Priscilla associates viewers know of in this arc are Al, Heinkel, and Schult. We know it couldn’t have been Heinkel given the sort of shit he was doing around that time that happened, and little Schult definitely didn’t do it, so that leaves Al unless it was someone yet to be revealed.

A big point from a previous episode is that Al left right as Subaru and his group were getting prepared to fight the Witch Cult in Episode 54, and he said he was looking for Priscilla, but Priscilla confirmed in Episode 58 that he did no such thing, which makes that time period the perfect opportunity for him to kill nine members of the Council of Ten.

More of the presentation this episode indicated that was the case with how Priscilla indicated earlier to Liliana and Anastasia that it’s not a matter of whether she trusts Al as there’s a lot he doesn’t tell her. Perhaps Al didn’t tell her why exactly he needed to kill the other members aside from Kiritaka instead of simply relocating them.

If you recall from one of my theories, I believe Al was the previous iteration of the hero of the story in the immediate previous iteration of the world. Perhaps Al took Beatrice’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom from that previous world and is acting based on knowledge from Echidna, meaning there were more than just 2 copies since Al had a copy from his previous world. That may be why the First District’s watergate was opened right as Subaru would’ve fallen to his death, and that is ’cause Al’s acting with instructions from Echidna. In a previous write-up, I suggested that Al accepted Echidna’s contract unlike Subaru when he was the hero of the story, but maybe that wasn’t it, and Al has a different sort of arrangement with her. He must know Echidna on a personal level to some extent given his distaste for Emilia making others a priority before herself, which appears to be the reason Echidna appears to dislike Emilia even if she has a deep respect for Emilia and Satella if one of my previous theories is correct, showing that Echidna’s tastes rubbed off on Al.

When the show flashes back to Reinhard and Subaru, Regulus is exasperated that Emilia chose Subaru over him. He could understand if he had lost in love to Reinhard, the manliest of men there are, but losing to Subaru is an insult to him, especially since Regulus had forgotten about ever having met Subaru in Episode 53, which called back to Al saying that the Witch Cult had never lost before, and the reason they never made any preparations in case of a counterattack from their group was that no dragon would care what the ants at its feet are planning. This is also relevant later on with Otto, Felt, and the White Dragon’s Scales, what I had previously thought was an item but was actually an armed group employed by Kiritaka that helped Otto escape the first time he met Sin Archbishop of Gluttony, Lye Batenkaitos. Lye had no recollection about meeting Otto, which was shown by how Lye said so you met us (Roy Alphard) before meeting us (him) when Otto mentioned he thought the Sin Archbishop of Gluttony went by a different name, showing Lye completely forgot about Otto much like Regulus did regarding Subaru. Thank goodness I have exposure to someone who knows Japanese as he indicated that Crunchyroll botched the translation and that Otto said something along the lines of “You’re different from the one at the government office” instead of the Sin Archbishop of Gluttony went by a different name, which completely changed the translation. The correct translation shows that Otto thought that Lye was a fake Sin Archbishop at first, but this encounter now shows that Lye is the real deal, meaning there is at least two Sin Archbishops of Gluttony.

Lye then said that now that you’re all here you might as well help us look for the hero who will judge us. This is actually a callback to Season 2 with how Rem said that her great hero, Subaru, would bring them to justice. As Lye was the one who ate Rem’s memories and could likely feel the strong emotions Rem felt about how Subaru would defeat them, Lye hearing Subaru’s broadcast hyped him up big time for a showdown against Subaru. I don’t think the narrative will allow that to happen in this Priestella arc as Subaru’s group is really strapped for battle-ready personnel with how it’s just Garfiel and Wilhelm against Kurgan and Theresia, Julius and Ricardo against Roy, and Priscilla against Sirius. There’s just no way Subaru will be able to help with Regulus’s wives and Regulus himself and fight Lye, so this showdown will probably be postponed for a future arc.

Otto motioned to bring Lye to Subaru in exchange for his life as a negotiation tactic, but Lye was furious as he had a very visceral negative reaction to Otto being a merchant who would put a price on anything to line his pockets, so it’s clear he and Roy were either ripped off badly by a merchant or were slaves to one. As Lye prepares to attack, Otto used his Divine Protection to get two Water Dragons to attack Lye before it skips over to Julius and Ricardo engaging Roy Alphard, who is another Sin Archbishop of Gluttony. Interestingly enough, Julius forgo calling himself Juli when the last time he engaged Roy he was careful not to use Subaru and Crusch’s actual names, calling them Little Girl User and Valkyrie instead. Perhaps during his last battle with Roy, which was offscreen, Roy revealed he already knew Julius’s name, potentially due to Julius being a well-known member of the Royal Guard with very distinct physical features. With how episodes this season not being extended-length for the most part aside from Episode 57, it’s possible an explanation for Julius’s decision was cut out of the adaptation although it’s possible to still infer the reason for that decision.

Back to Subaru and Emilia, it seems Regulus’s wives truly fear Regulus on every level. Earlier in the episode, Subaru remarked that they have nerves of steel with how none of the wives reacted to Regulus threatening to kill them all if Reinhard and Subaru advanced any further. Now, they can’t come to believe Regulus can be beaten even though Reinhard had performed a miracle in front of their eyes with how he came back to life after dying due to his Divine Protection of the Phoenix. It’ll take a lot of work to win them over, but I believe Subaru and Emilia have to be able to do something about this, as otherwise they will never be able to stop Regulus’s apparent invincibility. As Reinhard hinted at earlier in the season, he has the ability to wish for any Divine Protection he wants, which is how he could transmit his thoughts to Subaru while fighting Regulus as it seems he received the same Divine Protection that Liliana has. It seems Reinhard also has super hearing as otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to hear what Subaru had been saying. It seems one of Subaru’s plans is to have Reinhard kick Regulus really far away to give them alone time with the wives, so Subaru quite possibly thinks Regulus’s wives might know the secret behind Regulus’s invincibility.

As we get back to Wilhelm and Garfiel towards the end of the episode, Garfiel takes a big blow from Kurgan, and his trauma from his fear of death has again reared its ugly head, and Garf wills himself to continue on as he reasons the only thing he’s good for is fighting. I wonder how they will get out of this situation as retreat is not an option given how completely stretched thin the forces of the side fighting the cult is, and if one part of their group fails they all fail since they must take seize control of all four control towers at once. Garf realizes that the black piece of mass is not actually Capella after all, which may be a blessing in disguise ’cause if she were really with the two corpse soldiers, he and Wilhelm would certainly die.

Felix is then caught off guard by Capella who pretended to be several people on his side, but she’s here to wreak havoc, and given Priscilla left Al to defend the government office, it looks like we’ll have an Al and Capella showdown even though they aren’t in the same room yet. Felix should not be able to put up a good fight against Capella due to Capella’s insane regeneration. A lot is happening this episode, but things are definitely moving along, and I’m looking forward to more strong content from this season.