Amnesiac Subaru – Thorough Watch

Re:Zero Episode 81 (Season 4 Ep. 15) Analysis + Important Details

Posted on September 4, 2026 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

This episode clearly hints at how the problems of this arc will be solved, and I loved the strong emotional moments with Shaula and of amnesiac Subaru despairing over how he doesn’t have the competence to solve the problems at the tower.

The episode starts off with the group wondering how Roy could be Reid Astra, and after Reid protests that he’s himself, Julius explains that Roy had eaten Reid, but Reid’s memories/ego took control with those very memories/ego drawing out the form of Reid’s body, formally making this the third concept on how Rui’s words in Ep. 74, “Memories are what shape a person.” were used in the story of this season with the first being Subaru having his memories eaten resulting in him losing a core aspect of his being and with the second being how those who had their memories or both their name and memories eaten possessed by Lye Batenkaitos and Rui Arneb. When Julius asks how Reid how he could be confident that he’d take control, Reid merely answers he didn’t do all that much thinking, just that he didn’t expect that a snot-nosed kid could truly eat him up and that he’s mostly definitely himself. Emilia tries to talk him down, but Reid merely replies that he’s living up to the principle of the exams, meaning he’s going to test them nonetheless.

The group then loses to Reid offscreen, and Reid again, just like in Ep. 72, says that the group should’ve at least tried some petty tricks and not play by the book, which he’d pointed out again and again to Julius in that episode from the first part of Season 4. He then says that it’s not all about numbers, pointedly asking Julius for his answer, and Julius asks why Reid’s fixated on him with Reid turning that back on him, and that it’s Julius and amnesiac Subaru who’re fixated on him, which is very generous of Reid to give such advice since in saying that’s not all about numbers, he’s telling them they should take the Emilia approach and request a certain condition for them to have his approval, and this is backed by how Reid has Subaru’s memories with Subaru always being keen to throw raw numbers at a problem to solve solutions, like he did against Garfiel, which I believe is yet another sign that Reid’s on the side of Echidna, Satella, and whoever else is involved from four hundred years ago since he’s being ever so nice with his charity comments. Reid also directly tells amnesiac Subaru he doesn’t know how to swing a sword for shit, and when amnesiac Subaru protests about how he can’t use a sword, Reid says, “That ain’t the problem.” meaning it’s his inability to offensively use his whip, his not being able to use teamwork with Beatrice, and his not using his Authorities properly, such as how he doesn’t know how to use Invisible Providence, and when he does, usually resorts to using it offensively, meaning he’s hinting to him that one of the keys to success of this Pleiades Watchtower arc is regaining his memories since a remark about how he doesn’t know how to swing a sword properly is one focused on the technique concerning one’s weaponry, not meant to be taken literally, meaning Reid’s telling him to fight with his full toolset.

After he wakes up after looping, he gives the group instructions offscreen and audibly apologizes to the others by himself as we get cuts of what the others are doing since he intends to ask Shaula about the secret fifth rule for those who’ve partaken in the exam for access to the Great Pleaides Library. Before doing so, questions he asks her includes whether she’d die for him, which is a yes, and whether she can transform into a giant scorpion, which is also a yes, but her phrasing of it not being exactly like that indicates she was originally a scorpion mabeast to begin with. When she says that there’s no fifth rule, he says her name sternly, and she just won’t answer ’cause she’s waited four hundred years for him to return since while the group has been around for four days, he was unconscious for two of them, and she’s just not satisfied with that at all since her feelings of devotion and longing for his affection are at the very core of her being, which indicates Flügel had created Shaula, probably alongside Daphne, the Witch of Gluttony, since she’s necessary to create mabeasts, to have extreme dedication toward him, and the reason Shaula was made this way was likely to ensure that she would stay inside the Pleiades Watchtower for as long as she did, possibly as part of the grand intervention I propose that started four hundred years ago. If you recall, I had talked about how Shaula carrying Patrasche was an allusion to Greek mythology’s Titan Atlas’s punishment of carrying the celestial sphere, which consists of the night sky for my write-up of Ep. 70, and Amnesiac Subaru even calling her the star guardian of the tower as for why she should tell him about the fifth rule due to the tower being in danger, which backs up that analysis very well: Re:Zero Episode 70 (Season 4 Episode) Analysis + Important Details – Thorough Watch

As telling him about the fifth rule would mean he knows how to clear the exams, Shaula really doesn’t want to happen since it’d mean her time with him comes to an end, and I’m thinking there’s possibly more than one meaning to this as Atlas’s punishment was eternal, so Flügel may have told her that after the completion of the exams that she’ll either die or never be able to remain in human form ever again, meaning the punishment of human-form Shaula is eternal, much like Atlas’s, meaning she won’t ever be able to stay by her beloved master’s side again, not joining the Emilia camp at the end of the season. When she asks whether amnesiac Subaru hates her for lying to him, he says that he could never, and then probably ’cause of Reid leaving his floor, Shaula slowly starts to become a scorpion mabeast and asks amnesiac Subaru to promise to kill her before the transformation is complete, and he basically lies to her to learn what the rule is, which is that it’s not forbidden to destroy the exams themselves, and then he throws himself off the tower as Shaula herself jumps off hoping to save him with him probably doing this since her fierce loyalty to him can probably slow her transformation and limit her suffering to an extent while preventing him from staining himself with Shaula’s blood, which is very much a greedy thing to do, a callback to Rem telling him to save everybody, showing just how much Rem’s Stand Up moment resonated with him. And I don’t know if this is correct, but with how greedy he felt in that moment, maybe it’s the precursor to him using one of his Authority of Greed abilities better at the end of the episode.

What may have made it even more painful to Shaula is that there are clear differences between men and women socially even when accounting for individual differences between humans as well as mental health conditions/disorders with women innately needing more social interaction than men do. Maybe carrying Patrasche itself was easy, but waiting for hundreds of years as the Keeper of the Pleiades Watchtower with no sign on Flügel was the worst sort of punishment for her given she said in this episode (Season 4 Ep. 15) that her feelings for Subaru are what make her who she is, meaning a sense of deep devotion and longing for his affection is at the very core of her being.

But, yeah, it’s gutting for Shaula to perhaps only get two, maybe three days, with Subaru depending on how long it takes to solve the obstacles of this arc. Shaula’s someone who deserved much greater happiness than this. I can see why she didn’t want to tell Subaru about the fifth rule about destroying the exams not being forbidden as in here eyes it’d markedly cut down on her time with him given she doesn’t know just what sort of threats the tower will face.

He then wakes up again, and he tries going to Reid alongside both Julius and Beatrice, and Reid apparently didn’t want to be eaten but changed his mind, allowing for the battered Roy to eat him, and given Roy only placed his right palm on Reid, it meant that he’d only eaten his memories since placing the right palm on somebody before licking that same palm (offscreen in this place or saved budget by not showing it) as shown here is meant for eating memories while doing so for the left palm is used for eating somebody’s name, which is the world’s memory of that person’s existence, which Lye tried to do to amnesiac Subaru in Ep. 8 but couldn’t, and doing that for both palms is how one eats both a person’s name and memories, as shown by Lye in Ep. 66 with how he’d erased three members part of the White Dragon’s Scales mercenary group. I don’t believe that Reid genuinely changed his mind though and that he has some sort of pact with Echidna, and she’s feeding him instructions given how charitable he has been with the group and how he didn’t allow himself to be eaten before now, which greatly helped the group as it would’ve been Mission Impossible had he allowed it to happen sooner. After Roy says that there’s something wrong with Reid as he struggles for control, Reid says that there’s nothing wrong with him since it’s eat or be eaten as that’s what it means to live. So Reid’s appearance before wasn’t a real physical body but some fake physical vessel, and now he actually has a real body due to using Roy’s being to manifest his body. He says that amnesiac Subaru creeps him out, probably ’cause of his determination to go on despite his weakness. Reid then easily defeats all of them.

Amnesiac Subaru then has a montage of deaths, being able to confirm the mabeasts storming after the tower are coming after him, probably ’cause the Sin Archbishops of Gluttony ordered them to, ’cause when amnesiac Subaru or Subaru talks about Return by Death, the Taboo, even if in another dimension, more witch miasma comes from him, and ’cause Satella/the Witch of Envy are angry due to the Gluttony trio knowing about Return by Death, and that’s why the Witch of Envy keeps appearing.

He then trembles after all his failures with the group leaving him ’cause of how he’s clearly taking on too much by himself and needs to compose himself. After wallowing in self-defeat, he then again uses of of his Authority of Greed abilities and sees himself as a white sphere at the center of the library and more spheres/auras come into view, and he also sees another white sphere that’s flashing as well as an irregularly-shaped yellow thing. He goes over to the flashing white sphere, which he learns is Natsuki Subaru’s Book of the Dead, and he can fully read it as it’s spelled in kanji, indicating that my speculation about Books of the Dead being Echidna’s creations may very well be correct since if this book had been read in the language of the fantasy world, he wouldn’t have been able to read that since he’s lost his memories of his time in the world, and since Echidna has seen all of Subaru’s memories up until Season 2 in Ep. 29, Parent and Child, she’d know of how to write Natsuki Subaru in kanji, suggesting Echidna has full control over the Books of the Dead, which would explain the cognitive obstruction in how only those who’ve met somebody can read that individual’s Book of the Dead and why Reid’s Book of the Dead connected to the Corridor of Memories, meaning I was originally right, and it wasn’t that the Gluttony trio could seize control of the recollection of Books of the Dead of those whose memories they’ve eaten.

I can see his finding that Book of the Dead going four ways:

1. He recovers all his memories from the previous Subaru’s time in the world just from reading that Book of the Dead. He’ll still need to seize his memories from Rui to stop the Witch of Envy’s rampage.
2. He needs to read multiple Books of the Dead to recover all his memories ’cause there’s a Book of the Dead for each death. This will still require seizing his memories from Rui to stop the Witch of Envy’s rampage.
3. He doesn’t recover his memories ’cause Natsuki Subaru’s Book of the Dead contains memories of when Subaru had existed in the world 400 years ago, and Echidna won’t allow him to see those memories, meaning he’ll get sent to the Corridor of Memories instead where Rui is and need to take back those memories himself.
4. He does recover his memories and even sees a glimpse, not everything, of the time period from 400 years ago, ’cause Echidna wills for that to happen given she almost certainly controls the Books of the Dead, and showing a partial recollection is possible as seen by when Subaru read Typhon’s Book of the Dead. Again, he’ll still need to seize back his memories from Rui to stop the Witch of Envy’s rampage.

Personally, I lean toward Scenarios #2, #3, or #4 happening as Scenario #1 from my standpoint would be the most boring one from a writing standpoint although I can see why others wouldn’t feel the same way.

I’ll now talk about what the key to “destroying the exams” is as I believe unravelling the magic behind the exams would constitute as “destroying the exams”, and we’ve seen Beatrice and Subaru do this with the EMT spell that nullifies magic within the space the spell covers up since it nullified the Sand Time and Shaula’s needles in Ep. 68, which is how the group fell to the underground paths. Thus, the irregularly-shaped yellow thing could be the magic behind the tower’s exams, and if Beatrice and Subaru use the EMT spell on it, it could “destroy” the exams, leading to them no longer needing to be pass the exams. Seizing his memories from Rui will still be necessary to prevent the Witch of Envy’s rampage, so regardless of how which are the Witch of Envy, Reid Astrea using Roy to gain a physical form, Lye Batenkaitos, Rui Arneb, and the rampaging mabeasts. Even if this episode didn’t really have all that much to talk about, I believe it was a key episode in laying out the important pieces.

As for Re:Zero Break Time Ep. 81, it seems Heinkel was feeling completely worthless after his failure to hold Felt hostage, and that’s why Priscilla made the remark she did about how he’d consider her personally killing him for his failure right at that moment in Priestella an act of mercy compared to the conversation he was having with her now in his begging for his life ’cause his despondent look from this conversation even happening made it clear to her eyes given she’s good at reading body language.

It seems he’d dedicated himself to Priscilla ’cause of his wife being in a coma-like state (not due to a Sin Archbishop of Gluttony), which had been revealed in Season 3, and she called him half-hearted to his core, which judging by his reaction, he knows all too well given he was even drinking while he had Felt hostage, which was obviously not something somebody absolutely committed to his duties would’ve done.

Priscilla then gave him a chance in killing the attackers of her mansion, which he handled just fine. She said that it hardly redeems the disgrace he brought upon himself, which he himself knows and wanted to hear, but she praised him nonetheless as this is her style of giving praise to people. She tries to hit you where it hurts and then give you the praise you want, which is why Heinkel looked surprised and relieved and then mentioned his wife, Louanna, since he’s the one he fights for, showing he fought as seriously as he could’ve in that moment, which is why he uttered her name.

Re:Zero Episodes 78 + 79 (Season 4 Eps. 12 + 13) Analysis + Important Details

Posted on August 21, 2026 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

I was late to posting Ep. 78 and given it didn’t actually have all that much to talk about, I decided to do a write-up on both Eps. 78 and 79 instead since I believe they’re better off written as a package. Combined, the two episodes have so many callbacks, which was a joy to watch and think about for me.

Ep. 78 opens with amnesiac Subaru looping and greeting Emilia right away as her having done so much for him in the loops after he had come into being coupled with her confession to him made him legit fall in love with her all over again. And of course since Beatrice was the one that did the most to protect him from physical harm in Ep. 77, he was of course crying over her for ever having doubted Beatrice in the first place given in Ep. 75 the ones he had suspected most were Emilia and Beatrice since he never found their bodies, which is impossible in the case for Beatrice since she dissipates into mana upon dying, and for Beatrice’s sacrifice to save him in Ep. 77 from the discarded piece of the scorpion mabeast (that was probably Shaula after she slowly became it in both mind and body as shown by how she went from standing upright to falling towards a more inhuman posture that was meant for viewers to fill in the gap later after watching Ep. 77) left behind that exploded as a defense mechanism to kill those who pursue her, and probably as a release for all of the suffering he’d gone through.

We then see much of the same happenings as before with Julius being disturbed of amnesiac Subaru having no memories of the previous night, probably ’cause Julius intended to mend their relationship the next day, which he could no longer do since Subaru doesn’t know what exactly happened between them that led to that rift, Meili thinking amnesiac Subaru is so much trouble, and Ram distressed ’cause she had believed strongly in Subaru being the one who’d save Rem, and amnesiac Subaru explained it away as having no episodic memories, meaning he retains knowledge of their names and how he’s connected to them and who he is but can’t remember the specifics of anything involved, which is a legitimate expression of how someone with no episodic memories can experience life.

After amnesiac Subaru revealed to Ram in private that he’d genuinely lost his memories and forgotten Rem, she was of course distraught since she believed he was the one person she believed would never forget about Rem even if everybody was destined to, showing her belief in how Subaru was Rem’s anchor to the world given her state of suspended animation and also how he was Ram’s anchor to her sister as Ram would have no idea that Rem was her sister if Subaru had not insisted on finding Rem among the pile of bodies after Regulus and Lye had attacked the camp heading back to Lugunica’s capital.

Given Ram had forgotten about Rem’s contributions to Arc 2 due to Lye’s Authority of Gluttony, she of course held Subaru in even higher regard than she otherwise would have, and Roswaal having been revealed to no longer allow Ram to bring him his underwear after having learned that Ram genuinely loves him in a Season 3 Break Time episode ultimately has resulted in Ram being in a state of much, much higher stress than normal given Roswaal isn’t here to restore her mana like he usually does and since she loves his presence in general, but she was able to push past that.

I can see why people are upset that Ram slapped amnesiac Subaru, but she had the grace to show him she believes the true him will return even after she took roasted him in saying he was bad at keeping promises, and it just shows Ram and Subaru had built a genuine friendship in this last year he’s been in the fantasy world. Yeah, Ram’s very prickly to most people, and I’m not excusing that, but she genuinely does have belief in Subaru as shown by Eps. 40 and 78, and I enjoy how far they’ve come. This isn’t to say some people can’t get triggered by this dynamic though as what would be seen as a sibling dynamic for some could be seen as a dynamic of abuse by others who had negative experiences in which they were gaslighted by a manipulative person.

Subaru then sets a trap/intervention for Meili ’cause he had realized from the height of the person who pushed him and Meili’s tendency to resort to killing to resolve her issues since she never learned how to deal with her emotions due to her upbringing as a feral child, as Elsa’s apprentice, and as Capella’s underling, and since Subaru believes in the innate goodness of children much like Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Hans Christian Andersen as shown by how Subaru indicated in Season 2 that he doesn’t want to kill kids, he took it upon himself and for the entire group to raise Meili and give her a good example to live by that would be different than the example Elsa taught her.

I mention Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Hans Christian Andersen ’cause I’m also covering Sayonara Lara this season, and those two were both religious, and Re:Zero itself draws quite a bit from Christianity in believing in the goodness of children, and that children are innately good before their corruption of society. Hans Christian Andersen also believed in the unlimited grace of God for humans, and how this is relevant in Re:Zero is that the group decided to work with Roswaal anyway after all he’d done in Season 2 and even in Season 1 with him having revealed himself in Season 2 to have hired Elsa to get Emilia’s insignia in Arc 1, which was centered around the loothouse, and also having allowed the Witch Cult to run rampant in Arc 3 (Eps. 12-25), by not intervening, which posed huge problems for everyone involved, and it also draws from Christianity in how Witches, warlocks, and Sin Archbishops of the Witch Cult are based on sins. Subaru also has at many points forgiven those who have wronged him, while part of it is ’cause he has a fear of abandonment, I believe part of it is ’cause Tappei also deliberately intended for his story to take the stance of God having unlimited grace for humans through Jesus Christ, covering all past and future shortcomings.

The end of Ep. 78 and the start of Ep. 79 have amnesiac Subaru talking about putting his memory loss aside ’cause something in the Pleiades Watchtower caused him to lose his memories, so facing the exams head-on will result in them uncovering the reason for his memory loss, and the group agrees that Reid Astrea’s Book of the Dead almost certainly exists since Reid isn’t the type of guy to stick around too long in one place from what they’ve seen of him based on his lively personality, he shouldn’t belong to that of an extremely long-lived species, and since the Astrea family probably consists of humans, the same should apply to him especially since it was stated in Ep. 70 that he’d died of old age even if a lot of info from four hundred years ago is questionable.

As they were headed to the archive, Subaru decided to have he and Julius stay put as Julius’s body language was negative, and Julius begrudgingly admitted that they they have no other alternatives and that Subaru’s plan is the best one, and Julius’s behaviour born from Julius’s inferiority complex to Reinhard from childhood when Reinhard easily defeated Julius’s swordplay instructor, leading to him having doubts about his own ability up to this current day, as shown by Ep. 72 with the flashback to that, and how Julius took great pride stepping into Reinhard’s role as the sword of the kingdom to defeat Petelgeuse Romanee-Conti in combat in Ep. 24, and Julius’s name having been eaten, resulting in most people in the world forgetting him is really triggering this insecurity, especially since he had a strong belief that the most capable fighters are also those with the best character, only for Reid to run afoul of that AND beat him down twice. Thus, amnesiac Subaru having no memories of that past and his humiliation at the hands of Reid allowed for Julius to regain some of his mojo since even this version of Subaru thinks highly of him just ’cause of his appearance when he had no other person in this world who remembered what he could do on the battlefield at his peak, with Subaru saying of, “That’s one thing, and this is another.” being very impactful for him ’cause amnesiac Subaru was basically telling him to forget whatever happened the other night and not to sweat it, leading to him deciding to treat his previous losses as a throwaway, throwing that same line back at amnesiac Subaru, which is excellent character writing and a good way to alleviate some of Julius’s current issues, and to top it all off, it’s something only this current version of Subaru could’ve done, and there’s a point to this as shown by later in this episode.

In the Great Pleiades Library itself, Beatrice and Emilia both show care for amnesiac Subaru after he declares his intent to read Reid Astrea’s Book of the Dead due to them having found him unconscious in the archive without his memories, and even Ram had shown concern before that by saying none of them have read it due to being concerned about potential memory loss when he asked a leading question. Before that, he also made it clear he intends to find Elsa’s Book of the Dead as he’d cut no corners in ensuring Meili grows up healthy in not just her body but also her mind given the strong connection she felt to Elsa after it was revealed that Meili had found the relevant book. Subaru got everyone to agree to him reading Reid’s Book of the Dead by playfully designating everyone a role, including calling Julius the fighter to lessen the blow to his currently wounded ego, designating himself to be the reader of any Books of the Dead.

However, instead of peering through Reid Astrea’s memories, amnesiac Subaru instead found himself in the Corridor of Memories with Rui, who tells him that it’s the cradle of Od Lagna (Crunchyroll screwed up the translation here with the comma after cradle since it turned the sentence into gibberish), making it sound like Od Lagna and the Corridor of Memories are the exact same thing. As for why Reid’s Book of the Dead led to the Corridor of Memories, I suspect it’s ’cause Echidna’s the one who made the Books of the Dead and can decide who can read them based on my previous speculation. Meili’s Book of the Dead appearing to this group of people so soon when the group had concluded initially that the books aren’t sorted by name or date of death in Ep. 71 suggests that there’s a will behind when and where Books of the Dead that can be read appear. This is backed by how in that relevant episode, both Subaru and Julius were able to find one they were able to read almost right away, suggesting a will or higher power is what allowed for that to happen.

We know from the anime there’s someone who has the power to see a perfect reconstruction of the past, and that’s Echidna with her Authority of Greed: Tome of Wisdom, and if my speculation about Roswaal’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom and the Witch Cult Gospels are correct, they may be made with pieces of Echidna’s hair, fingernails, toenails, eyelashes, eyebrows, other facial hair, dead skin, zits, dandruff, body hair, and/or her body fluids such as her saliva, sweat, and the enzymes from other fluids, meaning they are connected to Echidna’s mind through magic, and that’s why Otto didn’t appear in Roswaal’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom, and why Gospels don’t really tell the future, which is why Regulus thought that he’d see Emilia again in the first loop despite it not happening until the 4th loop in Ep. 53 with Regulus telling Subaru to thank him for adhering to his Gospel in not doing worse than shredding off a large chunk of his leg since he could’ve done much worse, and why Sirius indicated that they need to stop hostilities due to the toll of the tower, all of which very much went in Subaru’s favour, likely not by chance.

If Echidna decides what appears in the text of Roswaal’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom, she can freely decide to omit Otto. That’s why I posit those texts are perhaps connected to Echidna’s mind through magic by being partially constructed with stuff from her body, possibly including her body fluids, meaning she 100% decides what shows up in them. Therefore, ’cause Echidna wanted Roswaal to lose and Subaru to win, Otto didn’t show up in his not-quite Tome of Wisdom. This is backed by Tea Party Echidna telling Subaru that even after 3 days of trial and error that she has no hope of breaking Emilia out of her shell, and maybe he could give the cowardly princess wings, showing she was telling him the way out of the situation was to do have Emilia do the Sanctuary trials. Tea Party Echidna also showed at that moment that she didn’t make the trials as hard as humanly possible but tried to coax Emilia out of her shell. Tea Party Echidna also said what was an evil as humanly possible regarding the reason she had Beatrice hole up in the Forbidden Library, knowing that it would push Subaru to take Beatrice’s hand instead of hers, and her saying that she doesn’t want Subaru to think that she’s the only evil one of the Witches of Sin, resulting in her taking away Subaru’s qualification for entering the tomb since he was using it as a crutch instead of supporting Emilia, was her doing good by Subaru in making sure he was victorious that loop.

Thus, archive’s filing system may be constructed in part from Echidna’s Authority and also magic from herself and possibly others such as Flügel, meaning she can possibly choose which books appear to certain people at any given opportunity based on future knowledge, which is how someone finds a Book of the Dead he/she can read at the lowest floor of the library so as to make it convenient.

Given Echidna’s Authority of Greed: Tome of Wisdom can show all of the past, present, and possible futures, and the Corridor of Memories is the Cradle of Od Lagna (Crunchyroll probably messed up the translation since Japanese doesn’t different from ‘l’ and ‘r’ since “Lagna” in Vedic astrology is the exact zodiac sign rising on the eastern horizon at the exact time and place of a person’s birth), which filters the souls of the dead and cleanses their memories so that they can be used again, making the Corridor of Memories the support system/cradle for Od Lagna, which probably shows that Od Lagna is actually the world’s memories whereas the Corridor of Memories is where the inaccessible memories are, such as the memories of someone whose names and memories had been eaten by Gluttony and the souls of the newly deceased. So it would make perfect sense if Echidna’s Authority drew its power from Od Lagna, and henceforth explains why Reid’s Book of the Dead connects to the Corridor of Memories since when a soul is ready to be reused again, it is ready for rebirth, thus Echidna’s Authority must capture the rebirth of anyone who’s ever lived, and that likely explains why amnesiac Subaru ended up at the Corridor of Memories.

Rui then reveals her background to amnesiac Subaru, and of course, he has no idea what many of the terms she talked about are, not realizing she’s an enemy, and during that conversation, he realizes that she keeps using the ‘we’ pronoun, which she explains as her having too many egos all in once place, so it’s not clear who’s in charge, and her saying all these egos are a gift from her two brothers suggests that Lye Batenkaitos and Roy Alphard are feeding to Rui some or all of their victims, possibly implying that they are all as one even if they are three entities and that Rui can somehow contain all these egos for whatever reason.

Rui then gives amnesiac Subaru a scare in showing they know about his past on Earth, which I’m assuming is ’cause his memories from Earth aren’t from this fantasy world, so they don’t stay eaten even though Rui and possibly the others can still remember them due to their recollection of his memories after consuming them, and this greatly unsettles him, causing him to push Rui down as she continues to use mind games on him, and she self-harmed by digging into her own skin, possibly ’cause of it being a habit she picked up from Subaru given Beatrice indicated he had a habit of getting scratches on himself as shown by Ep. 75, which I believe I didn’t pick up on at the time, and this interaction finally results in him realizing that Rui was the one who had eaten his memories.

Then it cuts back to those in the archive, and Shaula mentions that threats to the Pleaides Watchtower are approaching, telling them to protect her master, and Julius follows her while Ram and Emilia go get Rem. An enormous number of mabeasts were making a beeline to the tower, and Shaula used her Infinite Hell’s Snipe to snipe many of them, but that still wasn’t enough to stop them from breeching it. Ram and Emilia then see Lye Batenkaitos emerge out of the green room, and I’ll get back to this later.

As for why the mabeasts are storming the tower, I can think of three reasons:

1) Given that Lye and Roy are Sin Archbishops of Gluttony and that mabeasts had been created by the Authority of Gluttony, they have direct control over mabeasts.

2) Given Lye and Roy are supposedly both at the tower alongside Subaru, who all emit a ton of miasma, and since Subaru is currently connected to the Corridor of Memories, the miasma of all of Subaru, Rui, Lye, and Roy are at the Pleiades Watchtower, and mabeasts are drawn to large sources of miasma, which is why they are all gunning for the tower.

3) Since Subaru talked about returning and that this is the fifth version of him since Rui had eaten the original Subaru before he returned to the Corridor of Memories, Subaru’s amount of miasma is way high compared to normal, much like when he goaded the White Whale into pursuing him harder in Ep. 21 by talking about how he had suffered in the past, implying he can Return by Death, which is directly part of the Taboo as intentionally hinting about Return by Death is disallowed according to Subaru’s contract.

It’s probably some combination of all of these reasons for why this is happening.

Cutting back to Rui and amnesiac Subaru, she calls it amazing that he was able to come back to the Corridor of Memories once again and then asks him how many versions of him have come and gone since he had last been here (Crunchyroll screwed up the translation in rendering it as how many times had he died) with him replying five times to denote that he’d died four times with this current iteration being the fifth version of him since having his memories be eaten. She then says that she wants to eat him until her stomach bursts, pushing him down, saying that she believes she loves him as she considers appetite and lust to be similar before licking him provocatively to creep him out and make him consider killing her despite his belief that children should be forgiven ’cause they don’t know better.

Rui then continues her mind games against him, asking him if he really could wring the neck of a frail little girl such as her, suggesting he’s not capable of such a thing to basically dare him into doing it before attempting to mislead him in suggesting that if the original Natsuki Subaru came back that his current self would die since the old memories would erase this draft version of him, which is akin to dying. She asks him whether Natsuki Subaru really was worth all of that given memories are what shape a person, this current version of him and the relationships he has built (such as the current relationships with Julius and Meili). She then goes hard in attempting to sour amnesiac Subaru on the original Natsuki Subaru with false reasons for why he had relationships with Emilia (Crunchyroll may have screwed up the translation in saying Emilia had the same birth as Satella. Muse Asia said that it was ’cause of her looking like Satella, but I’m not 100% sure this is correct either given how incredibly different the translation are. I’m going to need someone who knows Japanese to clarify this later), Beatrice, and Rem, calling him drunk on playing the role of the saviour. Rui then goads him into killing her once again, directly placing his hand on her neck, and he starts sobbing about how he wants more time with everybody, implying he’s seriously considering killing the original Subaru now.

Then we get an update of events at the tower with Shaula still diligently spamming her needles, Julius tiring as he tries to prevent more mabeasts from advancing, and Ram having gotten Patrasche to carry her and Rem out of the green room while Emilia was fighting by herself against Lye, and given Lye had come out of the green room without hurting Rem and Patrasche before, this strongly implies as I’ve stated for over five years that Witch Cult Gospels don’t tell the future but are meant to guide the world to a specific future that develops Subaru and other characters in specific ways as an intervention against the world once again being destroyed by the Witch of Envy due to the character flaws of the Hero of the story with Echidna being highly likely to be the one controlling what appears in them as Rem being saved seems to be part of the grand plan.

Back to amnesiac Subaru and Rem, Rui goads him to declare that Natsuki Subaru’s nothing more than the stranger closest to him and to kill him so that he’s the one and only Natsuki Subaru. He then hears footsteps approaching him, and he thinks it’s the original Subaru coming to claim everything that’s his. And now comes a GIF to help explain everything about this scene:

In Ep. 37 (Season 2 Ep. 12) when Carmilla in the form of Rem was telling Subaru that he can rest and leave everything to her, Subaru protested, saying that the real Rem would tell him to stand up as she’s the one who wouldn’t let him shirk his responsibilities as someone who can’t give up halfway through something as her hero.

And now in Ep. 79 (Season 4 Ep. 13), when amnesiac Subaru was being led astray by Rui ’cause the Sin Archbishops of Gluttony wanted to lead him astray so that they could infinitely eat him by getting rid of the original Subaru’s memories through killing Rui, who had split herself into two exactly for the purpose of still being around after the Rui with Subaru’s memories was killed by amnesiac Subaru, Rem gave amnesiac Subaru the strength to be her hero once again.

That blue sphere Rui took out of her body was Rem’s existence/soul since having both your name and memories eaten is akin to your soul being eaten. Rem even as something that should’ve been immobile, used her force of will to give Subaru the strength he needed to prevail. It was a brilliant callback to that Season 2 moment and shows much planning Tappei put into the story.

This isn’t to say that Emilia didn’t also play a very nurturing role in Ep. 77 (Season 4 Ep. 11) and all the episodes she showed her care for amnesiac Subaru. She very much did, and her actions were what drove amnesiac Subaru decide to live up to the spirit of Natsuki Subaru, but amnesiac Subaru needed another push ’cause of Rui’s mindgame, which had seriously fucked him up and made him lose his resolve.

Subaru understood Rem so much in Ep. 37 ’cause Ep. 18 (From Zero) had Rem lay bare how she saw Subaru and how she felt about him ’cause of how he literally saved her repeatedly in the mansion arc by protecting her from danger and also allowing her to live for something other than being Ram’s replacement. I almost cried watching yesterday’s scene even though I’m not even a huge fan of Rem. I was choking up when I was talking about the scene as I watched. This is Re:Zero at its peak.

It’s surreal how amnesiac Subaru fell in love with both Emilia and Rem in a way that parallels how Subaru originally did in Season 1 with Emilia’s unlimited kindness for him, culminating in her giving him a lap pillow when he was struggling supremely due to his fear of abandonment in Ep. 8, and with Rem giving him the strength to not give up and see things through with Ep. 18, From Zero. Tappei loves writing parallels into the story, and it’s rewarding for big fans like myself to catch them.

And what’s more is that that scene foreshadows that Subaru awoke his Authority of Greed in that very moment, and I’ll use a GIF and an image comparison to help me explain this:

As you can see, the lights are meant to be a proximation of stars, and I highlighted in red the general shape of some stars with the one in amnesiac Subaru’s chest depicting the Regulus star, and given Regulus was the Sin Archbishop of Greed, it meant amnesiac Subaru awoke his Authority of Greed right at that moment ’cause of Rem urging him to stand up and save everyone to be as greedy as possible. As for the expression of the power, I believe Subaru can take in the emotions of someone else, who was in this case Rem, which allowed him to feel her overwhelming love for him, and that’s why Rem’s love took the form of a blue petal to depict that it was a part of her. I believe the entire confrontation with Rui is important since it legitimized amnesiac Subaru as his own distinct self, which is a big part of dissociation that many stories don’t get across right that another self is indeed a legitimate person in and of itself even as a part of a greater whole, and this is the reason Rui tried to make him feel completely distinct from the original Subaru so that he isn’t even considered the same guy so that after he killed her, the old Subaru would be lost forever, triggering her endlessly eating him even if it would never really actually satisfy her.

If you recall from my previous theory on Subaru’s Authorities, I believed that his Authorities are shaped by the biggest regret of each of those who reside in the dark world with Regulus’s biggest regret being that his first wife smiled in her final moments, showing her unhappiness with being his wife, and therefore, he desired to be able to share how he felt about her with her ’cause she never knew that he genuinely cared for her even though he slaughtered her family and the village the two lived in, meaning Subaru’s Authority of Greed might allow him to share what he feels with others. What I didn’t consider at the time since it was a rough draft of my theory is that communication is a two-way street, and Regulus wouldn’t have known to think to tell his first wife about his love for her had he not known about his first wife’s dissastisfaction with him, so Subaru’s power likely also manifested in being able to take what others feel inside their heart and feel it for himself, which is how he felt the warmth of Rem’s love she imparted to him to stop him from spiralling. All of this was due to Regulus deep down desiring connection with somebody, which he ultimately failed to do with his wife. For more on this theory and what I believe are the biggest regrets of the Sin Archbishops we know more about and how they impacted Subaru’s Authorities as I don’t want to rehash too much, read the relevant parts here: Re:Zero Episode 70 (Season 4 Episode) Analysis + Important Details – Thorough Watch

During that entire confrontation, Rui confirmed her plan to him, and very interestingly, she asks him about about life being unfair, how you can’t choose where you’re born, who your parents are, your environment, your future, or anything, and this is why she eats and eats and eats to search for the one rosy life that’ll make her life worth living. This makes me believe this is a hint to her biggest regret in life much like how Petelgeuse hinted in Ep. 15 that his biggest regret was killing the one he loved by his own hand, which he projected onto Subaru and Regulus’s biggest regret being what I said it was in Ep. 70. What’s relevant is that no matter how many memories Rui eats, she’ll never find one in which someone never experienced pain or suffering, so I think what she (and perhaps her brothers) are committing to a fruitless endeavor. So consequently, I believe Rui’s biggest regret is eating so many memories just to experience pain and suffering, that which she doesn’t enjoy, and if she could get a do over, she’d prefer to only eat a small piece of someone so that she could only eat a good part, such as someone’s shining moment, and that will have made her believe life was worth living instead of having that good part accompany negative memories/experiences, and how Subaru’s Authority of Gluttony could manifest with Rui’s biggest regret is that he only eats a piece of someone’s name or a piece of their memories, allowing him to perhaps eat the principal traumatizing event that caused great discomfort to somebody.

That portion about Rui about how you can’t choose anything is very particular. Given Rui only came into the physical world when she either swapped places or possessed Lye after he got hit by the powerful metia Felt and Beatrice had used, which knocked him unconscious, Rui may not have a physical body, and that’d mean she knows the Corridor of Memories filters souls and cleanses them of memories ’cause she has been there for the entirety of her existence with her soul somehow not having completed the cleansing process, leading to her not being born into the physical world. However, even if she strongly desires to live, and she had never been born in the first place assuming my theory is correct, I believe her never being born wouldn’t count as a regret as being born or not is something you can only regret from a meta standpoint if you had actually been born, so I don’t consider that a legitimate expression for how Subaru’s Authority of Gluttony can manifest itself.

In any case, I now fully buy into Sirius Romanee-Conti’s comment about Petelgeuse’s soul having amalgamated with Subaru’s, and I believe Regulus’s has as well. If that’s the case, assuming my theory about Subaru’s Authorities being shaped by those in the dark world is true, one could look at it from the lens of Christianity and say that the Sin Archbishops would be getting their redemption through the expression of Subaru’s Authorities to be kinder versions of themselves that they couldn’t be in the past. I believe this would make for an excellent plot twist if I’m right about all of this.

All in all, I’m extremely satisfied with Ep. 79 and believe it was one of the best episodes of the season with excellent character writing, great subject matter, story beats, foreshadowing, as well as absolutely stupendous voice work from Rui’s seiyuu. Truly it is an example of the best of what Re:Zero has to offer, and I encourage any Re:Zero fan to sing its praises.

For the relevant Break Time shorts for Eps. 78 and 79 that delve more into Elsa and Meili’s relationship as well as provide more backstory for Sirius, here they are:

Re:Zero Scene Analysis: In defence of Ram, given how passionate oni/demons are, I see how she found Subaru forgetting Rem unacceptable given she was counting on him to restore her

Posted on June 28, 2026 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

As can be seen with both Roswaal and Rem, Ram was very passionate about her love for the pair in wanting to bring Roswaal his underwear and in making sure Rem gets less work and gets validation from others. Rem herself falling so hard for Subaru and having previously done so much to be a stand-in for Ram due to having thought of how it’s great that Ram lost her horn also supports this read of oni/demons feeling great passion for what’s important to them.

As such, since it was revealed in a Break Time segment that Roswaal was no longer allowing Ram to bring him his underwear, after she revealed she loves him, more of her passion was directed to Rem, who shares the same oni blood in her veins as she did and could feel something was amiss in her life as Julius did when he fought Roy Alphard, leading to her reacting angrily to amnesiac Subaru saying that he’d lost his memories since she felt a sense of powerless due to not having memories of her and also ’cause her relationship with Roswaal wasn’t as great as it used to be, which increased the baseline stress she felt.

To Ram’s knowledge, Subaru’s the only one who remembered Rem and was her anchor to her sister, and given Rem’s contributions in Arc 2 and 3 were erased, and everything Rem had had prior to that was forgotten by her, of course Ram would flip out since Subaru was Rem’s greatest champion. To Ram, Subaru forgetting Rem is like having Rem’s greatest hope disappear, which she was personally hurt by as well as feeling hurt in place of Rem since she can’t feel anything right now and given the saying on how you only die when the world forgets you even if I believe that Foxidna remembers Rem since she’s given hints that she remembers Julius.

In a sense, Ram also kind of glazed Subaru hard in that scene since it showed she thought that if there’s one person in the world who would never forget Rem, it was Subaru, and that was part of the reason she reacted as strongly as she did given he had charged at her to attack her, so I believe this makes her reaction more justifiable given she thought that it was a possible imposter instead of the real Subaru.

I’m not saying people can’t dislike or hate Ram, but Tappei intends for his audience to see the perspectives of all the characters in his series, not just Subaru’s. Self-inserting into Subaru to mald against those who’ve hurt Subaru physically just hurts one’s ability to comprehend and enjoy the story as Tappei intended, which is to treat it as a serious work and not like generic male power fantasy isekai series and see how flawed characters would react and struggle much like everyday people do.

A Re:Zero Theory: Foxidna hinted at her own game to amnesiac Subaru, contradicting her stated reason for being at the tower, and he was none the wiser

Posted on June 21, 2026 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

Again, as I stated in a previous write-up, I feel I didn’t do a good job doing Ep. 77 justice by not being thorough enough in my reasoning as I shouldn’t just assume that everyone remembers everything I’ve posted before, especially since it’s been four episodes since I last commented on Foxidna being suspicious, so I am again posting a supplementary write-up.

As seen from the content of the GIF, which I have brought up before previously, Foxidna stated that she didn’t share her secret with Julius ’cause he didn’t see through her act like Subaru did, but Subaru’s first glimpse of Foxidna not being Anastasia was when she said that she thinks that Reinhard and Felix were more than just friends to Julius, something Subaru found surprising due to the face he made since he had previously not known anyone who could remember someone whose name had been eaten by Gluttony.

That’s why Subaru said later on that something’s been off the whole time ’cause of that moment hinting that Foxidna remembers Julius before talking about how coldly Foxidna spoke about Ricardo, which I believe was Foxidna deliberately cluing in Subaru on her identity since she had already given him a hint, meaning that next hint would confirm his suspicions.

Then when the tower’s under attack, Foxidna said, “I should have listened to Ana’s intuition. I shouldn’t have brought anyone else here.” (which is in the GIF) meaning that she shouldn’t have brought anyone else to the tower, going with those from her own camp and listened to Anastasia. This calls into question pretty much everything she’s said this season given she said that Anastasia had been asleep in her od ever since the battle with the Witch Cult in Priestella, but apparently, she either had a talk with Anastasia sometime during the battle or pre-planned the Priestella visit with Anastasia’s consent, bringing into question her motives for gathering everyone to Priestella. Any way you slice it, Foxidna is a serial liar.

To top all of this off, Foxidna also says in the GIF that this pain is penance for Ana since if she were to give back control to her, Anastasia would feel the extreme pain and the horror of death, implying she had the power to give back her body to Anastasia the whole time but didn’t, flying in the face of her previous remarks about not being able to give back Anastasia’s body, showing she’s just very suss in general since she contradicted her statement about not being able to give Anastasia’s body back twice in the same episode.

I believe Foxidna was outright trolling/following the Tome of Wisdom when she said that she should’ve listened to Anastasia’s inuition, and that was to stay in character regarding her not trusting Subaru when she knows full well that he’s trustworthy. That would be why I propose she said it should’ve been Beatrice instead of her that Subaru was dragging along with him, highlighting that Beatrice is an unfortunate girl to draw sympathy to Beatrice from Subaru despite Foxidna not really even knowing Beatrice well to aid in learning to believe in himself. While it may just be survivor’s guilt, Foxidna is just so suspicious that this interpretation I’ve come up with just can’t be ruled out.

And I do believe Foxidna still remembers Julius given the content of Episodes 67, 70, and 72 with Episode 72 providing a further hint of Foxidna remembering Julius with how she aggressively used Jiwald to try to defend Julius when he was fighting Reid. Someone who barely knows him wouldn’t do that, and Subaru even pondered about why she’d go to such lengths, which means Tappei intended for viewers to think hard about that detail. After Episode 67 with Foxidna putting it out there that Reinhard and Felix were more than just friends to Julius, which Subaru notably reacted to with his face before later saying something’s been up the whole time after she talked coldly about Ricardo, which was a reference to that first scene, and her general gaze toward Julius along with her look of discomfort in Episode 70 when Shaula was shattering Julius’s fantasy about Reid Astrea being a man of great character ’cause of his sword skills when nobody else was paying him any heed, showing she knows that Reid had been Julius’s idol since childhood, there’s a clear pattern of Foxidna showing a level of connection with Julius no one else in the group has, not even Subaru.

As I said with my post from four weeks ago, I believe Foxidna staged the talk she had with Subaru and Julius following her Authority of Greed: Tome of Wisdom due to her being a soul clone of Echidna’s, not just an artificial spirit, so that Julius would feel insecure about his role as Anastasia’s first knight as well as cause a fight between Subaru and Julius right before Subaru loses his memories to bring Julius to a new low with the one person he believed to have remembered him also forgetting him and that she likely spammed Jiwald not for the reason she stated in Ep. 73 with being unsure about Reid having lethal intent but ’cause she wanted to direct Subaru’s thoughts to Julius instead of the exam so that she could prevent the bad future from Emilia’s third Sanctuary line in Episode 48, and Muse Asia’s translation was: “I have bent my knees and lost even my sword. Just what do I have left?” This line suggests that that depicted a future in which Julius had to bend his knees in deference to Reid while also having lost his sword, leading to him being crushed emotionally and possibly suicidal.

Why Foxidna would be able to psychologically prime Subaru to do this is that he’s the type to follow his hunches and subconscious thoughts, as seen by when he likely chose the path on the right in Episode 69, ’cause of the ever-so increasing miasma and the doors that he could open that may have been built or cast by himself, subconsciously remembering his promise to Satella to kill her as she’d requested for him to do in Episode 38, and when he thought he’d Returned by Death when he woke up in a new location without it being exactly warranted since he associated a visit to the dark world/shadow garden with death, and why he thought to Reid as an answer for the exam on the third floor even though he had learned that Reid died of old age not that long ago, ’cause he subconsciously knew that Reid is in the tower.

If she’s indeed a soul clone, Foxidna should also have the same Authority the original did. And given Satella wouldn’t know which savepoints to choose without future knowledge, she probably has either an oath or contract with at least one or more Echidna soul clone(s) given Satella wouldn’t know what would be the right future/path to follow based on Subaru’s previous time as the Hero and what worked then wouldn’t necessarily work now.

As for how Foxidna would remember Julius, the common denominator between Subaru and Echidna is that they were Witch Factor holders who emitted miasma, so I believe the mechanism by which Subaru and Foxidna would remember Julius would be either ’cause of their Witch Factors or their miasma.

I believe Foxidna stating in Episode 67 that she will choose the option that has the highest possibility of success, no more or less, may be low-key a consistent character trait of all of Echidna’s soul clones, and that’s why Tea Party Echidna pushed Subaru to reject her contract even if she would’ve liked for him to take her contract since the world continuing rather than being destroyed very much aligns with her goal of attaining more knowledge. This would be the reason I posit that all Echidna soul clones follow the plan of the original Echidna.

And as for Anastasia being pragmatic and someone who would follow the mindset Foxidna mentioned, plenty of merchants do not choose the option with the highest probability of success ’cause that option may yield the smallest margins, so they weigh their decisions against their personal risk tolerance to go for something that has a higher reward, and if Anastasia is indeed a skilled merchant, this would perhaps be moreso her mindset, not that of which Foxidna shared, and you know since it’s Tappei, he’s done his research and should know the type of reasoning merchants deal with with it not simply being going with the option with highest probability of success.

If Foxidna is a soul clone of Echidna and her Authority, I also posit that she wouldn’t grant Anastasia her every wish much like those who genuinely believe in Foxidna’s goodness believe. Tea Party Echidna followed the plan of the original Echidna in Season 2, and the original Echidna may have made her soul clones specifically ’cause she knew they’d follow her plan ’cause of the core personality trait I’ve proposed they all have, so if that means following one specific future, Foxidna would do it even if it wasn’t the optimal choice every time but the choices that helps Subaru learn important info and give the cast character development.

I acknowledge a possible counterpoint anyone in that anyone with adequate social awareness should realize that Reinhard and Felix were more than friends to Julius based on Julius’s reaction, and I I may have been reading too much into Foxidna’s apparent connection to Julius, but the attention she showed him in Ep. 70 when none of the others paid Julius any attention when he was going on about Reid makes me believe there’s something more to it as it would’ve been easy for her to treat Julius like all the others did, not acknowledging him at all, if she really doesn’t remember him, and given Re:Zero is a series with a ton of details while also being short on available time, showing Anastasia’s reaction at all appeared to be like a big thing to me given her previous attempt to distance herself from Julius in Re:Zero Break Time Season 4 Ep. 6 even if I acknowledge she may have just figured out that Reid was his idol.

Re:Zero Scene Analysis – Episode 77 with the series name title drop is a callback to Episode 3, the Memory Snow OVA, Episode 18, From Zero, and Episode 40, A Reason To Believe

Posted on June 20, 2026 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

This episode’s title, Re:Life Starts In Another World From Zero, which is also the title of the series, is a callback to Episode 3’s title, Life Starts In Another World From Zero, with both of them pointing to how Subaru and amnesiac Subaru were inspired by Emilia, someone he hardly knows, to do his best to live on in this fantasy world. Subaru seeing how Emilia was still gifted the flower on her outfit by the girl who was separated from her mother, the wife of the appa shop man, made him realize how consistent Emilia was a person regardless of him not having interacted with her in that loop until they were at the loot house. It was the turning point that resulted in Subaru joining the Emilia camp and finding a new home for himself in this world, much like how he has chosen the group at the tower in Ep. 77 to be his family. He also asked for Emilia’s name in Ep. 3 whereas Emilia asked for his name in Ep. 77.

As for the callback to the Memory Snow OVA, which took place after Ep. 11 but before Ep. 12, Puck said that Subaru has a lot of scars for doing all he could for Emilia and that she shouldn’t forget that, which was quite rude to Emilia. but nonetheless, it served a very important point in that it was one of the reasons Emilia decided to cut ties with Subaru in Episode 13 due to how he’d repeatedly get hurt/endure harsh things due to involving himself with her, such as getting humiliated at the ceremony for the initiation of the Royal Selection and his getting beaten badly by Julius, in addition to him saying those entitled, ugly remarks to her. While some people who are less informed may believe it was only ’cause of the entitled remarks, they’re wrong as Emilia literally said that Subaru had done enough, showing she was concerned about just what extent he’d put himself in harm’s way ’cause of her.

And how this this episode was a callback to that OVA is that Emilia noted herself all that Subaru had done before, showing she gives a lot of weight to how hard and how often Subaru has worked to save her, a thought Puck had ingrained into her. Even if she was trying to give Subaru confidence, I believe there’ll be more on this subject in the future of this series as part of the reason Emilia felt like she was useless in Ep. 40, A Reason To Believe, is likely not just ’cause she was unable to pass the first Sanctuary trial but ’cause she’d internalized all of Subaru’s achievements, including him having passed the first Sanctuary trial while she struggled, and compared her achievements to his, which is why she had such a strong negative reaction to Subaru approaching her in the tomb, requesting that he tell her how useless she is.

And despite Emilia becoming more and more capable in battle as time goes on, which we viewers have seen. she may in a future arc or spread out across multiple arcs perceive an increasing gap between her actual skills and Subaru’s achievements, which keep growing in number, in part due to her not knowing about Return by Death and how she serves as such a vital emotional support to Subaru, leading to her feeling increasingly insecure about Subaru’s accomplishments relative to her own, which could cause some friction between her and Subaru or at least result in Emilia eventually having an emotional breakdown, and I believe this is more likely to happen than not since Tappei is very skilled at planning for the long game of his story and usually doesn’t introduce ideas to be one-and-done content.

In Ep. 18, From Zero, Subaru had reached his then lowest point and considered giving up on everything due to how his failures had reinforced in his mind how he was a piece of trash who’d never accomplished anything, and pointedly, he was rejecting the version of himself Rem saw in her eyes, much like how he was rejecting the Natsuki Subaru Emilia and the others knew in Ep. 77.

Similarly, Rem and Emilia sharing their loves for the Subaru they saw were what snapped Subaru out of his spiralling, and for this episode in particular, Subaru having hoped that this would be the last life he ever had so that his misery would end. Even though Subaru was considering giving up on helping others he’d grown fond of completely in From Zero, it’s still an accurate parallel given he was considering giving up a core part of himself in abandoning the people close to him compared to him considering giving up on life entirely.

As for the callback to Ep. 40, A Reason To Believe, Emilia was struggling with her identity due to the flood of memories coming back to her as well as her failure in passing the first Sanctuary Trial, all of which were major blows to her self-esteem, and in Arc 6, amnesiac Subaru was struggling due to all the past issues he had on Earth, such as his inferiority complex centered around his dad (him calling himself a piece of shit was a callback to that even if we didn’t see him thinking back to being compared to his dad) in addition to his being a pale imitation of pre-amnesiac Subaru who everyone looked up to with high regard, and the situation was very similar in how both Subaru and Emilia helped give the other the strength to believe in herself/himself respectively.

While Emilia specifically needed a kiss in A Reason To Believe given she knew that people can lie with their words such as how Subaru had promised that he’d stay with her throughout the night and reneged on that, it still doesn’t change that Emilia requested that amnesiac Subaru use the name, Natsuki Subaru. Due to all the history they had together that led to her falling for him, in addition to all the kindness she showed him, such as in always being attentive of him after he’d lost his memories and even approaching him and encouraging him to confide in her in Ep. 76, showing that she wasn’t angry at him for being different, that name served as proof that Subaru is indeed loved, however much he tried to deny it, much like with his parents and the others that came to the tower, and it snapped him out of his newest low, similarly to how Emilia was snapped out of her lowest moment.

Re:Zero is at its best when it delivers on the emotional moments, and even though Emilia’s interaction with amnesiac Subaru was simpler compared to the scenarios for From Zero and A Reason To Believe in that she mainly focused on saying what Subaru did, asking for him to give her his name, and confess to him, sometimes simplicity can be very potent, and I can see why fans really enjoyed this scene/episode.

Feel free to share your thoughts on this.

Re:Zero Episode 77 (Season 4 Episode 11) – Analysis + Important Details

Posted on June 19, 2026 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

This episode isn’t filled to the brim with content, so I’ll take a more standard approach and try not to recap as much as humanly possible. The episode leads with Ram calling amnesiac Subaru an imposter, so he charges right at her with the intent to kill, leading to Emilia trapping him in an ice cage with Ram threatening to kill him if he implies one more time that he forgot about Rem, having pushed Emilia out of the way when Ram had otherwise initially intended to torture him due to believing he might be a Sin Archbishop.

I don’t consider Ram’s anger at Subaru to be misplaced. Ram was really reliant on Subaru ’cause she can feel that Rem carries the same blood in her veins as she does, and given Rem’s feats in the mansion arc were adjusted in her mind, she has a higher opinion of Subaru than before Rem was erased by Lye Batenkaitos. To Ram, Subaru is the anchor tying her to Rem, and was the lone person, to her knowledge, who remembered her, and it just shows much she’s relying on Subaru that she’s lashing out in anger due to her own feeling of powerlessness since Subaru not remembering Rem means that Rem has lost her greatest champion. I feel calling Ram’s anger misplaced shows that one’s not being empathetic enough of the current situation as even though Julius had completely forgotten Joshua in Season 3, he still felt an emptiness and sense that something was missing, which is why Roy Alphard was able to mess with him, showing that Ram can also certainly feel that something was missing herself. It’s all the more understanding that Ram had the level of anger she did at amnesiac Subaru since to her Subaru’s possibly the only person in this world who’d never forget Rem even if everyone else did, so this man before her acting as suspiciously as he has would of course test her patience given she doesn’t know him to be the Subaru she put her faith in for restoring her sister, and we know how much she approved of Subaru’s relationship with Rem and his resolve to save her in Ep. 67 despite having no memory of it herself.

Amnesiac Subaru then blacks out and finds the ice cage destroyed with “Natsuki Subaru was here” carved into so much of the wall, and Reid comments on that with the scene change showing that it was almost certainly Rui Arneb, who could change into the form of somebody who’d previously been eaten, who made the carvings as there were carvings even above the door, which Subaru wouldn’t have the strength to carve into the wall himself given his height. He then asks Reid whether he didn’t previously say that he couldn’t leave the second floor, to which Reid says that the whole premise behind that is gone now, likely ’cause whatever mind manipulation magic or spatial loop that stopped him from leaving was no longer in effect due to one of the tower’s rules having been broken in that the tower was under attack, which of course comes with a flick to amnesiac Subaru’s head since amnesiac Subaru isn’t thinking things through, and I believe it’s a valuable lesson he needs to learn, possibly an intentional lesson from Reid given his cryptic remark at 3:22, “Ah, finally,” showing he may have been been waiting for that specific moment when the tower starts crumbling as a cue to when to engage Julius due to this version of him possibly still being on the side of Satella and Echidna with his mind being linked to Echidna’s, giving him future knowledge that can explain why he may have wanted to teach amnesiac Subaru a lesson.

Once they’ve made it to where Julius is, Julius is fighting a ton of those centaur/horse mabeasts, and when Julius is about to take a fireball at full strength, amnesiac Subaru warns him, saving him from certain death, much to Meilibaru’s chagrin, and Reid joins Julius and just shreds all the mabeasts to death while putting up a stink about how the exam is beginning again, forcing Julius to fight him once more, and Julius remarks that he leaves Foxidna and Anastasia to amnesiac Subaru, which stirred something in him given most of the group hadn’t been trusting him.

He then runs into Beatrice and Foxidna, the latter of whom “outwardly projected” that she believes he can’t be trusted, and Foxidna right then and there drops the most suspicious lines she’s had all season as if the previous stuff wasn’t already enough to make her suspect in that she believes she should’ve trusted Anastasia’s intuition and not have brought anyone else here aside from Subaru, showing she lied about Anastasia lying asleep deep within her od all this time, which is the container of her soul, since that comment shows she had talked to Anastasia about her plans to an extent, and given this is the linchpin of her arguments around having nothing to hide, I believe it calls into question pretty much everything she’s said this season. I believe Foxidna fully has the Authority of Greed: Tome of Wisdom, much like the original Echidna and also Tea Party Echidna, and that’s why she put it into Subaru’s head to bring Rem with him to the Pleiades Watchtower, ’cause Foxidna had been driving Subaru to one very specific future, which required Rem to be at the tower.

He then has an identity crisis and doesn’t care about Foxidna’s supposed blunder ’cause he’s not like the Subaru they know, retorting that it’s not an act since nobody would actually willingly choose to be Natsuki Subaru and the asshole that he is. As he’s breaking down due to how unfair the situation seems to him, he starts berating himself and asks to be forgiven and sent home due to this being too much for him. Foxidna says that that’s enough and that Beatrice can stay with him since she intends to find Julius, but amnesiac Subaru won’t let her go due to it being in his nature to help others and abide by Julius’s request. They then get attacked by a scorpion mabeast trying to snipe them, which is probably Shaula when she becomes a mindless killing machine when one of the tower’s rules are broken, and he saves Foxidna from falling to her death, leading to her asking him to stop being so unpredictable, and what he’d done was as much of a surprise to him as it was to her. She then blasted Shaula with El Jiwald, which tore off a piece of the scorpion mabeast.

Foxidna then asks him, “What in the world are you? Whose side are you on, and what is your goal?” probably to continue her ruse, and Beatrice finished his sentence in saying that he doesn’t remember, but she’s okay with that since she remembers that he brought her out of the Forbidden Library and always will, showing that Subaru’s words in Episode 49 were correct in that the time she spends with him would be so fun that he’ll forever be ingrained in her memories. Then Foxidna steps on a piece of Shaula’s body that was left behind, and it explodes, killing Beatrice, who took on the full brunt of the explosion so that her beloved contractor would survive. Later, even as Foxidna is getting dragged along the ground by him, asks him whether it should’ve been Beatrice over her that he took with him, which may have been survivor’s guilt or just really good acting, to make him think back to how Beatrice sacrificed herself for him and how he was loved. He then apologizes for Foxidna’s pain, and she merely retorts that her pain is penance for Anastasia given if she were to return her body now Anastasia would experience this pain and the horror of death, so she requests of him that she wouldn’t mind being put out of her misery, and once he again, he hears Meilibaru implying it’s a perfect opportunity to finish her off so that he can read her Book of the Dead, and he seriously considered doing so with a piece of rock but ultimately rejected Meili’s approach, showing he still had his own identity even if he’d taken in the Meili personality as his own, leading to Foxidna forgiving him and being sorry for having doubted him even if it’s potentially a ruse meant to give him the courage to believe in himself.

Then the Witch of Envy appears with her shadow hands from yin magic, not the Authority of Sloth, given Garfiel could see these hands in Season 2 ’cause yin magic can produce these hands, and the tell is that her vocabulary is limited to “I love you” as seen here or “Love me” from Season 2. Amnesiac Subaru is of course ranting that he doesn’t leave love himself, so how can anyone love him? This is despite knowing that his parents loved him deeply ’cause he’s rejecting other people’s love for him due to how much self-hatred he has for himself, much like in Season 1, when Rem had to put it so much effort for his From Zero moment. And he’d realized deep down that people who treated him so well couldn’t possibly be bad, so he wished that this could be his last life for ever having doubted them in the first place due to his doubt of them making him believe he was even more unlovable still, leading to the Witch of Envy enveloping him with her shadow hands before Emilia cuts the hands down and takes him away.

After they’d ran for a while, he then protests that that’s enough as he doesn’t understand why she and all the others trusted him and protected him, and after sharing the news of Beatrice and Foxidna’s death, he says that they’re all idiots for expecting anything of him. Emila then gives amnesiac Subaru a touching pep talk sharing all that he did for her, eventually resulting in her falling for him as he’s in complete despair, mirroring Ep. 40, A Reason To Believe, when she was the one with memory issues and at her breaking point, and as this happened, he ranted about how risking his life for somebody else, instinctively saving someone’s life, running around trying his best for someone else other than himself, and putting his life on the line to accomplish something for someone other than himself are things that Subaru couldn’t do as he believes he knows Subaru better than anyone and how pitiful, pathetic, and hopelessly rotten he really is due to his not having any of his memories from his time in the world prior to experiencing amnesia, emphasizing what a piece of trash he believes Subaru is, sounding so pained in admitting it, showing how great of a job his seiyuu is doing.

He then says that it doesn’t have to be him as surely there are others stronger and smarter out there who’s more capable of solving the issues here, and Emilia’s patient with him, merely requesting that he tell her his name even though she has so much she wants to say to him and ask him, and when he pleads to her to give him a reason, she says that she knows there are many people who are stronger and smarter than he is but that she wouldn’t want it to be anyone other than him ’cause rather than someone else doing it just ’cause they can or ’cause they happen to be there, it’s so much better when it’s the person she loves, a callback to when Subaru said in Ep. 40 that he realizes that Emilia isn’t perfect and causes him a lot of trouble but that he loves her regardless and also a callback to Ep. 18, From Zero, when Rem shared all that she loved about him he wouldn’t accept as being legitimately a part of himself, both great moments in the series that rejuvenated Emilia and Subaru respectively. As an aside, I don’t expect Emilia to realize that she’s in love with Subaru as readily as she did in this episode given it took amnesiac Subaru not acting like her Subaru for her to catch on to the fact that she does since that forced her to look inward and see what Subaru really meant to her. Without a catalyst like that, it’s possible there’s some stagnancy in this dynamic.

Amnesiac Subaru then decides he will accept that he’s Natsuki Subaru when prompted by Emilia once again, the one Julius relies on, the one Beatrice believes in, the one Foxidna forgave, and the one Emilia wishes for him to be, taking on the mantle/mask of someone he believes is greater to get him through this situation much like how he became Rem’s Hero in Ep. 18, and he does want to help her and the others and save her from the tower, and if Subaru can do that, he’ll be him, thanking her from the bottom of his heart for allowing him to believe in himself, and then the ground underneath Emilia crumbles, leading to her falling into a deep void with him following her and managing to take her hand before they end up in a pit of miasma that depicts his memories, which I’m guessing is a creative liberty rather than him actually falling into his own memories, and he resolves to remember them all and not to choose to see it as an end but a beginning even though the others will forget since he won’t.

While he says that he’s back after he’s looped, his hair is still in the same style as amnesiac Subaru, showing what he regained was his resolve and conviction, not his memories. From having watched Vivy: Fluorite’s Eye’s Song, which leaned hard into the message that autonomous AI who have a back-up of itself loaded isn’t exactly the same entity, I’m guessing Tappei has a message that’s not entirely the same in that it’s in Subaru’s core to be himself in wanting to help others even if it retains that same message in that memories and experiences shape who you are since amnesiac Subaru is taking on the mantle/mask of Natsuki Subaru rather than truly becoming him outright. Re:Zero seems to be supporting the belief that the nature and nurture approaches are intrinsically linked with its story across four seasons, and I welcome that instead of a hard nature vs. nurture approach. And where I’m going with my comment regarding the nature approach is that he resisted his mixing with Meilibaru, who had an inclination to solve problems through killing even though he’d taken in Meili’s memories, thoughts, and emotions, which was a huge environmental change, and given he’d experienced her whole life, he did really well to fight back that inner darkness in desiring to kill even though he only loosely associated with being Subaru.

Here’s the link to the relevant Break Time short: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_YBFHSCVWA

A Re:Zero Theory: How did Subaru lose his memories given Shaula knows when tower challengers leave the tower, perhaps implying she can sense the quantity of higher-order beings in the tower?

Posted on June 14, 2026 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

There’s been a lot of speculation on how Subaru lost his memories. Based on Eps. 74, 75, and 76 with amnesiac Subaru remembering “Memories are what shape a person.” which was said by Rui in Ep. 74 at 19:26, potentially hinting at her having possessed Subaru, his blacking out and waking up around a bunch of dead mabeasts he hadn’t killed himself and waking up having strangled Meili to death in Ep. 75, and Meili’s memories of what happened two days ago in Ep. 76, I believe this points to Subaru being possessed, but how did Rui (and potentially Lye and Roy) enter the tower given Shaula can detect who has left the tower since she knew amnesiac Subaru had left and given her prior warning that challengers to the tower cannot leave, which perhaps indicates she can sense how many challengers to the Pleiades Watchtower there are? Which means it may not be as simple as the Gluttony trio coming straight through the entrance even though the distortion and Sand Time had been dispelled.

“Memories are what shape a person.” may point to a second meaning in that those memories have been eaten can be claimed/possessed by Gluttony wielders. Perhaps reading the Book of the Dead of someone whose memories had been eaten by the Authority of Gluttony can result in a Sin Archbishop of Gluttony emerging to use his/her Authority against you, and that may be how Subaru lost his memories, ’cause they’d been eaten due to that deceased person’s memories being that Sin Archbishop of Gluttony’s possession, so Subaru likely read the Book of the Dead of someone tied to Rui, Lye, or Roy or perhaps even a previous Sin Archbishop of Gluttony (although I doubt this), and then the Gluttony wielder seized control of the recollection of the memories, using the Authority of Gluttony on Subaru. And I’m referring only to those who have had their memories eaten, not those who had both their name and memories eaten, leading to them being erased from the world. I know Rem appeared to be possessed in Ep. 74, but I have no idea what could explain aside from Rui teleporting from wherever she had been in during Season 3 before switching places with Lye in Ep. 66 when she swapped with Lye in the form of the green-haired woman (man?).

That’d be why Subaru had been reading many Books of the Dead and was normal when he interrupted Meili searching for Elsa’s Book of the Dead, and then when Meili returned, he was no longer himself as his memories had already been eaten, which is why he said that Meili’s face looks full of flavour, a very Gluttonyesque thing to say. It may not have been amnesiac Subaru, but the old Subaru should already have been gone at that point, which is why Meili thought to ask him about whether she could hold him to what he said last night in Ep. 75. This’d explain how Shaula, with her very keen sense of smell, didn’t smell other beings with high levels of miasma inside the tower aside from Subaru, and it’s that the Authority of Gluttony can be used when one is reading a Book of the Dead. Given Subaru by himself already emits a ton of miasma, Shaula may not have been able to detect a discernible difference unless she were really close by given miasma levels dissipate over distance like any other gas as shown by Ep. 69 by the ever increasing amounts of miasma as the group got closer and closer to the source of the miasma, not to mention she may have already retired for the night.

Feel free to share your thoughts on this.

Re:Zero Episode 76 (Season 4 Episode 10) – Analysis + Important Details

Posted on June 12, 2026 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

This episode makes things from previous episodes more clear while perhaps hinting at other things. It starts off with amnesiac Subaru continuing his identity crisis in that he was often speaking as if he weren’t Subaru, and now having “Natsuki Subaru was here” carved into his left arm with him having no recollection of it is giving him a fit, and he’s often smacking his arm across the ground due to thinking it makes no sense as he has a look of terror on his face, culminating with him asking himself, “Who are you?” referring to who he believes is the original Natsuki Subaru.

The scene then transitions to him putting Meili into a bag and hiding her behind a counter as he thinks of a way to buy more time to dispose of the body, musing that the detective being the killer is overdone as a trope in mystery stories. Outside, he runs into Emilia immediately, who asks him whether she startled him due to him legit looking like he may have pissed himself or something due to being caught in the act, but she hasn’t caught on aside from knowing he’s not doing well, and she shows so much concern for him and clearly has feelings for Subaru even if they aren’t yet at the point of love, to the point of putting his hand on her heart to show him that she’s not angry, encouraging him to not handle everything all on his own. During this scene, Emilia also brings up that she wants to give Meili a proper life even if it’s too early to be thinking about that, and the name drop spooked him for a moment, but Emilia ultimately reveals that since Meili’s the reason they got across the Dunes she should get better treatment and get moved out of her basement cell, leading to him angrily remarking about how she can be even thinking about the future when they’re stuck here at the tower, and Emilia is almost able to convince him to confide in her due to how she shows through her words and in her actions that she doesn’t think less of him for struggling, which is a problem he had with others treating him different in Ep. 75, leading to him trusting Patrasche and Shaula, but Ram ushers them to the library immediately due to a Book of the Dead on Meili having appeared, which Beatrice had found.

At the library, Beatrice says that Meili’s Book of the Dead having appeared is an ill-omen, and when he asks her why she hasn’t read it yet, she puts it out there that these books should be approached with extreme caution due to how distressed Subaru and Julius had been when they read the ones they were able to ’cause it’s as if they experienced the original person’ felt’s emotions and sensations, and thoughts/personality themselves, which can do real damage to their psyches if they’re not mentally prepared for that. Emilia is of course thinking of how Meili might be feeling at this point even though she’s dead, and Beatrice points out that it’s too late. Shaula then waltzes in and suggests that Meili must’ve kicked the bucket due to there being a book on her, which amnesiac Subaru takes issue with, and she merely replies that if he wants to find out what happened to her faster, he should just read her book, which is perhaps pointing to Shaula already having an understanding that Meili is dead. Given Shaula was shown at the end of Ep. 74 to be able to sense who has left the tower, which is why she said, “Master…” she may also be able to sense when one of the tower’s inhabitants has passed on, meaning she may have been trying to cover for him even from that point in the conversation, and if she’s indeed a mabeast, can probably smell that there’s a corpse. Beatrice does warn him that he’ll experience Meili’s entire life, and he still believes that it should be him who bites the bullet for the team since he doesn’t want anyone else reading it. Emilia, given she knows he’s really struggling heavily, suggests that she be the one to read it, but Beatrice objects, saying that it should be Subaru or Julius, and I’m guessing it’s ’cause she perceives both Subaru and Julius to have the strongest personalities or the strongest sense of selves, potentially even being the ones that had the best relationship with Meili of this group with Julius perhaps having conversed with Meili more than the others, not realizing Subaru amnesiac Subaru has lived lived for fewer than four days and would actually be one of the worst people to read a Book of the Dead given he currently has a very weak sense of self. Amnesiac Subaru then puts it out there that it might be a misunderstanding to try and deflect from the topic of Meili having died, and Emilia replies that if something happens that she’ll pull on his hair with him replying he’d prefer that she tap him on his shoulder or call out his name instead. And it once again begins with his soul being pulled into another Book of the Dead.

As Meili had revealed in the past, she’d been raised by mabeasts and had basically become the feral queen of beasts who escaped being prey for them and learned to desire to live among them before Elsa one day slaughtered her family on Capella’s orders to bring her back. Elsa apparently had taught Meili manners and such given she didn’t fight back when Meili had bitten into her after she’d washed her and was brushing her hair, showing she knows how to handle kids at least and didn’t use fear to force Meili to submit. When Meili had become presentable for Capella, the Sin Archbishop of Lust, she apparently told Capella that she didn’t know how to grieve, fight back or even live, which Capella just considered excuses and transformed her into various creatures to force her into submission, considering that something a mother must do.

In the next part of her backstory, Elsa, showing more of her patience with Meili, told her not to become Capella’s puppet ’cause for anyone other than herself, no amount of lives would ever be enough to satisfy Capella, meaning she didn’t want Meili to only live to kill, which is strangely kind of her even though she’s a bloodthirsty assassin, showing she knows it’s not most people’s nature to be like she is. Meili shot an angry look at Elsa while she was purchasing apples, and she wondered whether it was hatred she felt. She also wondered when she was killing people whether she felt sorrow and what it even was even whether she’d moved into the basement cell in Roswaal’s mansion. Since she had merely drifted through life, mimicking those around other, she had a weak understanding of emotions. Having lost Elsa, who she basically considered a sister, she didn’t know whose example to follow from now on. She thought that if Capella had told her to die, she would’ve willing done it, but she hesitated and came to the conclusion that she really didn’t want to die given Subaru’s kindness and her own will to live. At the very least, she wanted an answer, probably as to what she really wanted to do, which is likely why she agreed to tag along with Subaru to the Pleiades Watchtower.

In the penultimate part of the flashback that takes place during the time skip between Subaru’s meeting with Foxidna and Julius and waking up in the green room in Ep. 73, Meili worked up the courage to find Elsa’s Book of the Dead, and she was caught in the act by Subaru and was horrified, likely ’cause she felt shame over someone seeing that she could truly care about someone else given when Subaru had asked her to come to the tower, she’d explained that she didn’t do it for him but moreso herself since she didn’t want to lock herself away forever. Meili, for pretty much her entire life, did what she could to survive, whether as a feral child and as an assassin, so I think it scared her on some level to really care for somebody else, and that’s what led to her immediately leaving and thinking all sorts of negative thoughts about Subaru, ultimately culminating with her thought, “I don’t want him to know.” which shows she was thinking of killing Subaru for having found out about that since she never learned to process her emotions given the majority of her life centered around killing or being killed. When she headed back to the library, the one who spoke was certainly a Sin Archbishop of Gluttony given the manner of speech, and Rui had likely possessed Subaru, deciding to speak up after she tried to sneak up on her, and given Rui doesn’t have a broken gate, she could probably very well killed pre-amnesia Subaru or amnesiac Subaru given his gate is broken, and Rui encouraged her to find out what she really wants to do and confirm who she really is as a person, probably since her Gospel told her to do that. I’ll be calling Rui in Subaru’s body, Ruibaru from now on since it’s easier to do that. As for more specific hints on it being a Sin Archbishop of Gluttony, his saying that Meili’s face looks full of flavour was very much a hint that it’s a Gluttony wielder given those with the Authority of Gluttony love tasting the emotions of their victims. His also saying that he’ll remember it all when Meili’s acting more like herself is also very much a thing a Sin Archbishop of Gluttony would do and is what I believe is a sign that Rui or another one of the Gluttony trio is considering eating Meili’s memories.

The final part of the flashback showed her having licked her lips next to amnesiac Subaru and after she’d put out continuing their conversation from last night given she wasn’t exactly sure what he’d meant, showing she knew it wasn’t the kind Subaru who cared for her, and Ruibaru choked Meili to death, saying that asking him that question directly is against the rules since she can’t be outed like that. In the end, Meili thought that her life had amounted to nothing and that she’s being killed.

Ultimately, while I can see why someone would believe Meili didn’t want to kill amnesiac or RuiSubaru, I believe it’s more likely than not she did want to, and that’s ’cause while Meili wanted to grieve Elsa in finding her Book of the Dead, she was at a crossroads between whether to imitate Elsa or Subaru, and so since she felt some shame in being found out about that, she looked at Subaru with eyes full of anger. I’m guessing Meili blushing regarding Ruibaru sniffing her hair is ’cause she as someone who’d hit puberty had her hormones in flux, and it’s not ’cause she wanted to be his girlfriend. The title of the episode, “Murder Is a Habit”, from Agatha Christie’s Murder in Mesopotamia backs up this read that if you use violence to solve issues, you become more prone to doing it in the future, and that’d be why Meili wanted to kill him since she never learned to process her emotions and issues in a healthy manner.

And now it’s time for a theory, and it’s that Meili’s Book of the Dead appearing to this group of people so soon when the group had concluded initially that the books aren’t sorted by name or date of death in Ep. 71 suggests that there’s a will behind when and where Books of the Dead that can be read appear. This is backed by how in that relevant episode, both Subaru and Julius were able to find one they were able to read almost right away, suggesting a will or higher power is what allowed for that to happen. We know from the anime there’s someone who has the power to see a perfect reconstruction of the past, and that’s Echidna with her Authority of Greed: Tome of Wisdom, and if my speculation about Roswaal’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom and the Witch Cult Gospels are correct, the Books of the Dead may also be partially a product of Echidna’s Authority, and the Great Pleiades Library may be constructed in part from her her Authority and also magic from herself and possibly others such as Flügel, meaning she can possibly choose which books appear to certain people at any given opportunity, which would be very useful given she has the power to see the future and likely had been a major force behind all the events of the past four hundred years up until the end of Season 2. Its appearance was very convenient since it allowed amnesiac Subaru to be the first to read Meili’s Book of the Dead to prevent most of the others from suspecting him, and it allowed him to gain insight on Meili’s troubled past as well as seeing how it was his body that killed her.

Back to the episode itself, Beatrice tells Emilia she mustn’t read the book since amnesiac Subaru has mixed his mind with the memories of the original person, which is why he’s stating, “I’m being”, repeatedly as in “I’m being killed”, and “Elsa’s gone”. After a time skip when he’d calmed down, Foxidna asks him what did he see, and before he answers, he sees an imaginary Meili next to him, talking about how it much it hurts to flail around while being strangled since he’d internalized her memories as his own, leading to Beatrice telling him to calm down and find himself. Beatrice of course tells him to lean on her at times like these due to their relationship. Ram then calmly implies that Meili must be dead after Julius asks her what she makes of the situation, and the imaginary Meili tells amnesiac Subaru that they must’ve never trusted her much in the first place given how they’re so calm about this, which is still more pain for him mentally, and Foxidna stops Julius from reading Meili’s Book of the Dead due to the state amnesiac Subaru is in. Emilia then again puts out looking for Meili as the kind person she is, saying that they can’t leave her like that since she believes in treating the dead with respect as she did during her flashback with Fortuna in Season 2. And then the imaginary Meili says that she didn’t even care about her before she died, which is perhaps showing this isn’t just Subaru being haunted by Meili, but her memories/personality have literally mixed into his being, meaning he has multiple personalities right now, and that’s why this seems to be driving him insane. When Julius asks him whether he saw what happened to Meili, amnesiac Subaru can’t even look him in the eye and says that he didn’t, only knowing that something happened in the tower, and much like how most people realized he wasn’t himself in Ep. 75, I believe there should be a fair number here that didn’t believe what he said there either or at least realize that something is amiss.

In the next scene, much of the group’s members are shown looking to no avail, and Ram seems to think of an idea in the moment after looking at Rem in the green room. Back in the library, Shaula asks amnesiac Subaru whether she should look for Meili, and the imaginary Meili suggests that it’s almost as if Shaula knows what he did, so that subconscious influence from her leads to him telling her to take care of Meili, which is Shaula taking it to mean that she’ll dispose of the corpse, probably sniping it until there’s nothing left. And here comes the kicker, the one in Subaru’s body says, “Natsuki Subaru is a despicable coward who’s trying to hide “my” death, as in Meili’s death since amnesiac Subaru had less than four days of memories and internalized years of Meili’s life experiences, and that’s why he used the “watashi” pronoun in that scene, which he never uses, but Meili always does, so Meili Portroute lives on through him in that there are occasions he thinks like her, speaks like her, and acts like her, which is why he asks Beatrice why she’s treating him so well, not ’cause he’d lost Subaru’s memories but ’cause to Meili herself, Beatrice has no reason to treat her well. That’s why he thinks about why the group loves Subaru so much and that he wants to know, and it’s ’cause Meilibaru, which I will be referring to from now on whenever it appears that Meili’s personality is speaking, is in control at that moment. When he muses about whether he can love Emilia and the others or hate them, Meilibaru suggests that he kill them to read their Books of the Dead, which is really dark stuff and is consistent with the story of the episode. Beatrice then suggests that he go back to the green room due to how unwell he is.

In the green room, amnesiac Subaru thinks about why they’re so nice to him, and Meilibaru tells him to give Beatrice’s neck a little squeeze as it’ll snap like a twig, and he strongly considered it before fighting back that thought. Beatrice then notices the condition of his hand with him thinking that she has realized that he killed Meili, only for her to heal him. When Meilibaru tells him that there’s no fun since he stopped wanting to kill Beatrice, he says aloud for the first time when conversing with her, “You’re wrong. You’re wrong!” He then has an internal monologue with Meilbaru about how murder is a habit in that if you solve a problem with a murder once, you’ll become more likely to solve future problems with murder.

Later at the dining table, nobody was able to find Meili’s body, and Emilia had even asked Reid to no avail. Foxidna and Ram basically shoot down Emilia’s suggestion to continuing searching for the body tomorrow since Anastasia’s life is being worn away, and their food supply is finite. When he says that Meili wouldn’t want them to be sitting around here, Meilibaru taunts him in telling him that he doesn’t believe a lick of that, and I believe there are others who can tell that this is not the real Subaru given he’d take Emilia’s side on this.

At night in the green room, Subaru tells Meilibaru that he has to be sure or neither of them can rest easy ’cause of the corpse, and then he gestures to Patrasche to shush when she pokes her head up after he tries to leave quietly. After he goes to the room where the corpse was and finds that it’s gone, Ram enters the room and suspects that he’s the killer due to her having spied on him when he told Meilibaru that she’s wrong, when he talked about them resting easy, and when he shushed Patrasche using her Clairvoyance given the idea dawned on her when she went to visit Rem. Ram sets a trap in using the name Natsuki Subaru, which she has never done in all four seasons prior to this point, ’cause the real Subaru would flip out over her actually using his name, and all he can think of is strangling her due to it indeed being the case that resorting to violence once makes it easier to resort to doing that again, not having figured out that Ram knows he isn’t the real Subaru.

One final theory I have on this episode is that Rui perhaps didn’t enter directly through the tower’s entrance given Shaula can detect how many lifeforms are in the tower given how she knew amnesiac Subaru had left the tower at the end of Ep. 74, so perhaps reading the Book of the Dead of someone whose memories were eaten by the Authority of Gluttony can result in a Sin Archbishop of Gluttony emerging to use his/her Authority against you, and that may be how Subaru’s memories were eaten given that deceased person’s memories would be that Sin Archbishop of Gluttony’s possession, so Subaru likely read the Book of the Dead of someone tied to Rui or the other two Sin Archbishops of Gluttony.

Here’s the link to Re:Zero Break Time Season 4 Episode 10: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77SS_SdiQKg

A Re:Zero Theory: Ep. 75 may be more evidence of Satella + Echidna coordinating on RBD, and the point’s for Subaru or at least a part of him to become more self-confident

Posted on June 8, 2026 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

Given Regulus told Subaru to thank him for mauling a chunk of his leg off when he would’ve preferred doing more, and in Eps. 53/54 after the tower bell rung, Sirius shouted she must cease hostilities ’cause they were told to stop and Capella had to move into the government office in, and Foxidna indicated Capella’s blindly following whatever the Gospel says in retreating, this shows there’s a grander plot at play rather than Gospels telling the holder’s best path to happiness.

That’d be why whoever was in Rem’s body said, “Try to figure it out next time” to amnesiac Subaru, and whoever it was knows he can Return by Death by either having eaten his memories or having been told of it by Rui. Ultimately, I still expect Subaru to win since I believe Gospels don’t truly tell the future but are meant to keep the world on a particular path which would be why Regulus thought he’d meet Emilia again in Ep. 51 despite it not happening until the fourth loop.

This’d also be why Patrasche was unharmed while everyone else killed, and it’s ’cause the Gluttony trio’s Gospels didn’t tell them to kill Patrasche ’cause Echidna, who I believe is the one making the text in the Gospels appear, wanted amnesiac Subaru to trust Patrasche for now and find out about there being an unknown attacker. It’d also be why they were cornered at the hidden passage to the balcony ’cause Satella likely broke out of her Seal given he’d made multiple doors disappear, making it easier for the Seal to be broken, and the black smoke was actually either her miasma or her mass of shadows with her coordinating with Echidna to make that happen since that loop was clearly a disaster, and heneeded to learn to trust at least one of his allies since Patrasche would never betray him. This would be why the miasma or shadows deliberately cornered him and Patrasche where it happened so that Patrasche would be forced to toss him through the hidden passage leading to the balcony.

Additionally, this would be why amnesiac Subaru opts to trust Shaula later since she treats him the same as always as Patrasche does unlike the others who notice that he’s acting differently, leading to him learning to trust a second person, which he very much needs at this point in time given he’s not in the right mindset to trust others due to being in the shadow of both his father and pre-amnesiac Subaru, as shown by him talking about how they’re pushing their problems onto him, not to mention having been pushed to his death twice being on his mind, showing a direct through-line between the third loop and the fourth loop of Ep. 75.

We’ve known since the beginning that Satella is choosing Subaru’s save points, which begs the question about how she knows at what point Subaru can make a difference. A lot of anime-onlies believe in the theory that Satella and Subaru travelled back in time four hundred years to ensure that this current Subaru succeeds, and although I don’t believe in this theory I will nonetheless use it to support my argument.

Let’s say that this is true and Satella actually is a future variant of Emilia. How would she know in the current day at what points Subaru can make a difference so that he succeeds this time? The answer is that she doesn’t. Even if she knew how the previous Subaru’s run through as the hero worked, that doesn’t mean Satella 100% has an ironclad way of knowing what’s the best point for him to still be able to make the most impact given what failed last time would obviously fail again while what would’ve worked last time may not this time. The only way to know for sure is with future knowledge for this current world, which is why I’m now proposing that Satella has a contract with Echidna in that Satella shares her field of vision with Echidna for some unknown price we viewers aren’t privy to.

If Satella did have this sort of arrangement with Echidna, it’d explain why she makes the save points she does, and it’d be ’cause she consults with Echidna beforehand, who we know to have future knowledge and acts with it in mind as shown when she turned Petra’s handkerchief into a spectral knife for Subaru to kill himself after he revealed RBD to her. Echidna also looked forward into the future hundreds of years ago given she made Puck with the express intention of defeating Melakuera only for Puck to lose his memories so that Roswaal could draw Emilia into his camp with Puck losing his memories of the Roswaal who co-existed with Echidna four hundred years ago, making him oblivious to Roswaal’s Soul Transcription. Certain parts of the fandom say that Echidna doesn’t use her Authority, but I call BS as she has clearly used it well in advance hundreds of years ago.

This situation in Ep. 75 would also force Subaru to confront his insecurities about how the pre-amnesiac Subaru was such an incredible guy with his comment about “Just what the hell are you?” showing he thinks that his past self was a helluva guy, and if my write-up three days ago had some truth to it, it’d serve a point on pre-amnesiac Subaru perhaps having dissociated due to the imminent threat of his memories being either about to be eaten or in the midst of being eaten by Rui given Subaru remembering her seiyuu stating, “Memories are what shape a person.” in Ep. 74 at 19:26 with Tappei clearly planning to address this in some way, possibly by having Subaru become more self-confident or at least a part of him becoming more self-confident.

As for how the text in the Gospels may appear due to Echidna, given Roswaal’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom didn’t include Otto in it, I posit that this is also the case for that text as well, and it was also meant to keep the world on a particular path rather than be a true future-telling text and since the prototypes of the Witch Cult Gospels is Roswaal’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom, they may be partially made of the same materials, such as Echidna’s fingernails, toenails, hair, body hair, dead skin, or body fluids, and if they are indeed partially constructed by such materials, the Witch Cult Gospels and Roswaal’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom could be connected to Echidna’s mind through magic, and she’s the one who makes the text in the Gospels appear, meaning Echidna may be stealthily manipulating the Witch Cult through her Authority of Greed: Tome of Wisdom with the Witch Cult being created four hundred years ago so that it could eventually be used to give Subaru and others character development and achievements.

I guess Echidna could be using Satella, but a potential relationship with this level of coordination suggests that Satella might not just be being used but is closer to that of an equal partner compared to Roswaal. And if Echidna does in fact love Subaru given she said that she’s very fond of him in Ep. 38, she and Satella could have the same goal in trying to get him to save the world from being destroyed in part through the eventual slaying of Satella at the end of the story.

Echidna being partners with Satella could explain why she cried during Emilia’s second Sanctuary Trial with the reason being that she’s actually fond of Satella in spite of supposedly hating her with all her heart, and whatever the relationship between Satella and Emilia is, Echidna may hate that she herself’s the reason Emilia’s going down the path she’s headed toward, not that she truly hates Emilia after all without ever really having met her, and it might’ve been a moment of self-hatred. That may even be the reason she let Minerva see Emilia if Minerva is Emilia’s mother due to her feeling that she robbed Emilia of a happy life.

I believe the final boss biased the story path when an ancient hero, after his lover, the heroine, became the Witch of Envy, chose not to strike down his lover after her yin magic power was used to defeat what came out of the Seal in Elior Forest, which I posit was a monstrous horde of creatures with passive AoE auras that Reinhard cannot protect the world from due to not being able to be everywhere at once, and that’s why the heroine had to become the Witch of Envy, and then the world was destroyed due to the heroine not having complete control over her powers with that being the start of the wretched cycle. And Subaru may be the first Hero of the story since the cycle had started who’s overcoming the fatal character flaw all the previous Heroes of the story had, which is that they considered their lovers everything to them, leading to them choosing their lovers over the world, which is why the cycle has persisted up until now.

Feel free to share your thoughts on this.

Re:Zero Episode 73 (Season 4 Episode 7) – Analysis + Important Details

Posted on May 22, 2026 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

This write-up will be a lot shorter than what I usually put out, but I’ll be drawing upon what I have previously posted for reference. There was one huge thing from a story perspective that I’ll stress to readers, and I’ll make it clear what I’m referring to.

The episode starts with Emilia and Subaru basically telling Julius to take it easy, and after Emilia tells Julius that he’s one of them, meaning he can trouble them as much as he likes, he finds comfort and reassurance in that since he’s currently struggling with his identity after having been forgotten by the world, leading to him saying that he’d rest up as they intend for him to do. His remarking about being surrounded by lovely maidens is also true to his knightly self, so Subaru could tell that Julius had perked up a little.

At the group’s meet-up room for talking strategy, Ram puts it out there that she’d never though that Julius would act in the manner that he did last episode in challenging Reid, and Subaru basically said that it was like a man getting measles, which I believe isn’t meant to downplay the seriousness of measles as a viral infection but to showcase that it can be easy for men to act out when they have self-worth issues, showing that Subaru was drawing a comparison to Julius’s actions in Episode 72 to his own in the past and reinforcing my analysis for that episode. Nonetheless. Ram’s very worried that Julius’s actions could have meant failure of them all if Julius had died since Reid intended for seven people to pass, and Julius dying could mean someone else might have to challenge him twice to pass to also pass for a placeholder spot that Julius had even if were no longer of this earth. She put it out there that not even Shaula, who she calls a sham of a Sage, would be able to help them out if Reid were to rogue, and of course Shaula said that she was never the Sage in the first place and that she only has eyes for her master, which is why she looks at Subaru with such passion and spark in her eyes. Subaru then tells Ram that she should take it as a win since Julius’s mistake wasn’t fatal, and of course in Ram’s typical snarky fashion, she says that she just doesn’t want anyone getting in her way, implying all she’s here to do is save Rem.

Meili then calms the group down and its members start talking about how they can pass Reid’s exam. Ram notes that Emilia passed ’cause she drew concessions from him while fulfilling the new conditions she laid out which he agreed to. Thus, she concluded that the conditions for passing the exam aren’t uniform but whimsy. Shaula then interjects that Subaru should take as along as he likes no matter how many days, months, years, or centuries it takes since she’s been waiting for him for hundreds of years and hopes they have some fun with her before they leave, showing how lonely she has been these last four hundred years, backing up my analysis on her carrying Patrasche over her head with both arms raised being both a visual and symbolic allusion to the Titan Atlas carrying the celestial sphere as his punishment, which is how she forgot that Reid had died of old age, and Subaru saw her loneliness given the animation from his eyes showed that he was emphasizing with her. Then Subaru’s stomach indicates that it’s time for food.

Dinner is prepared by Ram and Emilia, who notes that they need to bring Julius some too, and Subaru tells Beatrice to not be shy about holding his hand given the relationship between a spirit and her contractor is special, and given it seems from Season 3 and 4 that the only reason Beatrice could use Al Shamak on such a wide area to remove the Great Rabbit from this dimension in Season 2 was that she had collected a ton of mana over four hundred years from the mansion residents and mansion visitors, which is why she needed large magic crystals in Season 3 to cast big spells and why when Subaru asked if Beatrice was ready in Episode 68 she replied by saying that the problem would be if he runs out of juice, showing that Beatrice’s ability to restore her own mana seems to be impaired, but of course Beatrice and Subaru are still really close regardless of Subaru replenishing her mana, and it’s cute to see Subaru tease her, especially since Beatrice was suicidal before forming a contract with him. Shaula of course has no table manners and just wolfed everything down, saying that she usually eats mabeasts and stuff, noting that she didn’t think she was particular, but the food is truly exceptional to her, to the point she said that’d even become Emilia’s apprentice so that she could make food this delicious to please Subaru since that’d be the way to his heart, and she finished that by saying that she hoped that her master would say, “I’m not letting you sleep tonight.” showing that she and Flügel may have had a sexual relationship and that Flügel might have been the type to sleep around given if Subaru was part of Flügel as I believe, he could’ve been Satella’s lover four hundred years ago given Subaru’s implied dormant memories of Satella from Episodes 18, 25, and 38,

As they get ready to prepare for sleep, Subaru again jokes about Beatrice never growing up meaning she’ll always be cute like he’d done earlier at dinner, and Beatrice and Emilia head to sleep. He then goes to the healing/green room, and Julius suggests that he’ll leave to give Subaru some time with Rem, who has surely longed for night to come. Subaru of course is uncomfortable with Julius leaving Anastasia’s side since she means so much to him, and he asks him if he’s sure with Julius replying that he’s not sure what’s the first thing he should say to her when she wakes up, and Subaru replies in typical Subaru fashion that he should just tell her he’s glad she’s awake and be focused on what her response to that should be, leading to Julius saying that he envies Subaru for being able to think so freely, ’cause no doubt many things are going through his mind, and he of course leaves the room to reflect on his thoughts.

And then it turns out Subaru fell asleep for an indeterminable amount of time, and he follows a bird that leads him to a hidden passage that leads to a balcony where Foxidna is with a whole flock of birds. After a bit of small talk, Subaru cuts to the case and asks her why she snuck out of her room in the middle of the night, slip through a secret passage nobody knows about, and hang out with some weird birds in the night breeze, and she just brushes Subaru off as her having followed a bird to this spot much like he did, and they are apparently the same birds that led the group through the sand time when Ram used her Clairvoyance to borrow their vision.

Around 10:58-10:59 of Episode 73, Foxidna’s smile transitioned into a look of surprise/shock as if she detected something very particular, such as a hint of mana from somebody else or detecting somebody’s else presence outright. Given Beatrice is reliant on Subaru’s mana, touching Beako can probably result in you detecting Subaru’s mana (since draining mana allows you to determine whether someone is an enemy, touching someone probably does at least what I stated) and realizing the connection the two of them have, and Foxidna may have detected an unseen force spying through the birds or at least that one bird since she stroked that bird’s chin.

Subaru has also an unreliable narrator on multiple occasions, such as believing that Julius beat him at full strength, believing that Crusch was a heartless person for being unwilling to help Emilia, and counting his chickens before his eggs hatched in thinking he’d get a perfect victory in the first loop after the White Whale fight, and given viewers are getting direct images of what the birds are seeing, it would be very fitting if this is another case of that, meaning somebody else is also observing them.

I’ve noted the possible importance of birds before in my post here with the one very tiny bird and the outline of a bird embedded in the wall if you look at it from a particular angle: https://thoroughwatch.org/?p=179 And I encourage anyone who has read my theories to refresh themselves on the content.

Birds were present during Subaru’s summoning, the moment preceding the From Zero Moment in Episode 18, and at two points in Episode 57 when Emilia was held captive by Regulus before those birds flew to the location of a fight:

So there’s likely to be an unseen force observing Subaru since he was summoned through the birds in addition to Satella, who we know is always watching Subaru and also Echidna, who I believe has been observing Subaru as long as Satella has.

Foxidna then put it out there that Anastasia couldn’t find any background on Subaru until he was involved in an incident at the capital, likely referring to when he retrieved Emilia’s insignia which was surprising given her extensive connections, which was frustrating for her. She then motions as if she’s afraid of Subaru ’cause of his origins, but I believe it’s a ruse to make the future the characters from four hundred years ago want to come true a reality. She needles him on his relationship to Shaula and whether it was a coincidence that he solved the exam from the third floor so easily, and Subaru replies with what he has always said. She also states that she’s afraid to accept it at face value that Subaru knows nothing about these birds, and then Subaru says that it’s his turn to ask questions.

He then asks how is Anastasia, and Foxidna said that things are still unchanged from before and that she’s unable to give Anastasia her body back even though she’s eating away at her life, which prompts Subaru to ask how Anastasia will even be the ruler if her body’s such a mess, and Foxidna said that Anastasia has a reason she cannot give up the throne even after Subaru brings up Anastasia having to give up the throne almost as soon as she gets it.

Julius is then led to that balcony with a bird and demands answers, even willing to point his sword at Foxidna, resulting in her getting him back up to speed, and I believe Foxidna pretending that she’s still Anastasia before fessing up was meant as a continuation of what she did in Episode 72 in the Break Time short, which was to make Julius feel isolated. I was wrong that Julius knew that Foxidna had taken Anastasia’s place, and I chalk it up to the bad translation from Crunchyroll in Season 3, so I’ll rewatch the relevant episode with Muse Asia’s subs, which although may not always have the best English, tend to be way more accurate than Crunchyroll’s. Foxidna reveals that she told the truth to Subaru ’cause she saw through his act with Julius feeling shame that he wasn’t able to as her first knight, and I believe she fully intended for Julius to hear this to bring him down some more to develop his character. Subaru wanted to say that the reason he knew was only a coincidence, and that’d be ’cause of when Foxidna indicated that she thought Reinhard and Felix were more than just friends, which he believed that nobody aside from him should know, so yeah, it’s not something Julius could ever know. Subaru tells Julius to drop that first knight stuff, but Julius, who’s having an identity crisis due to people having forgotten him, of course says that he’s afraid of losing anything of his right now, which backs up my read from Episode 72 that Anastastia was trying to force Julius to feel isolated and insecure.

Echidna states that her goal upon being prompted is to return Anastasia’s body to her and that this is a situation she didn’t want, but I’m not convinced of that and believe she’s deliberately guiding Subaru and Julius to a particular future that Satella, Echidna, Flügel, and perhaps others are working towards bringing about. Julius seems satisfied with Foxidna’s answer when she says that her spamming Jiwald on the second floor was ’cause she didn’t know whether Reid had lethal intent, meaning she couldn’t allow for them to lose a valuable asset in Julius, and given Julius’s insecurities at that moment, appealing to his ego worked very well, and he accepts it almost immediately even though Subaru questions whether that’s sound judgement. Julius then says that it’s their problem and that Subaru need not worry about this with Subaru protesting that whatever he chooses to worry about is his business, leading to Julius justly saying that in doing so, Subaru’s shielding him from facing his problems, much like when he stayed quiet about Anastasia and Foxidna, which he said with anger. Julius apologized of course, but I believe Foxidna and the unseen force may have both intended for this to happen with a worsening of relations between Subaru and Julius. Julius then motions for he and Anastasia to head back inside and make preparations on how to explain this to everybody else tomorrow, leading to Subaru asking Julius if he had something to say him, and Julius responds that he knows what Subaru is thinking and why he hid the truth from him and that it was out of consideration for him and that if their positions were reversed he likely would’ve done the same, but even so, he doesn’t want to be seen as unfit to be a knight, which backs up my analysis of Episode 72 perfectly.

After Subaru has gone back inside, he runs into Ram, who mentions that she considered heading up to battle Reid but turned back halfway there. She catches on to Subaru seeming miserable, and she asks astutely whether it had to do with getting into a fight with Julius with her saying that it’s a mix of Subaru being too easy to read her being too intelligent when Subaru says something out of embarrassment. On the surface, one may think that Ram used her Clairvoyance to see through the birds, but these birds have been around since the beginning of the story, so it shouldn’t be her. Subaru says that he intends to sort it out tomorrow, which Ram says is a very vague and evasive answer. Subaru wishes “Big Sis” good night, and of course, Ram replies that she’s not his sister even though she basically already treats him as a brother-in-law and accepts what he feels for Rem. Subaru then thinks it’s awkward to go to the green room where Julius and Foxidna are and decides to think of a plan to take out Reid, and then he sees a stairway leading upwards that he may have never seen before, leading to him most likely thinking that he could cheat by avoiding the exams to get to the top of the tower even though Shaula said that that’s not acceptable, and Subaru wakes up in the green room the next day with no memories of his time in the fantasy world, leading to him thinking he’d been summoned for the first time. I suspect that the Authority of Gluttony erases memories from the world you’re currently in, which is why Subaru’s memories of Earth have been retained with Subaru’s memories of Earth likely being erased if his memories had been eaten on Earth.

As for the possibilities for why Subaru has no memories, I can think of two:

Subaru’s memories were eaten by a Sin Archbishop of Gluttony, and given the three of them were seen in the OP, it’s the most obvious possibility. Shaula has not been sniping from a distance since Subaru’s group arrived to the tower, so others may have beelined to the tower without worrying about getting sniped by her.
There’s something in the Pleiades Watchtower itself that can cause one to lose his/her memories. Given Shaula had said, “Again?” in reply to her master having lost many memories, Flügel himself had an ordeal in which he lost his memories. Given the Sin Archbishops of Gluttony are in the OP, I believe the first possibility is more likely.

In the Re:Zero Break Time Season 4 Episode 7 short, Subaru informs Julius when they hadn’t yet arrived at the town near the Auguria Dunes about how things are awkward for Anastasia since he’s overcompensating by being even more knightly/courtly. He suggests to Julius to tone it down in case stacking blocks upon a new foundation makes it collapse, but Julius doesn’t want to abandon his previous relationships and wants to preserve them, and when he asks Subaru whether that’s greedy, Subaru relents and tells him he shouldn’t listen to somebody who doesn’t know what he’s talking about, encouraging him to stick to what he’s doing as long as he minds his distance with Anastasia, leading to Julius thanking Subaru with all his heart ’cause even he saw the awkwardness himself and would’ve been at a loss about what to do. This concluded with Julius stating he was writing about this moment to remember it for all time, and he said that Subaru actually features in his journal a lot with Subaru saying that he better not be saying nasty things about him ’cause he doesn’t realize just how much Julius respects him. It goes to show that Foxidna was deliberately setting up Subaru and Julius to get closer while making him insecure about his position as her knight. The link to the short is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br0FPRIyzb8