Okay, obviously with it being a much shorter episode, there was less to talk about this episode. It turns out I was only partially right about Subaru’s reaction at the end of the first episode. He had not entirely realized that he had died, and dying for the first time in a year had him feeling really uncomfortable. I’m sure after a year of not looping, he might’ve thought his days of dying were over and was not prepared for it to happen again, which is why he felt sick to his stomach. It was not due to him also remembering how he was clapping for the death of a child.
The danger of the situation in this arc is that Subaru has maybe 10-15 minutes to act since he looped back to a period close to when Sirius’s attack began, so this is unlike all of his previous dilemmas where he had hours or days to come up with a solution. Given that, I can see why Subaru rushed to try to take action without getting anyone else to help him since there was so little time to act although he did briefly consider getting Beatrice to help only for him to decide not to when he remembered how relentless the Witch Cult was in its pursuit of Emilia, which is not an unfounded concern. He wanted Beatrice to stay and protect Emilia. I know the point in Season 2 was for Subaru to learn to trust his friends, but Subaru did at least consider asking for help from Beatrice before thinking otherwise, so this shows progression compared to back in Season 2, not regression just ’cause he didn’t immediately try to tackle it head-on with Beatrice right from the get-go. Character development is not always perfectly linear and doesn’t always hold up perfectly, especially in the high-risk situations Subaru is forced into a lot of the time, particularly since he has so little time to act this time.
Consistent with what he learned in Season 2 about asking for help from his friends, Subaru did immediately try to get the help of the strongest person he knew the loop after that, which is Reinhard, and that didn’t work out either as Sirius can freely choose who, which includes herself, to share damage and emotions between others with the damage and emotions being shared not necessarily being from the same person, which is how she made everyone happy in the first episode by sharing her manic joy with everyone else while having the crowd take in all of Lusbel’s damage from smashing into the ground headfirst. Her being able to share the damage inflicted on her led to the whole crowd dying in this recent episode since Reinhard cutting off a piece of her body including her head led to everyone else dying in the same fashion. Given that when Reinhard touched Subaru and Rachins they came back to their senses, the solution to combating Sirius is probably preventing the crowd from falling under her control in the first place, whether that involves Liliana’s singing or possibly something else like strengthening the civilians given Beatrice indicated Sirius’s Authority is akin to spiritual interference. At minimum, I do believe Liliana’s singing must be a factor to prevent Sirius’s emotional manipulation from working by making the crowd feel something Sirius doesn’t.
In a nice callback to Season 1 in the loop after Reinhard killed Sirius, Beatrice revealed that when Reinhard fights seriously, all the mana nearby turns to him after Subaru sought out her help, so pretty much all spirits arts users are heavily nerfed by Reinhard’s presence. Emilia also showed her growth from Season 2 with how she doesn’t want to be left out when Subaru takes action and be someone who is just protected. I like that she completely showed how she was completely in the right that even Beatrice couldn’t find any fault in what she had to say and asked Subaru to give up convincing Emilia otherwise.. What’s consistent is that with Rachins when Subaru was trying to get him to call for Reinhard, with Beatrice when he was explaining Sirius’s attack, and even with Emilia when she was trying to convince Subaru to let her fight, Subaru was often grasping at his heart area since he was thinking back to Satella squeezing his heart. Subaru seems to have not yet realized that it’s when he intentionally tries to reveal that he can Return by Death or has had lived more than one life is when his heart gets squeezed. I think it was a nice touch that Priscilla was the reason Emilia went after Subaru and Beatrice. As I’ve indicated before, I believe that much of Priscilla’s public behaviour is put on, meaning she is hiding what type of person she actually is.
Emilia appears to have been training during the 1-year timeskip and used Subaru’s knowledge of weapons to create her ice arsenal and was more than putting up a good fight against Sirius. The battle noises she made were likely also inspired by the anime Subaru watched back when he was on Earth. On Sirius, it seems she hates that Petelgeuse only pays attention to Satella, which is why she remarked in disgust about Emilia’s features since Emilia’s appearance seems pretty much identical to Satella’s, and that tracks with how she was calling Emilia a homewrecker since she fancies herself being Petelgeuse’s wife even though Petelgeuse is unwillingly to give the time of day to anyone aside from Satella. When Sirius was saying Petelgeuse gave it to her, but you’re taking it from me, she was most likely referring to her wrath given Emilia was talking about being angry, which resulted in Sirius talking about how wrath belongs to her. I’d wager that the reason Sirius believes that Petelgeuse gave her wrath is ’cause his devotion to Satella infuriated her to no end or ’cause Petelgeuse found the Wrath Witch Factor and gave it to Sirius when she used to serve in the Sloth camp, leading to her becoming the Sin Archbishop of Wrath. Her marriage with Petelgeuse is probably all in her head due to whatever limited shared experiences they had together.
After Sirius played dirty by using Tina as a hostage, she defeated Emilia and nearly killed her if not for Regulus Corneas, the Sin Archbishop of Greed, taking Emilia into his arms. He had appeared previously in Season 2 and seemed to be able to undo all damage to him as well as have insane immunity to most direct damage, so he should be a serious threat and a major problem given he intends to make Emilia his 79th wife. And as I have said before, Re:Zero has no filler, so it’s likely that there is a reason he already has 78 wives aside from it being pure greed.