Tag: Emilia

Re:Zero Episode 70 (Season 4 Episode) Analysis + Important Details

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This episode is huge with its lore implications if I’m interpreting the scenes correctly. The episode opens with Subaru being denigrated by Petelgeuse and Regulus in the dark world that we’ve seen Satella/the Witch of Envy in before, such as when Subaru remembered having his heart squeezed and the isolation of that dark world when Puck used Shamak, in the White Whale fight when Subaru was pulled into the dark world so that Satella/the Witch of Envy could say that she loves him, and during the moment when Subaru intended to reveal Return by Death to get Petelgeuse to give up on possessing his body in which Petelgeuse was also pulled into the dark world but rejected by Satella. Given when Subaru tries to reveal Return by Death, the stench of Satella intensifies much like after he has looped back, this suggests that the dark world is a pocket dimension located within the vicinity of Subaru’s soul. This would make both Sirius and Emilia sensing Petelgeuse when Subaru uses Invisible Providence make sense, and it’s ’cause they sense Petelgeuse from within the dark world, and Sirius mistakenly believed that Subaru and Petelgeuse’s souls merged (I had mistakenly taken Sirius’s side last year in a blog post and failed to account for everything that came before that when I believe I’d been on the mark before that) when it was the case that Petelgeuse’s soul is just in close proximity to Subaru’s, which shows that Subaru’s body was constructed with a pocket dimension within the vicinity of his soul, which is not the case for any ordinary human, and that’s probably also the case for Al.

As for why this needs to be the case. I see no reason for a random Joe to have a pocket dimension within the container of their soul. This is Re:Zero, where there are logical reasons for events happening, not random isekai slop where there’s no rhyme or reason for the events happening, so it makes me doubtful that this sort of thing would happen for some random person in Re:Zero’s world. Need I point out that the whole point of Re:Zero was to summon Subaru, not an ordinary person? Authorities from the Witch Factors of the Seven Deadly Sins tend to make you batshit insane if what we’ve seen of the Sin Archbishops is representative of what happens, while Subaru still desperately clings to his humanity with all his being while having multiple of them. That doesn’t seem normal and actually extraordinary to me, to the point of being more than just human.

Now for something really juicy. For years, I’ve wondered why Subaru has recoil from using Invisible Providence offensively, which we’ve seen when he punched Garfiel in Season 2, when he hit Regulus in Season 3, when he crushed Regulus’s heart when it was attached to Emilia’s in Season 3, when Subaru punched Ram and sent her flying given he was sweating hard, breathing heavily, almost kind of slurring his words while advancing slowly to Ram to begin choking her, showing that he was pushing through the pain ’cause he had gone insane, and when he used his Authority against the faceless centaur mabeast to make it lose its footing. And now I believe I’ve arrived at an answer in that I believe that the regrets of the people in the dark world shape some aspect of Subaru’s Authorities.

Regulus’s regret is probably that his first wife laughed at him when she died when she had never showed emotion to him before that given he randomly went on without naming anyone about why you dared to laugh in your final moments in Episode 62, and that incident traumatized him, which is why he forced his future wives to agree to never smile or face death. Although Regulus is a an inhuman monster, he probably regretted that he never found out why his wife felt that way, so I believe Subaru’s Greed Authority will allow him to feel what others are feeling so that Subaru can understand and build better relationships with others. This is backed by Regulus stating in Episode 70 that Subaru violated his rights as an unselfish man who desires nothing but to settle for a tiny bit of simple, ordinary happiness, which shows that Regulus most likely just wanted a wife who loved him even though he killed everyone his first wife knew, which is why she never showed emotion and wouldn’t smile or laugh no matter what he did with him coping by telling himself he never needed any of his wives to laugh since it makes their faces uglier during the scene Reinhard had launched him into the sky.

If you’ve seen my Capella character analysis, I believe Capella’s regret is sleeping around so much and not getting to know the one she truly thought she could love, resulting in him treating her like a piece of meat like everybody else. To refresh yourself on that analysis, read this post: https://thoroughwatch.org/?p=44

Suffice to say, I think when Subaru defeats Capella, his Authority might be one that helps him and others around him get to know people they are attracted to rather than rushing toward intimacy. I don’t know what form that Authority will take, but I believe the effect I described will be close to what his Lust Authority will be used for after Capella is no longer of this earth.

I wonder what Sirius’s regret would be. My theory is that Sirius is the combination of Fortuna and a lesser spirit that matured during the Elior Forest attack that was in awe of Petelgeuse and Fortuna’s love for each other, and Sirius came into being when the spirit merged with Fortuna’s soul after Fortuna died, so if I’m right about Subaru’s Authorities being influenced by the regrets of those in the dark world, would it be Sirius’s regret that shapes Subaru’s Authority, or would it be Fortuna’s? I lean toward it being Sirius’s regret that would shape Subaru’s Wrath Authority since I believe Sirius is distinct from Fortuna. I remember in Season 3 during the fight against Priscilla, Sirius’s idea of love was everybody feeling the same thing, and that may have been born from when she was a lesser spirit who felt the intense emotions of Petelgeuse and Fortuna’s love for each other, and it may have misunderstood love as people feeling the same emotion for each other rather than grasping what love actually is.

I don’t know if Priscilla telling Sirius that real love is tolerantly accepting the differences of others would really be Sirius’s regret, but it could be possible if Sirius took it to heart given she seemed inspired by Liliana’s singing and started singing herself in a crude way, and she said that she’d try to drag Petelgeuse out of Subaru, so maybe she’s not all for making everyone feel the same emotion anymore if she wants Petelgeuse’s individuality to emerge from what she believes is Subaru’s and Petelgeuse’s souls amalgamating, so Sirius’s effect on Subaru’s Wrath Authority after Sirius gets killed one day may be an Authority that helps people shine by focusing on their own strengths instead of being worried about what areas they lack compared to others.

I surmise that if Subaru’s Authorities are indeed being shaped by those in the dark world, it’s to prevent Subaru from becoming a conceited person like previous Heroes of the story, forcing him to rely on others, even those he detested and defeated, which would be a great departure from the conceited and overpowered Heroes I believe came before him.

Back to the show, Subaru wakes up and wonders if he’s Returned by Death, which on the surface doesn’t really make the most sense given he wasn’t in the carriage before at his previous savepoint, and he passed out out after being saved by Shaula. But given the reason he believed this must be explainable, I’m thinking Subaru always spends some time in the dark world after dying before his soul loops back, and he just forgets everything about his time in the dark world although he subconsciously understands that he was there, and that’s why Subaru thought that he had Returned by Death, ’cause he subconsciously realized he was at the dark world deep down, meaning the Freud content from the previous episode may have come in handy. In the anime, Subaru hasn’t been to the dark world outside of after his body experiencing death since Season 1, so it’s been over a year since it’s last happened, making him thinking he Returned by Death the most plausible scenario to him given he’d just woken up and wasn’t thinking straight.

Subaru’s on Emilia’s lap, and that was intentional from Emilia given Beatrice said that Emilia gave up two nights of sleep for him, meaning Mr. Subaru was lying on Emilia’s lap a lot of the time, and he probably counts his lucky stars that that was the case. Subaru then exits the carriage and is told that they’re inside the Pleiades Watchtower. Shaula rushed to Subaru since he’s apparently her master, and she locks him in an extremely tight embrace that hurts him given how powerful she is, being distressed that her master doesn’t remember her, his student, and when Emilia wakes up and sees what’s happening, she gives Subaru a kick on the back rather than helping him out as he requested, showing her jealousy.

The whole group is surprised given Shaula barely said a word to any of them and is now clinging on to him for dear life and being very affectionate. Apparently, Shaula had been instructed by her master to never say more than she needs to no matter who asks her anything, and Subaru then tells her it’s okay to talk to the others given he knows Shaula believes him to be her master. Shaula then reveals when prompted that she’s not the Sage. Foxidna then throws Subaru three coins with her saying that the holy gold coin (the world’s word for platinum?) depicts the Divine Dragon, the gold coin depicts the first Sword Saint, and the silver one depicts the Sage, and of course the group remarks that it looks nothing like Subaru, prompting Shaula to say that she didn’t recognize Subaru by his looks but by his foul scent, showing that she can smell witch miasma. And Shaula knows the phrase, “No problem”, showing her master was someone who was originally from Earth. Shaula reveals that Reid was the first Sword Saint, calling him a stick swinger, and that Volcanica the sarcastic is the Divine Dragon. She hadn’t even realized just how much time had passed given Reid had passed long ago, showing Shaula isn’t an ordinary human given she doesn’t age and can smell Witch miasma. After Shaula insists that the group should know who the one she believes is her master, Ram said that her master hit her head on a chamber pot and forgot many things, leading to Shaula replying with “Again” to Subaru, showing that something is up here, revealing that her master is Flügel the Wise Man, the real Sage, the one who planted what was known as Flügel’s tree, the same tree the White Whale expedition force downed to trap the White Whale.

After that, it appears they group has been climbing the tower for a while, and Shaula is carrying Meili on her back with Meili complaining that it’s too bouncy of a ride, and Shaula says that a kid getting a free ride shouldn’t complain. Then Meili abruptly yanks Shaula’s ponytail, which is apparently a scorpion tail, not actual hair, and that fits the name Shaula given the name refers to a scorpion’s tail. When they arrive at the entrance, Beatrice says that Patrasche and Rem are a whole floor above this one, prompting Subaru to wonder aloud how they got Patrasche up that high, and Shaula revealed that she did it easily, which reinforces her incredible strength. I’m thinking the shot of Shaula carrying Patrasche may be an allusion. The most famous Patrasche is a dog from A Dog of Flanders, a TV series depicting a story of a boy and his dog in a village called Flanders within Belgium. Subaru’s ringtone in the White Whale fight was from A Dog of Flanders, clearing showing that he named Patrasche after the dog. The root of the name Patrasche is from Peter, derived from the Greek word, Petros, which means “stone”, with the author of A Dog of Flanders, likely adapting the name to invoke a sense of enduring strength, which may be why Tappei wrote Patrasche in one scene of Re:Zero Season 2 to fling Subaru with such force that he was launched back into a building after he had deliberately escaped the building to flee from a very powerful mabeast, showing that Patrasche was thinking mainly of Subaru in that moment and did what she could to protect him even at the cost of her own life. I may be wrong, but I believe the shot of Shaula carrying Patrasche (stone) is a subtle allusion to Atlas carrying a celestial sphere with Atlas carrying a terrestrial globe (stone) being a misconception from a certain period of time about Atlas carrying the world since what Atlas was really doing in Greek mythology was carrying the celestial sphere which consists of the night sky. What may back up this interpretation is that in Belgium there’s the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium that houses a famous 17th-century oil painting titled Atlas Holding up the Celestial Globe. Tappei could’ve chosen any name that meant “stone” or “rock” or had its root having either meaning, but he specifically chose Patrasche, possibly knowing of the association with Belgium and of that oil painting of Atlas, showing that Tappei does his research.

Subaru also reveals when they’re higher up the tower that he had previously heard that Flügel was the Sage and didn’t think his name would come up again, so I’m wondering where he heard it from given no one else in the group knew Flügel was the Sage. My best guess is that he heard the name Flügel from Liliana. As Liliana’s family was a travelling group of bards, the story of Flügel may have been passed down through the generations in her family. Even someone as long-lived as Beatrice didn’t know that Flügel was the Sage, so what was known about Flügel must’ve been lost due to time, possibly even ’cause of Echidna deliberately plotting to obscure knowledge of Flügel, much like how I am adamant she has been ensuring knowledge of past Witches of Sin has been lost so that the world blames everything on Satella, which is why Crusch and many others believed that mabeasts were created by Satella despite them actually having been created by Daphne, the Witch of Gluttony. As it started to hit Subaru about what it means to be climbing this tower, Shaula gives him 99 points out of 100, mostly ’cause of her affection for him, not ’cause of Subaru really realizing the gravity of what he’s doing since she says, revealing that the Pleiades Watchtower is a temporary name for a temporary role. To her Flügel being back means that it’ll return to its original role, which is that of the Pleiades Great Library where you can find everything you’ve ever wanted to know.

When the group reaches the floor where Patrasche and Rem are, Ram takes him into the dwelling of a spirit that has no will of its own that just heals the injuries and cures the sickness of those in it, and of course, Rem isn’t affected since she’s merely in suspended animation, and Subaru entrusts Ram with keeping Patrasche, who had been gravely injured, and Rem safe. He resolved himself to do what he needs to do and confirms sincerely that Ram looking over the two is more than enough, trusting that his not-really sister will do what she can.

Shaula then shares that this is floor basically functions as her den and is where she’s shooting intruders, referring to it as Hell’s snipe, another learned Earth phrase with the accompanying gun gestures along with it. Subaru finds out that Shaula was shooting people who approached the tower on her master’s orders all by her lonesome for four hundred years, so he ordered her to not harm him or his friends. And given Shaula is the Keeper of the Pleiades Watchtower, and the tower is named after a star cluster, and Subaru is the term for Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters, this may indicate that the decision to have Shaula be entrusted as its keeper was made by Subaru himself four hundred years ago, Shaula’s apparent master, who I’m not convinced is Flügel but moreso half of Flügel. Thus, much like how Zeus, the ruler of Olympus, forced Atlas to hold the heavens/night sky up, and how Flügel entrusted Shaula with the Pleiades Watchtower, it could be read as Shaula figuratively holding up the Seven Sisters in the night sky herself high up the tower similar to what Atlas did with the night sky in Greek mythology, a symbol of immense burden of responsibility, demonstrating the burden Shaula carried with her for four hundred years waiting for the return of her master, even to the point of forgetting that Reid was human. Maybe this is a pretty complex allusion, but I am adamant about its legitimacy nonetheless. Thus, this episode shows that Tappei had mapped out his story to this point with pinpoint accuracy having planned Patrasche to be used such in a way since at least Arc 3 of Season 1.

The third floor has a test that nobody in the group had been able to pass while Subaru had been sleeping. Touching the lone black monolith results in a very large amount of them emerging with the selection of the correct monolith being the test. A voice then emerges that states, “Hero slain by Shaula, touch upon his greatest splendor.” Touching the first monolith he touches ends the test, and touching it again reinitiates the test. The group in general has no idea what to do, and Meili then suggests that they ask Shaula, who doesn’t remember the names of people she killed outside of the first hundred, and she gives Subaru a thumbs up, also another thing not seen in this world. Subaru puts it out there that she killed Reid, which on the surface is strange given it was revealed earlier that Reid died of old age, but given the Sigmund Freud content last episode, maybe it’s not that strange, and Subaru used to know Reid. Given that Subaru almost certainly chose the path to the right in Episode 69 that led to Satella’s sealed body and that he thought he had Returned by Death due to subconsciously realizing he went to the dark world, Subaru may subconsciously realize that there’s a split-soul Reid in a vessel with everlasting youth that lies ahead on one of the higher floors since he knows what’s in this tower.

Of course, Subaru name-dropping Reid elicits pure terror in Shaula, resulting in her dropping Meili so that she could cower behind a monolith, and Meili referred to Subaru as “oni-san” as in “Big Brother” when he caught her, showing that Subaru has an easy time with making kids like him, meaning the Little Girl User is a fitting title for him. When Subaru asks if Shaula is that afraid of Reid, Shaula retreats to a monolith further away, and Julius follows that up by saying that Reid as the progenitor of Wilhelm and Reinhard must have been a man of great character, and he was crestfallen when Shaula mentioned that Reid was human scum who liked bullying those weaker than him, including herself. And Foxidna’s look of discomfort and gaze at Julius during that scene again shows again that she remembers Julius and was sad to see his reaction to learning that someone who may have been an idol to him was actually just a brat who never grew up.

It’s after Subaru heard about Reid’s strength that he gets some inspiration and realizes that the answer has to be something he’d know without asking Shaula since those who want to conquer the tower may have to defeat Shaula to enter it, so it has nothing to do with battle strength and somebody who Shaula has defeated in Re:Zero’s fantasy world, leading to him pondering of a different Shaula, and after he saw Shaula’s scorpion tail, that sealed the deal for him since Lambda Scorpii, formerly known as Shaula, is the second-brightest star in the constellation Scorpius and represents the stinger or raised tail of the scorpion.

Now for some more theorycrafting. Meili taking to Shaula so soon and basically clinging to Shaula seems surprising to me. Shaula also said that she has a scorpion tail, and maybe that was what she was using to snipe Subaru with in Episode 68. Given Ram saw a magic circle from Earth anime and manga, which shouldn’t exist in Re:Zero’s fantasy world, when she used her Clairvoyance, whatever Shaula was sniping with wasn’t a regular weapon powered by magic stones, which indicates she may be a being created by magic, specifically from someone who hailed from Earth.

Shaula having an affinity with Meili may also be why she didn’t create a huge scene out of Meili touching her tail and why Meili was clinging onto Shaula in the exam room when they no longer needed to climb further. Meili also never referred to Shaula by her action name, opting to call her “naked lady”, showing that Meili might see herself as Shaula’s superior, not requiring showing her the basic respect others get. A regular human even with eternal youth also wouldn’t be able to smell Subaru’s miasma. Thus, Shaula may either be a mabeast or a being similar in nature to a mabeast. And given her scorpion tail was key to Subaru gaining a hint he needed, this could be a part of the grand plan from four hundred years ago that I believe the heroes are enacting to bring about a free future. If Shaula is a mabeast, she had to have been created by Daphne, but if the scorpion tail hint for the test and Shaula’s outfit having Subaru’s tracksuit colours are pointing to anything, it’s also the case that she has a creator from Earth.

When Foxidna presses Subaru on how he figured out the answer, Subaru responds that it’s not a big deal and that it’s not their fault they couldn’t arrive at the solution since only someone from where he was from could know the answer since legends from his homeland talked about the hero, Orion, being killed by a scorpion, which resulted in Orion turning into stars, and that scorpion also becoming a star. When he had jumped up with Beatrice’s Murak before this, he had envisioned the constellations and saw both Rigel and Betelgeuse, the two stars of Orion that are said to shine the brightest, and Subaru chose Rigel since it shines consistently whereas Betelgeuse, which glows extra bright at times, and he took the test question with “touch upon his greatest splendor” as meaning he needed to choose the monolith representing the brightest star in Orion, and the Great Pleiades Library emerges. Subaru is of course dismayed by the enormous size of this library since as he said in Season 1, he’s the type to like to be rewarded for his efforts, indicating he doesn’t think working hard should be rewarded with even more work.

Now for my theory about how Subaru relates to Flügel. Of course it goes without saying that I believe that Re:Zero’s fantasy world is stuck in a cycle of being destroyed by the Witch of Envy and reconstructed as alluded to by Melakuera who talked about the Witch and the corresponding world imbalance and how he has faced world-ending crises countless times.

Subaru’s name is the Japanese term for Pleiades, which makes it fitting that the Seven Deadly Sins are used, and why since the brightest six of the stars are easily visible to the naked eye that there are six dead Witches of the Seven Deadly Sins in the story. The dullest star of the Seven Sisters is Asterope (Sterope I), which is part of the Sterope double star (Sterope I and Sterope II) in the Pleiades star cluster, and given the role Satella has in the story, it’s no surprise that Tappei made the Witch of Envy a separate personality from Satella, and had Satella sealed compared to dead like the others. And given Pandora and Hector exist, that’s 2 additional Witches of Sin outside of the main 7.

I am going somewhere with this beyond what I’ve usually posted. Michael Mästlin (anglicized as Maestlin) was documented to have mapped eleven stars in the Pleiades star cluster before the invention of the telescope in the 16th century. Michael Mästlin was German, much like how Flügel is a German name. Given Re:Zero’s fantasy world takes place in a medieval-ish setting, I theorize Tappei may have incorporated the number eleven in Re:Zero’s given, unless I’m mistaken, there shouldn’t be any telescopes in this world even though stars in the fantasy world aren’t like those from Earth, so Tappei may have decided to be Earth-accurate in making use of the number eleven. It is believed that 9 of these 11 were Alcyone (Eta Tauri), Atlas, (27 Tauri), Electra (17 Tauri), Maia (20 Tauri), Merope (23 Tauri), Taygeta (19 Tauri), Pleione (28 Tauri), Celaeno (16 Tauri), and Asterope (21 Tauri), which are known as the Seven Sisters and their parents.

I believe in the ancient past, an archetypal handsome, conceited, and overpowered hero typical of standard isekai slop in the moment in which he had to make the biggest decision of his life after the Seal in Elior Forest was opened, chose his lover, who had become the Witch of Envy, over the world, leading to the threat that came out of the Seal to be defeated, but the world was then destroyed following his choice to not strike down his lover, and when that hero made his choice, the final boss of the time activated his Authority to make the world extremely biased towards repeating the general path that archetypical hero followed on his journey. I don’t know the exact mechanism that the story can be biased toward following that path, but I nonetheless posit that it exists, and thousands or even millions of iterations of the story of the handsome, conceited and overpowered hero came and went as the world kept getting destroyed and reconstructed as the Hero of the story would have to fit that mold unless an intervention took place.

Thus, assuming the number eleven is important ’cause of Michael Mästlin, the Authority of the final boss in the ancient past was one that lets him/her control the story path to his/her liking, basically a super Authority if you will. I believe the ancient hero of the time also had a super Authority, although I won’t claim I know what it is assuming it’s real, and both the final boss and the protagonist having super Authorities would make the number eleven important.

Okay, after getting that out of the way, I still have more background content to cover, so bear with me. Episodes, 18, 25, and 38 show that Subaru has dormant memories of Satella as shown by how Puck indirectly revealed in Episode 18 the number of shadow hands Satella could generate to Subaru by asking Petelgeuse to summon 1,000 shadows if he truly wants to kill him, half of what Satella could (2,000), how Subaru used a number associated with Satella (2,000) to indicate his appreciation for Emilia in Episode 25 when he said that if Emilia named ten things she hated about herself he’d list 2,000 things he loves about her, which Emilia herself commenting on why he chose that number, and how Subaru suddenly had an upwelling of positive emotion for Satella in Episode 38 that led him to say that he’d save Satella after she asked him to love himself and then some day come kill her, which shows that Subaru and Satella may have a past history together as lovers given just moments ago, Subaru had been calling her an unfathomable monster he could never hope to understand, showing they must’ve had a very positive relationship in the past.

Al, Priscilla’s knight, in Season 3 also referred to Beatrice as Beako much like Subaru does, and I don’t believe that this means that Subaru and Al are the same person. However, I do believe that he and Subaru both originally came from the same soul. As I have said before, I have been researching the names of Re:Zero characters since Episode 22, A Flash Of Sloth, since that title could’ve referred to multiple things in that episode, and what may be relevant is that Subaru’s dad is named Kenichi, which means ‘wise man’. Subaru said in Episode 16 that Flügel’s Tree was planted by a wise man centuries ago, and while this wouldn’t mean something in a different show, its presence in a show with Re:Zero’s long-term planning suggests that Kenichi himself might be Flügel, and given Shaula referred to her master as Flugel the Wise Man, it’d be very fitting if Kenichi were him. Also of note is that Satella developed a separate personality in the Witch of Envy, who can barely talk, and the vocabulary we’ve seen from her so far is limited to “Love you” and “Love me”, and Subaru directly referred to her as the Witch of Envy in that Season 2 episode whereas when we saw Satella in Episode 38, the dead Witches of Sin were calling her Satella, which makes sense given Satella can speak in full sentences. Thus, Satella’s lover four hundred years ago may have also developed a split personality, who was Subaru, and that’s how Subaru can have a different appearance four hundred years ago given Shaula said that she recognized the current Subaru as her master by his scent, not anything else given she recognized the one depicted on the coin as her master, who didn’t look anything like Subaru.

Flügel itself means wing and can also be a nickname for someone with conspicuous sleeves at a time of dress regulations, so what this points to is that Flügel is a person not from Re:zero’s fantasy world who somehow came to be there given the nickname is for someone who dresses strangely, and this suggests that Flügel is from Earth. Perhaps Kenichi literally is Flügel, and it would make sense for Flügel to be Kenichi since I stress that Shaula didn’t recognize Subaru by his looks, which shows Subaru canonically had a different body four hundred years ago.

Satella most likely summoned the current Subaru to Re:zero’s fantasy world, but how did Kenichi get there if he is Flügel? Well, wings are symbolic of power, speed, and limitless freedom of motion, and maybe that’ss how Kenichi, if he is indeed Flügel, managed to make his way back to Earth after being in Re:zero’s fantasy world. Perhaps Kenichi has the power to freely travel between the two worlds because he has a limitless freedom of motion, and that would be how he ended up in Re:zero’s fantasy world in the first place. Given Kenichi is so badass and handsome and ripped as hell, he could’ve fit the mold of the handsome, conceited, and overpowered Hero of the story with the power to freely travel between worlds being his super Authority, and he likely gave himself the name Flügel when he arrived in Re:zero’s fantasy world to help himself fit into that world.

As for how Kenichi could split his soul, he likely couldn’t when he was the the Hero of the story of the fantasy world as his soul may have been indivisible since the story required for the Hero to make it to the end and repeat the cycle since dying ’cause his soul was eradicated wouldn’t be permitted as one of the parameters of the story path requires him to make it to the end to bring about the next cycle, meaning he couldn’t split Subaru from himself then, but after returning to Earth and losing his Hero designation, he should freely be able to do that using whatever tool Echidna used to cut her soul off as part of her immortality experiment since he wouldn’t have that privilege he had as he lost his Hero designation. Satella and this group of characters basically hijacked the path of the story in an attempt to save the world. The reason Kenichi couldn’t kill Satella himself was that he would always have a second personality that arose who couldn’t bear to kill Satella since his entire world was Satella, which is why he had to defer the task to someone else. Thus, Subaru being the protagonist of Re:Zero is to make up for him being why Satella couldn’t be killed in the past, making it a true redemption story unlike so many other stories billed as redemption stories when the characters don’t even have to address their character flaws, and thus, Subaru may be one half of Flügel, making Naoko telling Subaru to be half as cool as his dad in the first Sanctuary Trial potential foreshadowing of the situation four hundred years ago. Thus Flügel, the being I believe to be Kenichi and Subaru from four hundred years ago, may have been Shaula’s other creator who came from Earth.

Also of note regarding Michael Mästlin is that he was the first person to publish an account of Earthshine, the illumination of the moon by sunlight reflected from Earth. Given one of the kanji for Natsuki in Natsuki Subaru and Kenichi means “moon”, it could mean that Subaru and Kenichi are both associated with the Moon and that the Earth will always reflect on their fates and stories. Another name for Earthshine is The Da Vinci Glow, and there conveniently is the Da Vinci Crater on the Moon. And historically, Earthshine was referred to as “The old Moon in the new Moon’s arms”, and it may be an Easter egg on why Tappei has possibly set up Subaru inheriting the torch of saving the world from Kenichi.

Given we know Echidna succeeded in creating a soul clone of herself with how Echidna spoke in her own voice in Ryuzu Shima’s body in Episode 49 and how Foxidna herself is almost certainly a soul cone of Echidna’s given Re:Zero Break Time Season 4 Episode 3 had Foxidna calling Beatrice a kindred soul, which could indicate that they’re not just similar in nature but also similar in origin, then it wouldn’t be a surprise if Kenichi, if he is Flügel as I speculate, also did that as well, and Subaru and Al were both split off from Kenichi’s soul, and Kenichi made his sons his soul clones with that explaining why Al and Subaru both call Beatrice ‘Beako’, not ’cause they are the same person but because they were originally from the same soul. It’d also explain why Subaru has dormant memories of Satella despite it not being possible for him to have lived at that time under normal circumstances and why Al also likes being rewarded for his efforts much like Subaru does, all of which shows that Al isn’t Subaru but that his origins are likely similar, and that something is up with Subaru and Al that doesn’t involve time travel or straight up reincarnation, so Al and Subaru may be homunculi or artificial humans who were split off from Kenichi’s soul.

I believe Subaru, and previously Al, is being put through the wringer to fulfill the grand plan I believe the heroes from four hundred years ago implemented, which included Satella, Echidna, and probably Flügel, to save the world from being stuck in a cycle of being destroyed by the Witch of Envy and reconstructed as hinted by Melakuera in the Frozen Bond OVA due to the actions of an archetypal handsome, conceited, and overpowered Hero, and Satella destroying half the world four hundred years ago perhaps being a deliberate intervention that was needed to allow the heroes of that era to deviate from the archetypal story path to pave way for first Al and then Subaru with Al’s creation being a trial run in making the perfect Hero with Al’s failure being a necessary lesson for Subaru in the future and also ’cause Al’s future knowledge will be important in the future. I believe both Subaru and Al may be missing the super Authority that previous Heroes of the story had, in part to keep them honest unlike those that came before them although I don’t rule out that the super Authority is suppressed or sealed rather than being completely missing, meaning it could emerge later.

Why I say Al’s creation may have been a trial-run Hero is that he appeared to be the type of person Roswaal wanted Subaru to be. In Season 3, Al wanted Emilia to be dependent on Subaru and stay out of trouble instead of being her own person with her own contributions, which is exactly how Roswaal intended for things to go with Subaru with Subaru completing all three of the Sanctuary Trials and making Emilia dependent on him for the rest of his life. Al not having his gate shattered, which is why he can use the magic he does, may show that he likely didn’t save Beatrice when he was the Hero of the story and never entered into a contract with her. However, he may have acquired Beatrice’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom when he was the Hero, and that’s how he was able to conveniently time the opening of the Watergate in Season 3 when he did, conveniently kill the rest of Priestella’s Council of Ten, and conveniently wake up Beatrice when he did, and that’d be ’cause he was acting upon advice from Echidna.

I don’t believe that Roswaal’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom truly did the tell the future as if it did, the omission of Otto simply wouldn’t happen. What that shows is that the source of the knowledge didn’t intend for Roswaal to be victorious over Subaru. For those of you who think Echidna was serious about Subaru accepting her contract, consider the following content from Season 2 from my blog post I posted this year: https://thoroughwatch.org/?p=223

Also of note is that in Re:Zero Break Time Season 4 Episode 4, Subaru was hugging Ram tight when they were both asleep. He must’ve been very worried for her given in Episode 69 they were both in poor shape and saved by a mystery person who they didn’t know was friend or foe, so it just shows how much Subaru cares for Ram. Ram being so embarrassed about that was hilarious. And here’s the link to it: Re:Zero, Break Time 70 – English Translated

Re:Zero Episode 68 (Season 4 Episode 2) Analysis + Important Details

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There’s less to talk about regarding just this episode itself compared to Episode 67, but I still have some big things I want to emphasize here, so this will still be a long write-up since I’ll be highlighting how past content may apply heavily to the content of Season 4. The first of which is that names are very important in Re:Zero, which is why I have kept tabs on the names of Re:Zero characters since Episode 22 from Season 1, “A Flash Of Sloth”, since it could’ve referred to multiple things in the episode.

Based on Sin Archbishops having star names (Regulus’s name was a big plot point in Season 3) and Subaru revealing he was named after a star cluster in Memory Snow, it’s clear stellar names have significant importance in Re:Zero. Subaru is the Japanese term for “Pleiades”, a star cluster referred to as the Seven Sisters, the reason why the Seven Deadly Sins are a plot point, with six of the brightest stars in the Pleiades being visible to the naked eye under average conditions being why are there six dead Witches of Sin. Given Aldebaran means “follower of Pleiades”, this begs the question of why Al seemingly arrived in the world sooner than Subaru did given his name suggests he should’ve came after Subaru.

Thus, I theorize that Subaru was in suspended animation, the state Rem currently is in, within Flugel’s tree for hundreds of years, and that’s how Al seemingly arrived in the world sooner than Subaru did despite his name being follower of Pleiades, which should indicate that Subaru was summoned before Al was. This would be why I propose we see Flugel’s tree slowly grow from a sapling into a world tree before transitioning to the shot of Subaru since Subaru’s whereabouts were a mystery of sorts based on the connection between Al’s name and Subaru’s. And this is hardly a novel idea as other animanga have used the plot element of a person or multiple people being either in suspended animation or at least not aging inside a special tree.

Also of note is that in the OP, Subaru’s depicted as a hunk of flesh in clothes before his skin slowly surfaces when there were back-to-back shots of Echidna, Anastasia, Beatrice, and Subaru. This is very peculiar, and two things I can think of is that Subaru is either a homunculus or at least an artificial human, and both of the things I just mentioned merits raising the point about whether he was always a homunculus or artificial human or became one after being summoned, but now it’s time for a detour to remind readers of a previous theory of mine as my previous speculation actually supports Subaru being a homunculus or artificial human.

Al, Priscilla’s knight, in Season 3 also referred to Beatrice as Beako much like Subaru does, and I don’t believe that this means that Subaru and Al are the same person. However, I do believe that he and Subaru both originally came from the same soul. As I have said before, I have been researching the names of Re:Zero characters since Episode 22, and what’s very relevant is that Subaru’s dad is named Kenichi, which means ‘wise man’. Subaru said in Episode 16 that Flugel’s Tree was planted by a wise man centuries ago, and while this wouldn’t mean something in a different show, its presence in a show with Re:Zero’s long-term planning suggests that Kenichi himself might be Flugel. As for the time period in which Flugel existed, Petelgeuse apologized to Flugel-sama in Episode 43 for taking in the Sloth Witch Factor, which shows that Flugel was possibly from the same time period Satella was from since the sama honourific suggests Flugel was deeply respected by Petelgeuse. Liliana also knew of Flugel when she was in a travelling band with her parents, so it’s clear that whoever Flugel is he’s important to the lore of the series.

Episodes, 18, 25, and 38 show that Subaru has dormant memories of Satella as shown by how Puck indirectly revealed in Episode 18 the number of shadow hands Satella could generate to Subaru by asking Petelgeuse summon a thousand shadows if he truly wants to kill him, half of what Satella could (two thousand), how Subaru used a number associated with Satella (two thousand) to indicate his appreciation for Emilia in Episode 25 when he said that if Emilia named ten things she hated about herself he’d list two thousand things he loves about her, which Emilia herself commenting on why he chose that number, and how Subaru suddenly had an upwelling of positive emotion for Satella in Episode 38 that led him to say that he’d save Satella after she asked him to love himself and then some day come kill her, which shows that Subaru and Satella may have a past history together as lovers.

Given we know Echidna succeeded in creating a soul clone of herself with how Echidna spoke in her own voice in Ryuzu Shima’s body in Episode 49 and how Foxidna herself may also be a soul cone of Echidna’s, it wouldn’t be a surprise if Kenichi, if he is Flugel as I speculate, also did that as well, and Subaru and Al were both split off from Kenichi’s soul, and Kenichi made his sons his soul clones with that explaining why Al and Subaru both call Beatrice ‘Beako’, not ’cause they are the same person but because they were originally from the same soul. It’d also explain why Subaru has dormant memories of Satella despite it not being possible for him to have lived at that time, why Al also likes being rewarded for his efforts much like Subaru does, and why Al didn’t know about Capella’s powers, all of which shows that Al isn’t Subaru but that his origins are likely similar, and that something is up with Subaru and Al that doesn’t involve time travel or straight up reincarnation, so Al and Subaru may be homunculi or artificial humans who were split off from Kenichi’s soul.

I believe Subaru, and previously Al, is being put through the wringer to fulfill the grand plan I believe the heroes from four hundred years ago implemented, which included Satella, Echidna, and probably Flugel, to save the world from being stuck in a cycle of being destroyed by the Witch of Envy and reconstructed as hinted by Melakuera in the Frozen Bond OVA due to the actions of prototypical overpowered generic fantasy Heroes of the Story who encountered and lost to the Final Boss of the story every time due to the story path that began when an ancient hero in a moment of weakness of weakness, chose his lover over the world when the Seal in Elior Forest was opened, resulting in Re:Zero’s fantasy world being inevitably destroyed with the final boss of the time either activating an Authority or cursing the world to be extremely biased toward following the trend of that story path for all time with Satella destroying half the world perhaps being a deliberate intervention that was needed to allow the heroes of that era to deviate from the archetypal story path to pave way for Subaru.

As for how Kenichi could split his soul when he was the Hero of the story in Re:Zero’s fantasy world, I believe that would be impossible. Given Kenichi would have to follow the general story path I propose is happening, the Hero wouldn’t be allowed to split his soul while in Re:Zero’s fantasy world as the Hero of the story would be pushed to make it to the end to repeat the cycle, so dying by having his soul destroyed by an enemy or by himself, accidentally or intentionally, wouldn’t be allowed, so I propose that Kenichi at some point somehow returned to Earth to cut parts of his soul when he no longer had the designation as the Hero of the story, and eventually made Subaru and Aldebaran, who would eventually become his sons, Aldebaran after Subaru was whisked away. I think after all that I’ve finally explained why I believe Subaru being a homunculus or artificial human is line with my main theory.

As for the last part of the OP, it also has audio saying, “Let the magic stitch you back together”, when depicting Subaru’s sense of self seeming fraying with that out-of-character expression he had on his face and all the weird colours as he’s climbing stairs, so there may be something really stressful or traumatizing that causes some sort of identity crisis.

The first important detail is probably that Emilia still considers Subaru to be someone that needs to be protected, which is sort of a reversal of before in Arcs 1 and 2 when Subaru was doing all he could to protect Emilia regardless of whether she wanted him to, which is why she wanted Subaru stay behind in Arc 3 ’cause of his damaged gate, which eventually ended up being destroyed in Season 2 (Arc 4). Even after Arc 5 when Subaru and Emilia fought together against Regulus, Emilia still considers Subaru to be one of those who need protecting, much like Anastasia and Rem, to Subaru’s chagrin. Thus, since Emilia doesn’t consider Subaru an equal, I’m glad that they aren’t yet together especially since Subaru still has serious abandonment issues that flare up when Emilia doesn’t react to him well.

After that, the ground dragons react badly to Meili since those many years of handling mabeasts means she smells of them, which results in Patrasche and Joseph both picking on her with Joseph having Meili’s cape in his mouth. Julius settles things down by revealing that most ground dragons calm down if you stroke their necks. Roswaal then makes an entrance and tells Emilia and Subaru something offscreen that based on content from Seasons 1 and 2 implies that since Ram lost her horn she can’t replenish her mana, examples being after she expended a lot of mana in the mansion arc and after Roswaal nearly killed her in a fit of rage, both scenarios requiring for Roswaal to tend to her since as Beatrice revealed in Episode 1 one’s mana is that organism’s lifeforce itself, which is why the subs talked about regulation, and I’m guessing it should’ve been rendered as mana regulation.

When the group arrives at Mirula, which seems to be a town close to the Auguria Dunes, Subaru and Emilia meet a man at a bar who tells them that nobody has reached the Pleiades Watchtower in four hundred years and that the place is crawling with mabeasts and miasma, urging them to not attempt the trip. Despite hearing that, the pair aren’t at all perturbed, and before they depart, the man calls out to them and tells them about how locals have always seen birds headed toward the tower, so if they get lost they should follow a bird since it may show them the way. Subaru sees his metal leg, and it’s clear why the man told them what he did as he was genuinely concerned for them as Emilia had said earlier and just wants them to live life and be healthy.

Once they’re out there, Subaru prods Julius about his spirits, and Julius replies that the situation is the same as it was since his name was eaten in that his contracted spirits stay by his side but are perplexed by the situation since they do not remember him. The contract he made with them is still intact, but he cannot use them in battle, probably until his name is recovered from Roy Alphard should that be possible. Thus, Julius shares in that moment that he’s weaker in combat now although Subaru’s reaction proves that he’s not great at keeping secrets, which Julius already knew from spending more and more time with him. And of course, Subaru banters with Julius in a somewhat sour way when he says he doesn’t want to have the title of the one who understands him the most in the world after Julius put that out there, showing that Julius considers Subaru, just like in the previous episode, a source of strength since Subaru’s the lone person proving that he exists.

Then the sand time arrives, and it’s just a huge sandstorm with the group continually headed toward the tower yet making no progress whatsoever. Subaru is wearing something over his nose and mouth to pretend him from breathing in the sand, and Anastasia tells Subaru after he opens the window of the carriage that she will keep her promise since they’re in the same boat here, and Subaru obviously is pretty close to Beatrice given he shared that it’s Foxidna rather than Anastasia operating right now in that body even though he said that he didn’t want to tell the others and cause a stir when they least needed it, but it also reinforced Julius’s earlier point that Subaru’s bad at keeping secrets. Subaru then goads Meili into showing that she has been keeping the mabeasts from acting up by commanding a gigantic sandworm into nearly attacking them before harmlessly sinking back into the sand since he didn’t realize that Meili could command mabeasts with her mind, and that’s a very powerful skill.

Finally, Foxidna chimes in that it’s clear that they might be going in circles ’cause the space here is warped with the sand here not connecting to the Pleiades Watchtower, which she calls a distortion, clearing showing Foxidna has at least some of Echidna’s knowledge on magic, and she says that the sand time when the wind picks up is the recoil from space twisting and returning to normal, meaning that the periods between the sand times are when the distortion is weakening, and that’s when they can find the real path to the tower with the one best suited to the job being Ram since she can use her Clairvoyance, which was revealed in Season 1, to guide them to the right path by tracking the mabeasts’ vision. Mabeasts that are still active obviously came from where the real tower is since Meili has already tamed the ones in their vicinity, but Ram is clearly struggling, and then Foxidna remarks that she saw a bird feather, prompting Subaru to look out and tell Ram to see through the birds based on what the man from earlier told them, which is successful.

They then arrive to what seems like an endless field of flowers, which Meili states are the hideout of Oiran Bears, leading her to quickly tell everyone to can it since this is a mabeast that is difficult to control as most mabeasts she can settle down just with her mind, but with this species of mabeast since she needs to also make eye contact with it and command it with verbal gestures and repeating a tch sound to express disapproval. However, Joseph gets unsettled, resulting in them being chased by a horde of Oiran Bears, and once they’ve nearly made it past the flower field, Subaru gets his head blasted straight to pieces by a light from the tower. Upon Returning by Death, Subaru has no idea what happened, and the same sequence happens again except Subaru tells the group they can’t run straight for the tower, leading to Subaru, Beatrice, and Ram being separated from the group. Then that same light is shot at Subaru again, only Patrasche knocks Subaru partially out of the way before being killed, and Beatrice seeing how hurt Subaru is, tells him with tears in her eyes and an expression of great sadness that he can’t die and leave her alone since before Season 2 all she had experienced time after time again was loss with losing Echidna, Roswaal, Ryuzu Meyer, Petelgeuse, and probably others given in Season 2 Beatrice remarked that Petelgeuse left her too, which was one of the reasons she was suicidal and needed to be persuaded by Subaru to leave the Forbidden Library, which was burning to the ground as part of Roswaal’s mansion, since she was waiting for a person who she thought might never come. Then that same light kills Beatrice before a final shot kills Subaru.

During the third loop of this scenario, Subaru, thinking back to Julius calming down Joseph by stroking his neck before they departed, decides to use his Invisible Providence to calm Joseph down so that he doesn’t make a ruckus, leading to the Oiran Bears attack not happening, and he thought back to Beatrice first, so his not wanting Beatrice to cry and be in despair may have given him the inspiration to dig deeper for a solution. He also put his hands over Beatrice’s mouth during that incident, likely ’cause Beatrice would feel the air current from the hand emerging and potentially get startled, so he couldn’t have her crying out in surprise. He then remarks about a hunch of his about a light from the tower, and the group takes him seriously with Ram pointing her Clairvoyance to the tower and seeing a living being looking at Subaru before shooting something at him, which took the combined efforts of Emilia and Julius to stop, and the light ended up being a needle supercharged by magic, probably yang magic since a lot of yin magic involves debuffs like Shamac, making something powered up like up most likely an application of yang magic. Ram then notes that another needle is coming, and Subaru and Beatrice use their combination technique E-M-T, most likely named after Emilia as in “Emilia, my Tenshi (as in angel)”, which nullifies all other magic from the field generated, which protects them from the needle, but E-M-T also resulted in the distortion in space coming undone, resulting in the group falling to who knows where, whether it be back to the disconnected sand or somewhere else entirely.

Now the rest of my post will be about names or tangentially related to them. I have to give Tappei props for coming with the name Oiran Bears. Oiran is a collective term for the highest-ranking courtesans in Japanese history. The highest-ranking oiran, the tayū, had the prestige of being able to refuse clients, and the kanji for oiran consist of two characters, 花, meaning “flower”, and 魁 meaning “leader”.

Thus, this is almost certainly why Oiran Bears hang out under what seems to be an endless field of flowers and why they are hard to control even for Meili, and this is why making moderate- to-loud noises makes oiran bears go berserk, making them the “leaders” among regular mabeasts in the difficulty to control them even for mabeast tamers.

Tappei has often shown that he carefully considers how he names characters, whether it be due to the star lore (Subaru is the Japanese term for Pleiades, which is also referred to as the Seven Sisters, which is why the seven deadly sins is an important part of the story), plot details (Otto refers to attar, which is a fragrant essential oil, and Otto bought a bunch of oil out of season that he desperately needed to sell), personality traits (Petra means ‘stone’, and she is fearless considering she told the others to abandon her when Elsa took hold of her), mabeast species traits (Guiltylowe has “lowe” in it referring to lion, which is why a Guiltylowe has the head of a lion), character roles (Wilhelm means “resolute protector”, and he did devote his life to ensuring Theresia fought as little as possible), character powers (Betelgeuse means Orion’s hand, which is why his power is Unseen Hand), and names in relation to others’ names (Frederica and Garfiel and Fred and Rafiel to show that Liara subconsciously remembers Garfiel and Frederia), so I’m sure this is another instance of that. Well done, Tappei, my man, in giving that species of mabeast an intriguing name that fits the traits it was given.

As for the name of the Sage, Shaula, it’s a name of Arabic origin translating as the raised tail of a scorpion. It’s also a star representing the stinger of the Scorpius constellation, which is likely how Shaula came to have that meaning. Let’s see whether this is referring to a power, lore, or something else. Tappei surely has cooked up something good for Shaula.

As a reminder from Seasons 2 and 3, Baten Kaitos meaning “belly of the whale”, Alphard meaning “the backbone of the serpent, and Arneb meaning “hare”, likely meant that each of them could control one of the Three Great Mabeasts, which is why Lye referred to the White Whale as our pet since the Sin Archbishops of Gluttony speak as if they are a unit. I’d hazard a guess that Meili cannot control any of the Three Great Mabeasts.

And since Subaru itself is the word for Pleiades in Japanese, the Pleaides Watchtower bearing his name is interesting. We’ll see what’s in store. It could indicate that the Pleiades Watchtower itself was planned to be built with Subaru’s arrival hundreds of years later in mind, meaning it may have been part of the plan the heroes from four hundred years ago I propose made to bring the world to a free future as alluded to Melakuera talking about the world imbalance and the Witch as well as him facing world ending crises countless times, suggesting that the world is stuck in a cycle of being destroyed by the Witch of Envy and reconstructed with Subaru being the one they hope will break this cycle.

Re:Zero Episode 67 (Season 4 Episode 1) – Analysis + Important Details + Aside on Crunchyroll’s Horrible Work

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For this season, I will not be using the same approach I did with Season 3 in that my posts will be less recap and more interpretation of the scenes along with my heavy focus on theorycrafting as all the recap itself burned me out as I kept taking the same approach with multiple series.

Before I go into that, I deride the current state of Crunchyroll, which based on the translated words at multiple points in this episode, point to machine translation with stuff that makes no sense in the context of what is currently happening or what came before. Muse Asia, which is available in southeast Asia and to those who use VPNs with hosts in that region, is known for having much better translations of Re:Zero than Crunchyroll, and I suspect a higher-up at Crunchyroll knew this, which is why Crunchyroll used its financial and legal might to force Muse Asia to release Re:Zero Season 4 two weeks behind its simulcast, which is a big departure compared to the past. It’s disgusting that instead of trying to do a better job, Crunchyroll, or maybe should I name Sony instead since it owns Crunchyroll, decided to kneecap a competitor that was putting out a far superior product compared to what it was churning out with machine translation and robbed viewers of being able to watch an accurate translation in a timely fashion.

Episode 67 starts out somber with Subaru feeling a mixture of pain and anxiety over him being the only one to remember Julius although Julius is clearly happy that Subaru took this subject as far as he could. Subaru remarks that Julius only had his name eaten, which makes the people in the world forget you, as opposed to having only having your memories eaten, which happened to Crusch, and having both eaten, which makes it so that you functionally never existed in the world even though your body still exists although in suspended animation, with the source of that info being Puck when he spoke with Subaru early in Season 2.

After Julius said that he considered Reinhard and Felix friends following Reinhard saying that they were acquaintances or perhaps more than that, Anastasia according to Crunchyroll says, “Just two friends? I don’t think that’s all there is to it” when the conservation was about the trio of Reinhard, Felix, and Julius, showing a complete failure to understand the conversation, which suggests machine translation that can’t understand context. Using Google Translate, I see that “Tada no tari no tomodachi?” rendered as “Just casual friends?” so I’m assuming a proper translation would be “No more than mere friends?” rather than “just two friends”, which is very wrong based on the context. Subaru notably raised his eyebrows at this point since her suggesting there’s more to it than that shows that Anastasia remembers who Julius is unlike all the others aside from Subaru, which clearly demonstrates that she’s not the genuine article. If you recall from Season 3, Al clearly stated that the one in front of him cannot be Anastasia ’cause of her ability to use magic, and I speculated that either a shapeshifter had taken Anastasia’s place or someone/something had possessed Anastasia’s body.

Anastasia then suggests that even though they captured the Sin Archbishops (which is false since only Sirius, the Sin Archbishop of Wrath, was captured), they should visit Shaula the Sage, who is known as one of the three great heroes of the Dragonfriend Kingdom of Lugunica ’cause Sirius would be unlikely to tell the group what they need to know to either undo the damage to the victims of the Sin Archbishops of Gluttony and change back those who were transformed into different creatures by the Sin Archbishop of Lust. The Sage is supposedly the keeper of knowledge who foresees everything that will ever be, but I wonder how true that is since Echidna’s Tome of Wisdom apparently could see all of the past, the present, and possible futures of Re:Zero’s fantasy world based on Season 2, so it’s a question mark how accurate this info is. Shaula supposedly lives on her own at the Pleiades Watchtower located somewhere in the Auguria Dunes located in the easternmost edge of Lugunica, which was built to prevent invaders from reaching the sealed Witch of Envy, so now we know where Satella’s body is. Reinhard had set out in search of the Pleiades Watchtower two years ago when the Royal Family fell ill and was eventually wiped out, but a barrier prevented him from ever reaching it, similar to how there’s a barrier near the Sanctuary in Season 2 that made it hard for outsiders to find the correct path to get to the Sanctuary. He had been ordered to make this journey by the council, as in the Council of Wise Men, who are ruling in place of the king. He can’t take part since since he has to escort Felt and transport Sirius Romanee-Conti back to the Capital, and there’s probably no one better suited to bringing Sirius back since no one is a match for him in Lugunica.

After they make camp for the night, and everyone aside from Subaru and Anastasia are asleep, Subaru drops the fact that he knows it’s not really Anastasia speaking due to how coldly she talked about Ricardo, a close friend of hers who has a life-changing injury, with him saying something’s been off the whole time, a nod to early on in the episode when she gave a sign that she remembered Julius. Whoever’s in Anastasia’s body reveals that Priscilla also outed her, but surprisingly, she didn’t name Al, Priscilla’s knight for some reason, which I find suspect given the opportunity was 100% there. She reveals that her name is Echidna, identical to that of the Witch of Greed, and that she remembers nothing about herself aside from her name and that she’s an artificial spirit whose true form is the fox muffler that Anastasia wears. However, this artificial spirit speaking in an Echidna-like cadence suggests that she’s lying to an extent. Given Re:Zero has already used a character in the past speaking like that of another character in Season 2 in Roswaal to show that he had been traumatized due to his beatdown from Hector in Season 2, imitating his speech pattern ’cause to him Hector was the embodiment of power itself, it’s clear Tappei is willing to use speech patterns to imply relationships between characters. Now, I’ll be referring her to Foxidna from here on out on due to it being Subaru’s preferred name for her.

Where I’m going with this is that the number three is important in Re:Zero. The group who sealed Satella were revealed to be the Sword Saint of the time, the Dragon Lord, and Shaula the Sage, was a trio. The Pearlbaton siblings are triplets. There are three magic attribute pairs in fire and water, earth and wind, and yin and yang. There were the Three Great Mabeasts in the White Whale, the Great Rabbit, and the Black Serpent. The Sin Archbishops of Gluttony are a trio. Liara, Garfiel’s mom, has had children with three fathers since Frederica and Garfiel had different fathers as they’re half-siblings. To refresh one’s memory of previous seasons’ events, Puck called Beatrice his little sister in Season 1 and only in Season 2 did we find out that Beatrice is an artificial spirit made by Echidna. This makes Puck also an artificial spirit of Echidna’s if you’re able to connect the dots from past content. In the Frozen Bond OVA that came out in 2019, it was revealed that Puck had been ordered by a female speaker whose speech had been denoted by a special font to find Emilia, and he had a contract or oath with this female speaker wherein if he got too close to Emilia as in formed a contract with her, he would lose that which makes him himself. This special font was reused in Season 2 in one particular episode that showed that Echidna was the one who had given Puck the task of searching for Emilia and made him take up that contract/oath, and what it did was cause Puck to lose some of his memories. This is why Puck had no idea that Roswaal L. Mathers was the same Roswaal from four hundred years ago, only that he was body-snatching his descendants and why he allowed Roswaal to become Emilia’s sponsor at all, and only after Puck broke his contract with Emilia did he remark that Roswaal is speaking like someone he used to know very well and eventually remark that Roswaal will never be that devil/warlock, referring to Hector, ’cause he had finally recovered his memories. Also of note is that Echidna tasked both Puck and Beatrice with something in searching for Emilia and taking care of her Forbidden Library until she finds “that person”, so it’s established that Echidna has given her artificial spirits orders or suggestions for hazy reasons. Given Foxidna is familiar with Echidna’s speech pattern, she may very well be lying about knowing nothing about herself and at least remembers talking with Echidna four hundred years ago. Given this information, Puck, Beatrice, and Foxidna may be a trio of artificial spirits created by Echidna when one considers how often Tappei makes use of the number three, and since Foxidna had the opportunity to mention Al but didn’t, choosing only to mention Priscilla, the order or suggestion Echidna may have given her is to not say anything about Al with Subaru under any circumstance since she was about to bring up Al to Priscilla in Episode 59 only for Priscilla to answer what she had intended to ask before she said it. Echidna may have plans for Al that she needs Subaru to not know.

My next point will go back to the point I made at the start of the episode in that Foxidna remembers who Julius is. This is a very surprising development ’cause based on previous seasons, Subaru was the only person who remembered victims of Gluttony’s eating Authority, meaning this is breaking new ground. Given Echidna was the Witch of Greed in the past and was seeking immortality, and we know she had successfully created at least one soul clone since Tea Party Echidna spoke in Ryuzu Shima’s body in Episode 49, Foxidna might be another soul clone who was placed into a fox muffler as her body. This would make sense given Foxidna knows Echidna’s speech pattern, and Echidna may have worn the fox muffler that is Foxidna in the past, and that’d be how Foxidna learned how Echidna speaks. If that’s the case, what are the common denominators between Subaru and Echidna that could explain why Foxidna remembers who Julius is? What we know for know for sure is that both of them had Witch Factors, and people with Witch Factors and Witch cultists in general emit miasma, which we visibly saw in Episode 15 from Rem after Subaru looped and had retreated into a shell due to his being unable to bear how so many people died ’cause he wasn’t able to save them given Petelgeuse claimed that the love that hangs upon Subaru is equivalent to that of a Sin Archbishop, showing they emit something that is responsible for what Rem and Beatrice have described as a foul smell, and we know that Subaru can command Witch cultists due to his emitting a lot of miasma, and if Echidna split her soul into Foxidna, she may still have a piece of the Greed Witch Factor. In conclusion, I surmise it is either having at least one Witch Factor itself or emitting a high amount of miasma that allows for Subaru and Foxidna to remember Gluttony victims, and this makes me believe that all Witches of Sin, Sin Archbishops, and people with Witch Factors in general can remember Julius if they cared to even if this is just conjecture for now.

Furthermore, Foxidna says that she had Anastasia’s consent to take control of her body when danger presented itself and only this time was she unable to. I speculated last year with regards to Season 3 that Priscilla may have known what happened to Anastasia in Episode 59 when she Priscilla mused on the unseemly guilt, the vixen, Foxidna, placed on Julius, and it’s very likely ’cause Julius while out to battle the first time against the Witch Cult, he was unable to protect Anastasia, which is what led to her taking over, and Foxidna’s remark backs up my speculation. Foxidna made it seem like Julius doesn’t know about her to Subaru, but he almost certainly does. In Season 3 when the one who appeared to be Anastasia used yang magic, the magic came directly from her whereas when there was an actual metia as used by Beatrice and Felt, we saw the magic emanating from the metia, not Felt or Beatrice, so this should show that Anastasia was not using a metia. And given the White Dragon’s Scale, Kiritaka’s mercenary group, didn’t incur serious setbacks against Sirius aside from Kiritaka’s capture, perhaps Anastasia had a mishap somewhere outside their base since everyone was buying time for her escape. In a big city, there are many potential hazards, so it’s not just the Witch Cult or Demi-Beasts you should worry about. As for Julius showing no discomfort upon returning the first time, Julius has a reputation for being the most knightly of knights, the opposite of Arc 3 Subaru, the self-proclaimed knight, so I believe Julius could remain stoic if Anastasia had really been hurt due to him being away from her when others aren’t capable of that.

Foxidna also had a very interesting thing to say about what she’d do to return Anastasia’s body. She said that she’d make the choice that offers the highest probability of success, and that’s why she wants to visit the Sage, and if that’s the case, it backs up my theory that Tea Party Echidna deliberately steered Subaru into getting Emilia to do the Sanctuary Trials with her saying that even have after three days of trial and error, which imply that she changed up the trial to try to get Emilia to pass it, she was unable to break Emilia out of her shell, lied about her telling Beatrice to wait in the Forbidden Library for “that person” ’cause she was just curious who Beatrice would choose, which was an effort to sound as evil as possible so that Subaru would reject her contract that would involve him doing the Sanctuary Trials, and this is backed by Tea Party Echidna saying after Subaru rejected her contract that he didn’t him to think that she was the only evil one of the Witches of Sin, leading to her taking away Subaru’s qualification for entering the tomb, and this is important since Subaru was using his ability to enter the tomb as a crutch instead of speaking to Emilia and getting to know her, which viewers know to be true since the first thing he did after he composed himself was to try to go back into the tomb. Perhaps choosing the choice that offers the highest probability of success is actually a fundamental part of Echidna’s character, which would explain why she, as I surmise, enacted a grand plan with the heroes from four hundred years ago to bring the world to a good future. She may just say that all she wants is all the knowledge in the world, but the world continuing on instead of staying stuck in a cycle of being destroyed and reconstructed would be the best way to acquire more knowledge, so surely she took to the plan that would offer the highest chance of success. And there are signs that Foxidna may even have the Authority of Greed: Tome of Wisdom just like Tea Party Echidna did based on how she suggested to Subaru that taking Rem with him would be a good plan since he could say that he was the one to save her when she wakes up, which Subaru used a reason to take Rem with him on the journey to Ram when they meet later on in the episode, and Subaru’s notably reacted to that, showing that Foxidna’s words had a strong impact on him and that it dawned on him what a great idea it was in that moment. Foxidna may have shown that she’s just as manipulative as Tea Party Echidna and the original Echidna was. I suspect there is a very important plot reason why Rem has to be at Pleiades Watchtower, and it’s something we viewers won’t be able to see coming, but Foxidna knows why it must happen, and that’s the reason she planted the idea in Subaru’s head.

When they finally made it to Roswaal’s mansion the next day, there was yet another terrible translation by Crunchyroll when Subaru’s words were translated to “I hear the meeting with all the fakes went well.” As stated earlier in my write-up, the Council of Wise Men are currently ruling Lugunica in the absence of a king, meaning “caretakers” or “regents” would be a much better translation. “Fakes” in this scenario is gibberish that no human would come up with, showing that Re:Zero has an AI translator. This shows that just as Reinhard venturing out to try and reach the Pleiades Watchtower was done so by decree of the Council of Wise Men, Roswaal needed to meet with the Council of Wise Men to give Subaru’s group the okay to make the journey, likely ’cause of Satella’s sealed body being at the Pleiades Watchtower, meaning permission is necessary to ensure that the Council of Wise Men approves of their decision and doesn’t get squeamish at the thought of a large group travelling to where the Witch of Envy is sealed. Subaru reveals when they’ve arrived at the mansion that they are there for two reasons, to pick up Rem and Meili, and given that Meili blushed hard when she heard Subaru’s footsteps and that all the stuffed plushies there were made by Subaru since no one would know to make a plushie of a witch from fairytales from Earth given witches from Re:Zero’s fantasy world don’t look like that, this shows Meili has really taken to Subaru, making his title “The Little Girl User” very apt. Meili is only happy to go along since she doesn’t want to be cooped inside all day and going back to a familiar place where there are mabeasts she can control is fine with her even though she swears she isn’t like Beatrice and Petra, which is false given what we saw of her reaction to Subaru coming down to visit her.

In a later scene, Julius also shows some very uncharacteristic vulnerability, diverging from his reputation as the greatest of knights, in wondering which is more painful, being forgotten or forgetting someone else, ’cause he was struggling with being forgotten and not being able to remember his own kid brother. However, Subaru snaps him out of him by reminding him that he remembers how capable Julius due to his humiliation by Julius’s hand, and that immediately improved Julius’s mood, leading to him bantering about Subaru’s weakness and how Subaru is remarkable since he can bounce back from bad situations so easily, and they’ve come a long way since Julius talked smack about him and completely and utterly humiliated him.

After that, Subaru heads to Rem’s room, and Ram asks him why he’s willing to go far for Rem. He remarks that he wants to be the first thing Rem sees when she wakes up, much as Foxidna pushed him into thinking. He says that when you take emotion out of the equation it doesn’t matter who saves her, but he really wants to be the one to do it with all of his being, which elicits a genuine smile from Ram, showing just how much she appreciates Subaru for caring about her sister even though she herself has no memories of her. Given that Subaru is the one that got Roswaal, who Ram loves with all her heart, off his awful path of doing so much evil ’cause of his not-quite-Tome of Wisdom, and Ram attributes Rem’s feats in the mansion arc to Subaru due to her not remembering Rem, it’s very clear Subaru holds a special place in Ram’s heart even if it’s not the same feeling Rem had for Subaru but moreso akin to that of a honourary brother and genuine friend for remembering Rem and all that he’s done for Roswaal’s domain, and that smile from Ram just showed how far the relationship between her and Subaru had come, which I very much enjoyed since Ram is one of my favourite characters in the show. He then enters Rem’s room and shows how he is resolved to bring her back thinking he wasn’t able to get that across properly before, maybe ’cause he had no leads or anything of the sort, but Foxidna gave him the drive and hope he needed.

The last part of the episode shows Garfiel breaking down when his mother asks why he shows so much concern for them with him explaining away that he can tell that they’re kind of losing it, which Liara has no good comeback for, but she knows something is amiss when Garfiel suddenly looks like he wants to cry, and she holds him as if she were his real mother, which she is, as he bawls about missing his mom, and Rafiel and Fred both walk out of their rooms to see what the commotion was before Mimi guides them back. Once Garfiel is at the door and about to leave, Liara says goodbye to him and urges her young kids to as well, and only after he learns of Rafiel’s name and that Liara named both Rafiel and Fred that he gets the sense that somewhere deep down she remembers him and Frederica given the similarity in their names, which very much lifts his spirits, and given Garfiel in Season 2 had a notable arc on thinking that his mother abandoned him, that moment must’ve been very good for his self-esteem since although she may not have remembered him he was still in her heart in a way, which was good for closing a character arc from Season 2, showing that Tappei plans his story for the long haul.

As for the episode itself, I thought it was a great start to the season and had good emotional moments, nice lore drops, and a number of instances of potential foreshadowing, and this was just a setup episode itself, so I’m looking forward to this arc, which is supposed to be the favourite among the fandom although we’ll see whether White Fox delivers on that front, and if it does, whether it is all that it’s hyped up to be. If this season is a success, it’ll be in spite of Crunchyroll’s rancid translations.

A Re:Zero Theory: The Divine Dragon is on the side of multiple characters from 400 years ago, which includes Satella, Flugel, and Echidna

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We’ve seen repeatedly through Re:Zero that many characters are acting with future knowledge or at least what they think is future knowledge, such as Satella with her setting Subaru’s savepoints, especially in light of Episode 13’s savepoint, which had extremely intentional timing, Roswaal with his not-quite-Tome of Wisdom, Echidna with her real Tome of Wisdom given how she set up Puck perfectly to be Emilia’s protector all while having lost his memories so that he wouldn’t recognize Roswaal as being the one he knew 400 years ago, which was crucial to the story in many ways, Petelgeuse having been implied to have promised Flugel not to take in the Sloth Witch Factor only to break that promise to protect the love of his life and Emilia, paralleling how Echidna deterred Puck from entering a contract with Emilia until there was no other choice, and with Witch cultists and their Gospels. The central question is what is the purpose for all of these characters having the knowledge they do or think they do?

Why I believe some of these texts, such as Roswaal’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom and Witch cultists’ Gospels, only delude their holders into thinking they provide actual future knowledge is due to the end result of some of the actions taken in the story so far, current up until the end of Season 3. We know Roswaal’s goal was to resurrect his dear teacher, Echidna, but I question whether the not-quite-Tome of Wisdom really was supposed to help him achieve that given the absence of Otto from its pages as a true future-telling text shouldn’t have that problem and should be able to account for everyone in the world, meaning Otto was excluded ’cause the source of the knowledge intended for that to happen. We know the tea party Echidna still had her Authority: Tome of Wisdom given her Sanctuary trials could fully replicate the past and show glimpses of possible futures, showing it truly was an extremely powerful Authority that could read the history of the world, so the not-quite-Tome of Wisdom, if it really was based on the genuine article, shouldn’t have a problem with missing all the actions of a particular individual from its predictions, so that suggests Roswaal was basically strung along by a book to set up the story of Re:Zero with Subaru meeting Emilia and saving her and leading him down the path that he took to defeat Petelgeuse and sacrifice nobody in the Sanctuary Arc and allowing the tea party Echidna to revive herself given she spoke in Ryuzu Shima’s body in Episode 49. Thus, perhaps the source of the not-quite-Tome of Wisdom’s knowledge is Echidna herself with her Authority, and she just makes whatever she wants to appear in the text due to a connection to her mind with her Authority’s guidance. I’ll delve more into why this may be important after the next item on the agenda, which is the Witch Cult Gospels, the apparently defective copies of the not-quite-Tome of Wisdom..

I’ve always found the Witch Cult Gospels to be suspicious given how apparently no one can read them aside from the holder of an individual Gospel, which, on the surface, could be a good way of preventing any faction opposing the Witch Cult from learning about how the cult works, but based on what I observed of Season 3, I believe Gospels aren’t even intended to bring their holders to their desired future, much as is the case I proposed with the not-quite-Tome of Wisdom. I challenge you to think about a very important detail from Season 3 in that Regulus Corneas said in Episode 3 that Subaru should thank him for adhering to his Gospel when he only did heavy damage to Subaru’s leg and nothing else. If the Gospels are meant to bring their holders to their desired future, which in this case was Regulus making Emilia his wife, there shouldn’t be an order to limit casualties as that does nothing but play into Subaru’s hands. Since Subaru and the crowd was under the effect of Sirius’s Authority, everyone connected to Sirius took the same damage to their legs that Subaru received, forcing Beatrice to expend all her mana to heal everybody so that they wouldn’t be in critical condition, resulting in Beatrice ending up in a state of suspended animation similar to Rem. This suggests that Regulus Gospel’s main purpose in that scene was to put Beatrice in suspended animation so that Aldebaran would give her a healing crystal later, waking her up just in time to have Beatrice join the fight against Lye Batenkaitos close to the end of the arc. Of course I need not remind you of Capella’s retreat as ordained by her Gospel when she probably would’ve been able to kill one of Felix or whoever this Anastasia is before Reinhard arrived since Aldebaran is hardly some amazing fighter that can handle all the Demi-Beasts and Capella at the same time. Thus, Witch Cult Gospels likely aren’t future-telling texts either or defective for the matter but also texts connected to Echidna’s mind since the not-quite-Tome of Wisdom was their prototype, meaning they likely were made at least partially by the same materials, which may have been pieces of Echidna’s hair, fingernails or body fluids, which would be how the connection to Echidna’s mind I have proposed would be established.

I have long believed that multiple characters from 400 years ago, including Satella, Echidna, and Flugel, are pushing Subaru to end the cycle of the world being constantly destroyed and reconstructed, which was alluded to by Melakuera, who said that he faced world-ending crises countless times since the only way Melakuera’s words can actually be right is if in the world is constantly getting destroyed, and now I posit that the Divine Dragon is also one of the characters in on this plot. I have always found it suspicious that Subaru arrived in the world after Lugunica’s Royal Family had perished, setting up the perfect conditions for him to meet Emilia and for Reinhard discover that Felt was the final Royal Selection candidate, and the Divine Dragon and the other characters from 400 years ago may have planned out this scenario centuries ago. How this theory could be tested is if the Divine Dragon shows any hint of having future knowledge in the future, which would make such collusion between different characters possible and have a wide-reaching impact through Roswaal’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom and the Witch Cult Gospels for the last 400 years.

A Re:Zero Theory: Echidna is possibly lurking near the Emilia camp, and if not the Emilia camp, Roswaal himself due to a line in Emilia’s 3rd Sanctuary trial

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Emilia said in Episode 48, “Who is this? This should be Echidna’s grave…” ’cause she didn’t recognize the corpse, which was that of an older woman compared to the Echidna seen in the Sanctuary trials. Roswaal and Beatrice, however, recognized the corpse as their teacher/mother, showing that the Echidna in the Sanctuary trials and tea parties was not the same as the one Roswaal and Beatrice knew, showing that Echidna had previously cut off a piece of her soul when she was younger, which would explain the presence of the younger Echidna in the tea parties. Episode 50 confirmed this with a small animation of the older Echidna Roswaal and Beatrice knew whose face was closer to that of the corpse.

We know from Season 2 the Echidna from the tea parties had been able to place her soul into Ryuzu Shima, which is how Echidna spoke in her own voice after Emilia’s remark about saving the original Ryuzu Meyer got Echidna annoyed, which caused her to break her act momentarily, allowing for viewers to hear Echidna’s voice through Ryuzu Shima’s body, showing that Echidna’s immortality project had succeeded and that she created at least one soul clone, so it’s not out of the question that the Echidna Roswaal understood to be his teacher may also have been revived at one point. The Echidna Roswaal knew to be his teacher also may not have even been the original Echidna, but she is the one he long sought.

In Episode 48 of Re:Zero, one of the lines from the possible futures Emilia could face had Roswaal say, “I made the realization that I have not walked alone all this time. That is all.” For Roswaal, whose single goal that has kept him alive these past four hundred years is to bring back his teacher, it suggests that there’s an Echidna, not just any Echidna, but his original teacher, who is lurking near the Emilia camp, and if not the Emilia camp, then Roswaal himself, given he would never speak like that in reference to anyone else. What he spoke of suggests a physical closeness to Echidna that made him come upon a happy realization, and I wonder who in the cast could be her vessel or whether it’s someone not yet revealed.

A Re:Zero Theory: Two hidden mural birds from Re:Zero’s first key visual could point at how multiple forces are conspiring to save the world from its cycle of being destroyed and reconstructed

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2-Hidden-Mural-Birds

This is the first key visual for Re:Zero all the back in 2015, and I think it could highlight some important things. First, I’ve highlighted two depictions of things that are either birds or closely resemble them. Given this is Re:Zero, these two objects, which could very well be birds or were intended to be seen as birds, could be important to the plot. Of note is that two birds were also initially present right as the From Zero moment was about to begin at 17:22 of Episode 18 before tons of them emerged at the height of From Zero and also during Subaru’s speech in Episode 57 in Season 3 when they hung out where Emilia was held captive at 25:37 before flying over to the government office where Subaru had his speech at 25:45.

Here’s a link to the image of the birds in Episode 18:

From-Zero-Birds

Here’s the links to the images in Episode 57:

https://ibb.co/xK0sXz46

https://ibb.co/v4WgfzWQ

Birds were heavily featured even when Subaru was summoned to Re:Zero’s fantasy world:

image-2025-09-19-170608034

So there may have been an unknown force observing Subaru since he was summoned through the birds in addition to Satella, who we know is always watching Subaru.

Given how important the number three is in Re:Zero, it wouldn’t surprise me if there were actually three forces watching Subaru from the moment he stepped out into Re:Zero’s fantasy world. Who could it be if such a thing is indeed happening?

I believe it is Echidna who is the third force that has been observing Subaru since the beginning. Echidna literally said at one point that she had watched Subaru every step of the way of his journey after he was killed by the Great Rabbit, and while it could’ve been a false statement since she has literally lied to Subaru three times already, I’ll share why I believe that she was telling the truth.

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 travelled back in time four hundred years to ensure that this current Subaru succeeds, and although I am adamant that this theory is false 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. Evidence suggests that Echidna has been regularly using her Authority since at least hundreds of years ago.

Now I will draw your attention to the rest of the mural’s images, which show a city split in half with destruction to varying degrees all around it with the top right of the sky having cracks, similar to when Echidna’s Dream Castle shattered and when Beatrice’s Forbidden Library disappeared for good. Thus, I propose that the mural is depicting the beginning of the end of the world. I believe that Satella, Echidna, and the unknown force are probably working together to push Subaru to break the cycle of the world being constantly destroyed and reconstructed that has been alluded to by Melakuera in stating he has faced world-ending crises countless times that may be the result of an unrevealed Authority that affects the story path of the world. I believe hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago in the world’s history, an unidentified hero of the past chose his lover over the world in a moment of weakness, dooming it the destruction, and the big bad of the series used his Authority to keep the world biased towards repeating this general cycle, and it’s up to the characters from four hundred years ago to push Subaru to defy the unnatural story path so that this cursed cycle will end, bringing about an age of freedom from predetermination.

A Re:Zero theory: Sirius was right about Petelgeuse and Subaru’s souls fusing, and it’s ’cause she was speaking from experience

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I retract what I had previously said when covering Season 3 given I was adamant that Subaru and Petelgeuse’s souls had not fused and that Sirius was delusional in uttering that. I had tunnel vision about one of my previous theories and didn’t see what Tappei was trying to tell in that moment. I now believe Sirius was speaking the truth when she said that Subaru and Petelgeuse’s souls amalgamated/fused, and I also believe Sirius, who happens to have elven ears, silver hair, and purple eyes, isn’t Fortuna but also an amalgamation of Fortuna and a spirit, which would allow Petelgeuse and Fortuna to parallel each other in how they continued to exist after they were supposed to die, and this would explain Sirius’s obsession with Petelgeuse given Fortuna said that she came back to ensure that she and Petelgeuse either both lived or that they died together due to her not being able to live on without him visiting her.

Why Subaru and Petelgeuse’s souls likely amalgamated into one is that Sirius felt Petelgeuse’s presence when Subaru used Invisible Providence in Episode 53. Regulus was under the impression that Sirius thought that Petelgeuse had taken control of Subaru much like he did with his Fingers, but that was likely not correct given Sirius said in Episode 66 that Subaru and Petelgeuse’s souls had amalgamated into one, showing she never thought that it was what Regulus said in the first place.

This is backed by how Emilia in Episode 62 thought to herself that that’s where Geuse was all along after Subaru used Invisible Providence to have a shadow hand phase through Emilia’s chest, and only then was Emilia able to sense Petelgeuse. Emilia may have subconsciously recognized Petelgeuse in Episode 23 of Season 1 after she defeated him when he had possessed one of his Fingers, but Emilia has never known Unseen Hand to be able to phase through objects, so she shouldn’t have been able to intuit that it was Petelgeuse just by the hand phasing through, and thus I conclude that what she sensed was the genuine Petelgeuse.

Now on Sirius, I believe Sirius isn’t Fortuna but also an amalgamation of Fortuna and a spirit, which would allow Petelgeuse and Fortuna to parallel each other in how they both continued to live on despite what should have been their deaths.

I think one of the spirits who guided Emilia to the Seal may have matured into a full-fledged spirit and felt strong emotions from Petelgeuse and Fortuna’s feelings for each other, fusing with Fortuna’s soul in the process with the hope that their love would continue. Pandora may have planted the seed in a spirit similarly to how she asked Regulus if he felt nothing from seeing Petelgeuse and Fortuna. The spirit may have been emotionally affected in a positive way whereas it sent Regulus into a flying rage since he had come to make Fortuna his wife and was incensed to see that she already loved someone else.

We know spirits that aren’t full-fledged can ensure that they don’t physically materialize, so you never know when there might be a spirit nearby. What we do know is that there were spirits when Pandora and Regulus arrived, and there were spirits when they brought Emilia to the Seal, so it’s possible one spirit vibed very strongly with Petelgeuse and Fortuna’s love and tried to ensure that it continued only for it to be all fucked up ’cause this is Tappei’s story.

Given Fortuna indicated she’d have nothing to look forward to if Petelgeuse stopped coming to the forest, and that’s why she came back to ensure that they either both lived or that they died together, Petelgeuse probably featured very heavily in Fortuna’s final thoughts, and said spirit I propose was there may have desired so much for Fortuna and Petelgeuse to be together that it amalgamated with Fortuna’s soul, hence becoming the entity we came to know as Sirius. This would be how she knows Subaru and Petelgeuse’s souls fused ’cause it literally happened to her, and she was speaking from a position of experience.

Re:Zero Episode 66 (Season 3 Episode 16) – Analysis and Important Details

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I thought the episode was a satisfying conclusion to this season although there was one detail I hoped would be revealed that didn’t. Included in my post this time will be an update on how I believe Al relates to Subaru as I’ll be including something I didn’t in my previous write-ups.

The episode opens with Beatrice and the group fighting Lye, and she notes to Otto she can use up to five magic crystals as she needs to save one to bring back Puck. Two of them were used up as they fought with Lye eating the names and memories of three of the White Dragon’s Scales mercenaries with the special effect of them being shattered and reforming showing that they had entered the same state Rem and Joshua are in. When Felt returned, Lye attempted to eat her name but faced serious negative effects with his eyes becoming bloodshot and him feeing nausea that resulted in vomiting given it seemed to be a fake name Rom gave her in childhood. This gave them the opportunity to use two of the remaining of three crystals to fire the special metia Felt brought to them that appears to have once belonged to Echidna judging by Beatrice’s reaction to it. Lye was defeated, but he somehow swapped places with his sister, Rui Arneb, who gutted Dynas’s legs and then did the same to Otto when Rui had moved to strike Beatrice with Otto getting her out of the way. Apparently, one of the powers of the Sin Archbishop of Gluttony is to transform into people you’ve eaten before although we have yet to see Lye or Roy do that since Rui had taken the form of a man before going into her true form. Rui realized that Felt herself didn’t realize that her name is not her true name upon interacting with her. Rui notes that she’s backing off, most likely due to her Gospel’s instructions, reasoning that since Lye was beaten to a pulp and since Roy just does as that woman, who I assume is Capella, says. Rui says it’s not whether you’re a gourmand or a foul feeder as what you eat isn’t important, and it’s who you eat with that’s important. Beatrice, with only one magic crystal she can use, since one must be saved for bringing back Puck, decides not to pursure Rui although Felt really wanted to even though they were clearly outmatched.

If it wasn’t clear from Rui’s interaction with them that she was holding back severely, I’ll make it clear now. It’s clear with how Regulus’s Gospel making him believe he’d meet the Emilia camp again despite it not happening until the fourth loop of Arc 5 is that Gospels are meant to keep the world on a particular path as I have long believed rather than being an object that makes the holder’s goals/dreams come true. This was also likely why Capella went to attack the government office the heroes had made their base of operations when if she had stayed with Theresia and Kurgan both Wilhelm and Garfiel would’ve both 100% died and why Capella was certain that she accomplished all that she had needed and was leaving, when her pursuing Al, Felix, and Anastasia would’ve resulted in one or more of them dying, and for this very reason, Rui left as well when she could’ve butchered them all since Beatrice only had one magic crystal left aside from the one she was saving for bringing back Puck. I believe people who have treated Re:Zero as a serious story are meant to pick up on this, but people who expect the usual from most isekai series that don’t have much happening on a story front don’t realize that Re:Zero is a deep story and that it wants you to draw conclusions from these things happening multiple times in succession. You have to actually think critically when you watch Re:Zero. After all, Roswaal’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom was basically a tool meant for Echidna to keep the world on a particular path, and it wouldn’t be a stretch if the Gospels had a similar purpose.

Kiritaka then announced that they had taken control of all four control towers and had driven away the Witch Cult. After Subaru and Emilia make their way to the government office seeing that it had been destroyed, they are reunited with Beatrice, and Subaru princess carries Beatrice, leading to Anastasia saying that Subaru can be a boy after all, which Emilia affirmed, although I’m not sure Emilia affirmed that in the same way Anastasia did. First with Ricardo joking earlier in the season that Subaru seduces little girls and now this bit with Anastasia showing that characters are openly mocking Subaru about him attracting little girls knowing that Subaru isn’t really that type of person as that’d be inappropriate, which isn’t a bad thing of course given how serious of a show Re:Zero can be.

Subaru and co. then pay a visit to Garfiel, who is proud of Subaru for showing off what a man he is by saving Emilia. He’s in good spirits given he joked that he didn’t want to hear about his condition from Subaru of all people, which Emilia could see, and Beatrice resorted that he’s feeling too good about himself given it’s usually when he’s nice and quiet that he’s actually suffering. Mimi then barges in and has her way with Garfiel with Otto saying that he really should’ve acted like a man who’s hurt. Otto is expected to be able to recover from his injury, and Subaru wishes that he’d consult with him before leaping into danger since they’re friends after all with Otto replying that there’s no way he could just sit back and do nothing when Subaru had so much on his plate, ESPECIALLY since he’s his friend, and that just shows why Otto is such a good person to have on your side. Otto says he’s sorry that Gluttony got away but that they did gain something from this since Priscilla captured Sirius.

They start interrogating Sirius, and when Subaru asks what made them think about demanding the not-quite-Tome of Wisdom and the artificial spirit, as in Beatrice, Sirius remarks that she doesn’t even care to think about what the others were thinking and that they only gathered here ’cause of the instructions from their Gospels. When Subaru puts it out that there that they follow their Gospels so religiously to revive the Witch of Envy, Sirius retorts by saying she doesn’t give a damn about that and that the only one she loves is Subaru with her going up to him to lick him, which Emilia struck her hard for doing so. When Beatrice urged them to leave, Sirius started singing horribly since she had realized the power of song from Lilliana, and Subaru says that she shouldn’t consider Liliana and her singing to be the same with it being completely different. Fortuna then taunts Subaru, saying the situation is the same with him in that he’s not Petelgeuse but with both his soul and body and Petelgeuse’s melding together with her goal being to drag Petelgeuse out from within him although it’s hard to say whether this is pure delusion or a fact. Although I do believe Petelgeuse exists in a pocket dimension within the vicinity of Subaru’s soul, I do not believe their souls have literally melded together. Before they leave, Sirius warns them that Gluttony will be after Subaru. The subs say Gourmand, Foul Feeding, and Satiation, but given the words are used to describe their representation of the Gluttony sin, I feel it should be Gourmet (since Lye wants Gourmet food, which is why he makes his prey feel strong emotions to juice them up and fights them as if to prepare them well for being eaten), Foul-Feeding (Hyphen for grammatical purposes), and Satiation are the right terms to use, and I will use them moving forward since I’m not going to expect Crunchyroll to have any sort of consistency moving forward. I’m guessing Sirius got wind of this ‘when she compared the text written in the Gluttony Archbishop’s Gospels compared to her own ’cause Lye, and Roy and Rui by extension, have been after Subaru since Lye ate Rem’s memories, which is part of the reason he was so hyped for a confrontation with Subaru in Episode 59.

After they walk out of Sirius’s cell, Al replies that they got nothing aside from making them feel gross, which Subaru shoots down immediately, leading to Al saying he sure knows how to make those freaks like him, which suggests that Al is not Subaru himself since it alludes to him not being able to ingratiate himself with some of the Sin Archbishops whereas Subaru has, possibly showing that he was a failed hero of the story. Beatrice then tells Subaru to not get too friendly with Al, which Al is disappointed to her after he helped wake her up, calling her Beako, which she remarked she only lets Subaru do, and Emilia thanks Al for helping her pass a message to Subaru, which Al reacts well to, similarly to how Subaru said in Arc 2 that he’s the type to like to be rewarded for his efforts. When they emerge from the underground, Beatrice reveals that Al visited her and got her Kiritaka’s magic crystal, which is what woke her up but that he wouldn’t tell her anything about how he got it, and that soured Al on Beatrice even though Subaru does the same thing to others. It was only after Emilia spoke well of Al that they were forced to admit that Al’s not a bad guy.

I have to mention this regarding Al now. I don’t believe he is Subaru himself since there is a good deal against it, but I do believe that he and Subaru both originally came from the same soul. Ever since Episode 22, A Flash Of Sloth, I have been looking up the names of Re:Zero’s characters since that title could’ve referenced multiple things from that episode, showing that names are important in Re:Zero. Subaru’s dad is named Kenichi, which means ‘wise man’. Subaru said in Episode 16 that Flugel’s Tree was planted by a wise man centuries ago, and while this wouldn’t mean something in a different show, its presence in a show with Re:Zero’s long-term planning suggests that Kenichi himself might be Flugel. As for the time period in which Flugel existed, Petelgeuse apologized to Flugel-sama in Episode 43 for taking in the Sloth Witch Factor, which shows that Flugel was from the same time period Satella was from.

Episodes, 18, 25, and 38 show that Subaru has dormant memories of Satella as shown by how Puck indirectly revealed in Episode 18 the number of shadow hands Satella could generate to Subaru by asking Petelgeuse summon a thousand shadows if he truly wants to kill him, half of what Satella could (two thousand), Subaru using a number associated with Satella (two thousand) to indicate his appreciation for Emilia in Episode 25, and Subaru suddenly having an upswelling of positive emotion for Satella in Episode 38 that led him to say that he’d save Satella after she asked him to love himself and then some day come kill her, which shows that Subaru and Satella may have a past history together.

Given we know Echidna succeeded in creating a soul clone of herself with how Echidna spoke in her own voice in Ryuzu Shima’s body in Episode 49, it wouldn’t be a surprise if Kenichi, if he is Flugel as I speculate, also did that as well and Subaru and Al were both split off from Kenichi’s soul, and Kenichi made his sons his soul clones, and that would explain why Al and Subaru both call Beatrice ‘Beako’, not ’cause they are the same person but because they were created from the same soul. It’d also explain why Subaru has dormant memories of Satella despite it not being possible for him to have lived at that time, why Al also likes being rewarded for his efforts, why he failed when Subaru succeeded, and why he didn’t know about Capella’s powers.

When the group reconvenes without Julius and Ricardo, Anastasia, or whoever she is, reveals she is against letting Sirius live, which upsets Felix since Sirius is their only lead on how to save Crusch. Anastasia doubts they’ll get anything useful on Gluttony or Lust from Sirius, but Subaru disagrees and doesn’t think it’d be a total waste of effort although he does understand she’d uneasy about keeping her in custody. Wilhelm then shuts Felix down for making a fuss of things. Reinhard also takes Subaru’s side and says he’ll transport Sirius to the castle since this is a rare opportunity to learn about the Witch Cult. Then the topic comes to Lust’s victims, and Felix says that they can’t be healed since they’re creatures that’ve been completely remade. Priscilla suggests giving the people turned to flies death since they’d probably prefer that, and when Subaru starts to protest, she calls him a fool and that ideals that are all talk have no value, which leads to Emilia saying she’ll handle that by putting all of Lust’s victims in cold sleep, and Priscilla backs down after seeing Liliana’s exuberant confidence in Emilia and even says she’ll make Emilia her rival after she does, probably ’cause she was again as I said in my write-up for an earlier episode saying things that were stressful to others to bring out the best in them.

As dawn breaks, Kiritaka thanked Subaru for saving the city, and that he was had been fully prepared to die until he heard Liliana’s song. We get shots of all the relevant parties and then have Subaru thank Subaru and for Reinhard to say it’s a tremendous honour to help a friend, probably since Subaru treats him like an actual person like others instead of a weapon.

Subaru and Emilia are then happy that Lusbel and Tina are safe, and Emilia says that they have to celebrate that since everyone worked so hard to make that happen. Subaru then sees Subaru, who is wounded in a lot of ways and has lost an arm. When he makes a remark about Julius, Ricardo doesn’t respond, but Subaru sees Julius all by himself in the shadow of a building, and Julius is astounded that Subaru remembers him since Emilia doesn’t. This shows that Roy ate his name, which rewrites reality as if no one ever remembered his existence. I don’t believe Julius’s possessions were also erased given how three members of the White Dragon’s Scales broke into pieces of glass and reformed into their current state of being in suspended animation, showing that they had become something fundamentally different than before. As Puck revealed in Episode 26, if a Sin Archbishop of Gluttony eats your memories, you lose your memories, your name, your existence erased, and if both your name and memories are eaten, you become a shell of who you were in suspended animation. Given even Rem’s possessions disappeared when she had been erased by the White Whale, your possessions probably don’t disappear unless both your name and memories are eaten, or Rem’s possessions were just thrown out ’cause no one could remember her.

What this shows is that Subaru has a resistance to Authorities for some reason. After Unseen Hand was used in his presence once, he was able to see Petelgeuse’s Authority the next time he saw it being used. When the White Whale, which Puck referred to as Gluttony in Episode 18, erased Rem, Subaru was the lone person who remembered her, which showed even back then that he had a resistance to the Gluttony Authority. When Rem was again erased by Lye, he still remembered her, proving that the White Whale was either made or modified somehow to have its mist have a similar effect to the Authority of Gluttony. After Sirius used her Authority on Subaru, in subsequent loops, it took longer and longer for him to fall under her control. This latest incident shows that Subaru still retains his resistance to the Authority of Gluttony. I don’t know where this resistance comes from though and expect it will be made clear towards the end of the series.

Anyway, with Season 4 being confirmed to be in production, I eagerly await to learn more about Re:Zero’s fantasy world and the aftermath of Julius having been forgotten. I also wonder what is up with whoever this Anastasia is. This season was fun and a refreshing change of pace compared to previous seasons.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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