Emilia – Thorough Watch

Re:Zero Episode 82 (Season 4 Ep. 16) Analysis + Important Details

Posted on September 11, 2026 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

Much like for Ep. 72 when my write-up almost entirely centered around Julius, I believe any write-up that doesn’t do Subaru justice this episode is grossly lacking. I believe this is an episode that distinguishes between casual watchers of Re:Zero who’re just there for the ride and watchers who are there to engage with what the story is telling, who I call the core fans of Re:Zero, regardless of their degree of understanding of the details given Re:Zero is a highly complex story that’s not always easy to follow, but those who try are whom I qualify as being core fans. While I personally think this episode isn’t as strong as some of the absolute best episodes of this season, those who merely think the episode was fine fall into the casual watcher category while those who have greater appreciation for Subaru’s character arc across four seasons, the groundwork laid from Season 1 up until now, and/or the setup from previous episodes of this season are the core fans. While some people had heard from novel readers about this episode, Natsuki Subaru, being amazing and how it’d be the best episode of all time before even knowing what was in it, I stay off social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, so I had no preconceived notion of the episode’s quality going into it, and that helps me approach gauging this episode better than most others would in my opinion.

As one could tell when amnesiac Subaru was reading Natsuki Subaru’s many Books of the Dead, amnesiac Subaru was looking for what made the previous Subaru special since he believed he fundamentally lacked something the previous Subaru did, which is why he’s been struggling so hard. I’ll get back to this after a bit of a detour.

I ended up being right about that there being one Book of the Dead for each death in Ep. 71, although that doesn’t clear up whether new timelines are being created when Subaru dies, a straight up time rewind every time, or it’s a re-creation of the world from a particular point, but Melakuera’s words about the Witch’s return, the world imbalance, and how he’d faced world-ending crises countless times suggest that it’s more likely a straight up time rewind or a re-creation of the world given it appeared to be a clear cut adaptation and involved no creative liberties. Ep. 15, which had Puck cut off Subaru’s head as after he was crying and shouting aloud Petelgeuse’s name due to what Petelgeuse had done to those he cared about, especially Rem, followed by ending credits with the scene continuing was likely not in the source material as Tappei almost certainly hadn’t written those ending credits into his story, meaning the continuation of the world we’d seen in that episode was perhaps not canon to the source but a creative liberty much like when Ep. 36 had the dark mist/clouds in Emilia’s eyes which were meant to show that Emilia had gone insane, and that’s why she hadn’t realized how heavily injured Subaru was with him being on the verge of death. For Subaru’s 2nd Sanctuary trial, Echidna also said that it wasn’t possible to know whether the “unthinkable presents” he saw truly happened unless you’re Satella herself, but I potentially call bullshit on that, and the reason is that my speculation on Ep. 71 posited that in addition to the alternate timelines possibility, the other possibility is that Subaru is partially a product of Echidna’s Authority with the world being re-created from a certain point with Subaru’s soul having been sent back to his body since his entire body resets with his soul, which is the seat of memories in Re:Zero, being why he just doesn’t outright forget everything. Melakuera’s words about how he’d faced world-ending crises countless times in the Frozen Bonda OVA also lend to it being a straight up time rewind or the world being re-created due to implying he’s either being repeatedly sent back into time or re-summoned into the re-created world after its destruction. I do believe there’s very much something that suggests that Return by Death is a power that re-creates the world though, which I’ll get into next.

Someone who follows Tcrow on Crow’s World of Anime would know of most of what I’m planning to post next given I used to post theories there before I started my blog, but it won’t be a full rehash as I’m now including more content in light of Ep. 70 and Ep. 79. My entire theory here hinges on giving White Fox the benefit of the doubt and not assuming it screwed up in animating Re:zero, and I’m confident that everything was intentional. I believe that, in addition to reloading at a save point, reality is sometimes warped so that Subaru and his surroundings within a TBD radius or select objects/people/buildings in that radius (trying to cover all my bases here in case the Authority) somehow arrived at that point somewhere between a minute and a few minutes earlier each time he dies and that reality is warped to account for this discrepancy much like how the White Whale’s Fog of Elimination can erase a person entirely and adjust people’s memories that involved a person that was erased as well as erasing that person’s material possessions, and that is what is actually Return by Death. Why do I believe this to be the case? The primary reason is because of the difference between Subaru’s first loop and his third loop in Arc 1 and because of what happened with Subaru’s ringtone for the White Whale hunt in Arc 3 although I have evidence from Arc 2 as well.

A stone statue of the insignia was shown right after Subaru’s realization that he was summoned into another world, which then cut to a scene at 2:30 in Episode 1 showing Felt running on rooftops and jumping across them with Emilia’s insignia in hand long before Subaru had even met the appa guy at the 3:30 mark, which is where his first save point would be. At 5:02, Felt is again being shown running and jumping across rooftops, which shows she had the insignia before meeting Subaru in the alley. This suggests that RBD not only resets time when he dies but that there’s a spacetime displacement on top of the reset or else he wouldn’t have ever been able to see the the theft in the first place in the third loop given that he had time to pass out in front of the appa guy’s shop and see Emila pass the appa guy’s shop and have a brief conversation with her during that third loop.

Subaru would not be able to figure out that there is a spacetime displacement by checking out his phone after a death since his phone resets with him and would show the same time reading every time he Returned by Death, but it would be possible to figure this out by checking his phone during an event that consistently happens such as his first meeting with Roswaal and the mansion’s residents in Arc 2. However, Subaru did not check the time during these meetings, so he missed the opportunity to see whether he experiences a spacetime displacement. Subaru asking Rem and Ram what the date and time were in Episode 6 showed that Subaru just did the bare minimum, which is to see what time it was when he started his save point, but he made no effort to discern whether there was anything more to RBD. I will now post some circumstantial evidence involving Arc 2 and some more damning evidence in Arc 3 that I believe supports my theory.

In the first loop of the mansion arc, Puck awoke after Subaru and Emilia had exercised briefly, and he wasn’t tired in the least. They spoke a bit and then Ram and Rem inform that Roswaal has returned. After his first death, Subaru had time to run around the mansion and find Beatrice so that he could mope in the library. He then left the library and met Emilia outside, speaking to her somewhat briefly, and Puck was visibly tired after waking up. They had time to spare since the twins didn’t come to announce Roswaal’s return. In the third loop, Subaru spent an even longer time with Beatrice, got knocked out of the mansion by Beatrice twice, and got cleaned by a visibly tired Puck, yet he still had time for banter with Puck before the Roswaal meeting. So he wastes more and more time in loops two and three but still seemingly started the meeting at the usual time. I speculate that in the second and third loops, Puck is more tired because he is waking up earlier than he did in Loop 1, which shows there is a spacetime displacement on top of the time rewind.

Now, here is the big one. During the loop the alliance between three Royal Selection camps actually fought the White Whale, Subaru’s phone rang for a while before the whale showed up. The sky was also clear. In the loop directly before that in which Otto and Rem were erased by the White Whale, the area was already foggy and the whale had already attacked by that point. This suggests that Subaru’s phone started ringing a bit too early because it had been running for a longer period of time due to a spacetime displacement on top of a reset. If the strike force had been defeated, forcing Subaru to reset once more, everyone might have just deserted him because the Whale would have taken longer to arrive on yet another loop. I also believe that the reason Subaru saw Russell Fellow in Episode 16 is because Subaru died enough times to finally witness Russell leaving Crusch’s mansion, and that would be because of that spacetime displacement. You know what they say. Once is by chance, twice is a coincidence, and three times is a pattern. There’s no way White Fox messed up in animating Re:zero 3 arcs in a row.

However, we never see incidents of Subaru appearing to gain time again after the White Whale hunt, and Russell Fellow took Subaru’s phone as part of the deal made for the White Whale hunt to happen, so even if something like that were to happen, it’d be harder to confirm without that cellphone. Thus, to extrapolate from my newer theory about how Subaru’s Authorities are shaped by the biggest regret of each of those in the dark world, Return by Death may be shaped by Satella’s biggest regret being that her and Subaru’s love for each other wasn’t enough to win four hundred years ago, and I’ll explain why Subaru and Satella were likely lovers in the past.

Eps. 18, 25, and 38 show Subaru has dormant memories of Satella as shown by how Puck indirectly revealed in Ep. 18 the number of shadow hands Satella could generate to Subaru by asking Petelgeuse to summon a thousand if he truly wants to kill him, half of what Satella could (two thousand), how Subaru used a number associated with her (two thousand) to indicate his appreciation for Emilia in Ep. 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 commented on why he chose that number, and how Subaru suddenly had an upwelling of positive emotion for Satella in Ep. 38 that led him to say that he’d save her after she asked him to love himself and then some day come kill her, which shows Subaru and Satella likely had a past history together as lovers given just moments ago in that episode 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.

Satella saying in Ep. 38 that Subaru gave her everything supports that the two of them have a past history with each other, and Shaula saying she wouldn’t mind becoming “the half-witch’s apprentice” regarding Emilia in Ep. 73 shows Shaula knew that Satella was a witch as she’s been stuck in a tower for four hundred years, so they came from the same era. Shaula saying what she did showed that she drew a parallel between Satella and Emilia in that both of them may have the affection of Subaru, who she believes is Flügel, and Flügel, who I believe was Kenichi and Subaru in the same body (Kenichi’s body), through their cooking, meaning learning from Emilia, who she likens to Satella, would be a good way of increasing Subaru’s affection for her. Given Shaula specifically singled out Emilia’s cooking rather than Ram’s, I believe there was definitely a point to that, which was probably Emilia’s physical appearance.

So to sum it all up, I believe Satella’s biggest regret may have shaped Subaru’s Authority of Envy in that Subaru can loop back to a certain point of her choosing to overcompensate for their love not being enough in the past. I don’t know whether that is an active or passive choice/power from Satella. All I know is that I believe Subaru’s power by himself isn’t what the anime has shown thus far as being Return by Death likely involves Satella to be able to loop that far back, and I believe if Subaru can trigger the Authority of Envy himself, it would only bring him back 3 minutes at most due to what happened in all of Arcs 1, 2, and 3. I also don’t know whether Satella’s involvement in Return by Death can be disabled by an external force, but I believe Subaru when he is in the dark world after death, with situations with him being in the dark world being after death or when he breaks the Taboo, may choose to not activate his expression of Return by Death that manifests in a spacetime displacement of up to three minutes, meaning only Satella looping him back to a savepoint happens, and in that situation there’s no warping of Subaru’s surroundings in a TBD radius or select objects/people/buildings in that radius as if they’d occurred however much time before that (variable?) amount of time he’d gained. If I am right about this being how Subaru’s Authority of Envy, Return by Death, works, it’d support that Return by Death re-creates the world from a certain point, so it’s more than just a time rewind.

Now back to Subaru’s character, there’s very much a point to this GIF. The shots of Ep. 1 and Ep. 3 show that Subaru was drawn toward Emilia’s kindness, and that’s what helped him persevere through all that pain and suffering to save others. The kindness Emilia showed Subaru when no one else had given a damn started Subaru’s trajectory of saving so many people.

When he was on the verge of giving up in Ep. 18, From Zero, due to getting his shit kicked in over and over with him wallowing in despair about how he’d never done anything, Rem reminded Subaru that he is kind, telling him how he saved her in multiple ways, and that moment clearly linked to Ep. 37 when Subaru said that Rem would tell him to stand up instead of telling him to leave everything to her since he knows that she’d want him to persevere, which then connected to Ep. 79, Stand Up, having Rem say those very words.

This is why amnesiac Subaru thanked the previous Subaru for all he’d done, ’cause he literally was kind and ’cause it’s what amnesiac Subaru needed to see to fully accept that he’s Subaru, that the previous Subaru was a kind guy who could do all he did along the way due to the support he got along the way, not ’cause he was a superman, fully destroying Rui’s plan to eat Natsuki Subaru infinitely. Amnesiac Subaru ultimately saw that the previous Subaru is kind and resilient, and that’s how he has so many people he cares about now and objectively saved many people. That’s what led to amnesiac Subaru calling the previous Subaru amazing, pushing back against his low self-esteem, which is ultimately why he said he won’t tell the previous Subaru to do his best since he knows what that Subaru’s capable of and was jealous that it would’ve taken the previous Subaru much less time to solve the problems at the tower before they finally merge into one. And as for why the previous Subaru would even have a manifestation in the Corridor of Memories, it’s just like how amnesiac Subaru mixed with Meili when he read her Book of the Book, only it was only possible in the Corridor of Memories since Rui had eaten his memories, meaning that was the only place that could happen.

The people sending death threats to White Fox and the director of Ep. 82 should be ashamed of themselves. There didn’t need to be some fancy insert song for this scene. The core content of this episode is that amnesiac Subaru needed to see that the previous Subaru was a guy who at his core is drawn to kindness who’d work really hard to save those he cared about due to his being kind and being inspired by their kindness when he struggled.

Re:Zero exists ’cause Tappei genuinely believes in the goodness of people and all this hate directed to the staff who worked on this episode is disgusting given the staff still got the core message of the episode out there. I get that many believe find Subaru extremely relatable to the point of self-inserting into him and living vicariously through Subaru when they watch him, but need I remind you that in a post-Season 1 interview, a White Fox staff member who’d worked on Re:Zero had been told many times that if they drew Subaru to look cool they’d be told to redraw it until it suited Tappei’s fancy ’cause Subaru isn’t mean to be a self-insert outlet with Re:Zero being a real story showing the struggles of how an average Joe with specific, severe self-worth issues sent to a fantasy world would react and behave unlike all those standard isekai power fantasy slop series, so IMO, there was no need for some insert song to give the scene a stronger sense of hype or aura as that was never the point of the scene to begin with.

While I acknowledge actual faults of the episode, such as there being too many stills or anything else one didn’t enjoy that is within reason, I believe being mad at there being no insert song when amnesiac Subaru met the previous Subaru is a rather strange thing to get upset about given Tappei having implored the staff to not make Subaru look cool in Season 1, and IMO, the absence of such a song shows that the staff members involved are living up to Tappei’s intended vision even if one personally thought that amnesiac Subaru calling the previous Subaru an amazing guy warranted hype or aura. I can’t say I understand why novel readers are upset about this episode, but from an anime-only perspective, I believe this episode gets across the core message very well.

And why amnesiac Subaru calling the previous Subaru amazing was important is that he still very much as self-esteem issues that needed to be pushed back against by someone who’d seen all he’d done and wasn’t as biased as the previous Subaru was regarding himself. If you thought that Subaru’s issues with poor self-esteem had been solved after Ep. 29, Parent and Child, you are wrong. In Season 2, even after Ep. 29, Subaru saw no value in his life aside from being to able to reset things to solve problems, and that’s likely why Satella and the dead Witches of Sin had their intervention in Ep. 38, which culminated in Patrasche dragging Subaru out of the tomb, and Otto outright telling him, maybe not in these exact words, that there are people who appreciate him and value him. In Season 3, Subaru was very much upset and thought that everybody else could stay calm while he’s the only one unable to do, showing a continuation in his issues with poor self-esteem in Ep. 51, and even in Season 4, Subaru was insecure when Julius made a light jab about his ability in Ep. 67, showing again that his issues with self-esteem weren’t cured just like that, not to mention how his self-esteem issues may be abnormally difficult to overcome if my theory about the main antagonist’s Authority making it difficult for the Hero of the story to overcome his character flaws has any truth to it.

As for my last two pieces of analysis, I’d shared in my write-up of Ep. 79, Rui had split herself in two as part of her plan to infinitely eat Subaru, which is why she was doing crazy things such as kill Meili to make amnesiac Subaru think the previous Subaru was a bad guy, but there was more to it than I had thought. A duplicate had not only eaten Subaru’s memories but also merged with amnesiac Subaru’s being and was experiencing his deaths whenever he died, which I guess is possible due to Rui being a soul that failed to be born, which I had speculated was a possibility in Ep. 79, meaning she’s just a whole bunch of egos as she’d stated in that episode. And her being horrified and despondent about how death wasn’t the delicious experience she’d thought it be backs up my read that Rui’s biggest regret is having eaten so many memories just to experience pain and suffering, only wanting to experience just the highs or a high and none of the lows of life, something Subaru himself noted in this episode, which I believe bodes well for how Subaru’s Authority of Gluttony in the future may be shaped by this regret. And if the other Rui merges with the Rui who’d eaten amnesiac Subaru’s memories, she’d also be in for a rough time. Since the one Rui had fused with was amnesiac Subaru’s ego/personality, when amnesiac Subaru merged with the previous Subaru, possibly by using his Authority (I’m not sure) given Rem had imparted how she felt about Subaru to amnesiac Subaru by touching the center of his chest, and amnesiac Subaru put a fist to the previous Subaru, I guess Rui either was driven off due to amnesiac Subaru fully accepting that he’s Subaru or she willingly relinquished her hold on him since she didn’t want anything more to do with Subaru.

The last bit of analysis I have is that Tappei showed that his having Subaru use the -tan honorific to address Emilia was very much intentional as Subaru would never have thought of doing that without having experienced Emilia’s kindness and saw how consistent she was in being kind in Arc 1 of Re:Zero, which is backed by how the first time he used the honorific, he’d asked Emilia if she’d healed him, showing he believes she’s just intrinsically that kind, and that’s the cherry on top on Emilia being cheerful about hearing Emilia-tan ’cause it was showing that Emilia’s initial kindness to Subaru in Arc 1 had more of an impact on Subaru than Emilia’s confession of being in love with Natsuki Subaru to amnesiac Subaru, showing just how important that Arc 1 content was, and it’s foundational to Subaru falling for Emilia.

All in all, while I can understand some people’s gripes with the direction of the episode, such as there being too much flashback content or there being too many still frames, I nonetheless am adamant that this is an episode of Re:Zero that was very much worthwhile to watch and implicitly tied back to so much of the series.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Re:Zero Theory: Who is Sirius Romanee-Conti? What’s her biggest regret? And how would it shape Subaru’s Authority of Wrath if the regrets of those in the dark world indeed impact Subaru’s Authorities?

Posted on September 3, 2026 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

A common theory from fans is that Fortuna is Sirius Romanee-Conti given Sirius in the Season 3 anime outside of the Break Time shorts has silver hair, elven ears, and purple eyes and loves Petelgeuse. Personally, I don’t subscribe to this theory since in the Re:Zero fandom it’s very common for fans to come up with the X character is EXACTLY Y character theory, whether it involves time travel or not, which I believe is most likely a result of many fans either not having read much fiction or reading poorly-written works.

I believe Sirius is the result of an impressionable lower-level spirit (lesser spirit or whatever the spirit level of Julius’s spirits are given they directly follow Julius’s instructions) that was in awe of Petelgeuse and Fortuna’s love given Pandora told Regulus how he can look at them and feel nothing, which was likely her taunting him to bait him into killing her ’cause she knew Regulus has deep trauma over being a poor husband with the mere thought of Fortuna’s and Petelgeuse’s love reminding him of his personal failure. I believe she also said that for the lower-level spirits to hear, and one of them was strongly moved by Pandora’s words.

Thus, when Fortuna died, one of the lower-level spirits perhaps matured and fused with Fortuna’s soul, and that’s who Sirius is. Given in Re:Zero Break Time Ep. 79 Sirius said that her hometown was destroyed due to a witch hunt with witch hunts becoming common during that era, and she said that misfortune follows her wherever she goes, Sirius may have been the target of persecution repeatedly and repeatedly attacked for her silver-coloured hair and purple eyes despite her not being a half-elf.

And that’s probably part of the reason Sirius’s Authority manifested in an ability that lets her herd people into feeling the same thing since she’s seen so much hatred, and as a low-level spirit before she became Sirius, it may have thought that love is two people feeling the same thing since it felt Petelgeuse and Fortuna’s love for each other, leading to it wanting their love to continue after Fortuna died, and that’s the second reason for her Authority of Wrath allowing for her to herd people into feeling the same emotion.

And so, Sirius’s biggest regret could be fusing with Fortuna’s soul in the first place ’cause doing so only led to her experiencing pain and suffering due to her past persecution and ’cause of Petelgeuse not reciprocating her love after she fused with Fortuna’s soul, which is why she asked Priscilla if she understood her pain, so if that’s indeed Sirius’s biggest regret, assuming my theory about Subaru’s Authorities being shaped in part by those in the dark world has any truth to it, one of Subaru’s Authority of Wrath abilities may be to split apart souls that have amalgamated with each other.

Now to share some relevant background info, for Ep. 79, I posted a theory that Subaru’s Authorities being shaped in part by those in the dark world (Relevant scenes of the dark world being when Subaru remembered being in the dark world with his heart caressed by Satella in Ep. 8 after Puck used Shamak on him, when Satella whispered, “Aishiteru” to Subaru during the White Whale fight in Ep. 20, and when Subaru saw both Petelgeuse and Regulus before seeing Satella in Ep. 70).

For example, I believe Petelgeuse deeply regretting having killed Fortuna is probably why Subaru gets recoil from using Invisible Providence offensively since that act hurt Petelgeuse so much and drove him insane after whatever Pandora told him to help him cope with what he’d done, and we know it did given Petelgeuse was talking about how Subaru killed Rem in Arc 3 with his (Petelgeuse’s) own hands with tears in his eyes, showing that the moment in which Petelgeuse killed Fortuna with his Authority hurt him to his core, and that’s what prompted him to project his biggest failing onto Subaru. This would be why Subaru wasn’t hurt when he merely entered Invisible Providence into Emilia’s body but was pained when he crushed Regulus’s heart and why he wasn’t pained when he rubbed Joseph’s neck with Invisible Providence.

Petelgeuse even killed Rem in the brutal fashion he did likely ’cause he deep down remembered how he killed Fortuna and since trauma survivors like to put themselves in situations that re-traumatize them, that’s why he was crying in that scene since he subconsciously tried to draw a connection between a man killing a woman he loved, mirroring what had happened to him since he saw Rem’s overwhelming love for Subaru, much like how Fortuna came back to Petelgeuse in the past ’cause she couldn’t take it for him to die all on his own, leaving her behind.

Much like I propose for Regulus Corneas with his remarks about how others are violating his rights and how he says that he never needed his wives to smile, which I believe were coping mechanisms due to avoid dealing with his negative self-worth centered around having failed his first wife, who he’d actually cared about, which is backed by his rambling to himself in Season 3, demonstrating that he had serious trauma over his wife smiling in her final moments even though by self-admission no matter what he’d done before that, she’d refused to smile, showing that her not smiling was not for a lack of trying on his part, Sirius justifies her actions of “spreading love” to avoid dealing with her negative self-esteem, meaning this coping mechanism has also allowed her to stay functional or alive up until this point as I believe was likely the case for Regulus up until Season 3. I believe on some level Regulus and Sirius know what they’ve been doing is wrong, but they stay in denial to avoid dealing with issues core to their being.

If you recall in Episode 13 of Re:Zero in Season 1, Emilia called Puck a Great Spirit of Fire, which shows that ice attacks can be formed through temperature manipulation in Re:Zero. Priscilla’s flames in Ep. 61 based on Yang magic are bright white, which shows that more than one type of magic can produce flames, and this suggests that it’s possible that Sirius’s black/purple flames are based on Yin magic. That’d make the Fortuna and Sirius situation an inverse of the Satella and Emilia situation with Satella’s natural magic affinity being Yin given the mass of shadows and the shadow hands which can be seen by all aren’t the Authority of Sloth while Emilia’s is Fire, which would be a nice contrast to how one who fell from grace in Sirius ended up having the Yin attribute, an attribute associated with darkness, while Emilia doing her best to live despite the prejudice she faces has the Fire attribute with fire often representing life.

My reasoning for this being a good story development would be that individuality and identity are core issues in Re:Zero with the exploration of twin issues in Arc 2 with Rem’s inferiority complex centered around Ram, of Emilia not being Satella in the Frozen Bond OVA, of Subaru being his own person rather than a knock-off of Roswaal, of Subaru having space to grow out of Kenichi’s shadow, and the Ryuzu clone stuff in Season 2/Arc 4, and of amnesiac Subaru being treated as his own person in Season 4/Arc 6 as well as whatever they’re doing with Reid overpowering Roy. I believe aside from the topic of growing to love oneself, there’s nothing more consistent in Re:Zero than the topic of individuality/identity, so a spirit amalgamating with someone else could be explored in the future with both Sirius and Subaru if I’m right about the defeated Sin Archbishops merging with Subaru’s soul. It’d be in line with how Tappei has written his story with further exploration of the topic of individuality and identity as the story progresses.

Re:Zero Episode 80 (Season 4 Ep. 14) Analysis + Important Details

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

The episode starts off with Beatrice showing relief that amnesiac Subaru still remembered her upon waking up, showing how much she cares for him given he’d shared that he’d lost his memories after he was found collapsed by her and Emilia in prior episodes. The group then notes that Shaula had noticed something with her and Julius going off to check out the threat and that Ram and Emilia went to go get Rem, and after amnesiac Subaru affirms that it was the right decision, he answers that the plan to find out about Reid was foiled due to his Book of the Dead leading to Rui, a Sin Archbishop of Gluttony, after being prompted to by Foxidna. Julius then arrives back to inform the group that Shaula can’t handle the monstrous numbers of mabeasts coming even if he’d handled the first batch that got into the tower.

Having rushed to Shaula’s side, amnesiac Subaru then has Meili assist Shaula with the mabeasts that had already fallen under her control during their journey to the tower after Shaula had asked for praise from him. He believes that such a mabeast storming incident had likely happened in the last loop too, only Meili wasn’t available to help. The topic then drifts to Ram and Emilia taking a long time to meet up with them, and they decide to leave the mabeasts to Shaula and Emilia.

Afterward, they finally meet up with Ram, Rem, and Patrasche after going searching, but Ram has no memory of Emilia, just that she’s fighting a Sin Archbishop of Gluttony, and nobody else aside from Subaru does either, and when amnesiac Subaru brings up that the silver-haired girl is Emilia, Ram ends up feeling much pain, which we haven’t seen from anyone before. Given some time had been elapsed before Rem being erased and Julius having his name get eaten had been discovered, that could explain the discrepancy between Ram’s reaction to hearing Emilia’s name compared to when Emilia asked, “Who is Rem?” or when nobody could remember Julius aside from Subaru in that Emilia was recently eaten, and if Ram had a high opinion of Emilia with Emilia featuring a lot in her memories, it could explain her headache ’cause she could still feel that closeness or admiration that in time fades to a sense that something is missing as was the case with Julius and his brother Joshua in Season 3. Foxidna then urges them to fight with Emilia while she looks after Ram, Rem, and Patrasche since they have no time to waste with one of their own fighting Gluttony, and Ram with a burning look of rage, says to leave Gluttony alive since losing her sister and her memories of Emilia is making her feel a seething hatred right now, and I like this side of Ram being so protective of her loved ones.

Next, we see Lye and Emilia fighting, and he’s impressed with her combat ability, saying that it makes her worth eating, and the group joins the fight with amnesiac Subaru saying that he’ll never forget her, which notably cheers her up before she tosses a giant ice boulder at Lye, prompting him to ask her whether she isn’t afraid that the group will think that she’s a scary person, and she shrugs it off ’cause what matters is how she feels about them, and the one person she wanted to remember her most did, so she’s feeling great, leading to her kneeing him in the face, Captain Falcon-style, and Julius says that he feels the same way, and how Emilia’s words apply to him is that even though amnesiac Subaru has no memories from before yesterday, his mind feels the begrudging admiration he had for Julius since Julius was the type of knight he aspired to be, and amnesiac Subaru voicing his validation for Julius’s strength restored his confidence. Don’t you love it when content from previous episodes connect? That’s what Re:Zero is excels at.

Julius and Emilia struggle against Lye, and then Reid shows up and curbstomps him. Emilia of course tries to talk him down, but he’s itching for a fight, and Julius and Emilia starting engaging him as Lye also joins in. Amnesiac Subaru feels uncomfortable and when he closes his eyes, he sees auras representing those he cares about with the red one being Beatrice, the light orange and pink ones being Julius and Emilia, with the black, blue, magenta, and white ones being Patrasche, Rem, Ram, and Foxidna, meaning the auras aren’t souls since Rem current has no soul, the bluish-purple being Meili, who was fending off the mabeasts by herself, and the big orange one being Shaula. He saw the big orange one approaching, and that’s why he rushed to get Beatrice out of the way, ending up with him losing his left leg, which isn’t the one infected with black dragon blood, so it won’t regenerate. The Witch of Envy then bursts from the ground, killing him, starting a reset, and it’s the Witch of Envy given her very limited vocabulary as opposed to Satella in Ep. 38.

After he awoke, he hugs Beatrice with relief given he’d been very concerned about her and had just saved her from Shaula. And he whispered very quietly about Return by Death due to shock, and the Witch of Envy didn’t emerge ’cause there has to be intent to hint or reveal that his power allows him to loop, and given most of the lines from him were him thinking to himself, the Taboo was triggered. He wondered what caused the starting point to change, and it was most likely ’cause he made progress that was necessary to bring him forward to the future Satella and Echidna I propose are guiding him and the world to with his talk offscreen talk to Beatrice and Emilia, his reassuring remarks to Ram, his planned rehabilitation of Meili, and his heart-to-heart with Julius. Betty then reassures him that they’ve got this and will work it out if they have each other, leading to amnesiac Subaru implying that just like what he’d heard in the Corridor of Memories from Rem, he has strong supporters within the tower itself. Julius then comes back.

Following that, amnesiac Subaru told everybody including Julius about the Sin Archbishops at the tower, and he requests for Meili to go help her, and Meili calls him too easy when he says that he loves her. Amnesiac Subaru then tells Julius to stop Reid since he’s leaving the floor he’s on before he once again sees the auras, those in front of him in Foxidna and Beatrice, also Ram, Patrasche, and Rem moving away from Emilia, suggesting that Foxidna stay with Rem and Patrasche. And since they meet up with Ram sooner since he knew where was the best spot to reach her and didn’t go to Shaula this time, Emilia’s name doesn’t get eaten, so they can fight together properly. Lye of course is delighted that amnesiac Subaru is here and starts pretending to be Rem, which pisses him off, and he even tried to re-enact from the From Zero moment, which Subaru had surely told everybody about, leading to Ram immediately slicing his right eye. When Emilia goes, Lye stops her attack and uses a gap-closing technique to get close to her, nearly doing heavy damage to her if not for Ram pulling her back, saying that Emilia’s face is one of her few objectively excellent traits.

Given Ram was pained from Emilia’s memories recently disappearing from her mind and now this remark about Emilia’s face, I believe Ram has a girl crush on Emilia. I believe this to be so given she said that Emilia objectively has a few excellent qualities (to Subaru’s one good trait being having good timing), and with her saying this with many people around, it took guts for Ram to do that given she’s not the type to give praise easily. I believe she has great respect for Emilia for her role in saving the Sanctuary residents, which is backed by Ep. 46 when she lowered her head to Emilia, saying she was genuinely doing it for the first time, and asked her to save Roswaal. And surely she has admiration for Emilia’s beauty given she qualified Emilia’s face as being “objectively” one of her few excellent qualities, and to use objectively shows she wants it to be seen as a fact. I love it when shows meant primarily for a male audience demonstrate strong female friendships as a lot of isekai and/or harem male fantasy slop series do a poor job writing their female characters, and you can tell Tappei actually knows women as well as read fiction with strong female characters.

Amnesiac Subaru then again is able to see where everyone is and can tell what they’re doing okay aside from Julius, who’s struggling. Lye then tries to eat Subaru’s name, but Shaula in her scorpion form strikes him down, with him being disappointed that death wasn’t the exciting or a great experience that he and his siblings had thought it would be. Just like before, she sacrificed part of herself to explode at an enemy, and Emilia was saved by Ram’s wind magic. Ram of course cannot fight for long due to losing her horn, and they discuss amnesiac Subaru’s new Authority. They realize that defeating Lye isn’t enough to get back what’s lost. As for why Shaula had transformed, the answer is made readily available when Reid finishes cutting open the ceiling from having cut into the tower from the second floor to this floor.

Shaula has rules for those involved in the exams (including the examiners), which are:

Don’t leave the tower until you’ve finished all the exams.
Don’t disobey any of the exam rules.
Don’t disrespect the archive.
Don’t intentionally harm the tower.
A hidden fifth rule we viewers don’t know about.

Thus, Reid broke Rule #2 since he wasn’t permitted to leave the second floor, and he broke Rule #4 in that he intentionally harmed the tower. Given the staircases leading to each floor is quite large, Reid must’ve been cutting open part of the tower for some quite time, and that’s how Shaula had transformed in between the time amnesiac Subaru had thought that Shaula and Meili had been handling the mabeast storming incident well and now. However, Julius notes that Reid Astrea is actually Roy Alphard, meaning Reid had gotten eaten by Roy or a previous Sin Archbishop of Gluttony in the past, but due to Reid still speaking with his usual speech pattern, Reid’s being may have overpowered Roy’s attempt to access Reid and is currently in control at least some of the time to the detriment of Roy, or Roy is just mimicking Reid’s speech pattern, but Roy is the reason Reid’s body was able to leave that second floor nonetheless. I guess that’s the only thing I flubbed/missed from my write-up last week, and it’s that amnesiac Subaru’s attempt to read Reid’s Book of the Dead connected him to where Rui was not ’cause Echidna forbade him from reading it but ’cause he’d read the Book of the Dead of someone who at minimum had his/her memories eaten by the Authority of Gluttony. I had brought it up in my write-ups for Episode 76 but erred in not considering that for my write-up for Ep. 79 as this Roy development was fully foreshadowed as one could guess Roy not being shown last episode was ’cause of a twist like this. It would’ve been great if I had caught it exactly then as it’s a missed opportunity. I’ve been watching Young Ladies Don’t Play Fighting Games this season, so just like someone who executes 90% of a fighting combo and flubs the rest is called out for spaghetti fingers (this hasn’t been shown in the anime and may never be. I haven’t read the source material), I should be called out for having a spaghetti brain to poke fun at me for getting 90% of the way there with my theory and attributing something to Echidna that should’ve been to Roy Alphard.

All in all, this episode isn’t as strong as the last one, but I genuinely enjoy it a good deal for Subaru having a second ability to his Authority of Greed aside from being able to take in what others feel (and share what he feels with others, which is unconfirmed, but I’m fairly confident is one of his abilities due to Regulus’s biggest regret), which helps him understand the situation of his allies, the parallel between amnesiac Subaru being Julius and Emilia’s strength in the first loop featured in this episode, Ram’s girl crush on Emilia, and the Roy having eaten Reid reveal.

As for the relevant Break Time short covering Felt and Russell Fellow’s talk:

A Re:Zero Theory Follow-up: Regulus Corneas’s and Petelgeuse Romanee-Conti’s traumas led to them creating situations that would re-traumatize them, which backs up my read on Subaru’s Authorities likely being shaped by the biggest regret of each of those in the dark world

Posted on August 23, 2026 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

As I stated in my main write-up for Ep. 79, Subaru’s Authorities are shaped by the biggest regret of each of those who reside in the dark world (Relevant scenes of the dark world being when Subaru remembered being in the dark world with his heart caressed by Satella in Ep. 8 after Puck used Shamak on him, when Satella whispered, “Aishiteru” to Subaru during the White Whale fight in Ep. 20, and when Subaru saw both Petelgeuse and Regulus before seeing Satella in Ep. 70) with Regulus’s biggest regret being that his first wife smiled in her final moments, showing her unhappiness with being his wife, and therefore, he desired to be able to share how he felt about her with her ’cause she never knew that he genuinely cared for her even though he slaughtered her family and the village the two lived in, and since communication is a two-way street, and Regulus wouldn’t have known to think to tell his first wife about his love for her had he not known about his first wife’s dissatisfaction with him, Subaru’s power likely manifested in being able to take what others feel inside their heart and feel it for himself, which is how he felt the warmth of Rem’s love she imparted to him to stop him from spiraling, in addition to sharing what he feels with others (unconfirmed for now). All of this was due to Regulus deep down desiring human connection, which he ultimately failed to do with his wife.

This is not to say that Regulus is meant to be seen as a sympathetic character as he was a horrible guy who did many wretched things, but as can be seen by his rambling to himself in Season 3, the guy had serious trauma over his wife smiling in her final moments even though no matter what he’d done before that, she’d refused to smile, showing that her not smiling was not for a lack of trying on his part. That trauma’s why he forced his future wives to agree to never smile or face death ’cause his first wife actually meant something to him. I believe Regulus was coping in saying that he never needed for them to smile ’cause many people who have trauma create incidents that will re-traumatize them, meaning if Regulus lived long enough, he’d have another wife who smiled in her final moments.

There’s literally empirical evidence of trauma survivors creating incidents that re-traumatize them. Drawing on that knowledge, this is why Kana from Oshi no Ko is obsessed with Aqua, ’cause when he shined a light on her during the Sweet Today adaption arc, she replaced her mother, who used to be the one who validated her talent and feelings of competence, with Aqua, since he stepped into that role for her even though Aqua’s very emotionally distant to the point that her fixation with him led to a proximation of emotional abuse (not actual emotional abuse) when he started ghosting her. And also relevant is that Aqua’s mother, Hoshino Ai, the person he most wanted to support, was a popular idol who died, and he was subconsciously drawn to making this similar situation by having Kana, the one he most wanted to support, join her sister’s idol group, and when someone pointed out that connection, he was distressed about potentially reliving that and his own role in potentially re-traumatizing himself.

This is backed by Regulus stating Subaru violated his rights as an unselfish man who desires nothing but to settle for a tiny bit of simple, ordinary happiness, which shows 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 no matter what he did with him coping by telling himself he never needed them to to since it makes their faces uglier after she died. He realized he was the reason she was unhappy, and he ragequit life after that and never decided to be a proper man due to subconsciously realizing how he fucked up, and his coping mechanism for this trauma is blaming everyone else for his issues and never take accountability for his first wife’s unhappiness to help him cope with his failure even if that appears to be an oxymoron ’cause the reality is, accepting that he did his first wife bad would mean that he was such a disaster who made the only person he held dear live a life of despair, and accepting that might’ve resulted in him deactivating his Authority and considering suicide, meaning his coping mechanism’s the only thing that kept him alive up until the end of Season 3.

Some people with deep psychological wounds/traumas are known to recall traumatizing things in their final moments, and this would explain why Regulus was haunted by his wives smiling at him when Reinhard sent him up into the sky and then remembered young Emilia and how she’d been protected by Fortuna and Regulus ’cause at the time seeing Fortuna and Petelgeuse, a real example of both romantic and familial love, reminded him of his own failure as a husband, which is why Regulus attacked Pandora when she told him to calm his anger ’cause just the thought of Fortuna and Petelguse incensed him by reminding him of how inadequate he is as a person.

As for Petelgeuse, his deeply regretting killing Fortuna is probably why Subaru gets recoil from using Invisible Providence offensively since that act hurt him so much and drove him insane after whatever Pandora told him to help him cope with what he did, and we know it did given Petelgeuse was talking about how Subaru killed Rem in Arc 3 with his own hands with tears in his eyes, showing that the moment in which Petelgeuse killed Fortuna with his Unseen Hand hurt him to his core. This would be why Subaru wasn’t hurt when he merely entered Invisible Providence into Emilia’s body but was pained when he crushed Regulus’s heart and why he wasn’t pained when he rubbed Joseph’s neck with Invisible Providence.

Even Petelgeuse killing Rem in the brutal fashion he did was likely ’cause he deep down remembered how he killed Fortuna and was driven, without intentionally doing so, to make that connection ’cause trauma survivors tend to put themselves in situations that re-traumatize them, which is why he was crying in that scene as he realized what he had did to Fortuna.

Anyway, I’ll leave it at that. I had neglected to delve into this completely for my main write-up, so I felt I needed to do this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Feel free to share your thoughts on this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Re:Zero Episode 75 (Season 4 Episode 9) Analysis + Important Details

Posted on June 5, 2026 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

This episode has so much interesting things to bite into, and I’ll do my best to put forward my best possible theories into this write-up. It opens with amnesiac Subaru venturing out of the tower as he did last episode and is immediately attacked by a sandworm, which before it can eat him, is filled with holes by Shaula and crumbles to pieces. Shaula, however, doesn’t continue her onslaught, which is a surprise given she said in Episode 71 that she’d have to kill Subaru if he were to leave, and I reckon that indicates she’s being attacked by others, which is why she didn’t one-shot Subaru right then and there.

He then sinks into the sand having pleaded to Natsuki Subaru, asking what he should do, and then he sees a bunch of mabeasts, specifically oiran bears, and then the screen flashes to a no signal screen one would see on a TV back in the day, and that is what’s referred to as a blackout. Maybe the younger generation isn’t as likely to know about it, but anyone older than thirty is highly likely to know that this was probably a creative liberty to indicate that he lost consciousness. When he regains consciousness, all those oiran bears are dead, and he has no idea what happened and runs off. After having traversed through the path on the right he originally took in Episode 69, in which he likely took ’cause of him subconsciously remembering Satella, Subaru again passes through three doors and can’t get past a fourth, and as he slams his head against the slab of rock due to having been driven insane by the miasma, he starts glowing, and he has no idea what’s happening, and as he tries to slam his head again, he finds himself teleported back to the entrance of the tower where he’d left.

As for what could be the reason for amnesiac Subaru glowing before teleporting, I see four possibilities:

Beatrice, due to her bond with him, could feel his distress and pain, and in her final moments as she died, she teleported him using the last of strength, hoping he’d have a less painful death, although this is the one I least like due it not explaining why it’d become night when Subaru returned.
I suspect the Books of the Dead are based on Echidna’s Authority, and depending on which particular scenario it could be regarding how many Books of the Dead Subaru is and what RBD actually does regarding multiple timelines being created or whether the world itself is re-created, Subaru himself may be a product of Echidna’s Authority, so this may give Echidna some direct control over him, meaning she either planted a spell on him around the time he was born for this specific moment or actively teleported him right at that moment. It having become night could be ’cause Tea Party Echidna spoke in Ryuzu Shima’s voice in Episode 49 and made the crystal with the original Ryuzu Meyer in cryostasis disappear along with Ryuzu Shima, meaning she faked her death and may have more than one facility that can sustain Ryuzu Meyer’s cryostasis crystal, and she teleported amnesiac Subaru into a different cryostasis crystal, or Subaru was stuck in suspended animation within Flügel’s tree for hours before being teleported back to the tower’s entrance. And it’s actually not a novel idea for animanga/LNs to have people in suspended animation within a world tree.
Satella, given she is always nearby, likely ’cause she lies within the dark world within the vicinity of his soul, teleported him ’cause she still had more plans for him in guiding him along the future I believe she, Echidna, and Flügel are trying to make a reality. As for why night had fallen, Subaru may have either been pulled into the dark world for an indeterminate number of hours before being teleported back, or Satella also sent Subaru into Flügel’s tree where he’d been laying in suspended animation before getting teleported back. As for why the dark world is likely within the vicinity of his soul, it’d explain why the miasma Subaru gives off massively increases whenever he is pulled to that place.
Flügel himself, or Kenichi, since I believe Flügel was originally Kenichi and Subaru in the same body, may have planted a spell on Subaru specifically to have it be activated at that exact moment, and thus, Subaru was teleported into Flügel’s tree where he was again in suspended animation for a indeterminable amount of time before he got teleported back to the tower.

It’s now night, and he decides that instead of running, he’ll just kill the one who pushed him as he thinks of the everyone he’s met here while eventually their faces are altered as if they were angry at him while he gets crazier and crazier and starts moving up the stairs in a strange way, repeating, “Kill” over and over, before being very eager as he makes his same weird movements after he’s done with the stairs, and he finds Shaula dead with her spine having been ripped out. He concludes it wasn’t Shaula who pushed him, and then thinks Beatrice and Meili would be easy since they’re just kids as he continues searching, saying that Emilia didn’t seem wary of him, making Ram and Foxidna the real threats to him along with Julius, who he hopes is already dead, probably since he knows he can’t take on Julius in a fight. Amnesiac Subaru then finds Ram dead, sprawled over at Rem’s wheelchair, with her spine ripped out much like Shaula’s had been. As he continues his search, he finds Julius dead, having protected Meili, who had also been killed, and he picks up Julius’s broken sword. After that, as he finds the path to Reid on the second floor, he sees a dead Foxidna.

He then comes to the conclusion it’s either Emilia or Beatrice who killed him since he hasn’t found their bodies and stumbles upon Patrasche, who keeps following him before he gets pissed up and stabs her, and she doesn’t even flinch in the slightest. Upon seeing how selfless Patrasche is, he directs his energy to ranting about how everybody is pushing their problems onto him as he very much has his own problems as he begins to start crying. In Season 1 and 2, Subaru had been trying to live up to his daddy’s name due to his inferiority complex toward Kenichi, his dad, and now he’s in the shadow of the previous version of him who everyone thought highly of, whereas they are dismissive of him and don’t include him in their plans. Patrasche then approaches him, and then this huge, thick mass of smoke shoots out and does huge damage to the tower, leading to Patrasche tossing him onto her back as she tries to get him to safety. When it appears as if they’re surrounded, he stops ranting about how he doesn’t want to die, and Patrasche tosses him through the hidden passage leading to the balcony, which I’m guessing she knew was there given how the air would flow differently at that spot. As he sees the tower getting destroyed, he asks himself, “Just what the hell are you?” since he probably sees the previous Subaru as being somewhat akin to a monster if he could handle the situations he finds himself currently in. Someone in Rem’s body then lops his head off, telling him to try to figure it out next time. Now it’s time to drop a theory given it really made no sense how all those oiran bears had been killed as I could see Subaru perhaps defeating one of them if he had his memories, but without them, he wouldn’t be able to take out any of them.

As you can see, someone in Rem’s body killed amnesiac Subaru, but it wasn’t Rem herself. We have seen from Episode 66 (Season 3 Episode 16) that Rui could take the form of somebody she’s erased, so it’s possible that Lye could do that with regards to Rem given he asked for the group to let “us” see our hero in Episode 65, meaning he’s very interested in Subaru.

However, each member of the trio tends to speak as if all of them are speaking instead of individually with each of them doing that at one point (First time for Lye Ep. 26, Roy Ep. 54, Rui Ep. 66). Given all 3 have their own eating style and thoughts, there should be something more to this given Tappei uses speech patterns to indicate relations to other characters.

We’ve seen this with how Roswaal mimicked Hector’s speech pattern for four hundred years ago ’cause he’d been traumatized from his beatdown by him, not ’cause he’d merged with him and how Foxidna speaking momentarily in an Echidna-like cadence in Ep. 67 and also in Break Time Season 4 Ep. 8 shows that she may not just be an artificial spirit but also a soul clone of Echidna’s.

Where I’m going with this is that when Bennett Mossa, August Valen, and Carsiff Finrell were eaten in Ep. 66, they shattered into glass and became like Rem, being in suspended animation. The green-haired person Rui had taken the form of also shattered when she transformed back into Rui, and maybe this is the key to what the three of the trio could possibly share in common.

Maybe everyone who has his/her name + memories erased are gone so that not even the Great Pleiades Library has a Book of the Dead on them since it’s like they never existed. Thus, the memories/true bodies had to go somewhere as if the Gluttony trio can morph into them and use their memories, what consists of their memories and bodies must lie somewhere.

Perhaps it may be a central shared system between the trio that’s not a hive mind created by the Authority of Gluttony, a shared mindscape of a world between the 3, a special pocket dimension for those who’ve had their names and memories eaten, or something I haven’t thought of. I believe the Gluttony Trio must have some way to access them.

So assuming my speculation isn’t entirely off, any of the three could’ve been in Rem’s body when amnesiac Subaru was decapitated. Even if it makes the most sense for it to be Lye Batenkaitos, it may also be Roy Alphard or Rui Arneb with Rui being more likely due to amnesiac Subaru remembering a line from her seiyuu in Episode 74 at around 19:26 in the episode, “Memories are what shape a person.” showing she likely ate Subaru’s memories.

That’d be why whoever was in Rem’s body said, “Try to figure it out next time” to amnesiac Subaru, and whoever it was knows he can Return by Death by either having eaten his memories or having been told of it by Rui. Ultimately, I still expect Subaru to win since I believe Gospels don’t truly tell the future but are meant to keep the world on a particular which would be why Regulus thought he’d meet Emilia again despite it not happening until the 4th loop.

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

This’d also be why Patrasche was unharmed while everyone else killed, and it’s ’cause the Gluttony trio’s Gospels didn’t tell them to kill Patrasche ’cause Echidna, who I believe is the one making the text in the Gospels appear, wanted amnesiac Subaru to trust Patrasche for now and find out about there being an unknown attacker. It’d also be why they were cornered at the hidden passage to the balcony ’cause Satella likely broke out of her Seal, and the black smoke was actually her miasma with her coordinating with Echidna to make that happen since that loop was clearly a disaster with Subaru having opened three doors making it easier for Satella to break out.

Of course, there’s something I believe may be more likely than someone morphing into Rem. Perhaps Rui’s spoken line from amnesiac Subaru’s memories have a second meaning in that if memories are what shape a person then whoever ate that person’s memories has a say in shaping that person’s life, as in those who’ve had their memories eaten can be claimed/possessed by the one who ate their memories. Given there was no trace of Rem’s body among the many corpses even though she was defenseless, one of the Gluttony trio may have possessed her. This’d also explain how Subaru survived in the midst of so many oiran bears, and it’d be ’cause Rui, who likely ate Subaru’s memories, possessed him. We’ve seen with Foxidna that when you possess someone the possessor can use their gate, which is why she can use magic in Anastasia’s body, so Rui possessing Subaru’s body should be able to use mana flow to boost her strength while also tapping into any skills she may need from people she’s eaten.

As for how the Gluttony trio would even be at the tower:

Sirius warned Subaru that the Sin Archbishops of Gluttony are targeting him, meaning they may have followed them to the Pleiades Watchtower, and given Shaula has stopped taking up her sniper role, they were free to directly come to the tower given Subaru walking away not being affected by the distortion meant that Beatrice’s yin magic may have deactivated the distortion and the Sand Time.
I’ve speculated that the second floor where Reid is on another dimension/plane of existence, meaning the Pleiades Tower could be multidimensional. Thus, perhaps there is a room or floor at the Pleiades Watchtower that connects to the space where I believe the memories and the bodies of the people who had both their names and memories eaten lay. Given Rui clearly teleported from somewhere in Season 3 to switch places with Lye, that could’ve been the place she came from. As for why Shaula had never been able to detect them, maybe it wasn’t possible until recently for whatever reason. Maybe it physically required for Subaru to be there, or the exam on the third floor needed to be successfully completed before that could happen.

Back to what’s airing, amnesiac Subaru then wakes up, and his first instinct is to strangle Emilia although he stops after she asks him what’s wrong, and this isn’t surprising given he’d been insane for at least a few hours due to the miasma and had just woken up while thinking that one of the members of the group had killed him due to the events of Ep. 74. Beatrice thinks he’s just asleep and is none the wiser, and he then sees Patrasche and showers her with affection as Beatrice remarks that she’s unhappy about that given she and Emilia are the ones that found him and at least expected praise as the spirit he’s contracted to, but Emilia is fine with it given the bond she knows the two of them have, showing she probably doesn’t see a land dragon as a threat to her relationship with Subaru.

When they’re at the dining table, Emilia asks if he’s sure that he’s feeling all right, probably ’cause she can feel the negative energy he’s giving off negative energy, and she ends the interaction by telling him to tell them if he feels tired, probably ’cause she doesn’t want to overstep and make him admit to something he doesn’t want to. He’s resolved himself to not tell everybody of his amnesia since he wants to see whether it’s connected to why he keeps getting killed. He sees no reason for somebody wanting to kill him ’cause he’d lost his memories, but he can’t rule it out, and Subaru having lost his memories would be a reason for Meili to kill him. He then concludes that although he didn’t find Beatrice’s and Emilia’s bodies, the voice he’d heard didn’t belong to either of them. Ram then asks him to fetch water with her and says that he shouldn’t try and do things on his own given he fell asleep in the archive by himself, showing her worry for him and how despite his best efforts to play it cool, people can tell something’s off. Shaula then greets him, saying she dreamed of the past with herself, him, and mom, who I assume was Daphne given Shaula doesn’t seem human and could very well be a mabeast given Meili’s obsession and disrespect for her, the magic circle seen from her sniping vision, her ability to smell his scent, mabeasts themselves being her main diet, and quite possibly her inability to read social cues given she didn’t sense anything off with him, which is why he decided to trust her.

Julius then walks by with Foxidna, likely to share the news on Foxidna being here in Anastasia’s place, and the look he gives amnesiac Subaru shows he’s still thinking about last night. He has a man-to-man talk with Julius and realizes that Foxidna apparently doesn’t remember Julius, but he doesn’t understand why due to his lack of memories. Through this conversation, Julius also realizes this isn’t the Subaru he knows, which is why he said to himself, “There’s no way to know now, however.” in response to saying that if Subaru had apologized, he himself wouldn’t know how he would’ve responded. Shaula then springs out of a barrel after Julius leaves the storeroom, and when she asks amnesiac Subaru whether he’s okay with leaving it at that, he answers that it’s fine since he realizes that Julius didn’t have anything to do with what happened in the archive, leading to Shaula asking for her promised reward, and although Subaru is reluctant, he eventually yields and gives her her hug. He’s still unsure of what’s go great about Subaru that makes Shaula’s goal of making herself as convenient as possible for him worth it, but Shaula then immediately thinks of going for a kiss after getting her hug, and it makes me think Flügel indeed had something going on with her for Shaula to say that she’d been waiting hundreds of years for him to propose to her.

Back in the dining room, he thinks back to how everybody was treating him differently and believes that Patrasche is the only one he can trust after all and muses about a paradise with just the two of them, which catches Meili’s attention. She says that even if that’s how he really feels, she can’t blame him since she was raised by mabeasts, which he comments on, demonstrating to Meili that he isn’t the Subaru she knows. She reveals that her mom, the one who’d taken her in, is really strict, and Elsa, who she was around all the time, was really lax, so she had tons on her plate when she was working with Elsa, and I guess that explains why Meili’s so mature for her age. When he remarks that she’s making his head hurt even more racking over the details and tells her to play with Shaula, but Meili says that he’s the one she has business with, and she licks her lips in a manner striking similar to how Elsa used to do it before attempting to murder her prey, and after she asks him how seriously she should take what he said yesterday, which could be him saying he’d help her find her parents or something else entirely sometime before Subaru lost his memories and the end of Ep. 73, he again blackouts and finds that Meili is dead, having been strangled after he got the shock out of seeing her on the ground like that after he tried to do CPR on her. He wonders whether he was the one who did it given the condition of his own hands, and then after feeling a sharp pain, rolls up his sleeve and sees that “Natsuki Subaru was here”, and it wasn’t transcribed using Re:Zero’s writing system but actual Japanese, and now it’s time for yet another theory to close this post.

It would be easy to just claim that Rui possessed amnesiac Subaru’s body given his memories were eaten by her, but carving “Natsuki Subaru was here” into his flesh is probably not something Rui would do since it would’ve been such a troll move even if she instantly learns Japanese with Subaru’s memories as I feel it’d be borderline ridiculous if she did do it although I guess it’s possible if her Gospel told her to do it, so I’m partial to an alternative explanation.

Thus, given he spoke as if he wasn’t Subaru multiple times this episode, perhaps Subaru dissociated right before Rui ate his memories or even as his memories were being eaten. Given Subaru in Seasons 2, 3, and 4 has emphasized how his goal to save Rem is driving so much of his actions, he likely felt an intense desire that he can’t possibly let Rem down with that being something he cannot accept, and as a defense mechanism, he dissociated to give himself some hope given his memories would be gone soon.

It is known in real life that people who have powerful emotions about having something or someone they can’t lose may experience dissociation. And given Subaru has been busy forming his own identity separate from his father, that may be an additional factor that could’ve increased his chances of experiencing dissociation. This would also explain why after amnesiac Subaru fell to his death a second time in Ep. 74 he heard a voice very much like his own say, “Who are you?” before he looped. If he has another self who may have some memories who’s lying underneath the surface, that could explain why he carved “Natsuki Subaru was here” into himself when he was unconscious.

If that other self has Subaru’s memories, it may explain why Meili had been strangled, and it’s ’cause Meili had taken on some of Elsa’s mannerisms, much like the licking of her lips before going for a kill, and that’d be why the other self killed Meili, ’cause she was a threat to his life, which he picked up on due to viscerally being reminded of Elsa and how she’d slaughtered him so many times.

As for why this other self killed Meili rather than restraining her like pre-amnesiac Subaru would’ve done, when one dissociates, the other new self isn’t exactly like the original person and could be kinder or crueler depending on what suits the needs of the situation. Given the new environment is hostile to this new personality, he could be more prone to killing his perceived enemies.

And there’s one more possibility regarding what went down between amnesiac Subaru and Meili that doesn’t involve dissociation, and that’d be that Meili had both her name and memories eaten like Rem did with Meili being up and about while being remembered by others being conditional on a Gluttony wielder possessing someone who’d been completely erased resulting in that person being remembered while being possessed. Thus, Rui could have been going back and forth between Meili and Subaru, resulting in both of them going in and out of consciousness as Meili goes back and forth between struggling for dear life and going back into suspended animation like Rem is. And all of that could’ve been due to deliberately troll Subaru according to Rui’s Gospel since Witch cultists follow whatever they say. Tappei would be such a troll if he’d thought of this.

I’d say this episode drastically increased the odds of Meili having been the one who pushed Subaru to his death twice assuming Subaru experienced dissociation. Subaru without his memories is basically the one who killed Meili’s big sister rather than a big brother figure, so it’s not a surprise she wants to kill him right now since their relationship is basically starting again from zero. I’m guessing the title of the episode “Empty Shell” refers to how amnesiac Subaru is very different to the past version before he’d lost his memories and how pretty much everyone can see it aside from Shaula and perhaps Patrasche.

Suffice to say, I’m really looking forward to seeing how the rest of this season goes. This was quite a whammy of an episode with a lot of content to chew on. As for the link to the relevant Break Time short: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exix9t4o490