Lye Batenkaitos – Thorough Watch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Re:Zero 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:

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 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

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

Posted on October 25, 2025 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Re:Zero Episode 65 (Season 3 Episode 15) – Analysis + Important Details

Posted on March 21, 2025 | by anicritic | Leave a Comment

This was my favourite episode of Season 3 so far. It had very compelling fights ’cause the fights themselves made you care about the characters either directly or indirectly due to the Sin Archbishop of Gluttony’s powers, more compelling villains since Regulus was just a noob with an OP power who was just evil in contrast to Lye and Roy, interesting foreshadowing, and character writing that is consistent with what came before.

The first two scenes need to being looked at as a whole given how one interaction doesn’t make sense if you don’t do that, so I’ll be covering both the ongoing fight with Lye and the start of the fight with Roy, looking at them together as if they are a whole. The episode starts with a lot of the White Dragon’s Scales mercenaries making light of Lye since they think he’s just one brat, but he moves really quickly, leading to Gaston trying to take him on directly with him being taking a big blow from an attack Lye called the “Fist Lord’s Strike”, which seemed to pack a lot more punch than what Lye had attacked Gaston with a number of episodes back. Otto then used Earth Magic, which he had revealed he had in Season 2, to get Lye away from Gaston since he realized all of them would be in huge trouble if Gaston were to be killed. Otto then noted that he’s surprised by Lye’s lack of finishing blows considering he probably had the opportunity to kill Gaston then and there instead of merely hitting him with one blow. Lye then taunts them, saying that they’re useless for not being able to handle one brat and that he’s nothing compared to the indiscriminate Roy, and in this sense I believe he is referring both to how Roy is not a gourmand like he is and how Roy is unrestrained in dealing with his prey.

And now to the Roy fight, as I mentioned in an earlier episode, Julius reacted to Roy referring to him to Nii-sama, and it’s ’cause deep down he retains the feeling he had a younger brother even though Roy has erased Joshua by eating both his memories and his name, the latter of which causes all proof of your existence to be erased, and when both are eaten, you become like Rem, who is a shell of herself in suspended animation. That’s how Roy could dodge Julius’s Al Clauseria and then counter his 2-spirit combination attack after he demonstrated to Ricardo how much better as a swordsman he was. Then he dropped his swords and said, “Eclipse”, and struck Julius with his fist, which dealt a lot of damage to Julius. When Roy started using Water Magic, Ricardo was baffled that he had mastered sword arts, martial arts, and magic, and Roy had described himself as a humble, nameless mage after Ricardo asked him just what the hell he was, showing that he had gained access to the skills of a mage that he had erased, and perhaps the reason he said Eclipse after he dropped his swords the first time was to show he was switching to someone else’s memories to harvest his/her skills and knowledge, which allowed him to be skilled at martial arts. I believe Lye and Roy can only tap into one person’s memories and skills at a time basing this mainly on how Roy dropped his swords before he said, “Eclipse”, and switched to martial arts against Julius and how he called himself a humble, nameless mage when he used water magic against Ricardo and Julius. If they could tap into more than one person’s skills and memories at a time, Roy wouldn’t be speaking as if he was just a mage or dropping his swords when he intended to change his fighting style if he could just put them away, which shows he tapped into someone’s memories who isn’t used to moving around with swords on his/her person. Ricardo then dispelled the water dragon attack with a roar, leading to Roy being giddy about how it’s a long time anyone survived that attack, which shows that he is indiscriminate as Lye had indicated with him being unrestrained in handling his prey by going all-out from the beginning whereas Lye has seemed to be going easy on them by not dealing any of Otto’s group a finishing blow even though we’ve gotten much more of that fight and only the beginning of this Roy fight. Julius then remarks about why Roy has chosen evil despite his skills, and Roy taunts him with Joshua’s memories, calling him the brother he always idolized due to him picking an appa from a tree for him when he was sick, but Julius has no recollection of that even though clearly feels something deep down given his reaction to Roy’s words. Roy then says with Joshua’s memories that he always felt that he was a burden, but now with Joshua’s memories in tow, he implies it’s great now to be in control, saying he actually resented Julius for picking that appa for him since it’s something he couldn’t do himself at that age. It was then implied that Julius took a blow after rushing towards Lye, and that became a good time to segue into the Capella and Al fight.

Then it segues to Al having split Capella in half from the top of her head to her belly with Capella musing about how many more times will it actually take before he can actually kill her. Al then replies even if he dies a hundred times, he’s not sure that he could ever kill her but that maybe she is the one who hasn’t thought this through since he knew she’d come here which means they were prepared to give her an especially warm welcome with an attack that would shatter her very soul, and Capella just tells him to do it if they went through all that effort to do so. She says that if they did all that for her that her principles won’t let her turn down the thoughtfulness in what they had prepared for her. Al then has a cute interaction with Capella when he says that she’s seriously going to die and that dying hurts and is scary, especially the first time, saying she doesn’t want to do that, showing that Al does indeed have a power that lets him defy death, which was hinted at in Episode 60 when he said that she better get out of there before he dies. Al, for the lulz, even threw in a dirty joke for her about how she should save her firsts for when the time is right, which she really appreciated although she remarked that he’s probably doing that to lie to her, leading her to transform into her black dragon form, asking him which form he likes the most with Al replying that he can never love anyone. Al then steps on a part of the ground that caused the whole place to start collapsing, and he dives into the water.

When Al got out of the water, he nearly took off his helmet, but seeing Anastasia was there, he decided not do it, saying he’s self-conscious. Anastasia says she didn’t expect Capella to take the whole place down, and Al says he was secretly crushed three times, which suggests that Capella killed him three times. Then Felix also joined them, and when Anastasia asked whether it was pointless to hope that Capella had died, Felix remarked that even Anastasia blowing off Capella’s face with magic wasn’t enough and that she thought Anastasia couldn’t, leading to Al drawing his sword against Anastasia since he knows magic is something Anastasia’s not capable of using. I’m not sure who this could be in Anastasia’s body though, whether it’s a shape-shifter or a possession of sorts. Al only backed down ’cause Felix pressed Al’s sword against his skin, causing it to bleed.

The information suggests again that Al may have been the previous hero of the story given he knew the remains of the witch in Priestella is that of Typhon’s and that you shouldn’t give out your real name to the Sin Archbishop of Gluttony. As for why Al is very likely not a future Subaru, Al neither knew about the extent of Capella’s regeneration nor her power to transform into your ideal partner by reading all your reactions to her, showing he had limited to no exposure to her, meaning she may not have been the Sin Archbishop of the Lust during his run-through as the hero of the story. Another point against Al being a future Subaru is that Al can specifically mention that he has been dying to Capella with it implied that she knows that is the case, which Subaru is not permitted to do by Satella when he has the intent to share information about Return By Death. This suggests that Al simply has a different power than Subaru and that it’s not a matter of Al being able to control his power better. Granted, this is not definitive proof that he can’t be Subaru since we don’t know all the rules of Re:Zero’s world. We don’t know whether an Authority can change over time, and if it can, perhaps Al’s Authority used to be identical to Subaru’s before it became whatever it is now.

Capella then returns as she reforms from rats with her missing her eyes leading to her getting the last two rats to conglomerate into her full form. This may indicate that Capella has a minimum mass given when she was missing a couple of pieces of her body she couldn’t fully reform herself. Capella is acting very dere with how Al hit her with such a passionate attack even though it didn’t end doing any permanent damage to her. When Al draws his sword against her, she tells him not to misunderstand since she’s leaving due to her already having done what she wanted to do, and as Anastasia interjects, it’s what the Gospel ordered her to do, which Capella didn’t respond well to, saying that her feelings for them aren’t from some book and that they’re real, describing it as pure love, which triggers Felix, leading to him saying that if they kill her, she bets Crusch’s body will be returned to normal, something Capella shoots down immediately since her and her blood are two separate entities. She then sends out her Demi-Beasts that are alive yet dead since they’re so intent on chasing after her, which Felix makes Felix cry out in tears about how she could do such a thing with Capella remarking in an attempt to provoke Felix that it might be ’cause no one ever told her to not play with corpses. This does get under Felix’s skin since as a healer he probably values life and respects those who have died as opposed to Capella turning corpses into monstrosities and not allowing people to move on. Al then directs them to flee, and Capella tells them if they don’t keep up the fight that more people will die, creating more Demi-beasts in the process, urging them to slaughter them all before she splits her bodies in rats and starts fleeing from the city.

As I have stated before in my previous write-ups, I do not believe that Witch Cult Gospels are true texts that tell the future but are merely meant to keep the world on a particular path given how Regulus’s Gospel made him believe he would meet the Emilia camp again in the first loop of this arc despite it not happening again until the fourth loop. Capella escaping could be the way for the source of the knowledge of the Gospels to ensure that none of Al, Capella, or whoever this Anastasia is, die since if she had pursued them, one or more of them may have died, showing that it’s also keeping the world on a particular path. While they’re fleeing, Felix eventually cries out to somebody to help, leading to Reinhard using his super hearing to hone in on their location, and at Felix’s urging of him to kill all the Demi-beasts, he does. I believe Felix is crying for them to be given death since they currently can’t move on after dying due to what they have become. I believe Reinhard’s eyes were obscured for this week’s episode ’cause he is suffering while fulfilling his duty as the Sword Saint. ‘Cause Reinhard was adamant that the corpse soldier Theresia was just a corpse soldier, meaning he was justified in killing her, Wilhelm said that he had nothing left to say to him and urged “Sword Saint Reinhard-dono” to do his duty in using his immense strength on the battlefield, reducing him to merely being a weapon. Earlier this season, Wilhelm wanted to close the gap between him and Reinhard, but him saying in the previous episode “You’re right. I’m wrong. So I have nothing more to say to you”, followed by referring to Reinhard in an extremely impersonal and respectful way (full title with the -dono honorific) is a pretty clear indication that the gap is not closing anymore as you really don’t hit someone with a “I have nothing more to say to you, so respectfully go away” if you have any intention to be friendly with them afterwards. Reinhard just wants to be treated as a person as anybody else would, and that’s why he reacted so well to Subaru saying he’d make up for any of Reinhard’s shortcomings in Episode 58.

Back to Otto’s group and Lye, Gaston remarks that Lye is pretty damn good at fighting, and he knows this ’cause he was trained by the gardener at Reinhard’s place and can see that Lye’s movements aren’t that of someone who is innately talented but has trained for years. Upon hearing that, Otto realizes that Lye and Roy can gain the knowledge and skills of anyone they eat, and Otto plays dumb. Lye says that unspoken messages, which I’m guessing should actually be “hiding your body language” and was a mistranslation, isn’t a strong point of Otto’s, so maybe she should give up on being a merchant before he gets hurt. Lye then immediately eats one of the mercenaries, Hicks, and nobody remembers him, not even Dynas, the leader of the White Dragon’s Scales. Lye says it’s because this type of thing is so sad that they love to engage in this sort of one-sided reunion in which they taunt the people who have lost someone dear to them much like Roy had also been doing, and when Dynas says that he hasn’t seen the guy who had been eaten before despite clearly on some level knowing there’s something off, Lye taunts him with his memories, suggesting it wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t protect Miriam (and Maylie? The subs said Mary, but there was someone with a similar name from Season 2).

Enraged, Dynas rushes towards Lye and gets knocked back easily with Lye musing that strong emotions are great ’cause they’re so rich, and that’s likely why he takes his time buttering up his prey as opposed to Roy who immediately escalates the situation with his prey, which is why Otto remarks that as a normal person he can’t think of people in terms of how delicious they are, prompting him to ask everyone to not say his name, only for it to be revealed that none of them knew it to begin with. Otto put it out there that he believes that what Lye is doing in letting them fight back is his idea of setting a table for a meal, and Lye remarks that people with keen instincts are hard to finish off and that they get away with it ’cause it makes them all the more tasty. Otto declares that he has won with Lye indicating that Dynas and Gaston are not bad but not worthy of a main course but that after losing Felt it would be bad to also let Otto get away too, especially Rui would rip him a new one, and this is not the first time Lye has mentioned Rui. Given Rui would rip him a new one if he were to let Otto go, it perhaps suggests that Rui is also a Sin Archbishop although who knows where she is given she is nowhere to be seen. Otto then tells everyone if he touches them that they’re as good as dead since he can eat anything he touches. They all rush towards Lye after Otto thanks him for his impeccable manners, and after Gaston creates an opening, Otto grabs Lye and puts two fire magic stones underneath his shirt, which explode on him, revealing many scars. Otto wonders whether those scars made him the way he is, which leads to Lye pestering him about giving out his name to him and also saying he has other ways to get him to talk, such as eating Otto’s fingers one by one. Beatrice then makes a grand entrance saying it’s rude to start eating before everyone is at the table. I’m not sure how she’s awake after she was in a severely mana-depressed state, but absent a proper explanation, maybe she restored enough mana to function after one day of sleep. Otherwise, someone restored her mana through some other means. Otto was about to say Beatrice’s name, but Lye tapped into Rem’s memories and already knew it, and his impersonation of Rem is just so disgusting on every level. He clamours to meet Subaru since Rem had talked about how Subaru would pass judgement on him in Episode 26, which is why he was so eager to meet Subaru in Episode 59. Beatrice is determined to not let Lye meet Subaru given that he’d be extremely hurt, possibly irreparably, which is why she and Otto have to take care of him here and now. Beatrice and Otto don’t really remember Rem themselves, but they have been told about Rem by Subaru and knows how much she means to them.

I just find Lye and Roy to be much more compelling villains than Regulus was, who was just an evil man-child with a broken power. Lye and Roy taunting people with the memories of people they used to know is more effective at making me care their fights both the characters fighting the Witch Cult and the Sin Archbishops themselves. Capella also steals the scene of basically every scene she’s in. The touch with Reinhard being disheartened over how his relationship with Wilhelm has relationship has deteriorated further and the bit with Anastasia being a possible fake was also great to watch, and I believe this episode was Re:Zero at its best.

Re:Zero Episode 63 (Season 3 Episode 13) – Analysis + Important Details

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

This episode has a number of interesting implications as well as good character work that had been set-up since the premiere of Season 3. Not going to lie, I enjoyed all of that stuff more the last part of the fight between Garfiel and Kurgan, which was animated by Vincent Chansard, who I am not a fan of due how hard he makes it to understand what’s happening on screen.

The episode starts with Garfiel emerging in beast form from the black mass Capella had left there to trick them into believing she was there. As I noted in one of my previous write-ups, it’s a good thing Capella wasn’t also there as both Wilhelm and Garfiel would die if she had been present. I know some people will believe this is plot armour, but if my theory that Gospels are meant to keep the world on a particular path rather than being true texts that show how the holder can attain their dreams, then this is all part of the grand plan from characters 400 years ago to shepherd the world to a good future. Garfiel sees some demibeasts, but as they prepare to strike him, he again sees his hallucination of Elsa, asking if he can really kill them since they bore no grudge to him and were once humans. If you recall from my write-up from Episode 51, Garfiel has trauma both from killing Elsa and from having a bit of imposter syndrome due to the circumstances in which he defeated her since he won due to luck to an extent. It’s no surprise that a teenager like Garfiel struggled with processing his first kill, and I applaud Re:Zero for going in this direction when a lot of series would not even dare broach this topic. Garfiel then backed off, only for Kurgan to kill the demibeasts. You would think since they are on the side of the Witch Cult that he’d leave them alone, but it seems Kurgan still has some sense of individuality despite being a corpse solider and wanted a fair fight, which is why he killed them for interfering. Garfiel flinched at seeing those demibeasts die, which is no surprise since he doesn’t want to see people die as he even gave Elsa a chance to repent after all in Season 2 before continuing his fight with her. He then rushed at Kurgan and got beat down badly with Kurgan knocking Garfiel down many floors of the control tower.

Then it flashed back to the Otto and Felt group against Lye Batenkaitos, and Otto got multiple water dragons to attack Lye after he did a particular step with his feet. The group didn’t know how Otto did that, so I’ll explain it now. It was revealed in Season 1 and reaffirmed in Season 2 that Otto has a Divine Protection, specifically the Divine Protection of the Soul of Language that lets him speak to and understand all living creatures, even those regular people can’t. If you recall from Episode 58, Otto took a day off from the rest of the Emilia camp to go to the man who can repair what was Roswaal’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom. He probably spoke with water dragons during that time in case the city came under attack since it surely doesn’t take a whole day to speak with one man. I’m guessing he bribed the water dragons with food or something since there isn’t anything else he as a merchant can offer them. Otto then asks why Felt is here in particular and name-dropped Heinkel, and Felt immediately interjects that she left Camberley to watch Heinkel, and I’m guessing that is the the last of three thugs that attacked Subaru in the alley in Season 1 since Rachins is accounted for. Felt was on her way to retrieve something they left at the inn, a powerful metia that a sorcerer in her camp gave to her.

Otto then interrupted her, likely ’cause he heard one of the water dragons crying for help, and it almost escaped the building the water dragons had slammed Lye into but was dragged back into it, which would most likely end in its death eventually. Felt then reveals after some prodding from Otto that Old Man Rom believes the metia is so powerful that even Reinhard would take damage from it, which Otto believes is a good benchmark for what could turn the tides in this fight, leading to him proposing that they stay here while Felt retrieves the metia. Lye then finishes off the last of the water dragons that attacked, and he said that gourmands can be particular about their appetizers, which is again different from how Roy Alphard approaches things. Felt even decides to leave Gaston, the most brawny of three thugs that attacked Subaru in Season 1, who if you recall from a previous episode, has a pregnant wife, with them. Lye then attacks as Felt is running away, and Gaston takes a hit from Lye in place of Felt, using mana flow to strengthen his body to prevent Lye’s attack from doing damage to him. After seeing Gaston’s battle prowess, Lye realizes what sort of plan they actually have. He then notes that with Felt gone that there are three that Rui might like, Otto, Gaston, and the person I presume is the leader of the White Dragon’s Scales. Otto then makes a meta remark that he’s had to fight more this year than most low-level fighters, and he wonders what kind of merchant makes him.

Back to the Al and Capella fight, the beginning of the scene with Capella and Al showed their shadows fighting with each other. After Al does significant damage to Capella, and she starts regenerating, Al says that couldn’t be more disgusting since he isn’t into gore. Capella remarks that nobody likes boys who speak too bluntly and wonders aloud whether all people who scheme in the shadows are like that, accusing Al to be the one who opened the watergate right as everything looked doom for the heroes and the one who killed off the other nine members of the Council of Ten who knew where the remains of the Witch were one by one with no involvement whatsoever from her. Al motions as if he has no idea what she’s talking about even if he probably opened the watergate and factually killed the Council of Ten as Priscilla hinted at in Episode 59. Capella then says she’ll forgive Al for playing dumb if he’ll take off his helmet, take her to bed, and love her, which may be showing that Al is her type of guy, and he just brushes it off while speaking in a higher-pitched voice that he appreciates the sentiment but that they don’t know each other well enough and that he doesn’t want his friends spreading weird rumours. Capella with some snark indicates that she doesn’t believe she’s such a bad option for masochists who are into being strung along by women given she has a penchant for reading into people’s type of ideal woman which has Al protesting only for him to be cut off as Capella transforms into Priscilla after changing her hair colour and probably age as well multiple times to suit Al’s tastes.

Al says that’s a repulsive thing to do and asks where she has seen the princess before, and Capella says she has never seen or have been aware of her, but judging the gestures you give off, the reactions you give, and the bearing you prefer is what she does best. Capella says everything about her should be in line with Al’s tastes, and he just playfully dismisses that by saying that the human race isn’t ready for that sort of expression of love, which is irritating Capella, leading her to ask why he is resisting her and what about her he dislikes, and he just trolls her by saying he doesn’t care, only to confirm that he finds her disgusting, so he actually hates her, to inflict maximum pain on her since Capella seems into him for some reason. Al then uses earth magic to fight Capella, cuts her head off and explodes her body to pieces, thinking that was enough, but it clearly wasn’t. Capella says her opinion of him has skyrocketed for sharing his intent to keep going even when the going gets though, showing that she is still really into him, but Al just keeps resisting her by saying he is more afraid of Priscilla in a bad mood than anyone, even someone who keeps changing appearances, which really pisses Capella off for daring to speak about another woman in her presence, and so she says she’ll teach him some manners with the interaction ending with Al saying the stars sure are aligned against me today.

Regarding Al not knowing the extent of Capella’s regeneration, I think this directly calls into question the theory that Al is a future Subaru since he should know Capella’s powers if that were the case. Thus, I believe this blindspot in Al’s knowledge is due to him actually being born as Subaru’s younger brother by blood and the previous iteration of the hero of the story with Subaru being frozen in time for hundreds of years. Al notably said the stars are aligned against him today, which shows he also has an awareness that his true name, Aldebaran, is based on a star, meaning he probably is an astronomy nerd much like Subaru was, and may have been named specifically due to his relation to Subaru.

Now I will explain how Al factors into this. Subaru means Pleiades in Japanese, and Pleiades is referring to a star cluster in the Taurus constellation. Al’s true name, Aldebaran, is a star in the Taurus constellation that follows the Pleiades star cluster in the night sky. In Arabic, Aldebaran means the follower for that reason. While some of the Arabic meanings for certain stars hint at the powers of Sin Archbishops, perhaps it would be better to consider Al’s name in relation to Subaru since Aldebaran isn’t a Sin Archbishop.

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

Since names have power in Re:zero, Aldebaran as a name could very possibly mean that Aldebaran would be the next person to be summoned after Subaru was. For more on why I am partial to Al being Subaru’s brother and the immediate previous iteration of the hero, read this:

A Re:Zero theory: Why Subaru was summoned and Al, quite possibly the brother Subaru never knew and a previous iteration of the Hero

Assuming my assumption about Al is correct, this episode shows either that Al had minimal involvement in fights with Capella when he was the hero of the story or that Capella wasn’t the Archbishop of Lust when he was the hero of the story as otherwise he wouldn’t believe that cutting off her head and making her body explode would kill her. In my theory, it’s mostly the hero and the heroine of the story who are different when the world is reconstructed after its destruction, but there are perhaps other small differences as well, as part of the world’s attempt to break the cycle of being destroyed and reconstructed may involve changing a few things up with the hope that the next iteration of the world will be the key to the end, which would account for something such as Capella being the Sin Archbishop of Lust in the current world but not in the previous iteration of the world.

Back to the Garfiel and Kurgan fight, Kurgan is standing there waiting for Garfiel, who is back to his normal form, to be battle ready again, showing he wants not only a fair fight but also a good fight. We then get a flashback to Garfiel calling Kurgan a living legend. He says that demihumans typically have a high aptitude for magic but that the many-armed race is an exception with comparably low aptitude, so even in the Vollachia Empire (the subs said Volakia in an earlier episode, so I’ll be using Vollachia from now on) where demihumans are a protected class, the many-armed race faced discrimination. It was Kurgan who turned that around when the local lord’s soldiers tried to kill them, turning the tables on all of them by himself, getting his race the acknowledgement they needed. Wilhelm interjected that most members of the many-armed race have four or five arms, but Kurgan was abnormal with eight of them, making him an outcast even among his own tribe, and despite that, he will took up the sword to protect his people. Garfiel indicated that his swords were referred to as Devil Cleavers, and Wilhelm said that he only draws them all against opponents he deems worthy, bringing those opponents great honour. Basically, Garfiel realizes that Kurgan wasn’t treating him as a serious threat. Garfiel then also starts using mana flow to boost the power of his legs, and he was able to get a large scratch on one of Kurgan’s arms in exchange for several blows. He also chips the main sword Kurgan is using before getting pushed to the area close to where the water is flowing out since they’re in the sewers, and as Kurgan strangles him, Garfiel musters up the strength to use mana flow again to destroy the ground underneath him so that they both fall into the water.

Then there’s a rupture in the wall of one of the shelters where Garfiel’s half-sibling are, and a demibeast finds its way into the shelter. As the citizens run to the opposite end of the shelter, Garf’s half-siblings fall to the ground, and Garfiel’s trauma regarding killing rears its ugly head again. He looks toward his brother and sister and finally gets the courage to kill the demibeast and the hallucination of Elsa with the hallucination saying she loves Garfiel with Garf replying that he doesn’t love her since she isn’t her (Ram), the one he actually loves, a callback to Season 2 when Garf let Elsa know he loves Ram during his battle with her. This makes Kurgan a foil to Garfiel since while Garf wasn’t outright an outcast like Kurgan was, he still decided to fight those he wanted to protect, his brethren, even to kill others for the sake of them, while being somewhat of a third wheel since his mother doesn’t remember him and started another family without him. Tappei clearly loves writing Garfiel’s character, and I believe the characters who suffer the most will have the biggest payoff at the end with those characters being Subaru, Crusch, Rem, and Garfiel.

Kurgan then also arrived at the shelter, and after seeing the dead demibeast and the whole shelter cheering for Garfiel, he honours him as a worthy opponent by drawing the rest of his Devil Cleavers. During the fight, Garfiel uses mana flow to launch himself to the ceiling while using earth pillars to block Kurgan’s arms, and in doing so, he managed to ruin one of Kurgan’s eyes in exchange for a slice to his abdomen. Then the strange directing began, and Garfiel rushes up towards Kurgan again using earth pillars to block some of his arms, and he used all the strength he had to destroy two of Kurgan’s Devil Cleavers in exchange for breaking his arms in the process. Kurgan thought he was about to finish off Garfiel, but he didn’t notice that one of his left arms wasn’t working well due to the large scratch Garg had done to him earlier before they reached the shelter in the sewers since he is a corpse soldier and can’t feel pain, and Garfiel uses mana flow again to launch himself to the ceiling and use the earth pillars to block Kurgan’s arms and descend down to bite through one of Kurgan’s arteries in his neck by attacking Kurgan from his left side due to eye being disabled, which was really, really hard to see, and I had watch that more than once with me not understanding until I saw a piece of his neck gone later after the fight had concluded, and I blame the lackluster directing there on my gap in understanding. Kurgan commended Garf and then crumbled to pieces like stone, which I’m assuming is ’cause the corpse soldier magic involves earth magic. Garfiel also looked like he couldn’t believe that he won during that scene, so that plays into his trauma regarding imposter syndrome for feeling that he won against Elsa due to a fluke. After that, Garfiel said noble doesn’t even begin to describe it, probably ’cause Kurgan didn’t use to cheap tricks and just wanted a fair, and more importantly, a good fight. His younger sister than calls for a healer as Garf collapses.

I wonder why Kurgan retained some individuality while Theresia ended up being a killing machine. Kurgan obviously still understands the concepts of honour, respect, and glory given he notably killed the demibeasts that were going after Garfiel ’cause they interfered with his fight, showing he still understood the concept of honour and wanting a fair fight. Later on in the fight, when Garfiel was laying down on the ground, he waited until Garfiel was ready to get back up before fighting, which showed he not only wanted a fair fight but a good fight, which was again shown when he demonstrated respect for Garfiel by fighting will all his Devil Cleavers, but Theresia is just a one-note killer now.

We then flash back to the fight between Wilhelm and Theresia, and he gets a fresh wound from her with him saying he never expected to last long in this fight, which was implied to be due to the old wound he got from her, and he says that he will have plenty of time with his wife when he joins her on the other side but that he will not dream with her being beautiful being why she can’t exist now since she was middle-aged when she died.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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