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:
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:
While I guess Season 1 might make one think of Elsa as being nothing but a vicious predator, Season 2 had Elsa deliberately save Meili, her little sister figure, and Elsa revealed in Episode 48 that owing to her having been abandoned as a child, she came to love disemboweling people when she’d nearly gotten sexually assaulted in Gusteko with its very cold climate that both served to ensure that she didn’t think about things such as living well or being happy while potentially numbing her emotions due to your body doing what it can to preserve heat and served to alter the regulation of serotonin and endorphins in her body, so when she killed for the first time and felt the warmth of blood and innards, she thought to herself that if there’s happiness in the world it’s the warmth that makes one forget the cold, in essence sharing how she became the Bowel Hunter. Maybe this was a twisted happiness, but her horrible life up until that point is what resulted in her becoming what she was, and Re:Zero has a big emphasis on nurture versus nature.
But the Bowel Hunter isn’t all Elsa is as she was kind to Meili when she taught her how to be civil, allowing Meili to bite into her without retaliating against her, and while it may have been on Capella’s orders, I believe Elsa felt for Meili on some level due to them having both been abandoned as children. I believe Episode 76 showed that Elsa wanted more for Meili than just being a killer as she said that for anyone other herself, no number of lives would be enough, implying that if Meili took on enough jobs she’d eventually find a job too tough for her, showing very much that Elsa cared about her well-being, which is why she told Meili not to be Capella’s puppet, and they were very much sisters as Garfiel had called them in the relevant episode. Elsa also protected Meili when part of the ceiling was about to fall on her, and Elsa stopped her assault on Garf when she’d been in a winning position, so she definitely cared about Meili and wanted her to live on to put herself in such a bad position with a reset of sorts when she’d otherwise have won against Garfiel.
Elsa and Meili was also shown having a sisterly relationship in the Re:Zero Break Time Season 2 shorts, and given one of them pointedly had Elsa talk about how she hates Subaru’s eyes ’cause they show that he believes that death isn’t the end for him, Elsa may have alluded to this in some way between the end of Arc 2 and the end of Arc 3 or even between the start of Season 2 and before the pair began their duties later, leading to Meili having a curiosity about Subaru dying, which may partially be why Meili mused about whether a Book of the Dead would spawn if Subaru were to drop dead in Episode 71. I believe that Break Time content actually shows that Elsa values life on some level given her hatred for Subaru’s eyes, which demonstrates that she believes that you should live life to your fullest, whereas at that point in the story in Season 2, Subaru had been treating his life as disposable and a means to an end, and it’d also be why she treated Meili well, highlighting that she’s not just some monster even if she developed an unhealthy fixation on blood and innards.
I don’t believe Meili really would feel sad about Elsa, which is why she was the most likely candidate for having pushed amnesiac Subaru to his death twice, and look at him in anger during the recollection of her life when her Book of the Dead had been being read while tiptoeing in anticipation of killing him, if she had never once thought Elsa had ever genuinely cared for her, showing Meili felt shame about being caught caring, frustration over caring at all, and anger towards Subaru since she was indeed sad, and given she had never really properly processed her emotions aside from killing what stood in her way, of course it likely ended up in her desiring to kill amnesiac Subaru since he was no longer her big brother figure but the one who killed her big sister figure, who she had affection for.
There’s been a lot of speculation on how Subaru lost his memories. Based on Eps. 74, 75, and 76 with amnesiac Subaru remembering “Memories are what shape a person.” which was said by Rui in Ep. 74 at 19:26, potentially hinting at her having possessed Subaru, his blacking out and waking up around a bunch of dead mabeasts he hadn’t killed himself and waking up having strangled Meili to death in Ep. 75, and Meili’s memories of what happened two days ago in Ep. 76, I believe this points to Subaru being possessed, but how did Rui (and potentially Lye and Roy) enter the tower given Shaula can detect who has left the tower since she knew amnesiac Subaru had left and given her prior warning that challengers to the tower cannot leave, which perhaps indicates she can sense how many challengers to the Pleiades Watchtower there are? Which means it may not be as simple as the Gluttony trio coming straight through the entrance even though the distortion and Sand Time had been dispelled.
“Memories are what shape a person.” may point to a second meaning in that those memories have been eaten can be claimed/possessed by Gluttony wielders. Perhaps reading the Book of the Dead of someone whose memories had been eaten by the Authority of Gluttony can result in a Sin Archbishop of Gluttony emerging to use his/her Authority against you, and that may be how Subaru lost his memories, ’cause they’d been eaten due to that deceased person’s memories being that Sin Archbishop of Gluttony’s possession, so Subaru likely read the Book of the Dead of someone tied to Rui, Lye, or Roy or perhaps even a previous Sin Archbishop of Gluttony (although I doubt this), and then the Gluttony wielder seized control of the recollection of the memories, using the Authority of Gluttony on Subaru. And I’m referring only to those who have had their memories eaten, not those who had both their name and memories eaten, leading to them being erased from the world. I know Rem appeared to be possessed in Ep. 74, but I have no idea what could explain aside from Rui teleporting from wherever she had been in during Season 3 before switching places with Lye in Ep. 66 when she swapped with Lye in the form of the green-haired woman (man?).
That’d be why Subaru had been reading many Books of the Dead and was normal when he interrupted Meili searching for Elsa’s Book of the Dead, and then when Meili returned, he was no longer himself as his memories had already been eaten, which is why he said that Meili’s face looks full of flavour, a very Gluttonyesque thing to say. It may not have been amnesiac Subaru, but the old Subaru should already have been gone at that point, which is why Meili thought to ask him about whether she could hold him to what he said last night in Ep. 75. This’d explain how Shaula, with her very keen sense of smell, didn’t smell other beings with high levels of miasma inside the tower aside from Subaru, and it’s that the Authority of Gluttony can be used when one is reading a Book of the Dead. Given Subaru by himself already emits a ton of miasma, Shaula may not have been able to detect a discernible difference unless she were really close by given miasma levels dissipate over distance like any other gas as shown by Ep. 69 by the ever increasing amounts of miasma as the group got closer and closer to the source of the miasma, not to mention she may have already retired for the night.
Based on Muse Asia’s subs through Bilibili, Shaula replied that Meili kicked the bucket and that that sort of thing happens after the topic of her having died was brought up, and I believe that may have been her trying to diminish Meili’s death as possibly similar to that of an everyday occurrence to cover for amnesiac Subaru. While I acknowledge if she was with the Hero’s Party 400 years ago, they would’ve been accustomed to death, the way she spoke knowing of this Subaru being kinder compared to Flügel seems out of place since it seems she’d possibly been intentionally making light of the situation.
What may back this up is Shaula clasping her hands together and raising her leg at 4:46 in the episode, telling him that it’d be faster to read Meili’s Book of the Dead, which may have been her love language in trying to cover for amnesiac Subaru so that he’d read the book before anyone else given her insistence on it. She basically coached him into doing it with the reasoning she provided when Beatrice and Emilia had been against it, and she may have said what she said to ensure he would be the first to read Meili’s book before someone like Julius could decide to read it himself.
There’s also the prolonged shot of Shaula at 13:52, showing she was very attentive to him, showing she may have known that he was the one who killed her and how much suffering it was causing him, and given the question she asked later, it suggested that may have indeed been the case since she was implicitly asking amnesiac Subaru whether she should dispose of the corpse.
In earlier episodes, Meili taking to Shaula and basically clinging to her seems surprising to me. Shaula also said that she has a scorpion tail, and maybe that was what she was using to snipe Subaru with in Ep. 68 given Shaula means “the stinger” or “the raised tail”. Given Ram saw a magic circle from Earth anime and manga, which shouldn’t exist in Re:Zero’s fantasy world unless they were invented by people from Earth when she used her Clairvoyance, whatever Shaula was sniping with wasn’t a regular weapon powered by magic stones, which indicates that her creation may have involved somebody from Earth, such as Flügel, even if he didn’t outright create her on his own.
Shaula also increasingly appears to be a mabeast given her affinity with Meili with the teenager clinging onto her in Eps. 70 and 71, how Meili also never referred to Shaula by her name but as “naked lady”, which could be showing that Meili considers herself superior to Shaula, not requiring showing her the basic respect others get. A regular human even with eternal youth also wouldn’t be able to smell Subaru’s miasma like Shaula can. To top it all off, in Ep. 73, Shaula indicated she loved cooked food since her diet usually consists of raw mabeasts, not to mention she said that she had a mother to amnesiac Subaru in Ep. 75, and we do know there was a female Witch of Gluttony, Daphne, who lived around the time period of four hundred years ago, and given she created the Three Great Mabeasts, she could certainly create Shaula too if Shaula’s actually a mabeast.
Given many animals in real life have much stronger, potentially on the order of a few to several magnitudes stronger, senses of smell than humans do, that may also apply to mabeasts, meaning it’d be very well within Shaula’s capability to smell Meili’s corpse. Thus, it wouldn’t be out of the question that Shaula, if she’s indeed a mabeast, could smell that a corpse was in the tower itself, and that might explain her happy-go-lucky attitude with her saying that Meili kicked the bucket. Alternative, Shaula may have just been able to smell that amnesiac Subaru handled a corpse on his way to the library without cleaning up after himself.
This episode makes things from previous episodes more clear while perhaps hinting at other things. It starts off with amnesiac Subaru continuing his identity crisis in that he was often speaking as if he weren’t Subaru, and now having “Natsuki Subaru was here” carved into his left arm with him having no recollection of it is giving him a fit, and he’s often smacking his arm across the ground due to thinking it makes no sense as he has a look of terror on his face, culminating with him asking himself, “Who are you?” referring to who he believes is the original Natsuki Subaru.
The scene then transitions to him putting Meili into a bag and hiding her behind a counter as he thinks of a way to buy more time to dispose of the body, musing that the detective being the killer is overdone as a trope in mystery stories. Outside, he runs into Emilia immediately, who asks him whether she startled him due to him legit looking like he may have pissed himself or something due to being caught in the act, but she hasn’t caught on aside from knowing he’s not doing well, and she shows so much concern for him and clearly has feelings for Subaru even if they aren’t yet at the point of love, to the point of putting his hand on her heart to show him that she’s not angry, encouraging him to not handle everything all on his own. During this scene, Emilia also brings up that she wants to give Meili a proper life even if it’s too early to be thinking about that, and the name drop spooked him for a moment, but Emilia ultimately reveals that since Meili’s the reason they got across the Dunes she should get better treatment and get moved out of her basement cell, leading to him angrily remarking about how she can be even thinking about the future when they’re stuck here at the tower, and Emilia is almost able to convince him to confide in her due to how she shows through her words and in her actions that she doesn’t think less of him for struggling, which is a problem he had with others treating him different in Ep. 75, leading to him trusting Patrasche and Shaula, but Ram ushers them to the library immediately due to a Book of the Dead on Meili having appeared, which Beatrice had found.
At the library, Beatrice says that Meili’s Book of the Dead having appeared is an ill-omen, and when he asks her why she hasn’t read it yet, she puts it out there that these books should be approached with extreme caution due to how distressed Subaru and Julius had been when they read the ones they were able to ’cause it’s as if they experienced the original person’ felt’s emotions and sensations, and thoughts/personality themselves, which can do real damage to their psyches if they’re not mentally prepared for that. Emilia is of course thinking of how Meili might be feeling at this point even though she’s dead, and Beatrice points out that it’s too late. Shaula then waltzes in and suggests that Meili must’ve kicked the bucket due to there being a book on her, which amnesiac Subaru takes issue with, and she merely replies that if he wants to find out what happened to her faster, he should just read her book, which is perhaps pointing to Shaula already having an understanding that Meili is dead. Given Shaula was shown at the end of Ep. 74 to be able to sense who has left the tower, which is why she said, “Master…” she may also be able to sense when one of the tower’s inhabitants has passed on, meaning she may have been trying to cover for him even from that point in the conversation, and if she’s indeed a mabeast, can probably smell that there’s a corpse. Beatrice does warn him that he’ll experience Meili’s entire life, and he still believes that it should be him who bites the bullet for the team since he doesn’t want anyone else reading it. Emilia, given she knows he’s really struggling heavily, suggests that she be the one to read it, but Beatrice objects, saying that it should be Subaru or Julius, and I’m guessing it’s ’cause she perceives both Subaru and Julius to have the strongest personalities or the strongest sense of selves, potentially even being the ones that had the best relationship with Meili of this group with Julius perhaps having conversed with Meili more than the others, not realizing Subaru amnesiac Subaru has lived lived for fewer than four days and would actually be one of the worst people to read a Book of the Dead given he currently has a very weak sense of self. Amnesiac Subaru then puts it out there that it might be a misunderstanding to try and deflect from the topic of Meili having died, and Emilia replies that if something happens that she’ll pull on his hair with him replying he’d prefer that she tap him on his shoulder or call out his name instead. And it once again begins with his soul being pulled into another Book of the Dead.
As Meili had revealed in the past, she’d been raised by mabeasts and had basically become the feral queen of beasts who escaped being prey for them and learned to desire to live among them before Elsa one day slaughtered her family on Capella’s orders to bring her back. Elsa apparently had taught Meili manners and such given she didn’t fight back when Meili had bitten into her after she’d washed her and was brushing her hair, showing she knows how to handle kids at least and didn’t use fear to force Meili to submit. When Meili had become presentable for Capella, the Sin Archbishop of Lust, she apparently told Capella that she didn’t know how to grieve, fight back or even live, which Capella just considered excuses and transformed her into various creatures to force her into submission, considering that something a mother must do.
In the next part of her backstory, Elsa, showing more of her patience with Meili, told her not to become Capella’s puppet ’cause for anyone other than herself, no amount of lives would ever be enough to satisfy Capella, meaning she didn’t want Meili to only live to kill, which is strangely kind of her even though she’s a bloodthirsty assassin, showing she knows it’s not most people’s nature to be like she is. Meili shot an angry look at Elsa while she was purchasing apples, and she wondered whether it was hatred she felt. She also wondered when she was killing people whether she felt sorrow and what it even was even whether she’d moved into the basement cell in Roswaal’s mansion. Since she had merely drifted through life, mimicking those around other, she had a weak understanding of emotions. Having lost Elsa, who she basically considered a sister, she didn’t know whose example to follow from now on. She thought that if Capella had told her to die, she would’ve willing done it, but she hesitated and came to the conclusion that she really didn’t want to die given Subaru’s kindness and her own will to live. At the very least, she wanted an answer, probably as to what she really wanted to do, which is likely why she agreed to tag along with Subaru to the Pleiades Watchtower.
In the penultimate part of the flashback that takes place during the time skip between Subaru’s meeting with Foxidna and Julius and waking up in the green room in Ep. 73, Meili worked up the courage to find Elsa’s Book of the Dead, and she was caught in the act by Subaru and was horrified, likely ’cause she felt shame over someone seeing that she could truly care about someone else given when Subaru had asked her to come to the tower, she’d explained that she didn’t do it for him but moreso herself since she didn’t want to lock herself away forever. Meili, for pretty much her entire life, did what she could to survive, whether as a feral child and as an assassin, so I think it scared her on some level to really care for somebody else, and that’s what led to her immediately leaving and thinking all sorts of negative thoughts about Subaru, ultimately culminating with her thought, “I don’t want him to know.” which shows she was thinking of killing Subaru for having found out about that since she never learned to process her emotions given the majority of her life centered around killing or being killed. When she headed back to the library, the one who spoke was certainly a Sin Archbishop of Gluttony given the manner of speech, and Rui had likely possessed Subaru, deciding to speak up after she tried to sneak up on her, and given Rui doesn’t have a broken gate, she could probably very well killed pre-amnesia Subaru or amnesiac Subaru given his gate is broken, and Rui encouraged her to find out what she really wants to do and confirm who she really is as a person, probably since her Gospel told her to do that. I’ll be calling Rui in Subaru’s body, Ruibaru from now on since it’s easier to do that. As for more specific hints on it being a Sin Archbishop of Gluttony, his saying that Meili’s face looks full of flavour was very much a hint that it’s a Gluttony wielder given those with the Authority of Gluttony love tasting the emotions of their victims. His also saying that he’ll remember it all when Meili’s acting more like herself is also very much a thing a Sin Archbishop of Gluttony would do and is what I believe is a sign that Rui or another one of the Gluttony trio is considering eating Meili’s memories.
The final part of the flashback showed her having licked her lips next to amnesiac Subaru and after she’d put out continuing their conversation from last night given she wasn’t exactly sure what he’d meant, showing she knew it wasn’t the kind Subaru who cared for her, and Ruibaru choked Meili to death, saying that asking him that question directly is against the rules since she can’t be outed like that. In the end, Meili thought that her life had amounted to nothing and that she’s being killed.
Ultimately, while I can see why someone would believe Meili didn’t want to kill amnesiac or RuiSubaru, I believe it’s more likely than not she did want to, and that’s ’cause while Meili wanted to grieve Elsa in finding her Book of the Dead, she was at a crossroads between whether to imitate Elsa or Subaru, and so since she felt some shame in being found out about that, she looked at Subaru with eyes full of anger. I’m guessing Meili blushing regarding Ruibaru sniffing her hair is ’cause she as someone who’d hit puberty had her hormones in flux, and it’s not ’cause she wanted to be his girlfriend. The title of the episode, “Murder Is a Habit”, from Agatha Christie’s Murder in Mesopotamia backs up this read that if you use violence to solve issues, you become more prone to doing it in the future, and that’d be why Meili wanted to kill him since she never learned to process her emotions and issues in a healthy manner.
And now it’s time for a theory, and it’s that Meili’s Book of the Dead appearing to this group of people so soon when the group had concluded initially that the books aren’t sorted by name or date of death in Ep. 71 suggests that there’s a will behind when and where Books of the Dead that can be read appear. This is backed by how in that relevant episode, both Subaru and Julius were able to find one they were able to read almost right away, suggesting a will or higher power is what allowed for that to happen. We know from the anime there’s someone who has the power to see a perfect reconstruction of the past, and that’s Echidna with her Authority of Greed: Tome of Wisdom, and if my speculation about Roswaal’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom and the Witch Cult Gospels are correct, the Books of the Dead may also be partially a product of Echidna’s Authority, and the Great Pleiades Library may be constructed in part from her her Authority and also magic from herself and possibly others such as Flügel, meaning she can possibly choose which books appear to certain people at any given opportunity, which would be very useful given she has the power to see the future and likely had been a major force behind all the events of the past four hundred years up until the end of Season 2. Its appearance was very convenient since it allowed amnesiac Subaru to be the first to read Meili’s Book of the Dead to prevent most of the others from suspecting him, and it allowed him to gain insight on Meili’s troubled past as well as seeing how it was his body that killed her.
Back to the episode itself, Beatrice tells Emilia she mustn’t read the book since amnesiac Subaru has mixed his mind with the memories of the original person, which is why he’s stating, “I’m being”, repeatedly as in “I’m being killed”, and “Elsa’s gone”. After a time skip when he’d calmed down, Foxidna asks him what did he see, and before he answers, he sees an imaginary Meili next to him, talking about how it much it hurts to flail around while being strangled since he’d internalized her memories as his own, leading to Beatrice telling him to calm down and find himself. Beatrice of course tells him to lean on her at times like these due to their relationship. Ram then calmly implies that Meili must be dead after Julius asks her what she makes of the situation, and the imaginary Meili tells amnesiac Subaru that they must’ve never trusted her much in the first place given how they’re so calm about this, which is still more pain for him mentally, and Foxidna stops Julius from reading Meili’s Book of the Dead due to the state amnesiac Subaru is in. Emilia then again puts out looking for Meili as the kind person she is, saying that they can’t leave her like that since she believes in treating the dead with respect as she did during her flashback with Fortuna in Season 2. And then the imaginary Meili says that she didn’t even care about her before she died, which is perhaps showing this isn’t just Subaru being haunted by Meili, but her memories/personality have literally mixed into his being, meaning he has multiple personalities right now, and that’s why this seems to be driving him insane. When Julius asks him whether he saw what happened to Meili, amnesiac Subaru can’t even look him in the eye and says that he didn’t, only knowing that something happened in the tower, and much like how most people realized he wasn’t himself in Ep. 75, I believe there should be a fair number here that didn’t believe what he said there either or at least realize that something is amiss.
In the next scene, much of the group’s members are shown looking to no avail, and Ram seems to think of an idea in the moment after looking at Rem in the green room. Back in the library, Shaula asks amnesiac Subaru whether she should look for Meili, and the imaginary Meili suggests that it’s almost as if Shaula knows what he did, so that subconscious influence from her leads to him telling her to take care of Meili, which is Shaula taking it to mean that she’ll dispose of the corpse, probably sniping it until there’s nothing left. And here comes the kicker, the one in Subaru’s body says, “Natsuki Subaru is a despicable coward who’s trying to hide “my” death, as in Meili’s death since amnesiac Subaru had less than four days of memories and internalized years of Meili’s life experiences, and that’s why he used the “watashi” pronoun in that scene, which he never uses, but Meili always does, so Meili Portroute lives on through him in that there are occasions he thinks like her, speaks like her, and acts like her, which is why he asks Beatrice why she’s treating him so well, not ’cause he’d lost Subaru’s memories but ’cause to Meili herself, Beatrice has no reason to treat her well. That’s why he thinks about why the group loves Subaru so much and that he wants to know, and it’s ’cause Meilibaru, which I will be referring to from now on whenever it appears that Meili’s personality is speaking, is in control at that moment. When he muses about whether he can love Emilia and the others or hate them, Meilibaru suggests that he kill them to read their Books of the Dead, which is really dark stuff and is consistent with the story of the episode. Beatrice then suggests that he go back to the green room due to how unwell he is.
In the green room, amnesiac Subaru thinks about why they’re so nice to him, and Meilibaru tells him to give Beatrice’s neck a little squeeze as it’ll snap like a twig, and he strongly considered it before fighting back that thought. Beatrice then notices the condition of his hand with him thinking that she has realized that he killed Meili, only for her to heal him. When Meilibaru tells him that there’s no fun since he stopped wanting to kill Beatrice, he says aloud for the first time when conversing with her, “You’re wrong. You’re wrong!” He then has an internal monologue with Meilbaru about how murder is a habit in that if you solve a problem with a murder once, you’ll become more likely to solve future problems with murder.
Later at the dining table, nobody was able to find Meili’s body, and Emilia had even asked Reid to no avail. Foxidna and Ram basically shoot down Emilia’s suggestion to continuing searching for the body tomorrow since Anastasia’s life is being worn away, and their food supply is finite. When he says that Meili wouldn’t want them to be sitting around here, Meilibaru taunts him in telling him that he doesn’t believe a lick of that, and I believe there are others who can tell that this is not the real Subaru given he’d take Emilia’s side on this.
At night in the green room, Subaru tells Meilibaru that he has to be sure or neither of them can rest easy ’cause of the corpse, and then he gestures to Patrasche to shush when she pokes her head up after he tries to leave quietly. After he goes to the room where the corpse was and finds that it’s gone, Ram enters the room and suspects that he’s the killer due to her having spied on him when he told Meilibaru that she’s wrong, when he talked about them resting easy, and when he shushed Patrasche using her Clairvoyance given the idea dawned on her when she went to visit Rem. Ram sets a trap in using the name Natsuki Subaru, which she has never done in all four seasons prior to this point, ’cause the real Subaru would flip out over her actually using his name, and all he can think of is strangling her due to it indeed being the case that resorting to violence once makes it easier to resort to doing that again, not having figured out that Ram knows he isn’t the real Subaru.
One final theory I have on this episode is that Rui perhaps didn’t enter directly through the tower’s entrance given Shaula can detect how many lifeforms are in the tower given how she knew amnesiac Subaru had left the tower at the end of Ep. 74, so perhaps reading the Book of the Dead of someone whose memories were eaten by the Authority of Gluttony can result in a Sin Archbishop of Gluttony emerging to use his/her Authority against you, and that may be how Subaru’s memories were eaten given that deceased person’s memories would be that Sin Archbishop of Gluttony’s possession, so Subaru likely read the Book of the Dead of someone tied to Rui or the other two Sin Archbishops of Gluttony.
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
The episode opens with Subaru introducing himself to Emilia and Beatrice, which leads right away to a time skip of an indeterminable amount of time, and they’re very surprised that he remembers nothing of what he has experienced recently along with having no recollection of either of them. During that event I mentioned, Subaru came to the realization that he really remembers nothing of his time in this world with his musing about his hand not being in the condition he remembered it was in, and Emilia was at the same time clasping her hands together much like in Season 1 when she figured that Subaru was the one wearing her cloak that made it hard for people to recognize the person wearing it during the battle against Petelgeuse and was praying for his safety, only in this scene she was praying for him to get back his memories partially due to the distress it was causing her. After Subaru told the two to cheer up since everything will probably be okay in two hours much like in similar movies, Emilia says that she has no idea what he’s talking about, but Subaru often did that when he had his memories, which is try to approach things with a good attitude even if others didn’t understand what he was talking about as it cheered her up, leading to her smacking herself on the face since Subaru clearly has it worse than she does, meaning she can’t just mope around either. Beatrice herself is also quite distraught by Subaru not knowing what she meant by contractor given how close they had become and how Subaru told her to choose him in Season 2 ’cause he’d make sure she has so much fun that it’ll be worth it even after he dies given she was suicidal at that point and lonely about how those she knew were all leaving her behind, which is why she said that this better be the last time Subaru has amnesia, or she’ll lose all patience with him, and I believe this is a possible hint that Tappei will not abuse Subaru forgetting his memories as some authors do with making the same person forget his/her memories repeatedly. Subaru then snaps his fingers and requests for Emilia and Beatrice’s names, and Emilia is taken aback since she remembered that that’s exactly how he asked for name in the loot house arc when Elsa was tasked with stealing her insignia, but that melts into a smile since it’s further proof that this he’s still the same person. She replied that she’s Emilia, just Emilia, to harken back to that moment and treat it genuinely as a fresh start with amnesiac Subaru, which is what I’ll be referring to him from now on.
The next scene is when they’re back in at the dining table where they both discuss strategy and have meals, and Ram’s immediate reaction is whether it’s a joke since she’s really relying on Subaru to wake Rem since he’s the one who comes through in a pinch for everybody with his plans and ’cause he’s the only one she believes still remembers her sister, serving as her anchor to her dear sister. When amnesiac Subaru replies whether her nickname for him, “Barusu”, is referring to a spell, it is a callback to Season 1 when Ram first used that nickname to disrespect him, and he remarked about it being a blinding spell/curse due to the pronunciation of the Japanese. Ram obviously didn’t like hearing that since it called back the situation from the mansion, showing her that he may not be joking about his memories, and what hurt even more, which is why her facial expression immediately changes to that of someone who’s pained, is when amnesiac Subaru asked if she’s the sleeping girl’s sister since Subaru is the one she knew as the one lone connection to her sister that had remained, probably not even including herself since she personally has no memories of Rem. And when he makes his comment about saving her complaints for when his memory comes back, which is in the spirit of something Subaru would’ve said in the past, she said that that makes it hard for her to believe he’s actually lost his memory since she desperately hopes that he remembers Rem and wants for it to be the case with all her heart given he’s still acting like the Subaru she knows. Of course, he continued to be oblivious to who Meili and Shaula were given he’d lost his memories, and this changes Foxidna’s and Julius’s plan to reveal that she’s an artificial spirit right away since Julius is horrified by this latest development since his last interaction with Subaru was speaking to him in anger, and to his knowledge, Subaru was the only one who remembered him although I believe Foxidna also does but just isn’t revealing that, which is horrible for Julius given his current struggles with his identity.
Then Ram asks Emilia if she can borrow amnesiac Subaru, and he says that he’s fine when Emilia protests, calling her Emilia-chan, which upsets Emilia as her expression clearly gives way to her becoming crestfallen since the Subaru she knows would use Emilia-tan. He does notice Emilia’s discomfort, but he doesn’t understand what could’ve brought about that change in expression. Ram then openly confronts him on their fake water-hauling run, which is a pretext to grill him due to her being desperate and wanting to convince herself that this is an act from him even though he truly presents as having lost his memories. Her suggesting that it’s nothing new for him to shoulder something everything alone is her desperately trying to convince herself that’s what he’s doing since she’s having difficulty keeping it together. When she suggests to him that he tell her everything, promising that she’ll keep it a secret, his reply that having a secret between the two of them has a nice ring to it being followed by a “but” seriously pisses her off due to the change in expression on her face ’cause more and more, he’s confirming that Rem has lost her most powerful ally. Ram using physical force and her eyes narrowing in anger show just hard this is on her, which is why she starts pleading to Subaru to reveal everything ’cause if he has forgotten too then Rem will truly have nobody. It’s a very sombre cry for help due to how powerless Rem feels in this situation with having lost her pseudo-brother-in-law who was her sister’s biggest champion. Subaru replies by telling her, “Sorry”, in a manner that suggests he’d like to do as she says since he himself realizes just how much Ram is struggling.
When they’re back in the dining room, Julius introduces himself once again saying that he and Subaru were something akin to friends, and when Subaru asks why he sounded so unsure about that, Emilia replies that he and Julius are really close, and I’m guessing Julius sounding so unsure about their former relationship is ’cause Subaru harboured some residual resentment from since the time Julius emasculated him at the Royal Selection and had never really let it go except maybe until recently when he’d seen that Julius had similar issues to what he did and that they are at least somewhat alike. Meili then puts it out there that that’s the least of Julius’s problems since Foxidna had dropped her Anastasia act since this morning and many among the group had already picked up on her being somebody else. Foxidna then reveals that had hoped to build a similar relationship with Anastasia as the one Beatrice and Subaru had and the true situation of how things are concerning Anastasia. When Emilia hears that her name’s Echidna, she has a strong negative reaction, much like Subaru did, and Foxidna says that she’s a completely different person, which I suspect is false given even in the Re:Zero Break Time Season 4 Episode 8 short, Foxidna is speaking similarly to Echidna, much like she did in Episode 67, suggesting she may very well be a soul clone of Echidna’s who also doubles as an artificial spirit,. Emilia then says that she’ll need to give Echidna a piece of her mind next time with Foxidna replying that she’d give Emilia her full support in doing so ’cause she keeps getting slandered due to the association between their names, and the reason from the short is supposedly that Foxidna was destined to die due to people hunting her ’cause of her name, but I’m convinced Foxidna completely planned out her meeting with Anastasia with her Tome of Wisdom specifically so that she wouldn’t die even if she grew to become fond of Anastasia in time. As for the link to the short, here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Yc4z2iYkKE
Amnesiac Subaru then changes the subject, bringing up that they’re all here to help people, and Ram rudely interjects that now they’re here and working through the tower that Subaru has gone and forgotten what little memory he had of his time in this world while Anastasia’s consciousness isn’t available at all. When he brings up that there’s no good news at all and seems down, Emilia says that they shouldn’t mope around as it won’t get them anywhere, which was something Subaru taught her, leading to him perking up and saying that they should look on the bright side since he’s free from the logic of this world and may be able to cook up some fresh ideas that resolve the situation, turning a crisis into an opportunity, which Beatrice remarks is very much a Subaru-ism. That also freshly reassured Emilia that he’s still Subaru given she’d been shaken earlier when he’d called her Emilia-chan. Julius himself also seems to feel better upon hearing that, saying that amnesiac Subaru’s loss of memories hasn’t affected his inability to differentiate between bravery and recklessness, which is the sort of thing he’d say to Subaru. When he broaches the subject of Subaru’s amnesia, Emilia and Beatrice note that they found him lying on the ground unconscious in the library, and that’s when they carried him to the green room where he was lying down at the end of Episode 73 and the beginning of this episode. Foxidna believes that the library’s likely the problem given all the Books of the Dead with the group explaining what they are to the amnesiac. They’re not ruling out that it’s one of those books that messed up Subaru’s memories and believe it’s worth investigating, but the group decides that amnesiac Subaru won’t investigate with them, and he curses himself for giving into peer pressure as he walks aimlessly before deciding to say, “Status Open!” hoping he’d find a game screen like many of the isekai stories he’s read and seen have, only to be completely disappointed, confirming Beatrice’s words to him that since he destroyed his gate using beginner magic he can never use magic again. He also whips himself when he thinks of the remaining tool he has at his fingertips, failing so hard that he wondered why he didn’t make a diary for if something like this happens, which we know that Otto (From the Season 2 Break Time shorts) and Julius (from a Season 4 Break Time short) are doing by documenting things of importance to them. He then gets himself together, thinking that in this world, even someone like him can do it, as in do great things, due to his belief that he’s an isekai hero even if didn’t really do anything when he was still on Earth. He then spots a really long staircase and thinks it may go on forever and is pushed off and dies headfirst.
When he awakes, amnesiac Subaru is confused about what happened and believes he may have had a prophetic dream since Emilia and Beatrice act similarly to before, and he explained everything like he did before only omitting that he believes he has the power of prophetic dreams. Then the interactions with all the rest are mostly the same aside from Shaula running back to him, saying that he has a scary look on his face when the group had again decided on leaving him, snuggling up him to him really hard before Meili pulls her scorpion tail since she doesn’t want Ram and Beatrice getting mad at her, which Shaula is very hurt by, leading her to suggest that he tell Meili off and him thanking Meili instead since he doesn’t really know Shaula and doesn’t want her clinging to him, and that deeply saddens Shaula, resulting in her slamming the door as tears flow from her eyes. I really feel for Shaula given the visual and symbolic allusion to the Titan Atlas in Episode 70 and then her remarks in Episode 73 that pointed to loneliness that one might say is as deep as the Mariana Trench. This leads to Meili to say that he really doesn’t remember anything given he’d tasked her with handling Shaula and his surprise of having thanked an assassin, and Subaru talks about how he may have made an important promise and forgot the next day, showing that his past self was careless, which Meili readily agrees with given even she isn’t happy with amnesiac Subaru either given her earlier remarks about him being hopeless in the first loop after having lost his memories given the reason she’s even at the Pleiades Watchtower is ’cause of her wanting to help him due to the good relationship they had since they had a big brother-little sister dynamic, somewhat similar to Meili’s sisterly relationship with Elsa which was depicted in the Break Time Season 2 shorts.
The next scene after that has amnesiac Subaru observe the staircase where he fell, and he looks back to see if he’s about to get pushed since he remembered being pushed and feels reassured that there was nobody there. Then with oddly precise timing, he walks by to overhear Foxidna saying it might be dangerous to have him accompany them, which I find highly suspect as if she guided the conversation in that way so that he’d hear that right during the moment he did with her Authority of Greed: Tome of Wisdom, which I still suspect she has. The whole group aside from Emilia and Beatrice are against having Subaru aid them given he may be very unreliable and even a liability due to his lack of memories, although Ram is at least quite concerned for his safety given she mentioned it and wouldn’t have if the thought hadn’t come to mind, and the only one part of the group without any lines during that scene was Meili, either due to her not being there or due to the others not counting her as part of the group.
Subaru is of course distressed in hearing that and ran back to where the large staircase was, and as he becomes despondent about whether the group will even believe him about the prophetic dream given his lack of credibility, someone shorter than him pushes him down again as he falls while remembering things that had been said regarding the group’s lack of trust in him, how he’s still Subaru, and one line which I believe was huge foreshadowing.
Around 19:26 of Episode 74, Subaru heard Rui’s words, which shows he remembered her words as he fell, showing Rui may have eaten his memories. After she ate them, she likely said what she did either immediately after eating them, as she was carrying him to the library, or after she had dropped him off at the Great Pleiades Library. Subaru may have heard something while he was in between unconsciousness and being awake, which is the N1 light sleep phase when she said what she did. She could have knocked him out and then carried him to the library. She likely carried him to the libary to provide cover for herself, which if she did, worked very well since the group appears to believe that Subaru’s amnesia is due to a Book of the Dead. Given Shaula’s no longer sniping due to her orders, that should’ve opened the door for others to come to the Pleiades Watchtower.
Why amnesiac Subaru would remember this as he’s dying is that when someone is dying, the brain can trigger a surge of gamma brain waves associated with long-term memory retrieval, which is responsible for the life flashing before your eyes phenomenon, so Subaru may have remembered that specifically ’cause he was dying and otherwise wouldn’t have. Given Subaru’s identity issues and his fear of abandonment that had been revealed in Episode 7, reinforced in Episode 13, and shone a light on in Episode 29 as well as his hearing of “Who are you?” which very much appears to be his own voice after he awoke from his second death, that may be why that memory of Rui’s words surfaced since it was highly relevant to what he’s going through with regards to his identity crisis.
He then panics upon looping, and after Emila pats him on the back in an effort to comfort him, he remembers being pushed off the ledge, and that’s what led to him freaking out and shoving Beatrice to the ground, causing him to run straight to Reid on the second floor, which possibly was ’cause of his subconscious memories of Reid hinted at in Episode 70 given he lacks any memories of the group he’s with, possibly suggesting that Reid was a friend of his four hundred years ago, and if Subaru was indeed half of Flügel as I speculate, it’d make sense given Flügel, Reid, and Volcanica travelled together in the past. Upon reaching Reid, who was standing close to the stairway, Reid mocks him in saying what he’s doing here so early and asks amnesiac Subaru whether he had a fight with his friends since he’s crying and saying that he shouldn’t have ran, especially not to him, puncturing his body in the process. Anyway, I find it suspicious that Reid was hanging by the stairwell given the two others times people came through it he was quite a ways off from it, perhaps implying that he was waiting for amnesiac Subaru in that very moment.
While Reid saying that Subaru came too early may imply he’s aware of the passage of time, in all the instances Reid had screen time, there was zero indication of where the sun was shining, and given how heavily Re:Zero focuses on details and how I’d previously speculated that the huge field Reid is in another dimension entirely, Reid shouldn’t be able to perceive how much time had passed as getting exposure to sunlight is important in ensuring one has a normal circadian rhythm, and this space possibly has no sunlight but merely mimics daytime conditions, so even this Reid who apparently only remembers having swung a sword for three months may be on the same side as Satella, Echidna, and Flügel and is acting with future knowledge from Echidna through a soul link, contract, or oath with the assistance of her Tome of Wisdom. More to potentially back this up is that Reid basically said that amnesiac Subaru shouldn’t have ran and instead hashed things out with his people, which is useful advice for someone who’s supposed to be an enemy. Thus, Reid may have told amnesiac Subaru that he’s early ’cause he knew that the poor guy wasn’t really ready to face him. Yes, Reid’s the type who likes to bully the weak as Shaula had said, but I suspect there was more to this interaction than what was on the surface.
Reid then pushes him down the staircase, and amnesiac Subaru is writhing in pain as he remembers having been with his parents not that long ago before being summoned and not having washed his dirty cup after his meal with his mom not complaining about that, ruing how she should’ve replied to her “Take care” and how he never paid his parents back, both of which were callbacks to Episode 29, Parent and Child. He then hears laughing, whether it be internal or external, who knows? And now it’s time for a detour as I go into who I believe are the most likely suspects for having pushed him down the ledge, and I promise I will segue back into what comes next as I discuss the options.
As for who are the suspects for having pushed Subaru off the ledge, the only people in my opinion who would push Subaru are people I believe who have future knowledge, supposed future knowledge, or are interested in whether there is more for Subaru after death, of which only apply to Lye Batenkaitos, Roy Alphard, and Rui Arneb, the three Sin Archbishops of Gluttony, Foxidna, and Meili.
Given Season 3 revealed that Witch Cult Gospels don’t actually truly tell the future but are meant to keep the world on a particular path, which is why Regulus thought that he’d meet Emilia again in Episode 51 despite it not happening until the fourth loop, showing what was depicted in his Gospel was meant to make the Sin Archbishops act the way they did in the fourth loop when Subaru had a successful run until the end. This is backed by Regulus telling Subaru in Episode 53 to be grateful to him that he adhered to his Gospel in only shredding much of his leg off since he’d have preferred a massacre. Sirius and Capella also backed this up in Episodes 53 and 55 respectively when they were listening to the toll of the clock tower to either cease their hostilities or change their plans. Additionally, Episode 65 had Foxidna point out that Capella does whatever her Gospel says, and that’s why she was retreating, suggesting that some other force is what is causing the text in the Witch Cult Gospels to appear, indicating they are meant to keep the world on a specific path. Given Roswaal’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom didn’t include Otto in it, I posit that this is also the case for that text as well, and it was also meant to keep the world on a particular path rather than be a true future-telling text.
And given the prototypes of the Witch Cult Gospels is Roswaal’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom, they may be partially made of the same materials, such as Echidna’s fingernails, toenails, hair, body hair, dead skin, or body fluids, and if they are indeed partially constructed by such materials, the Witch Cult Gospels and Roswaal’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom could be connected to Echidna’s mind through magic, and she’s the one who makes the text in the Gospels appear, meaning Echidna may be stealthily manipulating the Witch Cult through her Authority of Greed: Tome of Wisdom with the Witch Cult being created four hundred years ago so that it could eventually be used to give Subaru and others character development and achievements.
Where I’m going with this is that if any of Lye’s, Roy’s, or Rui’s Gospel told each of them to push Subaru, he/she would do it to adhere to his/her Gospel, no questions asked, even if the whole point was to ensure Subaru learns about Return by Death. Even though the footsteps of the one who pushed Subaru indicated that person was wearing shoes, and the Gluttony trio’s known to go barefoot, Rui in Season 3 transformed into somebody she had previously eaten, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility that the other two can as well.
The one thing that makes Rui more likely to have pushed Subaru than the others is that this episode hinted that she was the one who ate his memories given Subaru remembered while he was falling the second time that Rui speaking about how precious one’s memories are right before he remembered Emilia saying that Subaru’s still Subaru. And given Satella emerged to slow down his Subaru’s heart after he was punctured by Reid when he was talking about specifics regarding Return by Death in that he’ll die and return, it means that the Taboo had been triggered, and there was an enemy observing him, which was likely one of the Sin Archbishops of Gluttony, and that’s why the time stop happened to get Subaru to calm down and not talk about dying, which would otherwise risk an enemy figuring out Return by Death.
And given what I’ve brought up about Foxidna across most of my write-ups this season, I’m not going to rehash it but only talk about new content. Foxidna bringing up the danger of having Subaru accompany them right as he walks by is incredibly suspicious, and if she timed the conversation with the Authority of Greed: Tome of Wisdom, it’d make a lot of sense. She said that just in the nick of time to make Subaru hear what would distress him the most, leading him to think that one of the members of the group pushed him when it could’ve been a Sin Archbishop of Gluttony, which may be intentional to bring Subaru to a new low this season. Suffice to say, if I’m right about all Echidna soul clones having the Authority of Greed: Tome of Wisdom, she could’ve had a vested interest in pushing Subaru to force him to learn about Return by Death as I believe Echidna both in the past and now is collaborating with Satella, which is how Satella knows which moments should be Subaru’s savepoints in which there is zero chance he’ll get trapped in a death loop.
As for why Meili’s a suspect, she said in Episode 71 that she’s wondering what would happen if Subaru were to drop dead right then and there regarding whether a Book of the Dead would appear as that’s what piques her interest. Why this is relevant is that in one of the companion shorts to Season 2, Elsa shared with Meili that she dislikes the look in Subaru’s eyes ’cause they indicate that he believes that death isn’t the end for him, and Elsa may have mused about this in the past in between the mansion arc and Season 2 or even between the start of Season 2 and when their assassination duties began in Season 2 given Elsa even protected Meili in that season, showing that Meili might’ve been the only one on this earth Elsa considered a friend.
Alternatively, Meili could’ve figured it out herself due to being a seasoned assassin and observing Subaru after he’d looped in Season 4, showing some great astuteness despite her young age, and given she showed much more maturity compared to most of the cast in Season 4, it wouldn’t be a shock for her to have arrived at that conclusion. And what Meili also has going for her is that she was the only one who’s part of the group without any lines during that scene in which the group was questioning whether to take amnesiac Subaru with them, either due to her not being there or due to the others not counting her as part of the group, and I lean toward the former although I don’t rule out the latter. Additionally, Meili may hold it against Subaru for killing Elsa, and now that she’s lost her ‘big brother’ due to his amnesia, her good relationship with him no longer applies, especially given Meili only came to the Pleiades Watchtower in the first place ’cause of Subaru and only has weak ties to the rest of the group.
As for who I think are the most likely suspects to have pushed amnesiac Subaru out of the five I mentioned, I’d say it’s the three female characters I listed with my leanings being Rui first, Meili next, and Foxidna last given Rui would have the speed to creep up on him, and we knew that one of the Sin Archbishops of Gluttony was likely observing him, given Meili didn’t have a line when the group was discussing him and since the sound of the footsteps of the one who pushed Subaru best matches Meili’s from earlier in the episode when she walked out after Shaula slammed the door on her way out as she was bawling her eyes out due to his not being open to sharing with her what burdened him as well as what I’d previously mentioned, and given Foxidna may have timed the conversation on Subaru for maximum impact, but since she’d been in that room in which they were discussing him, it would’ve been very difficult for her to catch up to Subaru without mana flow, which we saw multiple people, such as Gaston and Garfiel, use during Season 3.
Back to the chronological order of events, Emilia then appears and brings amnesiac Subaru back to the green room with him looking as if he’s living his own personal hell. Ram outright says that she feels sorry for Rem given Subaru was the only one she believed to remember her, showing she’s devastated for her sister given she approved of the relationship between Subaru and Rem and ’cause Subaru was her hope for restoring Rem, and Beatrice swears that she’ll figure something out as they won’t leave him to suffer alone, probably indicating that they’ll do yet another search of the library. Subaru then walks down the stairs after the group has left him and calls his ability Return by Death, swearing he won’t allow the group to kill him again, which is why he leaves the tower, triggering Shaula losing her mind and becoming a mindless killing machine that she stated would happen in Episode 71. I don’t believe that he didn’t know the rules of the tower as there were multiple scenes in this episode that involved a time skip of some indeterminate number of minutes or hours, and Subaru even mentioned at one point that he was looking forward to turning a crisis into opportunity, implying that he does know about the group being trapped in the tower, so Subaru was just so paranoid that someone among the group had been killing him that he chose to leave willingly rather than being pushed off the ledge again.
I found this episode to be outstanding given the directing, the character work involving so much of the cast, including Ram, Subaru, Emilia, Meili, Beatrice, and Julius, the sound direction as Subaru fell to his death the second time, the attention to details, and the potentially powerful foreshadowing in it, all of which are what made me fall in love with Re:Zero to begin with. In my book, this is clearly the best episode of the season so far, and I can’t wait to watch the rest of it. While I can see why people might claim that the group leaving Subaru on his own is bad writing, I believe that a significant amount of time had passed in between him having passed out and getting people back up to speed, so the individual members probably spent quite some time with him, and given how horrible he looked, they probably didn’t expect that he’d actually leave the tower given what they were told about Shaula becoming a mindless killing machine.
This write-up will be a lot shorter than what I usually put out, but I’ll be drawing upon what I have previously posted for reference. There was one huge thing from a story perspective that I’ll stress to readers, and I’ll make it clear what I’m referring to.
The episode starts with Emilia and Subaru basically telling Julius to take it easy, and after Emilia tells Julius that he’s one of them, meaning he can trouble them as much as he likes, he finds comfort and reassurance in that since he’s currently struggling with his identity after having been forgotten by the world, leading to him saying that he’d rest up as they intend for him to do. His remarking about being surrounded by lovely maidens is also true to his knightly self, so Subaru could tell that Julius had perked up a little.
At the group’s meet-up room for talking strategy, Ram puts it out there that she’d never though that Julius would act in the manner that he did last episode in challenging Reid, and Subaru basically said that it was like a man getting measles, which I believe isn’t meant to downplay the seriousness of measles as a viral infection but to showcase that it can be easy for men to act out when they have self-worth issues, showing that Subaru was drawing a comparison to Julius’s actions in Episode 72 to his own in the past and reinforcing my analysis for that episode. Nonetheless. Ram’s very worried that Julius’s actions could have meant failure of them all if Julius had died since Reid intended for seven people to pass, and Julius dying could mean someone else might have to challenge him twice to pass to also pass for a placeholder spot that Julius had even if were no longer of this earth. She put it out there that not even Shaula, who she calls a sham of a Sage, would be able to help them out if Reid were to rogue, and of course Shaula said that she was never the Sage in the first place and that she only has eyes for her master, which is why she looks at Subaru with such passion and spark in her eyes. Subaru then tells Ram that she should take it as a win since Julius’s mistake wasn’t fatal, and of course in Ram’s typical snarky fashion, she says that she just doesn’t want anyone getting in her way, implying all she’s here to do is save Rem.
Meili then calms the group down and its members start talking about how they can pass Reid’s exam. Ram notes that Emilia passed ’cause she drew concessions from him while fulfilling the new conditions she laid out which he agreed to. Thus, she concluded that the conditions for passing the exam aren’t uniform but whimsy. Shaula then interjects that Subaru should take as along as he likes no matter how many days, months, years, or centuries it takes since she’s been waiting for him for hundreds of years and hopes they have some fun with her before they leave, showing how lonely she has been these last four hundred years, backing up my analysis on her carrying Patrasche over her head with both arms raised being both a visual and symbolic allusion to the Titan Atlas carrying the celestial sphere as his punishment, which is how she forgot that Reid had died of old age, and Subaru saw her loneliness given the animation from his eyes showed that he was emphasizing with her. Then Subaru’s stomach indicates that it’s time for food.
Dinner is prepared by Ram and Emilia, who notes that they need to bring Julius some too, and Subaru tells Beatrice to not be shy about holding his hand given the relationship between a spirit and her contractor is special, and given it seems from Season 3 and 4 that the only reason Beatrice could use Al Shamak on such a wide area to remove the Great Rabbit from this dimension in Season 2 was that she had collected a ton of mana over four hundred years from the mansion residents and mansion visitors, which is why she needed large magic crystals in Season 3 to cast big spells and why when Subaru asked if Beatrice was ready in Episode 68 she replied by saying that the problem would be if he runs out of juice, showing that Beatrice’s ability to restore her own mana seems to be impaired, but of course Beatrice and Subaru are still really close regardless of Subaru replenishing her mana, and it’s cute to see Subaru tease her, especially since Beatrice was suicidal before forming a contract with him. Shaula of course has no table manners and just wolfed everything down, saying that she usually eats mabeasts and stuff, noting that she didn’t think she was particular, but the food is truly exceptional to her, to the point she said that’d even become Emilia’s apprentice so that she could make food this delicious to please Subaru since that’d be the way to his heart, and she finished that by saying that she hoped that her master would say, “I’m not letting you sleep tonight.” showing that she and Flügel may have had a sexual relationship and that Flügel might have been the type to sleep around given if Subaru was part of Flügel as I believe, he could’ve been Satella’s lover four hundred years ago given Subaru’s implied dormant memories of Satella from Episodes 18, 25, and 38,
As they get ready to prepare for sleep, Subaru again jokes about Beatrice never growing up meaning she’ll always be cute like he’d done earlier at dinner, and Beatrice and Emilia head to sleep. He then goes to the healing/green room, and Julius suggests that he’ll leave to give Subaru some time with Rem, who has surely longed for night to come. Subaru of course is uncomfortable with Julius leaving Anastasia’s side since she means so much to him, and he asks him if he’s sure with Julius replying that he’s not sure what’s the first thing he should say to her when she wakes up, and Subaru replies in typical Subaru fashion that he should just tell her he’s glad she’s awake and be focused on what her response to that should be, leading to Julius saying that he envies Subaru for being able to think so freely, ’cause no doubt many things are going through his mind, and he of course leaves the room to reflect on his thoughts.
And then it turns out Subaru fell asleep for an indeterminable amount of time, and he follows a bird that leads him to a hidden passage that leads to a balcony where Foxidna is with a whole flock of birds. After a bit of small talk, Subaru cuts to the case and asks her why she snuck out of her room in the middle of the night, slip through a secret passage nobody knows about, and hang out with some weird birds in the night breeze, and she just brushes Subaru off as her having followed a bird to this spot much like he did, and they are apparently the same birds that led the group through the sand time when Ram used her Clairvoyance to borrow their vision.
Around 10:58-10:59 of Episode 73, Foxidna’s smile transitioned into a look of surprise/shock as if she detected something very particular, such as a hint of mana from somebody else or detecting somebody’s else presence outright. Given Beatrice is reliant on Subaru’s mana, touching Beako can probably result in you detecting Subaru’s mana (since draining mana allows you to determine whether someone is an enemy, touching someone probably does at least what I stated) and realizing the connection the two of them have, and Foxidna may have detected an unseen force spying through the birds or at least that one bird since she stroked that bird’s chin.
Subaru has also an unreliable narrator on multiple occasions, such as believing that Julius beat him at full strength, believing that Crusch was a heartless person for being unwilling to help Emilia, and counting his chickens before his eggs hatched in thinking he’d get a perfect victory in the first loop after the White Whale fight, and given viewers are getting direct images of what the birds are seeing, it would be very fitting if this is another case of that, meaning somebody else is also observing them.
I’ve noted the possible importance of birds before in my post here with the one very tiny bird and the outline of a bird embedded in the wall if you look at it from a particular angle: https://thoroughwatch.org/?p=179 And I encourage anyone who has read my theories to refresh themselves on the content.
Birds were present during Subaru’s summoning, the moment preceding the From Zero Moment in Episode 18, and at two points in Episode 57 when Emilia was held captive by Regulus before those birds flew to the location of a fight:
So there’s likely to be an unseen force observing Subaru since he was summoned through the birds in addition to Satella, who we know is always watching Subaru and also Echidna, who I believe has been observing Subaru as long as Satella has.
Foxidna then put it out there that Anastasia couldn’t find any background on Subaru until he was involved in an incident at the capital, likely referring to when he retrieved Emilia’s insignia which was surprising given her extensive connections, which was frustrating for her. She then motions as if she’s afraid of Subaru ’cause of his origins, but I believe it’s a ruse to make the future the characters from four hundred years ago want to come true a reality. She needles him on his relationship to Shaula and whether it was a coincidence that he solved the exam from the third floor so easily, and Subaru replies with what he has always said. She also states that she’s afraid to accept it at face value that Subaru knows nothing about these birds, and then Subaru says that it’s his turn to ask questions.
He then asks how is Anastasia, and Foxidna said that things are still unchanged from before and that she’s unable to give Anastasia her body back even though she’s eating away at her life, which prompts Subaru to ask how Anastasia will even be the ruler if her body’s such a mess, and Foxidna said that Anastasia has a reason she cannot give up the throne even after Subaru brings up Anastasia having to give up the throne almost as soon as she gets it.
Julius is then led to that balcony with a bird and demands answers, even willing to point his sword at Foxidna, resulting in her getting him back up to speed, and I believe Foxidna pretending that she’s still Anastasia before fessing up was meant as a continuation of what she did in Episode 72 in the Break Time short, which was to make Julius feel isolated. I was wrong that Julius knew that Foxidna had taken Anastasia’s place, and I chalk it up to the bad translation from Crunchyroll in Season 3, so I’ll rewatch the relevant episode with Muse Asia’s subs, which although may not always have the best English, tend to be way more accurate than Crunchyroll’s. Foxidna reveals that she told the truth to Subaru ’cause she saw through his act with Julius feeling shame that he wasn’t able to as her first knight, and I believe she fully intended for Julius to hear this to bring him down some more to develop his character. Subaru wanted to say that the reason he knew was only a coincidence, and that’d be ’cause of when Foxidna indicated that she thought Reinhard and Felix were more than just friends, which he believed that nobody aside from him should know, so yeah, it’s not something Julius could ever know. Subaru tells Julius to drop that first knight stuff, but Julius, who’s having an identity crisis due to people having forgotten him, of course says that he’s afraid of losing anything of his right now, which backs up my read from Episode 72 that Anastastia was trying to force Julius to feel isolated and insecure.
Echidna states that her goal upon being prompted is to return Anastasia’s body to her and that this is a situation she didn’t want, but I’m not convinced of that and believe she’s deliberately guiding Subaru and Julius to a particular future that Satella, Echidna, Flügel, and perhaps others are working towards bringing about. Julius seems satisfied with Foxidna’s answer when she says that her spamming Jiwald on the second floor was ’cause she didn’t know whether Reid had lethal intent, meaning she couldn’t allow for them to lose a valuable asset in Julius, and given Julius’s insecurities at that moment, appealing to his ego worked very well, and he accepts it almost immediately even though Subaru questions whether that’s sound judgement. Julius then says that it’s their problem and that Subaru need not worry about this with Subaru protesting that whatever he chooses to worry about is his business, leading to Julius justly saying that in doing so, Subaru’s shielding him from facing his problems, much like when he stayed quiet about Anastasia and Foxidna, which he said with anger. Julius apologized of course, but I believe Foxidna and the unseen force may have both intended for this to happen with a worsening of relations between Subaru and Julius. Julius then motions for he and Anastasia to head back inside and make preparations on how to explain this to everybody else tomorrow, leading to Subaru asking Julius if he had something to say him, and Julius responds that he knows what Subaru is thinking and why he hid the truth from him and that it was out of consideration for him and that if their positions were reversed he likely would’ve done the same, but even so, he doesn’t want to be seen as unfit to be a knight, which backs up my analysis of Episode 72 perfectly.
After Subaru has gone back inside, he runs into Ram, who mentions that she considered heading up to battle Reid but turned back halfway there. She catches on to Subaru seeming miserable, and she asks astutely whether it had to do with getting into a fight with Julius with her saying that it’s a mix of Subaru being too easy to read her being too intelligent when Subaru says something out of embarrassment. On the surface, one may think that Ram used her Clairvoyance to see through the birds, but these birds have been around since the beginning of the story, so it shouldn’t be her. Subaru says that he intends to sort it out tomorrow, which Ram says is a very vague and evasive answer. Subaru wishes “Big Sis” good night, and of course, Ram replies that she’s not his sister even though she basically already treats him as a brother-in-law and accepts what he feels for Rem. Subaru then thinks it’s awkward to go to the green room where Julius and Foxidna are and decides to think of a plan to take out Reid, and then he sees a stairway leading upwards that he may have never seen before, leading to him most likely thinking that he could cheat by avoiding the exams to get to the top of the tower even though Shaula said that that’s not acceptable, and Subaru wakes up in the green room the next day with no memories of his time in the fantasy world, leading to him thinking he’d been summoned for the first time. I suspect that the Authority of Gluttony erases memories from the world you’re currently in, which is why Subaru’s memories of Earth have been retained with Subaru’s memories of Earth likely being erased if his memories had been eaten on Earth.
As for the possibilities for why Subaru has no memories, I can think of two:
Subaru’s memories were eaten by a Sin Archbishop of Gluttony, and given the three of them were seen in the OP, it’s the most obvious possibility. Shaula has not been sniping from a distance since Subaru’s group arrived to the tower, so others may have beelined to the tower without worrying about getting sniped by her.
There’s something in the Pleiades Watchtower itself that can cause one to lose his/her memories. Given Shaula had said, “Again?” in reply to her master having lost many memories, Flügel himself had an ordeal in which he lost his memories. Given the Sin Archbishops of Gluttony are in the OP, I believe the first possibility is more likely.
In the Re:Zero Break Time Season 4 Episode 7 short, Subaru informs Julius when they hadn’t yet arrived at the town near the Auguria Dunes about how things are awkward for Anastasia since he’s overcompensating by being even more knightly/courtly. He suggests to Julius to tone it down in case stacking blocks upon a new foundation makes it collapse, but Julius doesn’t want to abandon his previous relationships and wants to preserve them, and when he asks Subaru whether that’s greedy, Subaru relents and tells him he shouldn’t listen to somebody who doesn’t know what he’s talking about, encouraging him to stick to what he’s doing as long as he minds his distance with Anastasia, leading to Julius thanking Subaru with all his heart ’cause even he saw the awkwardness himself and would’ve been at a loss about what to do. This concluded with Julius stating he was writing about this moment to remember it for all time, and he said that Subaru actually features in his journal a lot with Subaru saying that he better not be saying nasty things about him ’cause he doesn’t realize just how much Julius respects him. It goes to show that Foxidna was deliberately setting up Subaru and Julius to get closer while making him insecure about his position as her knight. The link to the short is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=br0FPRIyzb8
I’m just going to let readers know ahead of time that this write-up will be different than most of what I’ve done before since the bulk of the episode is dedicated to one character, so it’s only fitting the crux of my post is a complete character analysis of Julius across four seasons. Any other miscellaneous points will be dumped at the end of the post. I love when previous episodes properly build up to something, which is why Episode 29, Parent and Child, is still my favourite episode of the series since it used the build-up from Episodes 7 and 13 to outright confirm just what the entirety of Subaru’s issues of self-worth involved, and this episode was similarly a long time coming with all of the foreshadowing.
What I realized after this episode after seeing the brief flashback with child Reinhard and child Julius is that Julius’s mantle of being the most knightly of knights is a mask he puts on due to feeling inferior to Reinhard, which is why this episode flashed back to child Reinhard easily defeating Julius’s swordplay instructor. This is also why Julius insisted on being called Juli when he and Subaru met again, both ’cause he subconsciously wanted a break from being Julius the most knightly of knights due to having had to do things he detested as a knight in beating Subaru even though he wouldn’t like to have if the circumstances had been different and not speaking out about so many people smearing Emilia during the initiation of the Royal Selection, not just ’cause it was unbecoming of a knight to take on the role of a mercenary, and ’cause he may have thought Subaru would react better to him if he did that even though Subaru ultimately didn’t at the time since he found it to be annoying roleplaying.
This is why Julius said in Season 3 that he was extremely angry at what Heinkel did and wished he could have done what Subaru did, which was yell at Heinkel since everybody was mad at that bumbling oaf but didn’t dare say anything ’cause of Heinkel’s rank as he saw proper decorum as being a liability in that moment with Subaru’s outburst allowing everybody to stay calm. This is why Julius kind of saw the light when Subaru told him to be Juli more since the mask he puts on is very much a burden to him with him realizing how much brighter the light out is when he first decided to be Juli ’cause Subaru was right about how having more flexibility would help him out in more situations rather than being so rigid with closing off his heart.
People who are less discerning when consuming media or have a very rigid worldview saw Episode 51 (Season 3 Episode 1) of Re:Zero as lowering Re:Zero to that of being like standard isekai slop, which is straight up incorrect, and I will call it as I see fit. Julius himself said that sometimes Subaru’s imprudence is useful on certain occasions, showing he understands the ugliness of Subaru’s actions, but nonetheless, he saw Heinkel turning what was an otherwise orderly gathering between people who respected each other with a reconciliation between Wilhelm and Reinhard being near given they were acting at least somewhat warmly to each other for possibly the first time since Theresia, his mother, had died, into a dumpster fire was disgraceful, and that’s why Julius thanked Subaru for his righteous indignation, not ’cause he was trying to put out there that every time Subaru has an outburst that it’s a good thing, but basic media literacy is dying off quickly in this day and age, partially due to kids and adults alike being glued to slop from their phones, resulting people in being unable to remember things said on screen a few minutes ago due to acting mostly on emotion and wanting immediate gratification.
Julius saw some of himself in Subaru in Episode 13, only Subaru chose a different path than he did, and even if he recognizes that what Subaru did was quite ugly and doesn’t condone all of what he did, which is why he took multiple shots at Subaru’s behaviour, saying that it can reflect badly on those around him, some people, such as Julius, feel a sense of awe or kinship with those who allow you to see a different approach to life. He saw Subaru as being someone rough around the edges but still fundamentally a good person even in spite of Subaru’s flaws, and that’s why he was calling Subaru a friend after the White Whale fight.
The reason Julius deliberately challenged Subaru to a duel ’cause he knew one of the knights or multiple of them would probably attempt to execute Subaru for insinuating that they inherited their status as knights from their families, and Julius saw that as being an injustice that must not be allowed to happen given he knows that Emilia is a good person and since he himself doesn’t discriminate against demihumans as seen by how he did a curtsy to kiss her in Episode 12, which is typical for someone to do for a woman of higher status, and nobody in Anastasia’s camp is allowed to think of demihumans as lesser. So of course he shared those same values and took to Subaru to an extent after the latter said that he chooses to stand by Emilia’s side ’cause she’s special, and Julius acknowledged those feelings given his own feelings for Anastasia. This is backed by how in Season 2 Subaru’s second Sanctuary trial had Julius saying, “I wanted to call you a friend.” since he ultimately sees that both he and Subaru want to fight against the injustices of the world.
As for the Kingdom of Lugunica itself, Julius knows that it’s far from a utopia given he acknowledged to Subaru that the White Whale was left unchecked for too long, which is why he thanked Subaru from the bottom of his heart for ensuring it was defeated in Episode 22. He most likely personally believed that the job should’ve been carried out much sooner and that that too was an injustice, which is why he was so keen on mending fences with Subaru since Subaru took action to make that happen when the kingdom would probably have kept dillydallying.
Basically, since Julius can’t be the strongest, he used the mask of the most knightly/courtly knight since that was something he could realistically aspire to, and now that most people don’t remember him he doesn’t have that anymore, which is why he took to heart Subaru saying that his humiliation is a testament to Julius’s strength and why he’s so adamant about proving his strength, mirroring Arc 3 Subaru to an extent.
This is backed by how Julius thought back to being made Anastasia’s personal knight in Episode 72 and defeating Petelgeuse, which he considered badges of honour that validated his self-worth. I believe even Julius saying, “I am the Kingdom’s sword that will slay you.” was also potentially signifying his insecurities about being inferior to Reinhard while also signifying kinship with Reinhard with it not being just a cool line for a knight to say but something Julius said to mean he’d be the weapon of the Kingdom that slays Petelgeuse, much like how Reinhard is first and foremost thought of as weapon of the kingdom before he is a person. Thus, it both signified that he was stepping into that role and that it was something he very much relished doing. The flashback to Petelgeuse was followed by a shot of Emilia, who Subaru had indicated passed Reid’s exam, and then to Subaru, who remembers him, intermixed with shots of him being frustrated about his current predicament after becoming a Gluttony victim, before finally remembering Subaru saying that his humiliation is a testament to Julius’s strength and then finally hearing Subaru call out to him, which was showing to viewers that Julius was going through much of the same thing Subaru was going through in Arc 3 and that Subaru rushing toward Julius was to stop him from having something worse happen to him, much like how Julius beat down Subaru in that arc to prevent worse happening to him, which is backed by how Subaru remarking that he hopes Julius isn’t too feeling too down since he’s realized that Julius also has self-worth issues from the talks he’s had with him, like during the scene he mentioned that his humiliation is a testament to Julius’s strength and his talk about the situation regarding Julius’s spirits when he said that Subaru is currently the one who knows him best.
There’s even a bit of a Subaru Season 2/Arc 4 parallel in that after Subaru lost Rem, who was his main pillar of support, to Gluttony, he saw no value in himself aside from Return by Death ’cause of the transactional nature of the events of Arc 3 that allowed him to win given the main point of Arc 3 for Subaru was to see that others have their own wants and goals, and how that applied to Julius is that since his reputation as being the most knightly of knights was gone due to the masses forgetting him, which was his big loss, he would use the only tool he believed he had at his disposal, which is his sword skills, to prove his worth given he believed that he had nothing else left that could validate him as a person, although it’s not a 100% parallel since Subaru was struggling due to him taking on the role as Rem’s hero only to lose Rem, resulting in him losing the mask he put on, and Julius right now is struggling ’cause of all the self-worth issues he had in the past, which have been exacerbated by the world forgetting him, as well as trying to live up to the ideal of being the strong knight Subaru believes he is, so the difference ultimately lies in his emotional support ultimately being an able-bodied person right now.
And that’s why Subaru and Julius’s voice-acting during the stairs scene, the direction overall, the effects regarding the footsteps, as well as the silence and tone of melancholy as Julius struggled, followed by Subaru seeing just how much Julius’s current situation reminded him of what he went through, allowing for him to comfort Julius and for the pair to grow closer made for a fantastic viewing experience.
I believe Julius’s character arc this season will almost certainly involve not clinging to his identity as the most knightly of knights since Reid was having the most fun with him when Julius tried to kick him instead of using just the sword, showing that Tappei very much intends for Julius to embrace Juli to finally overcome Reid. Julius can very much stay true to his character and fight against injustice without needing to stay fixated on chivalry and fighting with knightly honour, which would get him to be more on Wilhelm’s speed, who said in Episode 22 that chivalry was becoming a thing of the past. Tappei has plotted out Julius’s character arc so well from the beginning in making him a foil to Subaru, and he’s an amazingly well-written character. If I can make even one person realize how great of a character Julius is with this post, I will consider it mission accomplished.
Now for the stuff on the periphery, this episode provides further proof of Foxidna remembering Julius with how she aggressively used Jiwald to try to defend Julius when he was fighting Reid. Someone who barely knows him wouldn’t go to such lengths, and Subaru even pondered about why she’d go to such lengths, which means Tappei intended for viewers to think hard about that detail. After Episode 67 with Foxidna putting it out there that Reinhard and Felix were more than just friends to Julius and her general gaze at Julius along with her look of discomfort in Episode 70 when Shaula was shattering Julius’s fantasy about Reid Astrea being a man of great character ’cause of his sword skills when nobody else was paying him any heed, showing she knows that Reid had been Julius’s idol since childhood, there is a clear pattern of Foxidna showing a level of connection with Julius no one else in the group has, not even Subaru.
A line from Episode 48 (Season 2 Episode 23) depicting a possible future had Julius remarking about how he’d bent his knees and lost even his sword, pondering what he even had left, which could’ve been a future in which Reid forced Julius to yield to him, stripping him of all his dignity, and given Julius was thinking his sword skills were all he had left, implying he may have been borderline suicidal, this could suggest that Foxidna, again, as I have speculated has the Authority of Greed: Tome of Wisdom that I have posited she has like the original Echidna and Tea Party Echidna did, which is why she suggested to Subaru to take Rem with him to the Pleiades Watchtower and why she forced Shaula to reveal her hidden rules/orders for protecting the tower, the reason being she’s invested in Subaru’s success as the Hero of the story and also didn’t want to see Julius be reduced to a hollow shell of himself with nothing to live for, preventing that future from happening, meaning that her spamming of Jiwald was to deliberately signal to Subaru to think hard about why she’d do that instead of thinking of how to overcome the exam for the entire group, leading to his thoughts drifting to Julius instead of the mission of passing the exam even though Ram wanted him to focus on the exam given Subaru is somebody who follows his instincts and hunches as shown by Episodes 69 and 70.
As I have stated in the past, I believe the reason Satella knows what savepoints to choose for Subaru is that she has a soul link with Echidna, whose Authority allows for her to see into the future, meaning they are close collaborators and that Echidna is also observing Subaru, which would make her statement that she was watching Subaru every step of the way on his journey a true statement, and I believe Foxidna much like Tea Party Echidna has the Authority of Greed: Tome of Wisdom, so she was attempting to advance Subaru to a point in which Satella could update his savepoint to a point favourable for him to succeed, which would be sometime after Subaru has gone down the stairs with Julius. I believe Foxidna acting like she doesn’t know how Anastasia acts in Re:Zero Break Time Season 4 Episode 6 was meant to take away Julius’s sense of pride of being Anastasia’s personal knight and push him into starting a second duel against Reid due to him feeling he lost even that role as her knight, making him feel isolated much like Roswaal would isolate Emilia by making it snow in the Sanctuary Arc in addition to summoning the Great Rabbit. As for a link to the short, here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8DLpvo_4cc
As for Emilia, it was smart of her to appeal to Reid’s ego and get him to agree to passing her if she can make him move a single step. Reid seemed to really appreciate her appealing to him like this and relented, saying that she’s the biggest idiot he’s met since Trisha, who is likely to be a character from four hundred years ago although it remains to be seen how long it’ll take for Trisha to be relevant since it took until Season 4 for more information to be revealed about Flügel. To sum it up, Reid lost ’cause he decided to cop a feel on Emilia’s boobs with his chopsticks, and she didn’t even realize that she had been sexually assaulted, probably ’cause the person responsible for her education, Roswaal, doesn’t care to teach her about that. Of course, the episode wasn’t condoning sexual assault given Subaru’s reaction and how the series has previously tried to humanize Elsa by depicting her as having become a cold-blooded killer when she was close to getting sexually assaulted, so anyone who says otherwise is incorrect. Of course, Reid wasn’t satisfied with letting them all pass if Emilia beat him, and everyone aside from Rem will also have to do it since the seven people Reid referred to are Subaru, Beatrice, Emilia, Ram, Julius, Anastasia, and Meili, which is a real predicament.
The group heads back to a lower floor due to not being up for that task, and Ram revealed that there is one person in each nation that can claim to be the strongest with Cecilus Segmunt the Blue Lightning, Divine General from the Empire of Vollachia, the Mad Prince from the Holy Kingdom of Gusteko, and from Halibel the Admirer from the City-States of Kararagi, but none of them fit the description of the stick swinger ’cause they had forgotten Shaula’s nickname for him and don’t know anything about him aside from his wearing Kararagi folk clothes and being skilled with chopsticks, and Shaula reveals that it’s Reid after Subaru gives her a description not long after she has woken from her sleep due to having fallen unconscious due to intense fear ’cause of Reid being a sexual predator. Subaru wanted to ask Julius what he knew of Reid, but Julius had already headed out for a second bout with Reid after having been healed in the same room Rem and Patrasche were in.
Subaru of course was reminded of himself with the way Julius was acting in that he didn’t want Subaru to carry him down the stairs and was straight up iterated that he doesn’t desire for help from him since Subaru was acting out hard at the start of the White Whale and Petelgeuse arc ’cause the world was making him feel small and insignificant, leading to him behaving as if he was more important than he really was due to both an inferiority complex stemming from comparisons with his father, Kenichi, and a fear of abandonment from childhood, and showing his growth Subaru supported Julius the best way he could by not going against his desire to not be carried by lending him his shoulder instead, saying that he doesn’t need to act tough since he knows from experience that Julius shouldn’t be walking down the stairs, implying he knows how alone Julius feels.
