Tag: Natsuki Subaru

Re:Zero Season 3 Episode 8 Analysis and Important Details

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Okay, I ended up being right that Otto may have been in possession of the not-quite-Tome of Wisdom originally used by Roswaal, but I was wrong about the details. I thought it seemed too convenient that he ended up being where Felt, Reinhard, and Heinkel was while having his zodda bugs ready to distract Heinkel, but it seems it really was a coincidence like Otto had said it was. Apparently, the tome was left with a professional trying to restore it to a usable state, which was the reason Otto split up from the group in Episode 51.

And in comes Liliana with her new song that she came up with right on the spot, “Crazy Obsessed With Everything About You”. Given Reinhard revealed that he can wish for any power, and he will gain a Divine Protection for that power, resulting in him gaining his new Divine Protection of Judgement, which allows him to see and understand what Divine Protections other people have and what they do, Reinhard saw that Liliana has the Divine Protection of Telepathy, which may show that Priscilla is into Subaru. It’s possible that Liliana came up with this song ’cause she felt Priscilla’s affection for Subaru during the short time they were together outside and felt Priscilla’s mood improving as she approached the meeting place where Subaru would be. Priscilla notably announced that she is giving Subaru another reward for calming Priestella’s citizens down in allowing herself to be included in the group’s plan. She may have called his broadcast ugly, but ultimately respects results, but I think part of her just wants to be involved with Subaru. Given how Priscilla poked at Liliana later in the episode to get her to agree to accompany her in fighting Sirius, she may have been trying to poke at Subaru in a similar way to assess his manhood or banter with him, but Subaru still has deep insecurities over his self-worth. Priscilla even said after Subaru began to remark about how Priscilla must also be here ’cause of Liliana’s presence that of course she came here in person, most likely ’cause of his broadcast despite on the surface calling it ugly, addressing him as “fool”, much like she did in Episode 56. Maybe she has a thing for fools given Heinkel is a part of her camp.

Liliana’s songs tend to have meaning with her singing a song about a lonely wanderer (herself), age differences in love (regarding Subaru and Beatrice even though they aren’t romantically interested in each other), the Sword Demon’s Love Ballad (when Wilhelm was known to have visited the city), a song about dragon blood, and a song about how awesome life is to ease the mind of the city’s citizens, insulating them from Sirius’s Authority of Wrath, so I find it hard to believe that Liliana randomly decided to sing a love song for no reason but was inspired to do so. That’s what makes me believe the song is about Priscilla being into Subaru. Priscilla also notably gave Subaru two rewards on the same day, clearly showing Subaru favour. Liliana may have noticed how Subaru being around lifted Priscilla’s mood during the short time they were together in addition to whatever effect Subaru’s broadcast had on Priscilla, and that would be her inspirations for the new song.

Priscilla also made a good observation that Al was helping that group instead of accompanying her and forcing her to look for Schult on her own shortly after she made her entrance, calling Al and Schult rude for making her do that, but I believe part of it is show to demonstrate her lording over her power to outsiders due to her possibly carefully crafting her image to be this way. Al certainly has his own agenda, whatever it is, given his independence from his master. When Priscilla declared her intention to join the battle against the Witch Cult, he tried to talk her down from doing it, which is similar to how he wanted Emilia to be coddled and protected by Subaru instead of strong and independent. Given this recurring behaviour of how he wants a woman protected by a man and to tamp down their confidence/strength, it wouldn’t surprise me if he indeed lost to Roswaal if he was the immediate previous Hero of the story as I pose with how Roswaal wanted Emilia to be completely dependent on Subaru. Re:Zero Season 3 Breaktime Episode 4 also showed that Subaru physically needs Beatrice around due to his gate being destroyed making it so that his body can’t regulate its mana levels, and given we know Al does not need to hang around a spirit, Al’s gate most likely didn’t break when he was the hero, possibly ’cause he faced a crushing defeat to Roswaal, which set up his heroic delusions remark to Subaru.

Otto and Subaru have a 1-on-1 conversation as Al brings Priscilla up to speed, and Otto reveals he picked up the charred remains of the not-quite-Tome of Wisdom a year ago ’cause he wants to check its contents due to him not trusting Roswaal as far as he could throw him. He said that aside from what had engineered at the Sanctuary, Roswaal had all sorts of schemes that others let slide. Subaru then implies that they don’t let him get away with everything but that they need his strength. Otto says that it’s fine and that he’ll be wary enough of Roswaal for both him and Emilia. He said that as Subaru’s internal affairs officer, Roswaal didn’t behave as if he were up to any conspiracies or schemes that would weight on his conscience, but he was worried that Roswaal had set up some plans with a time lag so that they wouldn’t be able to see them coming. Otto wanted to ensure that nobody from their camp could be hurt by Roswaal again, which is very good reasoning that makes him a very good ally to those he believes in, although the Emilia camp probably doesn’t have anything to worry about unless Roswaal loses his desire to live due to the curse on his soul that will incinerate his soul ’cause of him losing his bet to Subaru in Season 2. Otto revealed his intent to retrieve the not-quite-Tome of Wisdom and that he could do it without any help from the group after Subaru remarked about not being able to spare anyone to help him do it since they’d be focused on the control towers, reminding Subaru that he was able to navigate around this danger-filled city and bring them the Sword Saint. Wilhelm then called for Subaru ’cause Crusch requested that he fetch Subaru.

When Subaru is in Crusch’s room, Felix tells him not to push Crusch given she’s in critical condition. Felix has blood on his face and clothes, which shows he probably tried to forcibly take the dragon blood out of Crusch’s body with that intervention failing completely and utterly. Everything below Crusch’s head and even part of her face have completely changed colour and filled with many veins, which shows she got the short end of the stick compared to Subaru with the curse of the black dragon blood. It’s hard seeing someone who was so charismatic and a natural leader end up like this. Subaru upon briefly touching Crusch’s left arm was in pain and transferred some of Capella’s black dragon blood from Crusch’s body into his own. When he saw that this improved Crusch’s condition, he did it again but for a longer portion of time by touching her face, and it resulted in Crusch’s face becoming normal again. As I indicated in Episode 56, it appears Subaru has a resistance to the curse to his dormant Ulgarm curses from Season 1 fighting with the black dragon curse, which weakens the black dragon curse so that Crusch saw more relief than Subaru gained in symptoms of the curse. Subaru intended to do more for Crusch, but Crusch wisely dissauded him as if they both become unable to fight the outcome would be fatal. She tells him to instead to assure that she can leave everything to him, which he does. All throughout that entire interaction, Crusch was looking to Subaru since him being okay had resulted in him being her hope. She not once looked towards Felix, her knight, and that must’ve really hurt Felix, which Felix alluded to with how he was powerless to do anything to help the one he wants most when Subaru said that there still many people who will require Felix’s aid.

When Subaru finally stepped back outside and showed Wilhelm his hand, which Wilhelm was undoubtedly grateful for, Wilhelm shared the identities of the two strong Witch cultist who were with Capella, “Eight-Arms” Kurgan, formerly the Volakia Empire’s most powerful swordsman, and Theresia van Astrea, the previous Sword Saint. Wilhelm revealed during the demihuman war several decades ago when he was in his youth there was a person who used the forbidden art of corpse manipulation. He revealed that that individual is long gone but that the art still exists and that those resurrected were referred to as corpse soldiers. Wilhelm pleads to Subaru not to tell Reinhard about Theresia. He reveals to Subaru that the Divine Protection of the Sword Saint is a Divine Protection that is inherited, which makes it different from all other Divine Protections. That Divine Protection was passed on to Reinhard when Theresia was fighting the White Whale, and ’cause Wilhelm was adamant that Theresia give up fighting since it was his job as the stronger of the two to protect her, she suddenly became very ordinary on the battlefield, which he clearly regretted since he indirectly caused her to die.

If you recall from Season 1, Wilhelm insisted that ’cause Theresia had a face like hers that she was not suited to the battlefield and that he would take the sword away from her. That flashback always pissed me off and came across as really sexist and was a big yikes despite it taking place in a medieval setting. Theresia also notably said in the flashback when Wilhelm defeated her in a duel that she wants to hear him say he loves her, and Wilhelm promised to do it someday with it being implied that it never happened as he only said it after he killed the White Whale… I’m glad to see that Wilhelm has wised up and realized that him preventing Theresia from fighting in an effort to protect her given his views led to her being mostly helpless after she lost her Divine Protection of the Sword Saint due to Reinhard inheriting it. It shows he has changed with his realization he caused her death. Even if Theresia personally didn’t want to continue fighting, which is probably she constantly asked Wilhelm if he likes flowers and why Wilhelm said she never wanted to pick up a sword, I believe she should have at least trained herself in self-defense instead of fighting. He rebuked Reinhard when he inherited the Divine Protection of the Sword Saint as he could not forgive young Reinhard for being saddled with a fate far too heavy for someone still mourning his grandma. Wilhelm says clearly that Reinhard bears no responsibility for Theresia’s death, which rings true since the rift with Reinhard was one of his three biggest regrets that were alluded to in Episode 51. Wilhelm doesn’t want Reinhard to be burdened with having to deal with Theresia, and it shows the love he has for his grandson. When Subaru says that they don’t know when the corpse soldiers will show up, Wilhelm asserts that Theresia will definitely come find him, most likely ’cause he believes in fate.

Back in the group’s meeting room, Priscilla insists she will take on Sirius from the Fourth District with Liliana’s help. Priscilla believes Liliana’s singing can counter Sirius’s Authority, and when Subaru wondered there was a way to test that, Reinhard received the Divine Protection I mentioned earlier in this episode and saw that Liliana’s ability would indeed be able to stop Sirius’s Authority, so the group finally settles on Priscilla fighting Wrath when they were deadset against it at first. Next Subaru brings up that the Lust faction with the two strong cultists and the demi-beasts are probably where most of the Witch Cult’s forces are concentrated, and he wants Wilhelm and Garfiel to be the ones to take them on. When Garfiel protests, saying that they need to save Emilia, Subaru reminds him that he has his own score to settle as it was due to those two cultists that Mimi is close to death. Wilhelm volunteers himself to fight Capella’s faction, but Reinhard objects ’cause he believes Wilhelm’s mind isn’t clear right now due to what happened to Crusch. Wilhelm says a bunch of things to get the point across that he is not to be underestimated and urges Subaru to choose him for the task, which Subaru was already going to do as he wants Reinhard fighting Regulus since it’ll be a fight with the strongest against the invincible. Garfiel begs Reinhard to help Subaru and Emilia, and Reinhard agrees as long as Garfiel promises that he will see through the mission at all costs and that they will both win. Garfiel probably needed to hear that due to him being low on confidence after letting Mimi get hurt so badly and having his punch be easily blocked by Reinhard, and having Reinhard in addition to Ricardo in Episode 54 put their faith in Garfiel might be just what Garfiel needed. Subaru says he’ll do whatever he can to cover for Reinhard in areas he’s lacking, which has Reinhard shocked, as he has probably never been told that before due to his immense strength ever since he was a young boy and him saying he will have faith that Subaru will fill in in the areas he will fall short might be the first time he has ever placed his faith in another person. Julius then says that he and Ricardo will take on Gluttony, but they still don’t know that there is more than one Sin Archbishop of Gluttony, so I wonder how that will go.

At Regulus and Emilia’s wedding, Regulus is amazed at Emilia’s beauty and remarks that he was right to keep seat number 79 open. He remarks that there was a woman he thought was the perfect fit for that seat when he first met, but he deemed her unsuitable before they married and left it open. I had previously speculated that Regulus chose his wives’ positions subjectively based on who he finds most attractive, but this episode calls that into question with this info likely showing that he chooses wives to fill particular seats based on particular physical characteristics. Regulus says that as a wife of his, Emilia will be forbidden from smiling and having any change of expression ’cause some women become ugly when they smile, and it might be the case that seeing a woman genuinely happy with a man who will treat her right pisses him off since it reminds him of his own failures as a man. This might be why Regulus was so enraged after seeing Fortuna return to fight with Petelgeuse in Season 2. Pandora told Regulus to calm his anger due to beauty of the love Fortuna and Petelgeuse had together, which resulted in him striking Pandora with all his might with the intent of killing her. Emilia then talks about how she believe marriage is supposed to be a happy thing, a ritual embodying the desire two people have for each other to be together. She then asks Regulus why he addresses his wives using numbers, and Regulus retorts by saying that being fixated on what people called is the same as being fixated on looks, the most shallow form of relationship there is, which shows extreme hypocrisy since looks are all that matters to Regulus with him even threatening to erase anyone who moves from the neck down since he doesn’t want to destroy a beautiful face once Emilia repeatedly brings up Subaru, much to Regulus’s chagrain. Regulus’s wives were terrified during the entire exchange as they fear Regulus and his temper deeply. When Emilia finally responds by saying she won’t be Regulus’s woman, Regulus is infuriated and is about to kill her right as Reinhard kicks open the door of the venue and knocking Regulus away. Subaru and Reinhard both had to introduce themselves given Regulus probably doesn’t remember Subaru due to seeing most men as ants who are beneath his attention, and Subaru coolly ends the episode by saying that he objects to the union. It was great that Emilia talked back to Regulus in such a manner as I’m sure none of his other wives were willing to do so out of fear of him. It goes to show how she has such faith that Subaru will save her and that she will eventually fall for him, not wanting to live a life where she is subservient to Regulus.

I guess this is as good of a time as any to take a break before Re:Zero Season 3 returns in February. I wonder whether Subaru will die any more times given the OP of the first part showed him looping after going right at Regulus, but that might have been misdirection since it showed him with Beatrice, who is out of commission due to being low on mana.

Re:Zero Season 3 Episode 7 Analysis and Important Details

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So it was revealed that Al killed a bunch of Witch cultists to obtain the metia from Capella’s tower. I apologize to my those reading my blog about about my conclusion from the previous episode. I had gotten tunnel vision over the watergate opening, which ended up saving Subaru from certain death, and believed that it must have been Al when it could have been any cultist who opened it if I’m right about how the Gospels are meant to keep the world on a particular path. This episode also had emphasis on the watergate being opened at a time that helped them, so I’m sure this will be an important plot point in the future. Al’s behavior while on call with Emilia was very interesting. Al told her that if she needed help that she can just ask for Subaru for help and that she doesn’t need to act tough, which seems as if he wants Emilia to be completely dependent on Subaru much like Roswaal had wanted to happen based on Echidna’s plan. If Al was the immediate previous hero of the story as I have speculated, he may have lost his bet to Roswaal and became focused on doing everything for his lover, never allowing her to grow. Al seemed quite taken aback by Emilia’s confidence, which shows his lover was probably more meek and relied solely on him.

While Subaru, Anastasia, and Julius had a brief talk about the broadcast metia’s ease of use, Al returned earlier than expected as Anastasia noted, which shows that they knew what he would be doing. Al had returned sooner ’cause he had a message he wanted to deliver to Subaru from Emilia. Anastasia questioned Subaru whether he believed the message since Capella can transform into people and even mimic their voices, which was unstated but must have been the case, and Subaru said that last part about Beatrice was totally in character for Emilia. Anastasia reacted well to that remark, but Al didn’t with his “hmph”, which made me think that Al had accepted Echidna’s contract since the only other person we know that dislikes Emilia’s selflessness that much is Echidna herself in Episode 49 when she broke her ruse in Ryuzu Shima’s body to speak with her own voice out of irritation when Emilia suggested that they all take the original Ryuzu Meyer back to the graveyard, the moment which showed that Echidna had successfully revived herself. This shows that Al in time took on some of Echidna’s dislikes with how Echidna hated Emilia’s selflessness even if the object of Al’s affection when he was the hero of the story was someone else if it was a different heroine that fits the same mold as Emilia and Satella. Subaru indicated that that’s what makes him want to believe in Emilia but that he just hopes that she isn’t being too reckless, which Al agrees with strongly, likely ’cause he had become someone who focused exclusively on one person when he was the hero as Roswaal had intended and projected his past situation onto the current situation given the heroine when he was the hero was probably similar to Emilia in some ways if most of the heroines fit most of the same mold given what we’ve seen from Emilia and also Satella when she was in the Dream Castle.

Wife Number 184 then caught Emilia coming back and dematerializing her ice stand-in, and she remarked that she was surprised that Emilia came back. She had hoped that Emilia would run away ’cause she had mustered up the courage to defy Regulus in what she believed were her final moments. Of course Emilia would never have done that since she cares deeply about others and didn’t want to create trouble for her and the other wives.

Back to Subaru and the group, Subaru answers that the metia will be the key to taking back the city after Al inquires what the group here is doing and what is the huge metia there, and it’s a quintessential Subaru plan. There’s a lot of talk about how Sirius’s Authority of Wrath affects the citizens and how evil it is, which leads to Garfiel asking Subaru what his plan is, which Subaru and Julius responded to by saying that since the Authority of Wrath amplifies the anxieties of people in the city that were caused by Capella’s malicious broadcast they need to spread a message of hope to counter that. Garfiel believes they need to use this plan ASAP, and Anastasia interjects by saying that the Witch Cult might not close the watergate this time if they do that. They had determined that it was the First District’s watergate and that Capella had not been in it when the watergate opened due to Emilia’s info, so why did it open up as if to help them escape and then close right away? Subaru remarks that the Witch Cult can be inconsistent, but there must be some rules, and I maintain that the only rule is to adhere to their Gospels as Regulus and Sirius had done in Episode 53. If the whole point of the Gospels is to keep the world on a particular path as I have long speculated, the watergate was opened primarily to save Subaru and prevent him from dying by falling onto pavement. They speculated about why they left the metia intact, and Al interjects by saying that the cult doesn’t care what is that they do ’cause they’ve never lost. As he put it succinctly, “What dragon would care what the ants at its feet are planning?”

Anastasia then notes that she’s on board with the plan and that the only question is who will do it. Subaru brings up and tries to volunteer a whole lot of people, and all his suggestions get turned down until Garfiel brings up that Subaru himself should do that since he’s the only one here who has directly defeated a Sin Archbishop and beaten the Witch Cult, and to this city, there’s probably nothing more important than that. Everyone aside from Al gives Subaru encouragement, saying that if Subaru has doubts he shouldn’t do it. After Al asked if the guy standing there really that great to the crowd, Garfiel got pissed, and Al responded by saying if taking everything upon himself somehow makes everything work out, then yeah, he’s great, but the majority of ordinary folks can’t handle that burden. He says he’s sure he can’t, and he knows Garf can’t either, so he questions why Subaru has to do it at all and that he feels sorry for him, and it might be ’cause Al was speaking from experience due to having been defeated by Roswaal. Al then asks Subaru if that little lady more important to him than anything else, regarding Emilia. Al says he everything he does is for his princess, and that it’s why he’s happy to put off everything else, which is eerily similar to how Roswaal wanted Subaru to be. He suggests that Subaru should do the same, which is focus on saving Emilia ’cause Witch cultists are just passing evildoers and that nothing good can come from getting involved with them.

Continuing on with the context gleaned from Re:Zero Season 3 Breaktime Episodes 5 and 6 with the confirmation that Al was also summoned and likely specifically from Japan, Subaru then responds that if a kid jumped out into the street at a red light he’d grab the kid’s hand and pull them back to the sidewalk without thinking about why, and that’s what the situation’s like, and Al responds that if he does that, the only thing he’ll be carrying is heroic delusions with losing being unacceptable and that he must win since he’d carry people’s hopes, shoulder their expectations, and fight for the future. Subaru replies that isn’t losing always unacceptable, to which Al responds that it carries a different weight ’cause his losses won’t be his own anymore. Subaru thinks back to a lot of moments and says that it’s just business as usual. Subaru gets more encouragement and when he makes a self-deprecating quip to Julius, Julius indicates that he’ll be completely respectful the whole time, which grosses Subaru out since he still bears a lot of resentment to Julius, and I hope he gets over that one day. Subaru then thanked Al for helping him make his decision, and Al kind of sulks and picks a spot far off where the others aren’t to sit as Subaru prepares to make his speech.

It then switches back to Emilia and Wife Number 184, who indicated that she hoped Emilia didn’t return so that Regulus would’ve killed her and that now everything will remain the same. Emilia tells that if she was able to back up, she should try again and that she herself has never given up. Wife Number 184 tells Emilia that she is free to insist she will never give up but that she herself will never be tempted again with the other wives being in agreement with that. She revealed that she was a simple girl living in a small village and that to make her his wife, Regulus killed everybody who knew her and that the same thing happened to all his other wives.

Subaru then begun his speech much like how someone would test a mic back on Earth. He said he apologized for startling the citizens, but he just wanted to get it across that he is not with the Witch Cult. The people in the shelters had gotten their hopes up that the Witch Cult had been run out, but Subaru indicated that the threat from the Witch Cult had not yet ended as they took back the government office but still hadn’t regained control of the control towers. He wanted to level with them that the city can still be flooded and that the cult’s demands are still very real. Subaru then said he’s sure they’re all really anxious and him doing a broadcast that got their hopes up probably got some of them thinking, “Who does he think he is?” It showed what a lot of characters were up to, including that Heinkel had knocked out one of three thugs from Season 1 with an alcoholic beverage bottle and unbound himself. Subaru says that like everyone else he is at the mercy of what is going on here. He feels that the unfairness of it is crushing him and shares that he’s really scared, and that’s just who he is. As such, he feels he’s in no position to be calling out to them like this and that he thinks there were better people for the job. He says a lot of people a lot more amazing than he is insisted that he should do it and that it would have more meaning that way. He says a lot of self-deprecating things, which leads to the citizens being downcast, and then says that he can’t run, and that’s why he fights. Subaru says a lot of things that show his concerns for them, and he urges them to not end up alone even if it’s a selfish thing to ask, and they don’t understand the request. He says when they’re alone that their heads just fills with senseless thoughts and that he’s speaking from experience. He encourages them to look at the face of someone around them. He says a lot of things about what motivates him and indicates that he wants the citizens to stop casting their gazes downward ’cause staring at their feet all the time won’t change anything and that making eye contact with people who share the same anxieties they do and who don’t want to lose will make them stronger due to him believing that’s the way to overcome Sirius’s Authority. He wants them to all believe in each other ’cause if they do he can fight with all his heart, which lifted their spirits. It’s a very powerful speech to uplift people, and Tappei does seem to get what moves people.

Back to Emilia and Wife Number 184, Emilia reveals that the one who was speaking was her knight to Wife Number 184 when prompted and says that he’s someone who always tries really hard. Emilia says that she won’t run and leave the rest of the wives. When Wife Number 184 presses Emilia on why she’d do that for them, Emilia indicates it’s ’cause she knew she was scared but still helped her when Regulus pressed Emilia on why she had such a bitter look on her face, which was also unstated and another moment Tappei expects viewers to remember the details from previous episodes. Emilia wants them all to be happy due to her belief that marriage should be with the one you love so that you can be happy. She knew that Fortuna and Petelgeuse loved each other and couldn’t get married and that it still hurts to think about them and indicated she’d never want to be in a relationship in which she was married but unhappy. Wife Number 184 says that’s an admirable thought, but if she’s going to act, she should act alone, and Emilia says she’s not alone and says let’s do the wedding. Emilia indicated that she almost made a mistake, likely ’cause she had intended to save all the wives by herself instead of working to encouraging them to help themselves.

Subaru is then embarrassed but got a lot of kudos for his speech, and they say that they have to conquer all four control towers at once. Otto then shows up and reveals that he managed to make it back despite some things having happened and that he brought Reinhard with him, and we get the title of the episode, which is “The Newest of Heroes, and the Most Ancient of Heroes.” On the surface, it may seem like the title is mainly about the original Sword Saint, who was an ancient hero, and consequently Reinhard as the current Sword Saint, but I believe the title also refers to Al. Al was also much more prominent in the episode than Reinhard was with how he tried to talk down Subaru from being the hero and focusing on Emilia, and that may be a hint to the sort of path Al previously took when he was the Hero of the story. One meaning of “ancient” is “bygone”, and if Al was from a bygone world, that would also mean he is an ancient hero even if he weren’t that old himself. I believe the title also refers to the group of characters from 400 years ago in my theory, such as Satella, Echidna, Pandora, Flugel, Subaru from 400 years ago, and others as well since they were heroes for enacting the grand plan for a good future.

I believe Subaru was summoned to bring the world to a free future and stop the cycle of the world being destroyed/reconstructed from the curse of the selfish hero who lets the world burn in an attempt to save his love, which has led to countless iterations of the same type of story happening with a different hero and heroine every time. The key is to have Subaru be born weak and improve Subaru’s self-esteem so that he isn’t conceited like past heroes and also to develop Emilia to be someone whose wishes Subaru will not dare trample over.

The time period from 400 years ago in which Satella, Echidna, Pandora, Flugel, Subaru, and others existed may have been the first time in the world’s history that the world didn’t come to an end and be reconstructed, and it’s most likely due to a grand plan that was formed in that time period. I believe Satella may have willingly become the Witch of Envy to destroy half the world, becoming the bogeyman of all the world’s evils in the process with the help of those other characters, in particular, Echidna and Pandora, in order to ensure that the possibility to unite the world against the Witch of Envy exists in the future to reduce the odds off the Hero of the story going against the plan.

Whatever the situation was at the time, since I’ve speculated that Al was summoned after Subaru but came to Re:Zero’s fantasy world before Subaru did, I believe Al was the immediate previous iteration of the Hero of the story who chose his lover over the world, dooming it to destruction, and that yet-to-be-determined force that constantly re-summoned Melakuera into reconstructed worlds re-summoned Al into the newly constructed world (Subaru’s world) after Al’s world came to an end.

I believe that in the age of Satella after she caused the calamity, she caused enough of a divergence from the story that whenever the world is reconstructed after its destruction it is reconstructed to the point right after she caused the calamity as a self-preservation mechanism from the world, so Al would also have been frozen in time in some place (perhaps the dark world Subaru is pulled to when he tries to reveal the Taboo) for hundreds of years much like I propose Subaru was before Al was re-summoned 18 years before Subaru’s arrival in Lugunica.

Al probably loved a different silver-haired half-elf in his iteration of the world, who may or may not have looked exactly like Satella and Emilia, and for whatever reason, he ended up being one of the failed heroes. Episode 57 suggests that Al may have lost his bet against Roswaal in the Sanctuary arc and accepted Echidna’s contract with how he was beseeching Emilia to ask for help from Natsuki Subaru and that she doesn’t have to act so tough, which is strikingly similar to Roswaal’s vision in Arc 4 to have Emilia be completely and utterly dependent on Subaru, and thus, Subaru may be the successful hero in the end whereas Al was a failure.

Maybe Al being a failure is exactly why Echidna is even playing along with the grand plan despite her desire for endless knowledge. Echidna may have deliberately pushed Subaru to reject her contract ’cause she had already seen through her Tome of Wisdom and saw Al’s playthrough as the Hero since the Tome of Wisdom can likely see all of the world’s history given how it could fully reconstruct the past and show glimpses of the future. This episode did strongly hint that Al entered a contract with Echidna with his implied dislike of Emilia’s selflessness that Echidna also had.

Thus, the title of the episode would refer to Subaru, the newest of heroes, and the most ancient of heroes, being the Sword Saint, both the original from 400 years ago and the current one Reinhard, Al, and many characters from 400 years ago with Echidna being the most important of them given the hint that Al accepted Echidna’s contract.

Re:Zero Season 3 Episode 6 Analysis and Important Details

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This was a slower-paced episode, but it still had some very engaging content, some of which were likely very important details. The first of which is that while Subaru was unconscious, he saw himself being washed away by an inundation of purple water, and while he was being washed away, he vomited out a dark substance that formed imagery of the Ulgarm mabeasts from Season 1 and the black dragon Capella transformed into, which then clashed, likely to signify that the dormant Ulgarm curses in Subaru weakened the influence of the curse of Capella’s black dragon blood when the two curses mixed, which is why only Subaru’s right leg was affected by the blood’s curse instead of his whole body like it was for many other people. For reference, Beatrice indicated in Season 1 that ’cause Subaru was bitten in so many places, the Ulgarm curses got knotted up, so she couldn’t dispel the curses, so the only way to prevent the curses from activating would be to kill all the Ulgarm that bit him, and that would be why the Ulgarm curses are dormant. Interestingly enough, Subaru not only regrew his leg but also the bandages wrapping it and his shoe, which suggests that there may be something more at play as well. Given Capella could transform herself and make new clothing for herself when she transforms, when Capella drips her blood on you, she may be sharing part of her Authority of Lust with you, and that is how Subaru regrew the bandages and his shoe. As we’ve seen that there are more than one Sin Archbishop of Gluttony, it should theoretically be possible to share an Authority even if it’s not clear why Lye and Roy can both be a Sin Archbishop of Gluttony. One other possibility if the dragon blood is a part of Capella’s Authority is that since Subaru had a resistance to the Sloth (could see the Unseen Hand in Episode 17 after failing to see it the first time) and Gluttony (remembers people erased by Gluttony as shown by Episodes 17 and 26 and the White Whale, which Puck called Gluttony in Episode 18, probably ’cause it’s the White Whale of Gluttony) Authorities that he also has a resistance to Capella’s Authority ’cause he has a resistance to Authorities in general, and that is another reason only his leg was affected and that injuries to his new leg are healed.

Another thing to note is that Priscilla asked Subaru not to scream when she cut open his leg with her fan. Clearly, she did not expect that to do permanent damage to Subaru and knew it would heal. Maybe Al’s right or left leg is in a similar condition, and that is why she did what she did, and it wasn’t out of curiosity. I believe that Al and Subaru both served as the Hero of the story of their times/world in the cycle of the world being destroyed and reconstructed and that Al was born as Subaru’s younger brother and was the immediate previous iteration of the Hero of the story. The reason Al is older than Subaru would be that Subaru’s body was frozen in time for centuries, and Al was re-summoned to Subaru’s world after his world came to an end eighteen years before Subaru arrived in Lugunica. Al knowing Subaru’s nickname for Beatrice, Beako, lends credence to this theory. Or maybe Priscilla just has incredible intuition, which is a point in the relevant Breaktime episode, but I think reading into there being more makes it much more interesting to think about. Subaru then revealed that it was Capella dripping dragon blood on him that led to his leg becoming like that. After this, Priscilla remarked that dragon blood is one of three treasures the Holy Dragon bestowed upon the Royal Family, and I wonder what the other two treasures are.

Priscilla then shares Capella’s new demands, which Subaru was pissed off at and loudly declared that he’d kick the whole Witch Cult out of the city, and that it’s not a matter of whether he can do it when Priscilla prodded him but whether he will do it or not. Showing off some gumption led to her saying she would give him a reward, and she proceeded to knock him down to the ground to prevent him from being targeted by an attack before fighting off a whole crowd of demi-beasts, which may have formed from the purple eggs in Episode 54. After saying that whoever made the demi-beasts had no sense of beauty, she easily cuts all of them in half and burns them to a crisp with her Yang Sword, which she pulled out of a fiery void, and declares that Subaru’s reward is seeing the shine of her Yang Sword and the knowledge of the Demi-Beasts. Even if Priscilla has good intuition, it’s clear she’s not infallible as I believe it’s the case that Capella deliberately wants her creations to not be beautiful due to her insecurity rather than her having no sense of beauty. Priscilla was also massively wrong about Subaru in Season 1 Episode 16 such that when she posed the foot licking test to him which she thought he would pass she was enraged due to how badly Subaru defied her expectations.

Priscilla then leads Subaru to one of the shelters, saying it is her objective, and the people there are being affected by Sirius’s Authority. Priscilla then casually remarked “Not here either…” which shows she was looking for someone, which she revealed to be Schult, the little boy who serves her, after Liliana calmed the civilians, who Priscilla noted were easy to rile up with the smallest of things, with her singing.

I understand Priscilla on the surface confirming Al saying Priscilla likes seeing vicious beasts torment weak creatures in Episode 13 followed by Priscilla beating the shit out of Subaru for complying with a request she made to him made her seem very cruel in Episode 16, but as I have argued in the past, that is likely the wrong read of things one might come to based only a surface-level reading of the content.

This recent episode shows Priscilla going out of her way to search for Schult by going to as many shelters as possible, showing motherly qualities for her vassal. She also called the situation in the shelters an ugly, meaningless reality, which directly contradicts how Al indicated that she loves seeing vicious beasts torment weak creatures, as if that were the case, she’d be cheering on Sirius for her Authority causing the discord it did.

Then when Subaru revealed to Priscilla that the Authority of Wrath throws people’s emotions into chaos and that a shelter full of unrest is the perfect prey for her, Priscilla narrowed her eyebrows in anger. She may have said that she was just looking for Schult, but I don’t fully buy it. I believe she really wanted to help the citizens in addition to finding Schult. Does this look like someone who likes seeing the weak be preyed on as Al suggested?

Much like I had thought after watching Re:Zero in Season 1, I do proclaim once again that Priscilla is kinder than she lets on, and even Subaru himself might’ve started realizing that given how he reacted in the shelter before he shared his intent to go back to the Muse Company. It is simply wrong to say she only cares about what sort of entertainment you can give her. I believe I have long been on the right track about her, and Tappei often plays with viewers’ expectations of a player by introducing them one way and showing that there was more to them, much like with Crusch, Julius, Otto, and Anastasia.

After Regulus’s Wife Number 184 changed Emilia into new clothes, Regulus noted how unhappy Emilia was and asked what’s wrong, and when Emilia didn’t respond, he prodded Wife Number 184 for an answer, and she remarked that it was probably the broadcast that upset her. After Regulus asks Emilia whether she’s still not better, Emilia looks really uncomfortable, prompting him to say she has a really bitter expression on her face and sternly asking why she has no answer, to which Emilia said she thinks she’s a bit tired. Regulus then reveals after saying it was negligence on his part to not notice that that he and his wives are preparing a temple for them to get married at and that he has had 291 wives total with many of them sadly having perished with 54 of them when including Emilia remaining. He says he will love them all equally, and he launces an attack that would’ve killed Wife Number 184 after he remarks that the one closest to Emilia should’ve noticed her exhaustion. Regulus forcing Wife Number 184 not to smile and deciding to her on a whim shows that his wives are all disposable dolls to him even if he’s not so evil as to seek out child brides and that he doesn’t understand what love actually is. Emilia says it’s wrong for that wife to start cleaning up after Regulus’s mess after he tried to kill her, but that wife says it’s not within her right to ask for anything further, which Emilia protests, asking if all of the wives shrink in fear of Regulus and accept when it when he tries to kill them, and Wife Number 184 responds by saying that is the nature of some spousal relationships and that Emilia will get used to it in time. Emilia believes that marriage should be the happiest picture of happiness, and Wife Number 184 says that marriage can exist without happiness and to do as their husband commands, which Emilia says isn’t right. It shows what a disgusting pig Regulus is for oppressing so many women.

Julius then saves Subaru after he was being hunted by a demi-beast and brings him back to the government office after informing him that the Muse Company was attacked and that everyone who went to take back the government office made it back alive and that it now serves as their base of operations. Inside, Felix slapped Wilhelm for not protecting Crusch, and it was made implicit that she implored multiple people to at least make an excuse why the situation couldn’t be avoided, but no one did so and accepted the responsibility of their actions as they believed there was no other approach they could have tried. If you recall from Season 2 with Episode 26, Felix wanted to abandon the alliance with the Emilia camp since the Witch Cult had attacked and eaten Crusch’s memories as Felix’s #1 priority is keeping Crusch safe even if Crusch herself feels a strong sense of duty in honouring her commitments as shown by when she agreed to have Felix heal Subaru’s gate in Season 1 and also deciding to stick with the alliance ’cause Crusch didn’t want to go on with her life knowing nothing, preferring to make that choice for herself rather than simply do as someone else says. Ricardo handed back Subaru his whip and indicated it was used to restrain Crusch and the black dragon that is most likely Garfiel’s mom’s husband. Julius indicated that a foreign substance, which Subaru knows to be Capella’s dragon blood, had entered Crusch’s body, which causes her suffering, and urged Subaru not to see her, which Ricardo agreed with since since she was such a beauty, making it painful to see her in her current state.

Emilia then does something proactive which is make an ice sculpture figure and place it under the covers so that Wife Number 184 wouldn’t notice that she wasn’t in bed. She makes ice platforms attached to the building so that she can move around freely outside. She saw that all of the 4 towers were taken at once, and that’s why nobody can move freely. She realized that she’s in the Third District and believes if she can find out which Sin Archbishop is in each tower, it’d be helpful info for Subaru and the others. Emilia is not content with being a damsel in distress, and I commend Tappei for writing her to be this way. Regulus was apparently having a conversation with Capella through his metia and was threatening to blow her tower to pieces for distressing Emilia, and Capella revealed that it wasn’t her who opened the watergate, which Regulus didn’t buy at all. Then, the conversation was cut short as one of Regulus’s wives indicated that preparation for the interior of the temple had begun, and he told her he’d be there right away. Emilia then said that the tower she can see straight ahead must be the First District tower since she’s at the Third District, which she wants to let Subaru know eventually.

Back at the government office, Anastasia asks Subaru whether Beatrice is an artificial spirit, and he confirmed it right away since hiding the info would only benefit their enemy. This lines up with what Seasons 1 and 2 presented since Echidna and Beatrice herself had indicated her artificial origins as there’s no way a spirit would call a human her mother unless she was artificially made. Subaru then told Anastasia that the not-quite-Tome of Wisdom is the prototype of the Witch Cult Gospels, and that it is more complete than the Gospels, which I swear was not shown in Season 2, so it must have been cut content that happened during one of Echidna’s tea parties. Subaru insists that the 2 copies of the not-quite-Tome of Wisdom were burned to ashes, and they think that the Witch Cult must’ve not realized it, but as I said in my write-up of Episode 55, Roswaal may not have confirmed that it had burnt to a crisp due to him believing that that must have been the case, meaning Otto saved Felt by using it, or the Tome of Wisdom could be referring to the true Tome of Wisdom from Echidna. The group indicated that they won’t cave to any of the Witch Cult’s demands.

Julius indicates that there are numerous shelters throughout the city and that that there is also unrest, which Subaru knew of, and that they’re trying to minimize the harm down, and that results in Anastasia saying that some are too far gone and that people will die, meaning it’s cowardly to mince words like that. Anastasia plans on making sacrifices to save the majority, which Subaru objects to, and Anastasia in return says that it’s silly for him to say that and it’d be like his outburst at the castle and reminded him there were casualties during the White Whale hunt. She was going to say something about Subaru being a knight now means he needs to act differently, but Subaru cut her off to say that the people who died fighting in the Whale Whale hunt were prepared for that but questioning the resolve of people who’ve had their city turned into a battleground is wrong. He indicated that people who’ve made up their minds about the situation need to met by people with the same resolve and that being aware of that at all times and being prepared for what it means is what being a knight is, and he believes that Julius feels the same and goes on a long diatribe about how knights want to look cool as much as possible, even on the brink of death, declaring that he’ll save everyone, which is the lesson he learned in the Sanctuary arc, which I believe Echidna deliberately pushed him to make by saying something so evil about why she had Beatrice wait in the Forbidden Library for 400 years. Although it’s nice to have that mindset, I wonder for how long Subaru will be able to keep it up. Given Re:Zero’s story is often much more realistic than most isekai stories, I do not expect Subaru to be able save everybody for the rest of the story and that he will eventually learn that Return by Death is not infallible, whether that happens now or in some future arc.

The post-credits scene has Emilia sneak into Regulus’s office and pick up his metia, and when there was a connection, she hid her face, only to hear Al say, “What’s this? I got a response.” showing that Al was likely not expecting to get a response since Regulus had just left the building. I always thought it was suspicious that Al left the group that attacked the government office just as they were rearing themselves up for a fight in Episode 54, and it might be ’cause he can’t be seen fighting the Witch Cult since he’s a Witch cultist. That would be why he has access to Capella’s metia. But if Capella wasn’t the one who opened the watergate, which ended up saving Subaru since he would fallen to his death since he probably would have fallen onto concrete, than perhaps it was Al. As I’ve been speculating for years that Witch Cult Gospels are not true forecasters of the future but merely texts connected to Echidna’s mind, Al was perhaps pushed to save Subaru by opening the watergate. Alternatively, if Al was summoned as the immediate previous iteration of the Hero of the story as I’ve been speculating, he might’ve also been summoned by Satella, meaning he also has the scent of the Witch, and that’s how he was able to pose as a Witch cultist, not that he actually is one since Witch cultists can physically see the amount of Witch miasma emanating from you as shown by Episode 22 from Season 1.

Here’s the link to Re:Zero Season 3 Breaktime Episode 6:

KakoeiSbi provides an English translation in the comments section.

Continuing off from last week’s Breaktime episode, Al says that Subaru saved him from going crazy with the knowledge there’s someone like him out there. Beatrice indicated that the Great Waterfall was probably what Subaru meant when he would say he was from a very far away place when he first arrived in the world, which Al also would say back when he was a newcomer to the world. The Great Waterfall apparently sits at the edge of the world with the world being flat considering Emilia said there is no nation east of Lugunica in Episode 1, and no one has seen what’s beyond the Great Waterfall. Al indicated that Priscilla’s good intuition allowed to realize that Al was from beyond the Great Waterfall as opposed to the hipsters who pretended that that was the case for them even though Al didn’t exactly say that when Subaru asked if Priscilla fell for the excuse they use. It’s nice to get some good lore out of this, and this week had some nice info to chew on despite being slower.

Echidna’s Authority of Greed: Tome of Wisdom, possibly the strongest Authority to have existed and Re:Zero Season 3 Breaktime Episode 5 Analysis and Important Details

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Here’s the link to Episode 5 of Re:Zero Season 3 Breaktime:

Apparently, it was leaked before the regular broadcast episode aired.

This short shows Al confirming that he came from Japan since he used utterances only a Japanese person would know, which had Subaru really stoked. Al also knew Subaru’s nickname for Beatrice, Beako, and I suspect what I brought up in last week’s theory post about Al may be relevant.

We saw in Season 2 that Echidna’s trials were probably based off of or use the Tome of Wisdom with how it could fully reconstruct the past, show possible continuations of failed loops, and show true glimpses of the future, likely regardless of whether it’s a failed loop or Subaru’s final good loop for an arc. As it contains all of the world’s past history, current information, and possible futures, it may be the most broken Authority to ever exist.

Thus as I’ve speculated last week that Al was summoned after Subaru but came to Re:Zero’s fantasy world before Subaru did, Al would be the immediate previous iteration of the hero of the story who chose his lover over the world, and his summoning might’ve been meant to be a trial run for Subaru’s success.

The group from 400 years ago may have peered through the Tome of Wisdom and saw that the world has been destroyed and reconstructed constantly. The Tome of Wisdom should be powerful enough to see the history of previously destroyed worlds, and that’s how the grand plan was created in the age of Satella.

Al and Subaru might not have been meant to be the hero of the stories for their respective times with Al being the immediate previous iteration of the Hero, but the group of characters from 400 years ago forcibly injected them into the story for their plans, possibly to use Al as a trial run for Subaru’s success.

That means Beatrice was also Al’s partner much like is the case with Subaru ’cause she was created to be the partner of the hero of the story with the group from 400 years ago hijacking the path of the story so that the cycle of the world being destroyed and reconstructed that I believe exists ends. I believe Al and Subaru may have originally came from the same soul, being splinters of the same person, which would be why they have the same nickname for Beatrice.

Re:Zero Season 3 Episode 5 Analysis + Important Details

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I found this to be quite a powerful episode with potentially lasting consequences.

Continuing on with Regulus and Emilia, Regulus said that Emilia has shown him a new way of thinking when she responded to his question by asking what is a virgin since she had never heard the term before as it shows she has a virgin soul, which he thought made Emilia the very picture of his ideal woman as he probably prefers sheltered women since they are easier to dominate, and dominating is something he very much enjoys doing given he told Wife Number 184 she is a good girl for no longer smiling when she carried out her tasks at his instruction. Given Emilia is considered Wife Number 79 even though he has someone in the 184th position, he probably numbers his wives based on how physically attracted to them he is, which may have been hinted at in Episode 53 when Regulus responded that having a pretty face is all that matters when it comes to love. He likely has many placeholders for how attracted he is to a certain person based on all the wives he’s ever had, and Emilia’s beauty may have matched whoever used to be in the 79th position. Wife Number 184 made it clear that Regulus merely sees those he deems his wives as objects given she indicated whether they want to be his wife is irrelevant, so he’s some nasty piece of work. Emilia remarked that Regulus reminds her of some evil king she read about in a book, to which Wife Number 184 said that that it is a fitting description and that he’s a king in his own right, specifically worthy of the title, “Little King”, which almost certainly has some significance since Re:Zero has no filler. As an aside, Regulus indicating that Emilia having a virgin soul showed him a new way of thinking in that it’s possible to live life up until that point without knowing what a virgin is suggests to me, although I could be mistaken, that he doesn’t take child brides and may only come for women who are of age since it shows he has never encountered a woman who didn’t know what the term virgin means. I believe everything in Re:Zero is intentional to the point that that line may have been included to let viewers know Regulus is undoubtedly evil but not SO evil as to seek out kids.

Back on the roof, Julius reminds Subaru what he set out to do when he was extremely angry after meeting the Sin Archbishop of Gluttony, Roy Alphard, for thinking he had eaten Rem’s name and memories, which resulted in her ending up in suspended animation, and it wasn’t even Roy that did it but Lye. Rem was his strongest emotional support, so it’s no surprise he reacted the way he did. Julius refers to Subaru as “Little Girl User” and Crusch as “The Valkyrie” to avoid having their names be eaten by Roy. I didn’t get it in Episode 54, but after a second episode of Crusch being afraid of being in the air, I see that she is afraid of heights, which is why she was screaming in fear when Subaru carried her through the updraft, when he jumped over to the window of the office where the broadcast metia was, and why Julius told Subaru to take care of Crusch in Episode 54 and to look after her in Episode 55.

When Subaru and Crusch are in the building, they see a dragon that is not happy with them when they motion to get closer. Crusch downs the dragon and they rescue a small girl they believe is a hostage who they don’t realize is actually the Sin Archbishop of Lust, Capella, who has the power to shapeshift at will. Capella points Subaru to the room where the hostages are, and the hostages have all become giant flies as a result of Capella’s dragon blood which transforms those who succumb to its curse. Capella knocked Crusch unconscious while Subaru was checking in on the hostages, and she stepped on Crusch, which prompted Subaru to tell Capella to get her leg off of her, to which Capella responded whether he’s infatuated with her beautiful legs or just Crusch, who she called female meat, saying she does have quite an erotic figure as she stepped on Crusch’s breasts. Subaru responded by saying Capella is not worthy of holding her Crusch under a foot and launches a piece of the building at Capella with his whip, which she easily started regenerating her wounds from. In the meantime, she sprouted a long tail and knocked Subaru to the side with it before asking if her beauty rendered him speechless. This is the second time Capella has tried to fish for a compliment, so there may be something more underneath the surface here with an insecurity.

Subaru asks her if she’s a dragon that takes human form, and Capella says Subaru displays irrationality that makes him a moron for coming to the conclusion, and she proceeded to beat the shit out of him, which shows she is likely a human who somehow has dragon blood in her body, and she incidentally said that she’d transform into the kind of girl he likes just for him during that exchange. She then hinted to Subaru what the passed out dragon and flies really were since he didn’t get it, and when he finally realized the reality of the situation, he questioned why she did that. She prodded him by asking if he found it disgusting, to which Subaru called it blood-curdling. Capella coolly says that it’s so disgusting and repulsive that it makes him hate her. She says seeing what he saw regarding the flies and the dragon made him hate her on a visceral level, and that’s the “right” answer. She said that no one could love creatures like those. Subaru then requests for her to kill him, to which she says she’d never do something so barbaric and throws out that she wants as many people as possible, for as long as possible, as deeply as possible to love her as being the reason she doesn’t kill him ’cause it’s her wish, which is quite odd given she’s been pushing him to hate her, so I take it that she does have an insecurity after all, probably about her own worth/beauty.

Subaru then makes a move to save Crusch, and Capella said that Subaru always ends up drooling over that female meat ’cause he wants her so bad. Subaru notes that there’s already someone he likes, and Capella remarks that can he really swear he hasn’t had lewd thoughts about Crusch for even a second? She asked him doesn’t he want to stroke Crusch’s hair or kiss her lips. Capella then raged about how Subaru shouldn’t dare take his carnal desire for the one he fancies he can’t speak of in the open and call it love. She then proceeds to transform into Emilia although without the right outfit and without the hair clip, which shows one of Capella’s powers may be to able to read your psyche and be able to transform into an approximation of your ideal lover. This is likely given she was able to read into what Subaru thought of his relationship of Emilia and then belittle him by suggesting he couldn’t possibly love Emilia if she were a fly. With all of this content, I am confident I can make a preliminary Capella character analysis that I will save for another post.

Capella then rips off Subaru’s leg and notes that Subaru and Crusch are both dying, and she started injecting her dragon blood into her and then Subaru, which the dragon Crusch had defeated reacted strongly to as seeing Capella do that probably reminded the dragon of how most of the hostages had become flies, clearly having gained sympathy for Crusch and Subaru. Given Garfiel’s mom’s husband was the only character introduced so far that works in this government office, he probably became this blue-eyed black dragon since their eye colours match. The dragon then blasted a hole through the office as Julius, Garfiel, and Wilhelm’s fight against the strong Witch cultists continued.

Back at the Muse office, Kiritaka reveals that he has learned that no one can get in contact with any members of the Council of Ten aside from himself. He believes it must be the work of the Witch Cult. He tells Anastasia to prepare to evacuate, but she tells him not to throw his life away, which surprises him ’cause he thought Anastasia would say something more self-serving, to which Anastasia says that she does business under the motto, “Your friendly neighbourhood shop.” And this brings me back to Season 1 when Anastasia directly gave Subaru a lesson in negotiating for business when she publicly humiliated him in exchange for a dragon carriage. While Subaru’s behaviour at the time had been clearly self-destructive, she personally helped Subaru get something he needed, all while squeezing the last bit of useful info from him with the knowledge that he had left the Crusch camp on a sour note, only giving him what he wanted after he revealed that Russell Fellow had been to Crusch’s mansion. Sure on the outside it may have seemed like Anastasia was being sadistic, deriving from pleasure from Subaru’s humiliation, but Subaru was pretty much a lost cause at that point, and I believe Anastasia gave him some tough love ’cause it was sad seeing someone walk the path that he was on, and this episode confirms that was what had happened.

Sirius then smashes right through a building, which would have killed Anastasia had Kiritaka not caught her by acting quickly. After remembering Sirius taking a direct blow from Reinhard and be all right, I guess she has to be pretty damn strong after all. Sirius then applauds them for working together to stay alive. When Anastasia reveals that she knows it’s the Sin Archbishop of Wrath, Sirius says she’s embarrassed. Sirius approaches the pair with the intent to kill and Hetaro and Tivey come in to save them even though they’re wounded ’cause of Mimi’s wound from the strong female regular Witch cultist due to their Divine Protection of Trisection causing them to share the wound, which is likely why Mimi hasn’t already died. Hetaro and Mimi springing into action made Anastasia believe that Mimi had perished, but Felix indicated that he used a forbidden method to prevent the wound from getting even worse, which she had also done for Subaru’s leg in Episode 53 after Regulus had attacked him. Anastasia tells Hetaro and Tivey she’ll buy them 2 minutes of time, and Hetaro and Tivey should theoretically be safe from Sirius’s Authority since Sirius isn’t within Mimi’s line of sight, and since you have to see Sirius to fall under her control, Mimi being holed up somewhere should shield Hetaro and Tivey from the effects of Sirius’s Authority. Anastasia then tells Felix to get Mimi and the others who were wounded out and says that she’ll meet him outside. When Anastasia and Kiritaka run into his guards, he says to leave the rest to them while she leaves. He says he is entrusting the city to her, which she says isn’t fair.

Back to the situation with Felt as a hostage, Felt sees a bunch of zodda bugs which come to distract Heinkel, letting Reinhard pin his father to a wall, and with his reluctance to do anything, Felt smashed Heinkel’s head with a bottle of booze, knocking him out so that Reinhard could tie him up. Otto reveals his presence and that he had been looking for a place to hide ’cause of his encounter with Lye, the Sin Archbishop of Gluttony. Apparently, white dragon scales saved him somehow. After that, I’m guessing Lye probably wasn’t too focused on pursuing Otto to eat him given he said Otto won’t even amount to an appetizer, so Otto most likely didn’t have to do all that much hiding. I have to more to say about this after a later reveal towards the end of the episode. Felt then tells Reinhard to go help Subaru and that she’ll take Heinkel to the nearest shelter, which Reinhard reluctantly agreed to. Felt doesn’t know what to about Heinkel, but then two of the thugs from Season 1 who attacked Subaru show up, and Felt commented on their great timing.

The Witch cultists then toll the bell and start flooding the city, and the black dragon/Garfiel’s mom’s husband attempted to carry away Crusch and Subaru, but after Capella latched onto the dragon, Subaru fell off the dragon as the dragon attempted to get away. Emilia is horrified seeing the destruction, and Capella makes three more demands in addition to Typhon’s remains, the Tome of Wisdom that’s been brought into the city, the artificial spirit that’s been chilling in the city, and that the wedding with the silver-haired girl that’s to be held in the city won’t be interrupted although she doesn’t really care about that last demand.

Regarding the Tome of Wisdom, Echidna’s Authority of Greed is the Tome of Wisdom as was revealed in Season 2. Echidna made two “imitations” of her Tome of Wisdom, and Roswaal colloquially called his copy the Tome of Wisdom given they had no actual name. I personally call it the not-quite-Tome of Wisdom. If you recall towards the end of Season 2, Echidna spoke in her own voice through Ryuzu Shima’s body in a moment she was disgusted with Emilia’s selflessness, and I believe this shows that Echidna was successful in her immortality experiment. Given Beatrice can use teleportation and portal spells, she most likely learned it from Echidna, the one who created her, meaning when Ryuzu Shima’s body disappeared with the original Ryuzu Meyer, Echidna had faked her own death although Emilia had not realized it

I believe that neither Roswaal’s not-quite Tome of Wisdom nor Witch Cult Gospels are true future-telling texts but texts connected to Echidna’s mind through magic that she has been using to control the world’s events. Regulus saying in Episode 51 that fate would bring him and the Emilia camp together again despite that not happening again until the 4th loops suggests that Gospels don’t actually tell the future but are meant to keep the world on a specific path that Echidna, Satella, Pandora, and likely others as well all desire.

So based on Capella’s demand, either Echidna herself is in the city with her actual Authority, or someone from the Emilia camp picked up Roswaal’s not-quite Tome of Wisdom ’cause it wasn’t burned to a crisp after all as viewers were led to believe. I had thought it was very peculiar that Otto was hiding out where Felt, Heinkel, and Reinhard were given Episode 51 showed that none of the other camps (aside from Priscilla’s) knew that Anastasia had invited them to Priestella, so he shouldn’t have had any idea where they were staying, so after that reveal at the end about the Tome of Wisdom, Otto is likely the one in possession of what they’re looking for if it’s not Echidna herself with the genuine article in her Tome of Wisdom. Perhaps one might think that Roswaal would’ve checked to see if his Tome had truly been burned, but I believe the events of Season 2 show otherwise. Roswaal, after seeing Ram drop his not-quite-Tome of Wisdom in flames, launched a powerful attack at her, likely ’cause of the intense frustration and anger he felt over Ram doing that since he had been do dependent on the Tome and ’cause Ram was his loyal servant, which made her betrayal feel even more overbearing. After that, he was so intently focused on Ram that I can see him having overlooked checking to see whether his Tome was actually burned since he wouldn’t have been so mad as to launch such a powerful attack at her if he hadn’t thought it was a done deal.

The artificial spirit Capella is demanding is most likely Beatrice given Echidna indicated that she was highly involved in her birth in Season 2. More to support this is that Puck was revealed to have been sent by Echidna to find Emilia in the past in The Frozen Bond OVA with a woman’s speech being denoted by a special font when a woman forced Puck into a contract by which he would lose his memories if he entered into a contract with Emilia with that special font having been revealed to be denoting Echidna’s speech in Season 2, making it likely that both Puck and Beatrice were created by Echidna, which makes Puck calling Beatrice her little sister make sense and gives context and meaning to Beatrice referring to Echidna as mother.

As for that bit about Regulus and Emilia’s wedding, as I’ve previously posted that I believe Witch Cult Gospels are meant to keep the world on a particular path that a group of characters from 400 years ago desires rather than be true forecasters of the future, I believe all three additional demands Capella made were likely due to instruction from her Gospel, and that bit with the wedding was meant to let Subaru know that the wedding is happening soon so that he can stop it even though he had made securing the government office with its powerful metia as his first priority.

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

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I believe Subaru was summoned to bring the world to a free future and stop the cycle of the world being destroyed/reconstructed. The key is to have Subaru be born weak and improve Subaru’s self-esteem so that he isn’t conceited like past heroes.

In The Frozen Bond OVA, Melakuera, the previous Great Spirit of Fire, stated he had faced world-ending crises countless times and ranted about the Witch’s return. Some people may dismiss it as pure discrimination against Emilia ’cause of Satella and Emilia’s resemblance, but he may have physically witnessed a Witch returning repeatedly with the world burning every time.

This implies a powerful curse was casted thousands or even millions of years ago (just ’cause the world was destroyed repeatedly doesn’t mean those events weren’t part of the world’s history) in which the world is reconstructed repeatedly after its destruction from a very powerful Witch. In the distant past a yet-to-be-determined hero may have faced off against the big bad of the story, and in a moment of weakness in which the hero had to choose between the world and his lover, he chose his half-elf lover, dooming the world to destruction, and the final boss cursed the world to be extremely biased toward repeating the failure of that hero for all time.

What I mean by bias is the Seal in Elior Forest, or the equivalent of that, was probably opened during the first instance of the proto-hero of the story, and so the world’s biased towards that happening. The proto-heroine, who was probably a half-elf, most likely had the power to defeat what comes out of the Seal by becoming the Witch of Envy, after which she’d need to be put down as she’d become a world-ending threat. The world thus became biased towards repeating those events again even if the reconstructed worlds and people aren’t 1 to 1 with the original world.

In my theory, a group of characters from 400 years ago are working to push the world to one specific future in which the world is saved by forcably opening the Seal in Elior Forest on their own terms instead of one day having it be opened under unfavourable conditions if it will open no matter what. If the Seal is opened, a monstrous horde of creatures that have a passive AOE aura not even Reinhard can protect the world from may emerge, which will require Satella’s yin magic to defeat without bringing the world to ruin. Satella would return by possessing Emilia’s body before needing to be killed due to having limited bodily control. Multiple instances up until Season 2 show that characters are acting with future knowledge, and that’s why I believe this is true.

Echidna has shown she was reading ahead in her Tome of Wisdom with how she (the special font from a female in the OVA was revealed to have been the words of Echidna in Season 2) had Puck search for Emilia and have him enter a contract with her in which if he starts a contract with Emilia he’d slowly lose his memories, showing she wanted him not to do it until there was no choice, and how she turned Petra’s handkerchief into a special knife after Subaru spoke with her about Return by Death so that he could kill himself. Why would a Witch who wants unlimited knowledge be so invested in Subaru’s success when she could enter a contract with Subaru and learn about RBD, a pipe dream for someone who loves knowledge? It’s probably if a threat is approaching in the future in which the world’s end is coming, which would end her quest for knowledge.

It’s likely that it’s not just Echidna who had future knowledge but also past Subaru, Flugel, Satella, Pandora, and the other Witches too. Flugel planted what was known as Flugel’s tree centuries ago in the exact spot the Whale subjugation force needed for it to burn the trunk off to trap the White Whale underneath it, showing Flugel did that to help Subaru succeed. Petelgeuse apologized to Flugel-sama after making the decision to take in the Sloth Witch Factor, which likely shows Flugel made him promise not to take it in so that Petelgeuse wouldn’t take it in until he had no choice like Echidna did with Puck. If most Witch Cult Gospels don’t show anything after the first loop, then it was likelly Pandora who ordered the White Whale to stop chasing Subaru in Episode 17 and blow him away with its breath, likely to give Subaru time to reach the mansion before resuming its chase ’cause Pandora might’ve been purposely trying to bring Subaru to his breaking point so that From Zero with Rem could happen. Season 2 showed that mabeasts and Daphne find Subaru to smell irresistibly delicious ’cause of his Envy Witch Factor, so the White Whale wouldn’t have left Subaru of its own accord, and since normal Witch Cultists’ Gospels’ only have info from the first loop, it had to be Pandora’s meddling.

So Subaru and Emilia may have been born and put through suffering specifically so that they could be the hero and heroine of the story in an attempt to the lead the world to a future with free choice. Even if Subaru’s self-esteem is built up properly, he’ll likely never be okay with sacrificing Emilia unless Emilia herself tells him she won’t suffer and accepts her role in the story, which is why Emilia herself needs her self-esteem to be built up in order to be the queen piece who willingly allows Satella to possess her to defeat what comes out of the Seal and be killed by Subaru. The story of Re:zero likely requires the building up of Subaru’s self-esteem and that Subaru be born with a weak body relative to those of Re:zero’s fantasy world so that he isn’t conceited and can one day put down Satella and then finally challenge and defeat the final boss.

I know people will call it a poor development for the story for it to be preordained that Emilia will die at the end, but if the world’s cursed to have the hero of the story let the world burn for his woman, then it’d really be defying fate for Subaru to kill Emilia/Satella, ending the long-standing curse.

As anime-watchers up to Season 2 know, the lore of the Witches of Sin was likely falsified. That is why Crusch wrongly believed that Satella created the White Whale when it was Daphne who did so. If you didn’t know, Subaru not only means “Pleiades” but also “unite”, and this’s likely one of the reasons why the lore was falsified, and that’s so Subaru can unite the world against Satella at the end of Re:zero.

Echidna stated in Season 2 that the Witch of Envy consumed the other Witches of Sin and used them for sustenance, but if Satella really did that, there wouldn’t be a corpse of Echidna at the Sanctuary, which means that info isn’t true. Echidna’s a calculating person. There’s no way she spread a false piece of info on a whim. Therefore, I put it out there that uniting the world against Satella isn’t the only reason the lore of the Witches of Sin was falsified. I propose a secondary reason to falsify this information would be to obscure or make lost to history what the dead Witches of Sin were capable of, and that’d be ’cause those Witches’ll be revived. Just like how Emilia’s choice to say her name is Satella was meant to scare Subaru off ’cause she didn’t want to put Subaru in danger and ’cause he was slowing her down, I believe there are two reasons why the lore of the Witches was falsified. This would explain why nobody except Al knew that Typhon was the witch who had died in Priestella.

So the hero of the story during the time of Satella and Season 2’s Witches (including Pandora but excluding Hector) might have found out about the world being biased toward repeating this failure of a long deceased hero, so they took a step to defy fate by enacting a grand plan hundreds of years in the making. The hero might’ve returned to Earth after acquiring future knowledge with his allies to inject Subaru into Re:zero’s fantasy world in the future as the hero of the story.

As we have seen in the anime, Flugel is the name of the person who planted what was known as Flugel’s tree, and the White Whale subjugation force burned part of the tree off to defeat the White Whale by trapping it underneath the tree’s trunk.

Flugel itself means wing and can also be a nickname for someone with conspicuous sleeves at a time of dress regulations. So what this points to is that Flugel is a person not from Re:zero’s fantasy world who somehow came to be there given the nickname is for someone who dresses strangely, and this suggests that Flugel is from Earth. Flugel may have been the past hero of the story who returned to Earth as part of the plan to save the world.

Assuming this is true, the only way Melakuera’s mind could’ve persisted even as the world restarted repeatedly if there is some yet-to-be-determined force saving Melakuera just as the world is about to be destroyed and summoning him into the reconstructed world, and that would be how his mind persists. I wonder who has been doing the summoning in this case.

Regardless of whether the characters in the past were tipped off by Melakuera or someone else, they probably agreed to steer the world to a future that defies the bias of the world repeating the proto-hero’s failure. The first episode of Re:Zero being titled the End of the Beginning and the Beginning of the End could mean that Subaru’s summoning is the equivalent of the endgame of MCU’s cinematic universe in the battle against Thanos.

I know Emilia’s goal to reduce racial discrimination and rehabilitate the image of half-elves is a topic Tappei intends to address. And I believe there’s no better way for Emilia to show that half-elves aren’t monsters than to sacrifice herself for the world in allowing Satella to possess her body to use her combat powers against the monstrous horde from the Seal. If Subaru and those in the know do a good job of spreading the word about Emilia’s noble sacrifice, even her biggest detractors would have to take a step back and acknowledge what she did for the betterment of the world.

The reason I have predicted that a statue of Emilia would be erected at the end of the story and that people of the world would make pilgrimages to it and bow to this statue in reverence is ’cause it’s the ending that I believe most dovetails with Satella dying and Emilia still being a very respected figure. This is an ending where Subaru can still be happy about his accomplishments while not being destroyed by Emilia’s death because Tappei took care to give him achievements outside of protecting Emilia while also rehabilitating Emilia’s image.

Now I will explain how Al factors into this. Subaru means Pleiades in Japanese, and Pleiades is referring to a star cluster in the Taurus constellation. Al’s true name, Aldebaran, is a star that in the Taurus constellation that follows the Pleiades star cluster in the night sky. In Arabic, Aldebaran means the follower for that reason. While the Arabic meanings for Petelgeuse (named after the Betelgeuse star and Batenkaitos (also named after a star) hinted at a couple of Sin Archbishop’s powers with Orion’s hand indicating that Petelguese’s power would involve hands and belly of the sea monster indicated Lye’s power would involve eating, since Aldebaran isn’t a Sin Archbishop, perhaps it would be better to consider Al’s name in relation to Subaru.

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

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

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

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

‘Cause Re:zero is a highly logical series, I posit that time is linear in Re:zero, and I think the main reason Al was summoned to the fantasy world to a point before Subaru’s arrival at Lugunica’s Capital is that Subaru undoubtedly was transported to somewhere in Re:zero’s world or a place that was a limbo between worlds where his body never aged even the slightest before he suddenly arrived in Lugunica’s Capital in Episode 1 of the series and that this period where that happened was before the time Al was summoned to Re:zero’s fantasy world.

Now I know some fans of time travel stories might be rubbed the wrong way by what I have posted, but that has never stopped me from posting something controversial. Re:zero being a logical series isn’t the only reason I believe that time is linear in this story. We as viewers know that when Subaru shows the intent to reveal anything about Return by Death that Satella drags him to a dark world where she often squeezes his heart. Given we know that what is known as Return by Death resets Subaru’s body, meaning that the soul is the seat of where memories and thoughts are held instead of the brain in Re:zero, I surmise that the reason Satella can so easily read Subaru’s mind is that that dark world is a pocket dimension located within the vicinity of Subaru’s soul, and since that would mean she is always lurking around Subaru’s soul, she can readily read his thoughts.

This could explain why Satella’s witch scent is so strong after Subaru dies, and that’s because Satella lurks within the vicinity of Subaru’s soul through that dark world. I believe that in between the time Subaru was snatched away from Earth and Al’s summoning, Satella was building this dark world for some purpose, which I believe is for her to help Subaru bring about her desired future where she is killed by him as she requested in Episode 38. Satella will one day emerge from the dark world that is within the vicinity of Subaru’s soul to possess Emilia in order to fight what comes out of the Seal in Elior Forest, and then Subaru will need to lead the force that kills her after the threat of the Seal is gone for good. There had to have been a period of time where that dark world was built after all. It wouldn’t have existed “just because”.

Thus since I’ve speculated that Al was summoned after Subaru but came to Re:Zero’s fantasy world before Subaru did, I believe Al might’ve been the immediate previous iteration of the hero of the story who chose his lover over the world, and Al’s summoning might have meant to be a trial run for Subaru’s success. It’s possible Al knew that Priestella was Typhon’s grave ’cause in his past world before he was summoned to the current world, the Witch Cult might’ve successfully extracted Typhon’s remains, leading to Priestella’s destruction. That would also be how Al knew that it’s possible that all the remaining Archbishops would be in Priestella and how Gluttony’s powers work. I believe that after the time period from 400 years ago in which Satella caused the calamity which destroyed half the world, the world is reconstructed to be right after that point after its destruction due to that group of characters’ successful intervention, which would be why Al isn’t from an alternative timeline but just the previous iteration of the world. Al would get summoned into the world Subaru is in after his world was destroyed by the same force that re-summons Melakuera repeatedly, the previous Great Spirit of Fire who seemed to have knowledge of the world facing world-ending crises countless times. Satella, Echidna, Pandora, and co. would’ve hijacked the path the world would follow by injecting Al and Subaru to be the heroes of the story, and this could be the only way to break the cycle of the world being destroyed and reconstructed.

A Re:Zero Theory – The implications of Regulus’s words in Episode 51 and Garf’s mom being alive but without memories of her past

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Regulus specifically stated in Episode 51 that fate would have him meet the Emilia camp again. This info explicitly shows that Regulus’s Gospel made him believe that they would meet again despite it taking until the 4th loop for it to actually happen. This shows, as I have long proposed elsewhere, that the Witch Cult Gospels are meant to keep the world on a particular path rather than being texts that give real forecasts about the future.

TL;DR: I do not believe Witch Cult Gospels or the not-quite-Tome of Wisdoms that Roswaal and Beatrice had actually truly tell the future but are merely connected to Echidna’s mind, and she can freely decide what appears on those texts.

If Roswaal’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom actually told the true future, it would account for Otto’s actions. I do not buy into it being what happened in the alpha timeline or first loop as some have proposed based on Petelgeuse having no knowledge of Subaru in Episode 24 since it’s a document that updates and should be able to account for changes like that unless the source of that text didn’t want to happen. That kind of flaw literally should not exist in a document that can update itself on future happenings. I don’t consider a stretch at all that the Gospels are also Echidna’s creation given how Echidna’s Tome of Wisdom Authority was still active in Season 2 with how her Authority could reconstruct the past as well as show the future, and making something ‘inferior’ to the not-quite Tome of Wisdom would be very easy for her, especially if the common denominator of those texts is that they are linked to her mind rather than being anything particularly special. If how some people believed it worked was correct, none of Ram, Emilia, or Petra would be in Roswaal’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom since they also died in a previous loop much like Otto did, so the idea that Otto wasn’t included in it ’cause he died in a previous loop is categorically false.

While there’s some mystery on where the Witch Cult Gospels came from, I believe the simplest explanation that they are Echidna’s creation is what is likely the reality of things. Petelgeuse apologized to Flugel-sama a long time ago back when he was already a member of the Witch Cult, which suggests that Flugel may have been the original leader of the Witch Cult as Petelgeuse shouldn’t have been subservient to someone else in the cult. Maybe Echidna distributed many, many Gospels to Flugel 400 years ago, and that is how the Witch Cult was founded. She may have distributed enough Gospels for all cultists who existed at the time and would exist in the future, so there wouldn’t have been an issue with the supply of them. Pandora, if she is the current leader of the Witch Cult, probably took control once Flugel was gone.

How Garfiel’s mom’s amnesia plays into this is that the reason Garfiel stayed in the Sanctuary is ’cause he had seen that his mother’s carriage had been caught in a landslide, which was the reason he was afraid of the outside world due to a fear of death, and Garfiel’s issues forced Subaru to learn to depend on his friends to win over Garfiel so that he would be able to defeat Elsa. I believe Echidna specifically had Lye Batenkaitos eat Garf’s mom’s memories through a suggestion in Lye’s Gospel, which resulted in her current situation with her new family. I believe this was specifically done to give Garfiel more character development in the future since he will likely be a huge key piece in the story with my prediction that he will become the next Sword Saint when Reinhard is sealed.

How would Reinhard even get sealed? I believe there will be a plot to seal Subaru, and it won’t be just any seal, but a seal that if broken, results in the person who was sealed dying. Now I know what you’re thinking… Why would there would be a seal that kills the person sealed if the seal is broken when you can just kill that person? The simple answer is that everything from Seasons 1 and 2 and even hundreds of years before that was planned out in advance with Echidna having Roswaal drawn Subaru into the Emilia camp, with Pandora commanding the White Whale to leave Subaru alone so that he could make it back to Roswaal’s mansion and inadvertently kill Emilia by invoking the Taboo, leading to the From Zero moment, with Subaru being trapped with the Sanctuary and mansion dilemma that required him to sacrifice nobody to succeed and lean on his friends, which Echidna deliberately pushed him toward even if she seemed to really want Subaru to accept her contract on the surface. I’ll elaborate on all of what I just typed, but I have to finish up my point on what I believe will be a future seal on Reinhard. Therefore, there is a seal that kills the person sealed if the seal is broken because it is another plot to trap Subaru into making a very specific decision, and that would be to get Reinhard to be sealed.

If you’re not understanding what I mean, I believe there will be a plot to seal Subaru because it is meant to force Subaru to loop until he has Reinhard take one for the team and be sealed. Why would the Witch Cult come up with such a convoluted plan? That would be because I surmise that Witch Cult Gospels do not truly tell the future but are merely connected to Echidna’s mind through magic, so she can make whatever she wants to appear in any Gospel, and since Witch Cultists try to follow their Gospel exactly as shown in Episode 53, they would make such a weird seal and not question their Gospels’ instructions. Subaru having to work through issues without the incredible Reinhard would be a good way for him to build confidence in himself, and considering Subaru loving himself is one of the principal goals of the story, I believe this is a likely development.

If in every arc, there is one big choice Subaru must make (whether to abandon Emilia, Rom, and Felt, whether to take Beatrice’s offer to be sent elsewhere, abandoning the residents of the mansion and Arlam Village, whether to run away with Rem, abandoning the Emilia camp in the process, and whether to accept Echidna’s contract), there will be a time in a future arc where he has to choose between having some yet-to-be-determined character or Reinhard get sealed in Subaru’s place and one final choice he makes at the end of Re:zero where he will have to choose between Emilia and the world, which I believe was foreshadowed by the dilemma the construct of Subaru’s mom proposed to him with choosing between mayonnaise and the world having Subaru retort that only someone who hates the world would choose mayonnaise. The big choice Subaru has to make in the Priestella arc is so far unclear, but there should be one.

There is a basis to believe this in the anime when Minerva said that sometimes good things happen from Echidna’s evil plots, which shows that the dead Witches of Sin may be in on Echidna’s plans, whether they be stopping Subaru from accepting Echidna’s contract when Echidna strongly favoured Subaru rejecting her contract or other things. I believe a large group of characters from 400 years ago, including Satella, Echidna, Pandora, the dead Witches of Sin, and possibly more are trying to steer the world away from destruction with the Seal in the Elior Forest one day being open under unfavourable conditions, so they plan to forcefully open it under their own terms using Subaru and Emilia and that everything that has happened so far in Re:zero is meant to push Subaru and Emilia to that very specific future.

I believe if this Seal is opened that there will be droves and droves of creatures that cause AoE damage just from existing and that not even Reinhard can stop the world from being destroyed in this case, which would require Satella to possess Emilia since Satella’s power is necessary to counter this threat that emerges from the Seal, most likely because powerful yin magic is needed to handle said threat. I believe Satella knows full well that she needs to be put down after she takes care of the threat from the Seal, and that is part of the reason she requested that Subaru come kill her since she will not have full control of herself and because this is one of the final pieces of the plan those characters from 400 years ago came up with.

Now I’ll get to why I believe everything starting from 400 years ago and even up until this season has been planned by Echidna. Echidna most likely deliberately wanted Subaru to turn down the contract she offered to him in Season 2. And it’s specifically because her actions didn’t line up with her goal of wanting Subaru to accept her contract. Echidna let it slip in Episode 34 that she tried to vary up the trial with 3 days of trial and error for Emilia in an attempt to help Emilia pass the 1st trial, which shows she was actively trying to help Emilia succeed. She then proceeds to tell Subaru that maybe he can give the cowardly princess wings, which is basically telling Subaru that the correct course of action that will lead to him achieving his goals is to have Emilia take the trials. However, this flew over Subaru’s head, and he was determined to do the trials in Emilia’s place after that interaction. Why would Echidna do this if she wanted him to accept her contract? It makes no sense.

Another example in which I propose that Echidna’ intentions were obscured is that she said she gave Beatrice a blank book because Echidna had wanted to see who Beatrice chose. I believe Echidna fully knew that Subaru is the one who would free Beatrice and that Echidna specifically chose to tell Subaru what she did was because she wanted to seem so outrageously evil so as to deter Subaru from accepting her contract. This is backed up by Echidna saying to Subaru after he rejected her contract that she didn’t want him to think she was the only one of the Witches of Sin who is evil, which led to her revoking Subaru’s qualification for entering the tomb. Subaru was using his right to enter the tomb as a crutch at that point, and Echidna did him a major solid by taking it away so that he’d be forced to do all he could to help Emilia pass the trials. Echidna clearly knew how evil what she said about Beatrice was. Echidna’s actions do not read as somebody who wanted to force Subaru to accept her contract no matter what. The true reason Beatrice’s book was empty was probably because Echidna needed Beatrice to stay in the library in case she died or something, and since all she did was stay in the library, there was no need for further instruction. As I have indicated before, Otto not being included in Roswaal’s not-quite Tome of Wisdom, was likely intentional and was constructed this way by design as Echidna fully intended for Otto to be the key to defeating Roswaal.

Given I have proposed that most Gospels are meant to keep the world on a particular path instead of being true predictors of the future, that begs the question of why the White Whale let Subaru go in Episode 17. I believe that Pandora has a Gospel that also accounts for Subaru’s decision-making much like Roswaal’s not-quite Tome of Wisdom since the common denominator is that these texts are connected to Echidna’s mind. That would explain why the White Whale stopped pursuing Subaru and blew him away with its breath after pursuing him for such a long time with the intent of eating him and then likely left the area. Given that Pandora had some control over the Black Serpent in Emilia’s past during her invasion of Elior Forest with Regulus in Season 2, it is not a stretch to believe that she had similar control over the White Whale. I therefore conclude that in Episode 17, Pandora saved Subaru by ordering the White Whale to leave him alone so that he could make it back to Roswaal’s mansion since he intended to warn of the threat of the Witch Cult. Lye Batenkaitos may have called the White Whale their pet, but I don’t believe that the White Whale listened to Subaru’s words “I don’t want to die.” is the reason it let him go. The White Whale stopped in its tracks and blew Subaru away with its breath before Subaru ever said that he doesn’t want to die, which shows that the White Whale was already letting Subaru go. And considering what viewers found out in Season 2 about Daphne and her creations finding Satella and consequently, Subaru, to smell irresistibly delicious, there was no reason for the White Whale to let Subaru go unless it was ordered to.

I believe the point of that happening was to have Subaru try to tell Emilia about Return by Death so that he could indirectly cause her death when Satella would emerge from him to kill Emilia and have Puck admonish Subaru, leading to him wanting to run away with Rem, which led to the From Zero moment. I believe this loop also happened so that Subaru could one day figure out that the White Whale has a special mist that erases someone from existence, which would be something he needed to know for the White Whale fight. I believe Echidna specifically instructed Pandora through her Gospel to have the White Whale leave so that Subaru could finally make progress toward defeating Petelgeuse. I do not believe that Pandora is Subaru’s enemy but that she is merely trying to make a future she and some other characters from 400 years ago wanted to happen be realized. If my speculation is right, viewers should be thanking Pandora for allowing the From Zero moment to happen because she pushed Subaru to his breaking point by saving him from the White Whale.

Okay, so here comes the elephant in the room. Why would Echidna, who thirsts for knowledge, propose a contract with Subaru if she had no intention of forcing him to accept it even though it’d be a dream come true for her to have that contract considering she has an unsatiable desire for knowledge? I surmise that one reason was to keep Subaru in the dark about Echidna’s true role in the story. I have to go on a tangent right now before I get back to this.

Episodes 18, 25, 38 show that Subaru has dormant memories of Satella with how Puck indicated how many shadow hands Satella could generate in Episode 18 by saying Petelgeuse must summon 1,000 shadow hands, half of what Satella could in order to kill him, how Subaru used a number associated with Satella (2,000) to describe how much he loves Emilia in Episode 25, and Subaru swearing that he’d save Satella after she told him to one day come kill her, showing he randomly had a swell in positive emotions for Satella. This shows that he previously existed in Re:Zero’s fantasy world in some form, probably as Satella’s lover.

Given that we know Echidna’s Tome of Wisdom can fully reconstruct the past with her trials and show glimpses of the future after watching Season 2, it’s possible that Subaru gleaned some information about the world’s future 400 years ago through Echidna’s Authority and saw that the world was coming to an end. He could have convinced Echidna by saying that the destruction of the world will end her pursuit of knowledge to help him create a plan to avoid the world’s destruction.

Echidna would have a crucial role as the one who guided the actions of the Witch Cult and Roswaal for 400 years up to the present day with Pandora causing Emilia to freeze Elior Forest and herself and drawing Subaru into the Emilia camp. The Frozen Bond strongly indicated that the one who sent Puck to search for Emilia was no other than Echidna with the reveal in Season 2 where the same font used in the OVA was used for Echidna’s speech in that season. So Echidna knew that Emilia’s memories would be sealed by Puck, and I surmise that Echidna created the Sanctuary trials as a way for Emilia to unseal her memories, regain her memories of Pandora that were erased, to help Subaru learn to rely on his friends and also get Emilia over that hump with the trials instead of bearing the weight of everything by himself, and for Echidna to attempt to give herself time to achieve immortality. Whatever the future holds may require a strong relationship between Subaru and Emilia and needed for Emilia to be traumatized and frozen in the past so that Subaru could help her get past that when all the pieces were in the right place.

If you think Echidna wouldn’t keep tabs on the future, there is clear evidence of Echidna 100% keeping tabs on the future in the anime. She turned Subaru’s handkerchief into a special knife in anticipation of Satella engulfing Subaru in her mass of shadow for all time and made sure there was a way for him to kill himself. She also instructed Puck to find Emilia 400 years ago, and that was also likely an instance of her keeping tabs on the future. Flugel having Petelgeuse promise to not take in the Sloth Witch Factor and Echidna forcing Puck into a contract where if he enters into a contract with Emilia he’d slowly lose his memories shows that both those characters likely had kept tabs on the future to ensure that Petelgeuse and Puck wouldn’t take those actions until there was no other choice. Flugel was also the one who planted what was called Flugel’s tree, and it happened to be in the right spot for the White Whale expedition force to burn down its trunk to trap the White Whale, leading to its defeat, which shows more keeping tabs on the future.

Echidna probably has set it up so that Subaru doesn’t realize that he’s being manipulated into making specific choices, and that’s why she may have hijacked the Witch Cult since the start of its creation to develop Subaru’s character into being a proper hero with high self-esteem who won’t let the world burn over his extreme attachment to his lover. Maybe Subaru will find out about this plot towards the end, but he will need to willingly make the choice to choose to save the world over Emilia.

Re:Zero Season 3 Episode 3 Analysis + Important Details

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This episode was quite a nice setup episode and introduced what sort of person Regulus Corneas is. He likes to talk a lot and dictate the pace of conversation. If he he feels his rights are violated as the very self-centered person he is, he may attack, but given that it was implied that his Gospel indicated to him that he shouldn’t cause a whole lot of bloodshed, he didn’t, which is why he told Subaru to be grateful that he adhered to his Gospel as the situation could have been a lot worse if Regulus had wanted it to be. He did attack Subaru after the bell tolled, stating that Subaru was quite rude to him, which showed he’s a vindictive type given his Gospel most likely didn’t tell him to cause a scene. Regulus’s remark that fate would bring them together again in Episode 1 of this season also has major implications for the story and is good fodder for my main theory on Re:Zero, but I’ll save that for a separate post.

Lye Batenkaitos again introduced himself as the Sin Archbishop of Gluttony, and he again speaks as if he is part of a group much like he did at the start of Season 2 when he said that the White Whale was “our” pet, which shows that he is either part of a hive mind with others or that it’s just a speaking quirk of his. He doubted that the guy he ate would make much of an appetizer, which seems to indicate he can tell through some mechanism whether someone would make for a good meal. He said that he’d eat him anyway, but Lye clearly wasn’t particularly enthused about doing so, and he had an even worse remark for Otto in saying he wouldn’t even amount to an appetizer, but this could perhaps be a blessing in disguise if he doesn’t want to eat Otto.

Sirius has straight up proven to be insane once again. Seeing Subaru use his Authority, Invisible Providence, led to her thinking that Subaru must be Petelgeuse and that he had been hiding all along instead of having been killed. This episode does appear to confirm that she used to be part of the Sloth camp with how she talked about making eye contact with Petelgeuse several times a day, how when she stole something of his she wasn’t punished, how he forgave her for slurping up the last of her food, and how he didn’t say anything when she inhaled his exhaled breath. According to her, Petelgeuse is the one who gave her her name and was the one who gave her wrath, but this could very much be a delusion much like how Petelgeuse thought that Satella gave him his Unseen Hand when he willingly took it in himself to fight on Fortuna and Emilia’s behalf. It’s hard to say what the true extent of their relationship really is. Anyway, it seems that Sirius appears to be incompatible with her Wrath Witch Factor to an extent given she started bleeding from her eyes and apparently mouth as well, which is why the civilians under her control were bleeding from those areas. She has that in common with Petelgeuse, who was incompatible with the Sloth Witch Factor.

This episodes shows Garfiel and Otto having a walk and Garfiel thinking back to when he was over at his mom’s place after saving Fred. His mom knew what tea he liked despite having no recollection of him. He eventually left after Rafiel, his half-sister, indicated it was time for dinner, and learned from his mother’s husband that she forgot all her memories and was caught in a landslide. That she has no memories makes me believe that it was Lye Batenkaitos, the Sin Archbishop of Gluttony, that attacked her in the past, eating her memories in the process and causing the landslide. I have more to say on this in a separate post since my theory is only tangentially relevant to the episode. Garfiel bawled with Mimi comforting him due to how awful he felt after remembering that his mom loved him so much only for her to forget everything. Mimi never knew her parents and heard her mother gave her up ’cause she couldn’t afford to raise triplets.

Capella Emerada Lugunica, the Sin Archbishop of Lust, had taken over the area that made the broadcasts. This is later brought up when Subaru is brought up to speed when most of the camps are together when Wilhelm informs that the 4 control towers that control the water level have been captured by the Witch Cult. Apparently, Kiritaka is not just a big-shot merchant but also one of Priestella’s Council of 10, the ten most important people in the city, and that’s why they’re corresponding at a place he owns. Anastasia suspects that the Witch Cult is after the remains of a dead witch. Given that Satella was sealed and Echidna seemed to have successfully put her soul into one of the Ryuzu clones with how she spoke with her own voice, making her immortality experiment a success, this narrows down the list of possible witches down to Carmilla, Daphne, Minerva, Sekhmet, and Typhon.

The situation is bad with Subaru not being able to count on his partner, Beatrice, since she is in suspended animation, similar to Rem, due to exhausting her mana reserves to save Subaru and the entire crowd that was under Sirius’s control. This limits Subaru’s combat potential, which will make it all the more difficult for them to fight back the Witch Cult.

The episode concludes with Garfiel rushing to Subaru and Emilia ’cause of the broadcast, but he encountered his mom, who indicated that her kids are missing and that her husband worked at the government office where the broadcast by Capella happened, which showed how concerned she was about them despite seeing that Garfiel was rushing somewhere and had his own priorities, and of course, Garf said he’d find them for her. I’m sure she wasn’t trying to impose on him and was just concerned about those who were dear to her. This episode surely escalated things, and the next episode should be a treat.

Re:Zero Season 3 Episode 2 Analysis + Important Details

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Okay, obviously with it being a much shorter episode, there was less to talk about this episode. It turns out I was only partially right about Subaru’s reaction at the end of the first episode. He had not entirely realized that he had died, and dying for the first time in a year had him feeling really uncomfortable. I’m sure after a year of not looping, he might’ve thought his days of dying were over and was not prepared for it to happen again, which is why he felt sick to his stomach. It was not due to him also remembering how he was clapping for the death of a child.

The danger of the situation in this arc is that Subaru has maybe 10-15 minutes to act since he looped back to a period close to when Sirius’s attack began, so this is unlike all of his previous dilemmas where he had hours or days to come up with a solution. Given that, I can see why Subaru rushed to try to take action without getting anyone else to help him since there was so little time to act although he did briefly consider getting Beatrice to help only for him to decide not to when he remembered how relentless the Witch Cult was in its pursuit of Emilia, which is not an unfounded concern. He wanted Beatrice to stay and protect Emilia. I know the point in Season 2 was for Subaru to learn to trust his friends, but Subaru did at least consider asking for help from Beatrice before thinking otherwise, so this shows progression compared to back in Season 2, not regression just ’cause he didn’t immediately try to tackle it head-on with Beatrice right from the get-go. Character development is not always perfectly linear and doesn’t always hold up perfectly, especially in the high-risk situations Subaru is forced into a lot of the time, particularly since he has so little time to act this time.

Consistent with what he learned in Season 2 about asking for help from his friends, Subaru did immediately try to get the help of the strongest person he knew the loop after that, which is Reinhard, and that didn’t work out either as Sirius can freely choose who, which includes herself, to share damage and emotions between others with the damage and emotions being shared not necessarily being from the same person, which is how she made everyone happy in the first episode by sharing her manic joy with everyone else while having the crowd take in all of Lusbel’s damage from smashing into the ground headfirst. Her being able to share the damage inflicted on her led to the whole crowd dying in this recent episode since Reinhard cutting off a piece of her body including her head led to everyone else dying in the same fashion. Given that when Reinhard touched Subaru and Rachins they came back to their senses, the solution to combating Sirius is probably preventing the crowd from falling under her control in the first place, whether that involves Liliana’s singing or possibly something else like strengthening the civilians given Beatrice indicated Sirius’s Authority is akin to spiritual interference. At minimum, I do believe Liliana’s singing must be a factor to prevent Sirius’s emotional manipulation from working by making the crowd feel something Sirius doesn’t.

In a nice callback to Season 1 in the loop after Reinhard killed Sirius, Beatrice revealed that when Reinhard fights seriously, all the mana nearby turns to him after Subaru sought out her help, so pretty much all spirits arts users are heavily nerfed by Reinhard’s presence. Emilia also showed her growth from Season 2 with how she doesn’t want to be left out when Subaru takes action and be someone who is just protected. I like that she completely showed how she was completely in the right that even Beatrice couldn’t find any fault in what she had to say and asked Subaru to give up convincing Emilia otherwise.. What’s consistent is that with Rachins when Subaru was trying to get him to call for Reinhard, with Beatrice when he was explaining Sirius’s attack, and even with Emilia when she was trying to convince Subaru to let her fight, Subaru was often grasping at his heart area since he was thinking back to Satella squeezing his heart. Subaru seems to have not yet realized that it’s when he intentionally tries to reveal that he can Return by Death or has had lived more than one life is when his heart gets squeezed. I think it was a nice touch that Priscilla was the reason Emilia went after Subaru and Beatrice. As I’ve indicated before, I believe that much of Priscilla’s public behaviour is put on, meaning she is hiding what type of person she actually is.

Emilia appears to have been training during the 1-year timeskip and used Subaru’s knowledge of weapons to create her ice arsenal and was more than putting up a good fight against Sirius. The battle noises she made were likely also inspired by the anime Subaru watched back when he was on Earth. On Sirius, it seems she hates that Petelgeuse only pays attention to Satella, which is why she remarked in disgust about Emilia’s features since Emilia’s appearance seems pretty much identical to Satella’s, and that tracks with how she was calling Emilia a homewrecker since she fancies herself being Petelgeuse’s wife even though Petelgeuse is unwillingly to give the time of day to anyone aside from Satella. When Sirius was saying Petelgeuse gave it to her, but you’re taking it from me, she was most likely referring to her wrath given Emilia was talking about being angry, which resulted in Sirius talking about how wrath belongs to her. I’d wager that the reason Sirius believes that Petelgeuse gave her wrath is ’cause his devotion to Satella infuriated her to no end or ’cause Petelgeuse found the Wrath Witch Factor and gave it to Sirius when she used to serve in the Sloth camp, leading to her becoming the Sin Archbishop of Wrath. Her marriage with Petelgeuse is probably all in her head due to whatever limited shared experiences they had together.

After Sirius played dirty by using Tina as a hostage, she defeated Emilia and nearly killed her if not for Regulus Corneas, the Sin Archbishop of Greed, taking Emilia into his arms. He had appeared previously in Season 2 and seemed to be able to undo all damage to him as well as have insane immunity to most direct damage, so he should be a serious threat and a major problem given he intends to make Emilia his 79th wife. And as I have said before, Re:Zero has no filler, so it’s likely that there is a reason he already has 78 wives aside from it being pure greed.

Introduction + Re:Zero Season 3 Episode 1 Analysis + Important details

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I’m anicritic, and Re:zero was the first anime that got me feeling passionate enough to write about on other bloggers’ comment sections. I like thinking about how scenes connect with previous ones and enjoy diving into characters’ minds to interpret what scenes actually mean and whether there is more underneath the surface of what is immediately presented, and since Re:zero is a series with tons of small details (There is not a single filler moment in this series), hints of future events, and callbacks to previous character and plot moments, that makes it the perfect show for me to cover. As such, I won’t be covering everything in this premiere but just what interests me most and details I believe will need to be remembered. I’ll also be sharing my perspective on a number of things with a trauma-informed perspective since I forgot about the woman I wanted to marry for most of my life for a sustained period of time due to my trauma, which I believe is heavily relevant to this episode and perhaps the season in general.

After Joshua delivered his message to the Emilia camp, Subaru makes a good point that he’d hate to owe a debt to Anastasia knowing she’s a very shrewd businesswoman. Emilia mentions that Priestella would be underwater when it rains without the tall walls and watergates that control the water level, prompting Subaru to think of it more as a water prison. I can tell at this point that Crunchyroll’s translation is really bad at this point despite not knowing Japanese since the conversation there was mangled with Emilia saying that the city would be underwater when it rains, which cannot be true once you’ve seen how the city is set up. Given that once they arrive at Priestella Subaru again complains that he gets the sense that it’s a prison and Beatrice notes that the city was designed to be a trap, it’s clear that the setup of this arc involves Priestella being used as a trap as otherwise they wouldn’t be so heavy-handed about it.

Although Sirius’s whole introduction was the highlight of the episode for most fans of Re:zero, what most interested me was how Garfiel was written this episode. As we know from the Sanctuary Arc, Garfiel was proud to be the strongest person there and the defender of the Sanctuary. Here he saw just how much weaker he was compared to Reinhard, not to mention Reinhard unintentionally pissing Garf off by calling him impressive for his age, which rubbed more salt in the wound. Later on in the episode, Garfiel informs Subaru that he’s taking a step outside since he’s unhappy about not being the strongest. When outside, he has hallucinations of Elsa due to having killed her and also ’cause he came close to dying against her. And it is fantastic writing for Garfiel to be written like this since he clearly demonstrated a fear of death in his first season. I have to hand it to Tappei for being a master of writing his characters to be consistent with what came before. Given Garfiel originally stayed in the Sanctuary ’cause he became scared of the outside world due to seeing that his mother’s carriage had been caught in a landslide, it was clear he had a huge fear of death. This is further backed by how Garfiel backed off after Subaru said that he knows hell and looked at Subaru’s eyes, which shows Garfiel believed that that is indeed the case, a callback to Season 1 Episode 12 when Wilhelm said that Subaru’s eyes indicate that Subaru is well-versed with death. So it is very fitting that Garfiel, who fears death, is struggling with seeing hallucinations of Elsa when she is long dead since it was probably his first kill, which was traumatizing for him. If you’re confused about Garfiel showing no visible signs of being bothered by his killing of Elsa or his stoic behaviour in the Breaktime episode following that in Season 2 telling Maylie that it’s okay to cry, trauma does not always happen close to instantly and can take months to manifest.

In Episode 48 (Episode 24 of Season 2) Garfiel, while fighting Elsa, eventually got a lucky break when the ceiling fell down on Maylie, which distracted Elsa, allowing him to savagely bite into Elsa’s neck repeatedly and do enough damage to stop her regeneration, allowing him to deal the finishing blow. Garfiel who took pride in being the strongest of the Sanctuary, likely had some trauma over defeating Elsa in this way since it took Elsa being distracted rather than him winning a pure man to woman fight. The reality likely dawned on him that he wouldn’t have won a fair fight, leading to him thinking he isn’t the strongest, and hence, weak as the hallucination of Elsa said. If Garfiel only had these hallucinations rarely, he will likely have them more often now that Reinhard has shown how much he outclasses him. Garfiel wants to be the strongest ’cause he fears death and ’cause he’s a young teenager and who hasn’t developed a healthy self-esteem yet. Clearly from Subaru’s struggles with RBD and now Garfiel, Tappei has shown he has a very nuanced view of death with Garfiel in having both have trauma for killing Elsa and also being reminded of his mortality due to the circumstances of his victory over her, and this should be applauded.

I have also long believed that Episodes 12 and 13 contrasted Crusch and Priscilla’s approach to acquiring power with the context gleaned from Episode 16, and Episode 51 has given what I believe is more ammunition to support this thought. Before I bring up the relevant contrasts, I first need to state outright that I believe Priscilla is a lot less whimsical than she lets on. Every bit of Priscilla’s interaction with Subaru in Episode 16 was well thought out and cannot be simplified to Priscilla being a creature of her emotions or that she was looking for entertainment. On a lot of occasions Priscilla says that it’s for her entertainment or that it’s amusing, I suspect she just doesn’t want the people involved to know what she’s really thinking. You can’t always trust what a character says at face value.

This is backed by Priscilla calling Subaru her appa handler to Marcos and then following through with that by calling Subaru her manservant to Emilia. This sequence of actions shows that Priscilla saw significant value in Subaru after he dared to defy her and try to protect her anyway despite her needing no such assistance and how he taught her that appas have red skin, even considering him in some extent part of her camp due to some possessiveness.

Priscilla was notably the only Royal Selection candidate in Arc 3 to give Subaru help in the way of pointers after his outburst at the castle without asking for anything of monetary or strategic value in return. When she said that she appreciates Subaru’s desperation but that Subaru had not thought things through with how his actions amounted to cornering his ally, benefiting his enemy, and losing all control in the process, she basically straight up told Subaru that his actions weren’t helping Emilia and were unbecoming.

She specifically said that Subaru was better off dying for using the sort of approach he was using. Contrast this with Crusch wanting Emilia to withdraw from the Royal Selection as compensation for helping out and Anastasia wanting to see what sort of information she could learn from Subaru in his vulnerable state, Priscilla was basically being somewhat selfless and acting out of the goodness of her heart, however shocking that may be.

Priscilla basically gave Subaru a chance to redeem himself in her eyes after his outburst at the castle in Episode 16. That’s why she told him that his desperation wasn’t helping Emilia and then immediately posed a situation to him that would require for him to be disgustingly desperate with her asking for him to lick her foot. She was basically hoping for him to pass a test in which she had already clearly given him pointers, and Subaru still failed miserably, which Priscilla most likely saw as being extremely disgraceful after all the effort she put in to make the interaction favourable for him with her hinting at what she actually wanted to see from him.

I believe the reason Priscilla decided that SHE would strike down any camp Subaru was a part of, not that she would have any camp he was a part of be struck down, is that he did something that insulted her to the core, and for someone as extremely proud and confident in herself to the extreme as Priscilla is, it would be to show that she was wrong about her womanly instincts in some way, and that would be that Subaru showed that he was pathetic and not worth her time after she would go as far as to try and make Emilia jealous by grabbing his arm and suggesting that Subaru was her (Priscilla’s) manservant at the Royal Palace. Showing that she was wrong to think more of Subaru was shameful to her, so much that she beat the hell out of him, lectured him, and threatened him to strike down any camp he was a part of.

Her wanting to strike down any camp he is a part of shows she wants Subaru to be humiliated to the extreme because it was a personal humiliation for her that she misjudged Subaru, and for a guy who is struggling through his way in the world and acts as a white knight, what greater shame could he face than to have his ambitions be thwarted by Priscilla, the one who had him on his knees and asked him to savour the humiliation of licking her foot, every time he tried to make something of himself? It would be the ultimate humiliation.

This interpretation is backed by Priscilla saying, “Your careless behavior and attitude have lead me to that decision!” It shows that she thought that Subaru would think over the reason for that particular interaction leading to the way it did and that she expected a better response from him. I do note that Priscilla was likely also angry because Subaru abandoned his pride, and for someone who values her pride so much, seeing Subaru lower himself to that level probably disgusted her, but I believe the main source of her anger that bordered on rage was a sense of humiliation due to her pride being wounded, leading to her feeling significant shame.

If Subaru was just a little ant or clown to her, she would not have reacted the way she did in as deciding to strike down any camp he is a part of is far too punishing for just being disgusted at Subaru’s actions. Priscilla decided to personally see to Subaru’s attempts at achieving manhood in the future be denied, castrating him at every turn, most likely as a reminder to herself not to make the same mistake again in misjudging a man to avoid a similarly shameful moment from happening again.

In personally striking down any camp Subaru is a part of, Priscilla also gives Subaru a chance to redeem himself by defeating her, which would prove she was right that he is a man of significant worth. Any way the future goes if she carries out this threat to strike down any camp Subaru is a part of is thus a win for her no matter what the outcomes is, which shows Priscilla had very carefully thought out the entire interaction with Subaru, from her using her fan to hide her lips to hurling Subaru to the door so that Al could take him away, so it had nothing to do with entertainment but was meant to be a test for Subaru, and she had already thought about what she’d say if he failed it.

Given Priscilla had planned out the entire interaction with Subaru in Episode 16, it goes to show that is possibly the case in other scenarios too, not just that one moment. I’ll get back to this point later.

Crusch notably indicated in Episode 12 that she thought that the Royal Selection candidates for there at the castle for a drinking party where they get to know each other before they face each other as rivals. Although she was mistaken ’cause Felix knows how to get around her Divine Protection, I believe it still shows that Crusch is the type to value camaraderie due to how hyped up she sounded about it.

In contrast, Priscilla, if I am right about her being a lot less whimsical than she lets on, specifically is used to or grew up using a divide-and-conquer strategy. Emilia faces tons of discrimination for her half-elf heritage, so taking a shot at her by asking Emilia if she is sorry for being born would play well with a lot of the nobles and even much of Lugunica’s Imperial Knights since kids are raised on folktales of the horrifying Witch of Envy even if Priscilla does not necessarily have a hatred for demihumans and specifically half-elves herself. I’m not saying that Priscilla does or doesn’t fear half-elves since I genuinely don’t know but that there may have been a point to her hurtful words to Emilia.

Even with Priscilla’s interaction with Felt when the former moved to ‘strike’ the latter might not have been ’cause Priscilla lost control of her emotions. Priscilla heard very well that the nobles thought it was an insult that the knights brought a girl from the slums to participate in the Royal Selection with all the talk of her lack of grace and education. Priscilla knew full well that with Reinhard around that she would be unable to commit actual violence, especially towards Felt, and I believe she did what she did to look better in front of the nobles since many of them would like to strike Felt as well for daring to be there even though it wasn’t her own choice to be present. Thus, I believe Episodes 12 and 13 demonstrated two contrasting styles for attaining power, Crusch’s camaraderie and Priscilla’s divide-and-conquer strategy.

As for Episode 51, Season 3’s premiere, Priscilla brought out Heinkel to spoil a family reunion. She may have said that it’s amusing to do so, but I again put it out there that she just doesn’t want people to know what she’s really thinking. In all likelihood, Priscilla brought Heinkel to the gathering ’cause she knows that if the Astrea house were to be united in favour of one candidate that that candidate would be the favourite to win the Royal Selection. That would be why she sought to prevent Reinhard and Wilhelm from making up by allowing Heinkel to take a piss and ruin things for Reinhard and Wilhelm, which is continuing her divide-and-conquer strategy. I don’t believe that she was really going to strike Heinkel with the Yang sword, and that it was performative to prevent people from realizing what sort of person she actually is.

As for Crusch’s side of things, she implied in the premiere of Season 3 that the reason the Emilia camp was even invited to Priestella by Anastasia was ’cause Crusch knew how much Subaru cares about Rem and personally ensured that Anastasia invited the Emilia camp to the Watergate City. Crusch cares very much about camaraderie and building good will, and that is one of the reasons she’s my favourite character in Re:zero. I fully believe Episode 51 also contrasted Crusch and Priscilla’s approaches, much like I propose was the case for Episodes 12 and 13. Earlier on in the episode before Subaru left the mansion, we saw him talk to Rem even though she couldn’t hear a thing he said due to her being in suspended animation, so the episode did well to remind viewers how much Rem means to Subaru.

I have more to say about Priscilla, but now I’m going to bring up some of my own background. When I was in 6th grade, the girl who was a few years younger than me I had wanted to marry since I first met her at my school’s open house said that her family was moving away to a different province. The conversation eventually went to her discussing her university plans since she had planned it out from a young age with help from her mom. She suggested that we meet up again at a specific university, which led to me asking her if we’d get married in university. It’s unbelievable that I would say something like that now, and I wonder how I ever had the courage to do that as a young boy. Anyway, long story short, I forgot that girl’s face over the years even though she was so dear to me. I decided to go to university, not ’cause I had a strong desire for a particular career but ’cause I wanted to meet her again even though I’m not sure how that’d even happen since I no longer remembered her face. I followed a friend into Engineering even though I didn’t have an interest in it, and of course I didn’t do well since I was unmotivated and hadn’t picked up good study habits since school had come easy to me up until that point. At the first sign of struggle when it was clear I was not going to pass the second semester, I decided to drop out since I didn’t want to impact my GPA too badly. As I had it relatively easy up until then, my first schooling failure led to me feeling shame, and I felt I didn’t want that girl I fancied to know about that failure since it’d be ugly. Before I dropped out, I reasoned that I would never see her again since I couldn’t even remember her face, so it made it easier for me to do so. I wanted to think about this failure as little as possible instead of processing it like a normal healthy person, so I thought to myself that I’d forget as much of this incident and that university as possible and even transfer to a different university. As a result, I had some self-afflicted trauma about my worth as a person, and that trauma led to me repressing my memories of that girl since that university was the last tie to her in my memories since I could no longer remember her face, meaning that forgetting about as much as of that experience possible cut away the last connection to her in my mind.

At that different university I took a number of psychology courses, and I learned that shame is one of the most common emotions that can lead to memories being repressed although I didn’t come to realize that my own memories had been repressed until years later. Years later, I met that woman again at my workplace where I was a star employee. I didn’t recognize her since I had 0 recollection of her face even before I had repressed my memories. I was immediately drawn to her although after years of social isolation I couldn’t even have a proper conversation with her. Due to pent up unaddressed emotions I felt regarding her in my subconscious and my conscious mind, I eventually had a mental health crisis and ended up in the psych ward. After spending time there, one of the student nurses made me think back to my grade school days, and I was able to unlock my repressed memories of that woman, realizing that she was the same person from my youth. My point is that deep shame can cause one to repress your memories, and I will now get back to writing about Priscilla.

I know it might be a tough sell since Episode 16 is just one scene from a character that has only showed up in 3 episodes prior to Season 3, but Priscilla’s outrage along with her body language during the scene which included her playing with her hair as well as uncrossing and crossing her legs before she approached Subaru says to me that she thought of Subaru as being more than just a clown or jester and as someone she will make herself presentable for by showing off her feminine features. If that’s the case, perhaps her approaching Subaru with her fan actually doubled as a romantic overture alongside a test of Subaru’s dignity, and that scenario would mean that Subaru’s best response would be to say something along the lines of “Wait a minute. You really want me to lick your feet? I’d say somebody has a foot fetish.” It would be a clever way to turn the tables on Priscilla and take away the inordinate power she had over Subaru during this interaction by reframing the situation as being something Priscilla so desperately wants.

While it may not matter to Subaru whether or not Priscilla was attempting to demonstrate a power move against Emilia when she declared him as her manservant, what matters is Priscilla’s intent. If that was what she intended, Subaru’s loudly declaring himself to be Emilia’s knight at the Royal Selection would be seen as a rejection of her romantic overture. Depending on how badly she was impacted by this perceived rejection, there are 2 ways I suppose she was most likely to respond based on her always behaving as if she’s the most important woman/person in the world:

  1. Priscilla will downplay Subaru’s achievements the next time they meet and possibly in the future as well as a way to make Subaru seem less of a catch so that it doesn’t seem that she missed out on much by being rejected by him since she felt so much shame about misjudging Subaru. This would be her overcompensating for her initial impression of him being soured by the horribly embarrassing outburst at the castle so as to preserve her ego by telling herself that Subaru was not really worth it. An extreme case of this would be pretending that she doesn’t even remember Subaru so as to outwardly project that Subaru isn’t worth remembering as a means of saving face for the perceived rejection regardless of Subaru not caring about or never having perceived that he rejected her in Episode 12.
  2. Priscilla was affected so badly by Subaru’s humiliating display at the castle, which called into question her initial good impression of him as a potential lover, that she completely forgets memories related to that event due to the overwhelming shame she felt over her instincts as a woman leading to her settling on Subaru, meaning she forgets all memories about having met Subaru on that day. This is referred to as repression in psychology. Priscilla unconsciously pushes away thoughts about Subaru because of how much that incident traumatized her since it caused her to see that she had made a horrible mistake in judging Subaru to be a potential lover, which calls into question her absolute faith in her own judgement. Her mind thus represses the thoughts to preserve her ego. She would think about his outburst over and over until she subconsciously represses memories of him to get rid of the negative feelings she felt about how Subaru defied her expectations and turned out to be a complete and total loser. In this scenario, Priscilla was negatively impacted by Subaru’s outburst even moreso than Emilia herself despite how shocking that might be.

And after encountering Subaru again after forgetting him, she could still pretend to not remember him after she has actually recovered her memories to distance herself from him because his horrible outburst at the castle was still weighing on her and lowered his perceived value to her so she has to save face after Subaru so loudly declared himself to be Emilia’s knight after Priscilla introduced Subaru to Marcos as her appa handler and called Subaru her manservant to Emilia, rejecting her (Priscilla) so boldly in the process in favour of a silver-haired half elf who is the spitting image of Satella, which would be considered the ultimate rejection. If Subaru is a complete and utter loser, and he chose someone who looks like the biggest monster that has ever existed in that world over Priscilla, then that makes Priscilla the loser to end all losers by association, and she can’t have that, so she has to cope even harder by saying that she can’t remember Subaru until her perceived value of him is great enough that the perceived rejection is not so bad anymore because Subaru has become just too great of a catch.

I know some people will point to Al saying to Priscilla that she loves watching wicked beasts torment weak creatures and her affirming that she does love that as well as well as Episode 25’s title being “That’s All This Story Is About” and Priscilla’s claim of bringing Subaru along as entertainment as being things that directly refute my analysis, but I cannot believe that she took pleasure in watching Subaru get emasculated and was actually horrified. Her extreme reaction in Episode 16 that had her being outraged that Subaru didn’t think clearly about why she made the request for him to lick her feet and declare that she would strike down any camp he belonged to doesn’t jive with assertions that Priscilla thought of him as some lowly peon. If he was some gnat to her, she would not have been so outraged that she threatened to strike down any camp he was a part of, which is effectively castrating him and denying him in all his efforts to achieve manhood. And what’s more is that she said that SHE would strike down any camp he was a part of, not that she would have any camp he was part of be struck down. She made it clear that it was something she would do personally, which shows how much of an affront Subaru’s behaviour was to her. The purpose of personally striking down any camp Subaru is three-fold, to deliver him the utmost humiliation, to remind herself not to make the same mistake in wrongly choosing a man again, and to give Subaru a chance to defeat her, proving that her initial impression of him was right all along.

I personally lean towards Priscilla having genuinely forgot Subaru due to trauma due to my own experience, and now I’ll share how this is relevant to the Emilia situation. As we know from Season 3’s premiere, Emilia didn’t recognize Regulus even though she thought he seemed familiar. I’ve seen some casual Re:zero watchers say it makes no sense for Emilia to forget Regulus and that it was poor writing since she saw him attack Petelgeuse when she was younger, but given how traumatic that incident was for her, she could also have repressed some of her memories, especially since Regulus was only a small part of young Emilia’s memories with most of what was shown of Regulus being from the 1st Sanctuary trial. And that is before going into the entire context of Season 2. In Season 2, Puck broke his contract with Emilia so that she could regain access to her memories, allowing her to successfully take the trials, and it came with a flood of memories since her memories of her actual past had been sealed away at the time. Emilia notably wondered whether she is even the same person after getting them back, so she was having an identity crisis. The triple whammy of the trauma from her memories, her having an identity crisis, and Regulus’s relative insignificance in her memories since it was Pandora that caused her to lose everything likely all contributed to her not remembering Regulus. It is not poor writing but something that can feasibly happen given I forgot the one most dear to me, so why wouldn’t Emilia forget someone who wasn’t a big part of her life since she only saw him briefly attack Petelgeuse given that a year had passed with probably nothing violent happening during that time that could bring that incident to mind?

As an aside, during the scene when Subaru remarked that one of the canals was flowing in the other direction, and Emilia pointed out that a control tower that controls the flow of water throughout the city (probably not filler since Re:zero has no filler), it was revealed that both Garfiel and Subaru have a fear or perhaps trauma of masses of water although Garfiel was able to overcome that when he saved a group of kids without even thinking about it. This will likely seriously hinder Subaru and perhaps Garfiel as well as Subaru works to try to bring everybody to a good end this arc. One of the kids Garf saved named Fred has an older sister named Rafiel, and their mother is no other than the mother he thought was long dead given her carriage had been caught in a landslide. This should be an interesting development although the aftermath of that was skipped, so we viewers don’t know what happened, but this is surely not the last we’ve seen of this plot point, and it looks like Garfiel is set to get bucketloads of character development this arc.

When the Emilia camp arrives at the Wings on the Water inn, I made a mental note that I believe this is the first building in the anime which had its name focused on. Given that Re:zero has no filler, I believe it may have future relevance although I don’t know what that might be. When inside, Otto reveals that Hoshin, one of the founders of Kararagi, built Priestella, and Subaru reasons that due to the entire building structure and also how they have to take off their shoes that Hoshin must have been summoned from Japan like he was to build a city like this with all these Japanese customs and architecture. This is relevant ’cause I believe the anime in Season 1 danced around with clues of another character having been summoned.

As a refresher, in Episode 12, Subaru had no way of going to the Royal Castle since Emilia left without him. He thus decided to hitchhike, probably ’cause he thought of it as being a universally understood signal back on Earth. However, hitchhiking wasn’t invented until well past the Industrial Revolution when cars were invented, so it probably wouldn’t have been invented in Re:zero’s world despite them having dragons. That means at least one of the carriage driver, Priscilla, or Al knew what hitchhiking was and had come from Earth. Episode 13 had Al indicate he knew what Subaru was referring to when he was exasperated from hearing Anastasia speak in the Kansai dialect, a uniquely Japanese phenomenon, and that suggests that Al was summoned from Earth like Subaru had been since Al outright knew what the Kansai dialect is. This is further hinted at when Priscilla in Episode 16 used the English word “chance”, saying that the opportunity she gave to Subaru is what he would refer to as a chance, which shows she did this knowing that Al and Subaru are from the same world and that she likely learned the word from Al. To top it all off, later in that same episode, Mimi is shown eating cheeseburgers, which were invented from Earth, meaning in no uncertain terms at least one person from Earth had been summoned before Subaru to invent them. All of this along with Subaru’s realization that Hoshin had also been summoned show that Al was without a doubt also summoned from Earth.

I have less to say about this, but I wonder what the point of Liliana singing a song about Wilhelm was given Subaru’s reaction to hearing it. The details about their broadcasts will probably still be relevant later in this arc, but why sing a song about Wilhelm’s love life given his wife had died so many years ago? Clearly Wilhelm and Heinkel don’t believe that Reinhard literally killed Reinhard given she died in a White Whale expedition hunt, but we still don’t know all the details regarding what happened. After night fell, Subaru had a talk with Wilhelm, who had learned about himself through his wife since he was just a knucklehead who only cared about wielding a sword back in the day. He says he is the reason for the rift between him and Reinhard and doesn’t know how to approach Reinhard after all these years since he had neglected him, and Subaru just told him outright that Reinhard wanted to hear the story about the White Whale to reassure him that Reinhard wants to mend fences with him. And given Wilhelm had told Subaru he had three regrets in life and named one of them, his rift with Reinhard, I believe Subaru’s chat with Julius implied that the other two are that Wilhelm failed to find the member of the Royal Family that had been kidnapped and that he was away ’cause of that search, leading to his wife, Theresia, dying. It was interesting all three regrets were revealed in one episode. I’m wondering if there is a point to that.

Sirius Romanee-Conti then introduced herself close to the end of the episode as the Sin Archbishop of Wrath and clapped her hands after 30 seconds had gone by since she started talking, at which she had pointed out herself that they all went silent after 30 seconds, and it seemed the whole crowd, including, Subaru fell under her control. Sirius appears to be able to read the emotional state of the people in her crowd and herds them to one specific emotion so that the damage inflicted on her chosen victim’s body is transferred over to the whole crowd. If Sirius catching people in her spell with her talking is her power, Liliana is probably the counter to this by disrupting Sirius’s emotional manipulation, and that’s probably why Liliana was introduced this arc.

Subaru’s reaction after looping was great. He most likely felt sick to his stomach since it was the first time he had died in over a year and ’cause while he may have been under a trance/spell, he remembered everything that was happening and how absorbed he and the whole crowd was with Sirius’s performance, and how they clapped over Sirius throwing a boy to his death.

All in all this was quite a fun premiere, and I enjoyed writing this despite how much time it took for me to do so since the episode was filled with important connections to make from previous seasons and even from within this episode itself.