This episode isn’t filled to the brim with content, so I’ll take a more standard approach and try not to recap as much as humanly possible. The episode leads with Ram calling amnesiac Subaru an imposter, so he charges right at her with the intent to kill, leading to Emilia trapping him in an ice cage with Ram threatening to kill him if he implies one more time that he forgot about Rem, having pushed Emilia out of the way when Ram had otherwise initially intended to torture him due to believing he might be a Sin Archbishop.
I don’t consider Ram’s anger at Subaru to be misplaced. Ram was really reliant on Subaru ’cause she can feel that Rem carries the same blood in her veins as she does, and given Rem’s feats in the mansion arc were adjusted in her mind, she has a higher opinion of Subaru than before Rem was erased by Lye Batenkaitos. To Ram, Subaru is the anchor tying her to Rem, and was the lone person, to her knowledge, who remembered her, and it just shows much she’s relying on Subaru that she’s lashing out in anger due to her own feeling of powerlessness since Subaru not remembering Rem means that Rem has lost her greatest champion. I feel calling Ram’s anger misplaced shows that one’s not being empathetic enough of the current situation as even though Julius had completely forgotten Joshua in Season 3, he still felt an emptiness and sense that something was missing, which is why Roy Alphard was able to mess with him, showing that Ram can also certainly feel that something was missing herself. It’s all the more understanding that Ram had the level of anger she did at amnesiac Subaru since to her Subaru’s possibly the only person in this world who’d never forget Rem even if everyone else did, so this man before her acting as suspiciously as he has would of course test her patience given she doesn’t know him to be the Subaru she put her faith in for restoring her sister, and we know how much she approved of Subaru’s relationship with Rem and his resolve to save her in Ep. 67 despite having no memory of it herself.
Amnesiac Subaru then blacks out and finds the ice cage destroyed with “Natsuki Subaru was here” carved into so much of the wall, and Reid comments on that with the scene change showing that it was almost certainly Rui Arneb, who could change into the form of somebody who’d previously been eaten, who made the carvings as there were carvings even above the door, which Subaru wouldn’t have the strength to carve into the wall himself given his height. He then asks Reid whether he didn’t previously say that he couldn’t leave the second floor, to which Reid says that the whole premise behind that is gone now, likely ’cause whatever mind manipulation magic or spatial loop that stopped him from leaving was no longer in effect due to one of the tower’s rules having been broken in that the tower was under attack, which of course comes with a flick to amnesiac Subaru’s head since amnesiac Subaru isn’t thinking things through, and I believe it’s a valuable lesson he needs to learn, possibly an intentional lesson from Reid given his cryptic remark at 3:22, “Ah, finally,” showing he may have been been waiting for that specific moment when the tower starts crumbling as a cue to when to engage Julius due to this version of him possibly still being on the side of Satella and Echidna with his mind being linked to Echidna’s, giving him future knowledge that can explain why he may have wanted to teach amnesiac Subaru a lesson.
Once they’ve made it to where Julius is, Julius is fighting a ton of those centaur/horse mabeasts, and when Julius is about to take a fireball at full strength, amnesiac Subaru warns him, saving him from certain death, much to Meilibaru’s chagrin, and Reid joins Julius and just shreds all the mabeasts to death while putting up a stink about how the exam is beginning again, forcing Julius to fight him once more, and Julius remarks that he leaves Foxidna and Anastasia to amnesiac Subaru, which stirred something in him given most of the group hadn’t been trusting him.
He then runs into Beatrice and Foxidna, the latter of whom “outwardly projected” that she believes he can’t be trusted, and Foxidna right then and there drops the most suspicious lines she’s had all season as if the previous stuff wasn’t already enough to make her suspect in that she believes she should’ve trusted Anastasia’s intuition and not have brought anyone else here aside from Subaru, showing she lied about Anastasia lying asleep deep within her od all this time, which is the container of her soul, since that comment shows she had talked to Anastasia about her plans to an extent, and given this is the linchpin of her arguments around having nothing to hide, I believe it calls into question pretty much everything she’s said this season. I believe Foxidna fully has the Authority of Greed: Tome of Wisdom, much like the original Echidna and also Tea Party Echidna, and that’s why she put it into Subaru’s head to bring Rem with him to the Pleiades Watchtower, ’cause Foxidna had been driving Subaru to one very specific future, which required Rem to be at the tower.
He then has an identity crisis and doesn’t care about Foxidna’s supposed blunder ’cause he’s not like the Subaru they know, retorting that it’s not an act since nobody would actually willingly choose to be Natsuki Subaru and the asshole that he is. As he’s breaking down due to how unfair the situation seems to him, he starts berating himself and asks to be forgiven and sent home due to this being too much for him. Foxidna says that that’s enough and that Beatrice can stay with him since she intends to find Julius, but amnesiac Subaru won’t let her go due to it being in his nature to help others and abide by Julius’s request. They then get attacked by a scorpion mabeast trying to snipe them, which is probably Shaula when she becomes a mindless killing machine when one of the tower’s rules are broken, and he saves Foxidna from falling to her death, leading to her asking him to stop being so unpredictable, and what he’d done was as much of a surprise to him as it was to her. She then blasted Shaula with El Jiwald, which tore off a piece of the scorpion mabeast.
Foxidna then asks him, “What in the world are you? Whose side are you on, and what is your goal?” probably to continue her ruse, and Beatrice finished his sentence in saying that he doesn’t remember, but she’s okay with that since she remembers that he brought her out of the Forbidden Library and always will, showing that Subaru’s words in Episode 49 were correct in that the time she spends with him would be so fun that he’ll forever be ingrained in her memories. Then Foxidna steps on a piece of Shaula’s body that was left behind, and it explodes, killing Beatrice, who took on the full brunt of the explosion so that her beloved contractor would survive. Later, even as Foxidna is getting dragged along the ground by him, asks him whether it should’ve been Beatrice over her that he took with him, which may have been survivor’s guilt or just really good acting, to make him think back to how Beatrice sacrificed herself for him and how he was loved. He then apologizes for Foxidna’s pain, and she merely retorts that her pain is penance for Anastasia given if she were to return her body now Anastasia would experience this pain and the horror of death, so she requests of him that she wouldn’t mind being put out of her misery, and once he again, he hears Meilibaru implying it’s a perfect opportunity to finish her off so that he can read her Book of the Dead, and he seriously considered doing so with a piece of rock but ultimately rejected Meili’s approach, showing he still had his own identity even if he’d taken in the Meili personality as his own, leading to Foxidna forgiving him and being sorry for having doubted him even if it’s potentially a ruse meant to give him the courage to believe in himself.
Then the Witch of Envy appears with her shadow hands from yin magic, not the Authority of Sloth, given Garfiel could see these hands in Season 2 ’cause yin magic can produce these hands, and the tell is that her vocabulary is limited to “I love you” as seen here or “Love me” from Season 2. Amnesiac Subaru is of course ranting that he doesn’t leave love himself, so how can anyone love him? This is despite knowing that his parents loved him deeply ’cause he’s rejecting other people’s love for him due to how much self-hatred he has for himself, much like in Season 1, when Rem had to put it so much effort for his From Zero moment. And he’d realized deep down that people who treated him so well couldn’t possibly be bad, so he wished that this could be his last life for ever having doubted them in the first place due to his doubt of them making him believe he was even more unlovable still, leading to the Witch of Envy enveloping him with her shadow hands before Emilia cuts the hands down and takes him away.
After they’d ran for a while, he then protests that that’s enough as he doesn’t understand why she and all the others trusted him and protected him, and after sharing the news of Beatrice and Foxidna’s death, he says that they’re all idiots for expecting anything of him. Emila then gives amnesiac Subaru a touching pep talk sharing all that he did for her, eventually resulting in her falling for him as he’s in complete despair, mirroring Ep. 40, A Reason To Believe, when she was the one with memory issues and at her breaking point, and as this happened, he ranted about how risking his life for somebody else, instinctively saving someone’s life, running around trying his best for someone else other than himself, and putting his life on the line to accomplish something for someone other than himself are things that Subaru couldn’t do as he believes he knows Subaru better than anyone and how pitiful, pathetic, and hopelessly rotten he really is due to his not having any of his memories from his time in the world prior to experiencing amnesia, emphasizing what a piece of trash he believes Subaru is, sounding so pained in admitting it, showing how great of a job his seiyuu is doing.
He then says that it doesn’t have to be him as surely there are others stronger and smarter out there who’s more capable of solving the issues here, and Emilia’s patient with him, merely requesting that he tell her his name even though she has so much she wants to say to him and ask him, and when he pleads to her to give him a reason, she says that she knows there are many people who are stronger and smarter than he is but that she wouldn’t want it to be anyone other than him ’cause rather than someone else doing it just ’cause they can or ’cause they happen to be there, it’s so much better when it’s the person she loves, a callback to when Subaru said in Ep. 40 that he realizes that Emilia isn’t perfect and causes him a lot of trouble but that he loves her regardless and also a callback to Ep. 18, From Zero, when Rem shared all that she loved about him he wouldn’t accept as being legitimately a part of himself, both great moments in the series that rejuvenated Emilia and Subaru respectively. As an aside, I don’t expect Emilia to realize that she’s in love with Subaru as readily as she did in this episode given it took amnesiac Subaru not acting like her Subaru for her to catch on to the fact that she does since that forced her to look inward and see what Subaru really meant to her. Without a catalyst like that, it’s possible there’s some stagnancy in this dynamic.
Amnesiac Subaru then decides he will accept that he’s Natsuki Subaru when prompted by Emilia once again, the one Julius relies on, the one Beatrice believes in, the one Foxidna forgave, and the one Emilia wishes for him to be, taking on the mantle/mask of someone he believes is greater to get him through this situation much like how he became Rem’s Hero in Ep. 18, and he does want to help her and the others and save her from the tower, and if Subaru can do that, he’ll be him, thanking her from the bottom of his heart for allowing him to believe in himself, and then the ground underneath Emilia crumbles, leading to her falling into a deep void with him following her and managing to take her hand before they end up in a pit of miasma that depicts his memories, which I’m guessing is a creative liberty rather than him actually falling into his own memories, and he resolves to remember them all and not to choose to see it as an end but a beginning even though the others will forget since he won’t.
While he says that he’s back after he’s looped, his hair is still in the same style as amnesiac Subaru, showing what he regained was his resolve and conviction, not his memories. From having watched Vivy: Fluorite’s Eye’s Song, which leaned hard into the message that autonomous AI who have a back-up of itself loaded isn’t exactly the same entity, I’m guessing Tappei has a message that’s not entirely the same in that it’s in Subaru’s core to be himself in wanting to help others even if it retains that same message in that memories and experiences shape who you are since amnesiac Subaru is taking on the mantle/mask of Natsuki Subaru rather than truly becoming him outright. Re:Zero seems to be supporting the belief that the nature and nurture approaches are intrinsically linked with its story across four seasons, and I welcome that instead of a hard nature vs. nurture approach. And where I’m going with my comment regarding the nature approach is that he resisted his mixing with Meilibaru, who had an inclination to solve problems through killing even though he’d taken in Meili’s memories, thoughts, and emotions, which was a huge environmental change, and given he’d experienced her whole life, he did really well to fight back that inner darkness in desiring to kill even though he only loosely associated with being Subaru.
Here’s the link to the relevant Break Time short: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_YBFHSCVWA
