Tag: Satella

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

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

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

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

  1. Beatrice, due to her bond with him, could feel his distress and pain, and in her final moments as she died, she teleported him using the last of strength, hoping he’d have a less painful death.
  2. I suspect the Books of the Dead are based on Echidna’s Authority, and depending on which particular scenario it could be regarding how many Books of the Dead Subaru is and what RBD actually does regarding multiple timelines being created or whether the world itself is re-created, Subaru himself may be a product of Echidna’s Authority, so this may give Echidna some direct control over him, meaning she either planted a spell on him around the time he was born for this specific moment or actively teleported him right at that moment.
  3. Satella, given she is always nearby, likely ’cause she lies within the dark world within the vicinity of his soul, teleported him ’cause she still had more plans for him in guiding him along the future I believe she, Echidna, and Flügel are trying to make a reality.
  4. Flügel himself, or Kenichi, since I believe Flügel was originally Kenichi and Subaru in the same body, may have planted a spell on Subaru specifically to have it be activated at that exact moment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Re:Zero Theory: Shaula lied when mentioning there’s no fifth rule, and it may be that she can’t directly comment on Satella’s looks given she thinks Emilia looks like her

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Foxidna stated that there are 5 secret rules Shaula has for protecting the tower in Ep. 71, and judging by Shaula’s reaction, Foxidna was almost certainly right on the money, meaning Shaula saying that there’s no fifth rule may have been a lie with Foxidna pointedly asking if that’s the last of them meant to show her belief that there’s definitely one more, showing again that she’s probably a soul clone of Echidna given Echidna was from that time period of four hundred years ago.

And as we see from Ep. 73, Shaula herself believes that Emilia bears a striking a resemblance to Satella, which is why she wouldn’t mind becoming the half-witch’s apprentice, which is a comment showing both that she knew who Satella was and that she was a witch, likening Emilia to Satella. Given this, I believe it’s plausible Flügel had a very good reason to hold Shaula to this if that’s indeed the fifth rule.

Thus, Flügel may have ensured Shaula can’t directly comment on Shaula’s appearance, possibly ’cause of a future situation in which Satella or the Witch of Envy appears, such as an exam in which a much weaker version of Satella appears or much like in Season 2, Satella and the the Witch of Envy appear in the Dream Castle/Sanctuary due to the Taboo, and this was done to prevent Subaru or the others from losing trust in Emilia later.

Given we’ve already seen one instance of the Taboo being invoked when amnesiac Subaru’s heart was stroked and calmed down in Episode 74, likely due to the presence of an enemy, such as a Sin Archbishop of Gluttony, that may have also stealthily psychologically primed viewers to expect that to happen again given he has no idea what the Taboo is and what situations allow for Satella or the Witch of Envy to appear.

As to hazard a guess what Flügel specifically told Shaula, it may have been something along the lines of “One day when I return, and you see someone with a striking resemblance to Satella, you are not to directly comment on it under any circumstance whatsoever, and you are forbidden from revealing this rule to anyone. The other four are okay, but this one is absolute no-go territory. Do I hear an okay?”

As for what Shaula’s true purpose is, I think it’s somewhat like Season 2 Tea Party Echidna’s, only her role is split between herself, Foxidna due to all the suspect things she’s done, and perhaps the unseen force I believe was spying through the birds that led Foxidna, Subaru, and Julius to the hidden passage to the balcony to develop the cast in a certain way for a larger plan to steer the world to a good future.

Re:Zero Episode 74 (Season 4 Episode 8) + Relevant Break Time Ep. Analysis + Important Details

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The episode opens with Subaru introducing himself to Emilia and Beatrice, which leads right away to a time skip of an indeterminable amount of time, and they’re very surprised that he remembers nothing of what he has experienced recently along with having no recollection of either of them. During that event I mentioned, Subaru came to the realization that he really remembers nothing of his time in this world with his musing about his hand not being in the condition he remembered it was in, and Emilia was at the same time clasping her hands together much like in Season 1 when she figured that Subaru was the one wearing her cloak that made it hard for people to recognize the person wearing it during the battle against Petelgeuse and was praying for his safety, only in this scene she was praying for him to get back his memories partially due to the distress it was causing her. After Subaru told the two to cheer up since everything will probably be okay in two hours much like in similar movies, Emilia says that she has no idea what he’s talking about, but Subaru often did that when he had his memories, which is try to approach things with a good attitude even if others didn’t understand what he was talking about as it cheered her up, leading to her smacking herself on the face since Subaru clearly has it worse than she does, meaning she can’t just mope around either. Beatrice herself is also quite distraught by Subaru not knowing what she meant by contractor given how close they had become and how Subaru told her to choose him in Season 2 ’cause he’d make sure she has so much fun that it’ll be worth it even after he dies given she was suicidal at that point and lonely about how those she knew were all leaving her behind, which is why she said that this better be the last time Subaru has amnesia, or she’ll lose all patience with him, and I believe this is a possible hint that Tappei will not abuse Subaru forgetting his memories as some authors do with making the same person forget his/her memories repeatedly. Subaru then snaps his fingers and requests for Emilia and Beatrice’s names, and Emilia is taken aback since she remembered that that’s exactly how he asked for name in the loot house arc when Elsa was tasked with stealing her insignia, but that melts into a smile since it’s further proof that this he’s still the same person. She replied that she’s Emilia, just Emilia, to harken back to that moment and treat it genuinely as a fresh start with amnesiac Subaru, which is what I’ll be referring to him from now on.

The next scene is when they’re back in at the dining table where they both discuss strategy and have meals, and Ram’s immediate reaction is whether it’s a joke since she’s really relying on Subaru to wake Rem since he’s the one who comes through in a pinch for everybody with his plans and ’cause he’s the only one she believes still remembers her sister, serving as her anchor to her dear sister. When amnesiac Subaru replies whether her nickname for him, “Barusu”, is referring to a spell, it is a callback to Season 1 when Ram first used that nickname to disrespect him, and he remarked about it being a blinding spell/curse due to the pronunciation of the Japanese. Ram obviously didn’t like hearing that since it called back the situation from the mansion, showing her that he may not be joking about his memories, and what hurt even more, which is why her facial expression immediately changes to that of someone who’s pained, is when amnesiac Subaru asked if she’s the sleeping girl’s sister since Subaru is the one she knew as the one lone connection to her sister that had remained, probably not even including herself since she personally has no memories of Rem. And when he makes his comment about saving her complaints for when his memory comes back, which is in the spirit of something Subaru would’ve said in the past, she said that that makes it hard for her to believe he’s actually lost his memory since she desperately hopes that he remembers Rem and wants for it to be the case with all her heart given he’s still acting like the Subaru she knows. Of course, he continued to be oblivious to who Meili and Shaula were given he’d lost his memories, and this changes Foxidna’s and Julius’s plan to reveal that she’s an artificial spirit right away since Julius is horrified by this latest development since his last interaction with Subaru was speaking to him in anger, and to his knowledge, Subaru was the only one who remembered him although I believe Foxidna also does but just isn’t revealing that, which is horrible for Julius given his current struggles with his identity.

Then Ram asks Emilia if she can borrow amnesiac Subaru, and he says that he’s fine when Emilia protests, calling her Emilia-chan, which upsets Emilia as her expression clearly gives way to her becoming crestfallen since the Subaru she knows would use Emilia-tan. He does notice Emilia’s discomfort, but he doesn’t understand what could’ve brought about that change in expression. Ram then openly confronts him on their fake water-hauling run, which is a pretext to grill him due to her being desperate and wanting to convince herself that this is an act from him even though he truly presents as having lost his memories. Her suggesting that it’s nothing new for him to shoulder something everything alone is her desperately trying to convince herself that’s what he’s doing since she’s having difficulty keeping it together. When she suggests to him that he tell her everything, promising that she’ll keep it a secret, his reply that having a secret between the two of them has a nice ring to it being followed by a “but” seriously pisses her off due to the change in expression on her face ’cause more and more, he’s confirming that Rem has lost her most powerful ally. Ram using physical force and her eyes narrowing in anger show just hard this is on her, which is why she starts pleading to Subaru to reveal everything ’cause if he has forgotten too then Rem will truly have nobody. It’s a very sombre cry for help due to how powerless Rem feels in this situation with having lost her pseudo-brother-in-law who was her sister’s biggest champion. Subaru replies by telling her, “Sorry”, in a manner that suggests he’d like to do as she says since he himself realizes just how much Ram is struggling.

When they’re back in the dining room, Julius introduces himself once again saying that he and Subaru were something akin to friends, and when Subaru asks why he sounded so unsure about that, Emilia replies that he and Julius are really close, and I’m guessing Julius sounding so unsure about their former relationship is ’cause Subaru harboured some residual resentment from since the time Julius emasculated him at the Royal Selection and had never really let it go except maybe until recently when he’d seen that Julius had similar issues to what he did and that they are at least somewhat alike. Meili then puts it out there that that’s the least of Julius’s problems since Foxidna had dropped her Anastasia act since this morning and many among the group had already picked up on her being somebody else. Foxidna then reveals that had hoped to build a similar relationship with Anastasia as the one Beatrice and Subaru had and the true situation of how things are concerning Anastasia. When Emilia hears that her name’s Echidna, she has a strong negative reaction, much like Subaru did, and Foxidna says that she’s a completely different person, which I suspect is false given even in the Re:Zero Break Time Season 4 Episode 8 short, Foxidna is speaking similarly to Echidna, much like she did in Episode 67, suggesting she may very well be a soul clone of Echidna’s who also doubles as an artificial spirit,. Emilia then says that she’ll need to give Echidna a piece of her mind next time with Foxidna replying that she’d give Emilia her full support in doing so ’cause she keeps getting slandered due to the association between their names, and the reason from the short is supposedly that Foxidna was destined to die due to people hunting her ’cause of her name, but I’m convinced Foxidna completely planned out her meeting with Anastasia with her Tome of Wisdom specifically so that she wouldn’t die even if she grew to become fond of Anastasia in time. As for the link to the short, here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Yc4z2iYkKE

Amnesiac Subaru then changes the subject, bringing up that they’re all here to help people, and Ram rudely interjects that now they’re here and working through the tower that Subaru has gone and forgotten what little memory he had of his time in this world while Anastasia’s consciousness isn’t available at all. When he brings up that there’s no good news at all and seems down, Emilia says that they shouldn’t mope around as it won’t get them anywhere, which was something Subaru taught her, leading to him perking up and saying that they should look on the bright side since he’s free from the logic of this world and may be able to cook up some fresh ideas that resolve the situation, turning a crisis into an opportunity, which Beatrice remarks is very much a Subaru-ism. That also freshly reassured Emilia that he’s still Subaru given she’d been shaken earlier when he’d called her Emilia-chan. Julius himself also seems to feel better upon hearing that, saying that amnesiac Subaru’s loss of memories hasn’t affected his inability to differentiate between bravery and recklessness, which is the sort of thing he’d say to Subaru. When he broaches the subject of Subaru’s amnesia, Emilia and Beatrice note that they found him lying on the ground unconscious in the library, and that’s when they carried him to the green room where he was lying down at the end of Episode 73 and the beginning of this episode. Foxidna believes that the library’s likely the problem given all the Books of the Dead with the group explaining what they are to the amnesiac. They’re not ruling out that it’s one of those books that messed up Subaru’s memories and believe it’s worth investigating, but the group decides that amnesiac Subaru won’t investigate with them, and he curses himself for giving into peer pressure as he walks aimlessly before deciding to say, “Status Open!” hoping he’d find a game screen like many of the isekai stories he’s read and seen have, only to be completely disappointed, confirming Beatrice’s words to him that since he destroyed his gate using beginner magic he can never use magic again. He also whips himself when he thinks of the remaining tool he has at his fingertips, failing so hard that he wondered why he didn’t make a diary for if something like this happens, which we know that Otto (From the Season 2 Break Time shorts) and Julius (from a Season 4 Break Time short) are doing by documenting things of importance to them. He then gets himself together, thinking that in this world, even someone like him can do it, as in do great things, due to his belief that he’s an isekai hero even if didn’t really do anything when he was still on Earth. He then spots a really long staircase and thinks it may go on forever and is pushed off and dies headfirst.

When he awakes, amnesiac Subaru is confused about what happened and believes he may have had a prophetic dream since Emilia and Beatrice act similarly to before, and he explained everything like he did before only omitting that he believes he has the power of prophetic dreams. Then the interactions with all the rest are mostly the same aside from Shaula running back to him, saying that he has a scary look on his face when the group had again decided on leaving him, snuggling up him to him really hard before Meili pulls her scorpion tail since she doesn’t want Ram and Beatrice getting mad at her, which Shaula is very hurt by, leading her to suggest that he tell Meili off and him thanking Meili instead since he doesn’t really know Shaula and doesn’t want her clinging to him, and that deeply saddens Shaula, resulting in her slamming the door as tears flow from her eyes. I really feel for Shaula given the visual and symbolic allusion to the Titan Atlas in Episode 70 and then her remarks in Episode 73 that pointed to loneliness that one might say is as deep as the Mariana Trench. This leads to Meili to say that he really doesn’t remember anything given he’d tasked her with handling Shaula and his surprise of having thanked an assassin, and Subaru talks about how he may have made an important promise and forgot the next day, showing that his past self was careless, which Meili readily agrees with given even she isn’t happy with amnesiac Subaru either given her earlier remarks about him being hopeless in the first loop after having lost his memories given the reason she’s even at the Pleiades Watchtower is ’cause of her wanting to help him due to the good relationship they had since they had a big brother-little sister dynamic, somewhat similar to Meili’s sisterly relationship with Elsa which was depicted in the Break Time Season 2 shorts.

The next scene after that has amnesiac Subaru observe the staircase where he fell, and he looks back to see if he’s about to get pushed since he remembered being pushed and feels reassured that there was nobody there. Then with oddly precise timing, he walks by to overhear Foxidna saying it might be dangerous to have him accompany them, which I find highly suspect as if she guided the conversation in that way so that he’d hear that right during the moment he did with her Authority of Greed: Tome of Wisdom, which I still suspect she has. The whole group aside from Emilia and Beatrice are against having Subaru aid them given he may be very unreliable and even a liability due to his lack of memories, although Ram is at least quite concerned for his safety given she mentioned it and wouldn’t have if the thought hadn’t come to mind, and the only one part of the group without any lines during that scene was Meili, either due to her not being there or due to the others not counting her as part of the group.

Subaru is of course distressed in hearing that and ran back to where the large staircase was, and as he becomes despondent about whether the group will even believe him about the prophetic dream given his lack of credibility, someone shorter than him pushes him down again as he falls while remembering things that had been said regarding the group’s lack of trust in him, how he’s still Subaru, and one line which I believe was huge foreshadowing.

Around 19:26 of Episode 74, Subaru heard Rui’s words, which shows he remembered her words as he fell, showing Rui may have eaten his memories. After she ate them, she likely said what she did either immediately after eating them, as she was carrying him to the library, or after she had dropped him off at the Great Pleiades Library. Subaru may have heard something while he was in between unconsciousness and being awake, which is the N1 light sleep phase when she said what she did. She could have knocked him out and then carried him to the library. She likely carried him to the libary to provide cover for herself, which if she did, worked very well since the group appears to believe that Subaru’s amnesia is due to a Book of the Dead. Given Shaula’s no longer sniping due to her orders, that should’ve opened the door for others to come to the Pleiades Watchtower.

Why amnesiac Subaru would remember this as he’s dying is that when someone is dying, the brain can trigger a surge of gamma brain waves associated with long-term memory retrieval, which is responsible for the life flashing before your eyes phenomenon, so Subaru may have remembered that specifically ’cause he was dying and otherwise wouldn’t have. Given Subaru’s identity issues and his fear of abandonment that had been revealed in Episode 7, reinforced in Episode 13, and shone a light on in Episode 29 as well as his hearing of “Who are you?” which very much appears to be his own voice after he awoke from his second death, that may be why that memory of Rui’s words surfaced since it was highly relevant to what he’s going through with regards to his identity crisis.

He then panics upon looping, and after Emila pats him on the back in an effort to comfort him, he remembers being pushed off the ledge, and that’s what led to him freaking out and shoving Beatrice to the ground, causing him to run straight to Reid on the second floor, which possibly was ’cause of his subconscious memories of Reid hinted at in Episode 70 given he lacks any memories of the group he’s with, possibly suggesting that Reid was a friend of his four hundred years ago, and if Subaru was indeed half of Flügel as I speculate, it’d make sense given Flügel, Reid, and Volcanica travelled together in the past. Upon reaching Reid, who was standing close to the stairway, Reid mocks him in saying what he’s doing here so early and asks amnesiac Subaru whether he had a fight with his friends since he’s crying and saying that he shouldn’t have ran, especially not to him, puncturing his body in the process. Anyway, I find it suspicious that Reid was hanging by the stairwell given the two others times people came through it he was quite a ways off from it, perhaps implying that he was waiting for amnesiac Subaru in that very moment.

While Reid saying that Subaru came too early may imply he’s aware of the passage of time, in all the instances Reid had screen time, there was zero indication of where the sun was shining, and given how heavily Re:Zero focuses on details and how I’d previously speculated that the huge field Reid is in another dimension entirely, Reid shouldn’t be able to perceive how much time had passed as getting exposure to sunlight is important in ensuring one has a normal circadian rhythm, and this space possibly has no sunlight but merely mimics daytime conditions, so even this Reid who apparently only remembers having swung a sword for three months may be on the same side as Satella, Echidna, and Flügel and is acting with future knowledge from Echidna through a soul link, contract, or oath with the assistance of her Tome of Wisdom. More to potentially back this up is that Reid basically said that amnesiac Subaru shouldn’t have ran and instead hashed things out with his people, which is useful advice for someone who’s supposed to be an enemy. Thus, Reid may have told amnesiac Subaru that he’s early ’cause he knew that the poor guy wasn’t really ready to face him. Yes, Reid’s the type who likes to bully the weak as Shaula had said, but I suspect there was more to this interaction than what was on the surface.

Reid then pushes him down the staircase, and amnesiac Subaru is writhing in pain as he remembers having been with his parents not that long ago before being summoned and not having washed his dirty cup after his meal with his mom not complaining about that, ruing how she should’ve replied to her “Take care” and how he never paid his parents back, both of which were callbacks to Episode 29, Parent and Child. He then hears laughing, whether it be internal or external, who knows? And now it’s time for a detour as I go into who I believe are the most likely suspects for having pushed him down the ledge, and I promise I will segue back into what comes next as I discuss the options.

As for who are the suspects for having pushed Subaru off the ledge, the only people in my opinion who would push Subaru are people I believe who have future knowledge, supposed future knowledge, or are interested in whether there is more for Subaru after death, of which only apply to Lye Batenkaitos, Roy Alphard, and Rui Arneb, the three Sin Archbishops of Gluttony, Foxidna, and Meili.

Given Season 3 revealed that Witch Cult Gospels don’t actually truly tell the future but are meant to keep the world on a particular path, which is why Regulus thought that he’d meet Emilia again in Episode 51 despite it not happening until the fourth loop, showing what was depicted in his Gospel was meant to make the Sin Archbishops act the way they did in the fourth loop when Subaru had a successful run until the end. This is backed by Regulus telling Subaru in Episode 53 to be grateful to him that he adhered to his Gospel in only shredding much of his leg off since he’d have preferred a massacre. Sirius and Capella also backed this up in Episodes 53 and 55 respectively when they were listening to the toll of the clock tower to either cease their hostilities or change their plans. Additionally, Episode 65 had Foxidna point out that Capella does whatever her Gospel says, and that’s why she was retreating, suggesting that some other force is what is causing the text in the Witch Cult Gospels to appear, indicating they are meant to keep the world on a specific path. Given Roswaal’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom didn’t include Otto in it, I posit that this is also the case for that text as well, and it was also meant to keep the world on a particular path rather than be a true future-telling text.

And given the prototypes of the Witch Cult Gospels is Roswaal’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom, they may be partially made of the same materials, such as Echidna’s fingernails, toenails, hair, body hair, dead skin, or body fluids, and if they are indeed partially constructed by such materials, the Witch Cult Gospels and Roswaal’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom could be connected to Echidna’s mind through magic, and she’s the one who makes the text in the Gospels appear, meaning Echidna may be stealthily manipulating the Witch Cult through her Authority of Greed: Tome of Wisdom with the Witch Cult being created four hundred years ago so that it could eventually be used to give Subaru and others character development and achievements.

Where I’m going with this is that if any of Lye’s, Roy’s, or Rui’s Gospel told each of them to push Subaru, he/she would do it to adhere to his/her Gospel, no questions asked, even if the whole point was to ensure Subaru learns about Return by Death. Even though the footsteps of the one who pushed Subaru indicated that person was wearing shoes, and the Gluttony trio’s known to go barefoot, Rui in Season 3 transformed into somebody she had previously eaten, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility that the other two can as well.

The one thing that makes Rui more likely to have pushed Subaru than the others is that this episode hinted that she was the one who ate his memories given Subaru remembered while he was falling the second time that Rui speaking about how precious one’s memories are right before he remembered Emilia saying that Subaru’s still Subaru. And given Satella emerged to slow down his Subaru’s heart after he was punctured by Reid when he was talking about specifics regarding Return by Death in that he’ll die and return, it means that the Taboo had been triggered, and there was an enemy observing him, which was likely one of the Sin Archbishops of Gluttony, and that’s why the time stop happened to get Subaru to calm down and not talk about dying, which would otherwise risk an enemy figuring out Return by Death.

And given what I’ve brought up about Foxidna across most of my write-ups this season, I’m not going to rehash it but only talk about new content. Foxidna bringing up the danger of having Subaru accompany them right as he walks by is incredibly suspicious, and if she timed the conversation with the Authority of Greed: Tome of Wisdom, it’d make a lot of sense. She said that just in the nick of time to make Subaru hear what would distress him the most, leading him to think that one of the members of the group pushed him when it could’ve been a Sin Archbishop of Gluttony, which may be intentional to bring Subaru to a new low this season. Suffice to say, if I’m right about all Echidna soul clones having the Authority of Greed: Tome of Wisdom, she could’ve had a vested interest in pushing Subaru to force him to learn about Return by Death as I believe Echidna both in the past and now is collaborating with Satella, which is how Satella knows which moments should be Subaru’s savepoints in which there is zero chance he’ll get trapped in a death loop.

As for why Meili’s a suspect, she said in Episode 71 that she’s wondering what would happen if Subaru were to drop dead right then and there regarding whether a Book of the Dead would appear as that’s what piques her interest. Why this is relevant is that in one of the companion shorts to Season 2, Elsa shared with Meili that she dislikes the look in Subaru’s eyes ’cause they indicate that he believes that death isn’t the end for him, and Elsa may have mused about this in the past in between the mansion arc and Season 2 or even between the start of Season 2 and when their assassination duties began in Season 2 given Elsa even protected Meili in that season, showing that Meili might’ve been the only one on this earth Elsa considered a friend.

Alternatively, Meili could’ve figured it out herself due to being a seasoned assassin and observing Subaru after he’d looped in Season 4, showing some great astuteness despite her young age, and given she showed much more maturity compared to most of the cast in Season 4, it wouldn’t be a shock for her to have arrived at that conclusion. And what Meili also has going for her is that she was the only one who’s part of the group without any lines during that scene in which the group was questioning whether to take amnesiac Subaru with them, either due to her not being there or due to the others not counting her as part of the group, and I lean toward the former although I don’t rule out the latter. Additionally, Meili may hold it against Subaru for killing Elsa, and now that she’s lost her ‘big brother’ due to his amnesia, her good relationship with him no longer applies, especially given Meili only came to the Pleiades Watchtower in the first place ’cause of Subaru and only has weak ties to the rest of the group.

As for who I think are the most likely suspects to have pushed amnesiac Subaru out of the five I mentioned, I’d say it’s the three female characters I listed with my leanings being Rui first, Meili next, and Foxidna last given Rui would have the speed to creep up on him, and we knew that one of the Sin Archbishops of Gluttony was likely observing him, given Meili didn’t have a line when the group was discussing him and since the sound of the footsteps of the one who pushed Subaru best matches Meili’s from earlier in the episode when she walked out after Shaula slammed the door on her way out as she was bawling her eyes out due to his not being open to sharing with her what burdened him as well as what I’d previously mentioned, and given Foxidna may have timed the conversation on Subaru for maximum impact, but since she’d been in that room in which they were discussing him, it would’ve been very difficult for her to catch up to Subaru without mana flow, which we saw multiple people, such as Gaston and Garfiel, use during Season 3.

Back to the chronological order of events, Emilia then appears and brings amnesiac Subaru back to the green room with him looking as if he’s living his own personal hell. Ram outright says that she feels sorry for Rem given Subaru was the only one she believed to remember her, showing she’s devastated for her sister given she approved of the relationship between Subaru and Rem and ’cause Subaru was her hope for restoring Rem, and Beatrice swears that she’ll figure something out as they won’t leave him to suffer alone, probably indicating that they’ll do yet another search of the library. Subaru then walks down the stairs after the group has left him and calls his ability Return by Death, swearing he won’t allow the group to kill him again, which is why he leaves the tower, triggering Shaula losing her mind and becoming a mindless killing machine that she stated would happen in Episode 71. I don’t believe that he didn’t know the rules of the tower as there were multiple scenes in this episode that involved a time skip of some indeterminate number of minutes or hours, and Subaru even mentioned at one point that he was looking forward to turning a crisis into opportunity, implying that he does know about the group being trapped in the tower, so Subaru was just so paranoid that someone among the group had been killing him that he chose to leave willingly rather than being pushed off the ledge again.

I found this episode to be outstanding given the directing, the character work involving so much of the cast, including Ram, Subaru, Emilia, Meili, Beatrice, and Julius, the sound direction as Subaru fell to his death the second time, the attention to details, and the potentially powerful foreshadowing in it, all of which are what made me fall in love with Re:Zero to begin with. In my book, this is clearly the best episode of the season so far, and I can’t wait to watch the rest of it. While I can see why people might claim that the group leaving Subaru on his own is bad writing, I believe that a significant amount of time had passed in between him having passed out and getting people back up to speed, so the individual members probably spent quite some time with him, and given how horrible he looked, they probably didn’t expect that he’d actually leave the tower given what they were told about Shaula becoming a mindless killing machine.

A Re:Zero Theory: Flügel might not have been the most loyal person and was intimate with both Satella and Shaula based on Shaula’s reaction and words to and on Subaru

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After Shaula explained the rules of the Pleiades Watchtower, she said, “Also, as long as none of those rules are broken, my body belongs to me! Oops! I mean it belongs to my master!” And given Shaula was blushing the entire time, I take it to mean she was intimate with Flügel and that it wasn’t entirely referring to her becoming a killing machine that loses her own will.

Shaula explaining that Reid used to grope her boobs as she bounces on Subaru’s stomach is a very strange soothing motion, especially for someone who was a victim of sexual assault and in the midst of remembering having been assaulted, making me believe there was something more to her relationship with Flügel given the choice of what she did.

Then there’s her saying that she’ll become Emilia’s apprentice to win Master’s heart through his stomach and make him say, “I’m not letting you sleep tonight.” And the implications of that are that Flügel and Shaula were potentially more than just master and apprentice in my opinion and that she wanted a relationship moreso like what she previously had with Flügel.

Additionally, I believe Shaula saying that she’d become “the half-witch’s apprentice” to win over Master’s heart shows that she at least knew Satella in the past and drew a parallel between Satella and Emilia in that both of them may have had her master’s affection through their cooking, meaning learning from Emilia, who she likens to Satella, would be a good way of increasing Subaru’s affection for her. Given Shaula specifically singled out Emilia’s cooking rather than Ram’s, I believe there was definitely a point to that. I don’t know if this makes sense to others, but it does to me.

As for Satella, Eps., 18, 25, and 38 show Subaru has dormant memories of Satella as shown by how Puck indirectly revealed in Ep. 18 the number of shadow hands Satella could generate to Subaru by asking Petelgeuse to summon a thousand shadows if he truly wants to kill him, half of what Satella could (two thousand), how Subaru used a number associated with Satella (two thousand) to indicate his appreciation for Emilia in Ep. 25 when he said that if Emilia named ten things she hated about herself he’d list two thousand things he loves about her, which Emilia herself commenting on why he chose two thousand, and how Subaru suddenly had an upwelling of positive emotion for Satella in Ep. 38 that led to him saying he’d save Satella after she asked him to love himself and then some day come kill her, which shows Subaru and Satella may have had a past history together as lovers given just moments ago, Subaru had been calling her an unfathomable monster he could never hope to understand, showing they must’ve had a very positive relationship in the past.

Satella saying in Ep. 38 that Subaru gave her everything supports that the two of them have a past history with each other, and Shaula calling Emilia “the half-witch” in Ep. 73 shows she knew that Satella was a witch, so they came from the same time period. While I don’t believe Subaru is fully Flügel and moreso half of Flügel given Naoko in Subaru’s first Sanctuary trial said that all Subaru needs to do is become half as cool as his dad, which is a strange thing to say to your son you know has an inferiority complexity centered around his dad, especially since he’s her husband, and thus, it could be foreshadowing of the situation from four hundred years ago given Kenichi means “wise man”, Subaru called Flügel a wise man who lived centuries ago, and Shaula called her master, Flügel the Wise Man.

Thus, I believe Flügel may have had multiple partners with both Satella and Shaula at minimum, and he may not have even been limited to them given Shaula indicated that Flügel isn’t exactly the most kind and big-hearted person around in Ep. 71 since she apparently gets extremely itchy when she tells a very blatant lie and given she praised Subaru making a false accusation as something expected of her master, showing Flügel was a man of questionable character overall. Flügel may have been conceited on some level in the past due to having been handsome and overpowered despite all he did for Satella.

Re:Zero Episode 70 (Season 4 Episode) Analysis + Important Details

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This episode is huge with its lore implications if I’m interpreting the scenes correctly. The episode opens with Subaru being denigrated by Petelgeuse and Regulus in the dark world that we’ve seen Satella/the Witch of Envy in before, such as when Subaru remembered having his heart squeezed and the isolation of that dark world when Puck used Shamak, in the White Whale fight when Subaru was pulled into the dark world so that Satella/the Witch of Envy could say that she loves him, and during the moment when Subaru intended to reveal Return by Death to get Petelgeuse to give up on possessing his body in which Petelgeuse was also pulled into the dark world but rejected by Satella. Given when Subaru tries to reveal Return by Death, the stench of Satella intensifies much like after he has looped back, this suggests that the dark world is a pocket dimension located within the vicinity of Subaru’s soul. This would make both Sirius and Emilia sensing Petelgeuse when Subaru uses Invisible Providence make sense, and it’s ’cause they sense Petelgeuse from within the dark world, and Sirius mistakenly believed that Subaru and Petelgeuse’s souls merged (I had mistakenly taken Sirius’s side last year in a blog post and failed to account for everything that came before that when I believe I’d been on the mark before that) when it was the case that Petelgeuse’s soul is just in close proximity to Subaru’s, which shows that Subaru’s body was constructed with a pocket dimension within the vicinity of his soul, which is not the case for any ordinary human, and that’s probably also the case for Al.

As for why this needs to be the case. I see no reason for a random Joe to have a pocket dimension within the container of their soul. This is Re:Zero, where there are logical reasons for events happening, not random isekai slop where there’s no rhyme or reason for the events happening, so it makes me doubtful that this sort of thing would happen for some random person in Re:Zero’s world. Need I point out that the whole point of Re:Zero was to summon Subaru, not an ordinary person? Authorities from the Witch Factors of the Seven Deadly Sins tend to make you batshit insane if what we’ve seen of the Sin Archbishops is representative of what happens, while Subaru still desperately clings to his humanity with all his being while having multiple of them. That doesn’t seem normal and actually extraordinary to me, to the point of being more than just human.

Now for something really juicy. For years, I’ve wondered why Subaru has recoil from using Invisible Providence offensively, which we’ve seen when he punched Garfiel in Season 2, when he hit Regulus in Season 3, when he crushed Regulus’s heart when it was attached to Emilia’s in Season 3, when Subaru punched Ram and sent her flying given he was sweating hard, breathing heavily, almost kind of slurring his words while advancing slowly to Ram to begin choking her, showing that he was pushing through the pain ’cause he had gone insane, and when he used his Authority against the faceless centaur mabeast to make it lose its footing. And now I believe I’ve arrived at an answer in that I believe that the regrets of the people in the dark world shape some aspect of Subaru’s Authorities.

Regulus’s regret is probably that his first wife laughed at him when she died when she had never showed emotion to him before that given he randomly went on without naming anyone about why you dared to laugh in your final moments in Episode 62, and that incident traumatized him, which is why he forced his future wives to agree to never smile or face death. Although Regulus is a an inhuman monster, he probably regretted that he never found out why his wife felt that way, so I believe Subaru’s Greed Authority will allow him to feel what others are feeling so that Subaru can understand and build better relationships with others. This is backed by Regulus stating in Episode 70 that Subaru violated his rights as an unselfish man who desires nothing but to settle for a tiny bit of simple, ordinary happiness, which shows that Regulus most likely just wanted a wife who loved him even though he killed everyone his first wife knew, which is why she never showed emotion and wouldn’t smile or laugh no matter what he did with him coping by telling himself he never needed any of his wives to laugh since it makes their faces uglier during the scene Reinhard had launched him into the sky.

If you’ve seen my Capella character analysis, I believe Capella’s regret is sleeping around so much and not getting to know the one she truly thought she could love, resulting in him treating her like a piece of meat like everybody else. To refresh yourself on that analysis, read this post: https://thoroughwatch.org/?p=44

Suffice to say, I think when Subaru defeats Capella, his Authority might be one that helps him and others around him get to know people they are attracted to rather than rushing toward intimacy. I don’t know what form that Authority will take, but I believe the effect I described will be close to what his Lust Authority will be used for after Capella is no longer of this earth.

I wonder what Sirius’s regret would be. My theory is that Sirius is the combination of Fortuna and a lesser spirit that matured during the Elior Forest attack that was in awe of Petelgeuse and Fortuna’s love for each other, and Sirius came into being when the spirit merged with Fortuna’s soul after Fortuna died, so if I’m right about Subaru’s Authorities being influenced by the regrets of those in the dark world, would it be Sirius’s regret that shapes Subaru’s Authority, or would it be Fortuna’s? I lean toward it being Sirius’s regret that would shape Subaru’s Wrath Authority since I believe Sirius is distinct from Fortuna. I remember in Season 3 during the fight against Priscilla, Sirius’s idea of love was everybody feeling the same thing, and that may have been born from when she was a lesser spirit who felt the intense emotions of Petelgeuse and Fortuna’s love for each other, and it may have misunderstood love as people feeling the same emotion for each other rather than grasping what love actually is.

I don’t know if Priscilla telling Sirius that real love is tolerantly accepting the differences of others would really be Sirius’s regret, but it could be possible if Sirius took it to heart given she seemed inspired by Liliana’s singing and started singing herself in a crude way, and she said that she’d try to drag Petelgeuse out of Subaru, so maybe she’s not all for making everyone feel the same emotion anymore if she wants Petelgeuse’s individuality to emerge from what she believes is Subaru’s and Petelgeuse’s souls amalgamating, so Sirius’s effect on Subaru’s Wrath Authority after Sirius gets killed one day may be an Authority that helps people shine by focusing on their own strengths instead of being worried about what areas they lack compared to others.

I surmise that if Subaru’s Authorities are indeed being shaped by those in the dark world, it’s to prevent Subaru from becoming a conceited person like previous Heroes of the story, forcing him to rely on others, even those he detested and defeated, which would be a great departure from the conceited and overpowered Heroes I believe came before him.

Back to the show, Subaru wakes up and wonders if he’s Returned by Death, which on the surface doesn’t really make the most sense given he wasn’t in the carriage before at his previous savepoint, and he passed out out after being saved by Shaula. But given the reason he believed this must be explainable, I’m thinking Subaru always spends some time in the dark world after dying before his soul loops back, and he just forgets everything about his time in the dark world although he subconsciously understands that he was there, and that’s why Subaru thought that he had Returned by Death, ’cause he subconsciously realized he was at the dark world deep down, meaning the Freud content from the previous episode may have come in handy. In the anime, Subaru hasn’t been to the dark world outside of after his body experiencing death since Season 1, so it’s been over a year since it’s last happened, making him thinking he Returned by Death the most plausible scenario to him given he’d just woken up and wasn’t thinking straight.

Subaru’s on Emilia’s lap, and that was intentional from Emilia given Beatrice said that Emilia gave up two nights of sleep for him, meaning Mr. Subaru was lying on Emilia’s lap a lot of the time, and he probably counts his lucky stars that that was the case. Subaru then exits the carriage and is told that they’re inside the Pleiades Watchtower. Shaula rushed to Subaru since he’s apparently her master, and she locks him in an extremely tight embrace that hurts him given how powerful she is, being distressed that her master doesn’t remember her, his student, and when Emilia wakes up and sees what’s happening, she gives Subaru a kick on the back rather than helping him out as he requested, showing her jealousy.

The whole group is surprised given Shaula barely said a word to any of them and is now clinging on to him for dear life and being very affectionate. Apparently, Shaula had been instructed by her master to never say more than she needs to no matter who asks her anything, and Subaru then tells her it’s okay to talk to the others given he knows Shaula believes him to be her master. Shaula then reveals when prompted that she’s not the Sage. Foxidna then throws Subaru three coins with her saying that the holy gold coin (the world’s word for platinum?) depicts the Divine Dragon, the gold coin depicts the first Sword Saint, and the silver one depicts the Sage, and of course the group remarks that it looks nothing like Subaru, prompting Shaula to say that she didn’t recognize Subaru by his looks but by his foul scent, showing that she can smell witch miasma. And Shaula knows the phrase, “No problem”, showing her master was someone who was originally from Earth. Shaula reveals that Reid was the first Sword Saint, calling him a stick swinger, and that Volcanica the sarcastic is the Divine Dragon. She hadn’t even realized just how much time had passed given Reid had passed long ago, showing Shaula isn’t an ordinary human given she doesn’t age and can smell Witch miasma. After Shaula insists that the group should know who the one she believes is her master, Ram said that her master hit her head on a chamber pot and forgot many things, leading to Shaula replying with “Again” to Subaru, showing that something is up here, revealing that her master is Flügel the Wise Man, the real Sage, the one who planted what was known as Flügel’s tree, the same tree the White Whale expedition force downed to trap the White Whale.

After that, it appears they group has been climbing the tower for a while, and Shaula is carrying Meili on her back with Meili complaining that it’s too bouncy of a ride, and Shaula says that a kid getting a free ride shouldn’t complain. Then Meili abruptly yanks Shaula’s ponytail, which is apparently a scorpion tail, not actual hair, and that fits the name Shaula given the name refers to a scorpion’s tail. When they arrive at the entrance, Beatrice says that Patrasche and Rem are a whole floor above this one, prompting Subaru to wonder aloud how they got Patrasche up that high, and Shaula revealed that she did it easily, which reinforces her incredible strength. I’m thinking the shot of Shaula carrying Patrasche may be an allusion. The most famous Patrasche is a dog from A Dog of Flanders, a TV series depicting a story of a boy and his dog in a village called Flanders within Belgium. Subaru’s ringtone in the White Whale fight was from A Dog of Flanders, clearing showing that he named Patrasche after the dog. The root of the name Patrasche is from Petr, derived from the Greek word, Petros, which means “stone”, with the author of A Dog of Flanders likely adapting the name to invoke a sense of enduring strength, which may be why Tappei wrote Patrasche in one scene of Re:Zero Season 2 to fling Subaru with such force that he was launched back into a building after he had deliberately escaped the building to flee from a very powerful mabeast, showing that Patrasche was thinking mainly of Subaru in that moment and did what she could to protect him even at the cost of her own life. I may be wrong, but I believe the shot of Shaula carrying Patrasche (stone) is a subtle allusion to Atlas carrying a celestial sphere with Atlas carrying a terrestrial globe (stone) being a misconception from a certain period of time about Atlas carrying the world since what Atlas was really doing in Greek mythology was carrying the celestial sphere which consists of the night sky. What may back up this interpretation is that in Belgium there’s the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium that houses a famous 17th-century oil painting titled Atlas Holding up the Celestial Globe. Tappei could’ve chosen any name that meant “stone” or “rock” or had its root having either meaning, but he specifically chose Patrasche, possibly knowing of the association with Belgium and of that oil painting of Atlas, showing that Tappei does his research.

Subaru also reveals when they’re higher up the tower that he had previously heard that Flügel was the Sage and didn’t think his name would come up again, so I’m wondering where he heard it from given no one else in the group knew Flügel was the Sage. My best guess is that he heard the name Flügel from Liliana. As Liliana’s family was a travelling group of bards, the story of Flügel may have been passed down through the generations in her family. Even someone as long-lived as Beatrice didn’t know that Flügel was the Sage, so what was known about Flügel must’ve been lost due to time, possibly even ’cause of Echidna deliberately plotting to obscure knowledge of Flügel, much like how I am adamant she has been ensuring knowledge of past Witches of Sin has been lost so that the world blames everything on Satella, which is why Crusch and many others believed that mabeasts were created by Satella despite them actually having been created by Daphne, the Witch of Gluttony. As it started to hit Subaru about what it means to be climbing this tower, Shaula gives him 99 points out of 100, mostly ’cause of her affection for him, not ’cause of Subaru really realizing the gravity of what he’s doing since she says, revealing that the Pleiades Watchtower is a temporary name for a temporary role. To her Flügel being back means that it’ll return to its original role, which is that of the Pleiades Great Library where you can find everything you’ve ever wanted to know.

When the group reaches the floor where Patrasche and Rem are, Ram takes him into the dwelling of a spirit that has no will of its own that just heals the injuries and cures the sickness of those in it, and of course, Rem isn’t affected since she’s merely in suspended animation, and Subaru entrusts Ram with keeping Patrasche, who had been gravely injured, and Rem safe. He resolved himself to do what he needs to do and confirms sincerely that Ram looking over the two is more than enough, trusting that his not-really sister will do what she can.

Shaula then shares that this is floor basically functions as her den and is where she’s shooting intruders, referring to it as Hell’s snipe, another learned Earth phrase with the accompanying gun gestures along with it. Subaru finds out that Shaula was shooting people who approached the tower on her master’s orders all by her lonesome for four hundred years, so he ordered her to not harm him or his friends. And given Shaula is the Keeper of the Pleiades Watchtower, and the tower is named after a star cluster, and Subaru is the term for Pleiades, also known as the Seven Sisters, this may indicate that the decision to have Shaula be entrusted as its keeper was made by Subaru himself four hundred years ago, Shaula’s apparent master, who I’m not convinced is Flügel but moreso half of Flügel. Thus, much like how Zeus, the ruler of Olympus, forced Atlas to hold the heavens/night sky up, and how Flügel entrusted Shaula with the Pleiades Watchtower, it could be read as Shaula figuratively holding up the Seven Sisters in the night sky herself high up the tower similar to what Atlas did with the night sky in Greek mythology, a symbol of immense burden of responsibility, demonstrating the burden Shaula carried with her for four hundred years waiting for the return of her master, even to the point of forgetting that Reid was human. Maybe this is a pretty complex allusion, but I am adamant about its legitimacy nonetheless. Thus, this episode shows that Tappei had mapped out his story to this point with pinpoint accuracy having planned Patrasche to be used such in a way since at least Arc 3 of Season 1.

The third floor has a test that nobody in the group had been able to pass while Subaru had been sleeping. Touching the lone black monolith results in a very large amount of them emerging with the selection of the correct monolith being the test. A voice then emerges that states, “Hero slain by Shaula, touch upon his greatest splendor.” Touching the first monolith he touches ends the test, and touching it again reinitiates the test. The group in general has no idea what to do, and Meili then suggests that they ask Shaula, who doesn’t remember the names of people she killed outside of the first hundred, and she gives Subaru a thumbs up, also another thing not seen in this world. Subaru puts it out there that she killed Reid, which on the surface is strange given it was revealed earlier that Reid died of old age, but given the Sigmund Freud content last episode, maybe it’s not that strange, and Subaru used to know Reid. Given that Subaru almost certainly chose the path to the right in Episode 69 that led to Satella’s sealed body and that he thought he had Returned by Death due to subconsciously realizing he went to the dark world, Subaru may subconsciously realize that there’s a split-soul Reid in a vessel with everlasting youth that lies ahead on one of the higher floors since he knows what’s in this tower.

Of course, Subaru name-dropping Reid elicits pure terror in Shaula, resulting in her dropping Meili so that she could cower behind a monolith, and Meili referred to Subaru as “oni-san” as in “Big Brother” when he caught her, showing that Subaru has an easy time with making kids like him, meaning the Little Girl User is a fitting title for him. When Subaru asks if Shaula is that afraid of Reid, Shaula retreats to a monolith further away, and Julius follows that up by saying that Reid as the progenitor of Wilhelm and Reinhard must have been a man of great character, and he was crestfallen when Shaula mentioned that Reid was human scum who liked bullying those weaker than him, including herself. And Foxidna’s look of discomfort and gaze at Julius during that scene again shows again that she remembers Julius and was sad to see his reaction to learning that someone who may have been an idol to him was actually just a brat who never grew up given Foxidna had been with Anastasia for ten years and would’ve known who Julius probably admired from childhood..

It’s after Subaru heard about Reid’s strength that he gets some inspiration and realizes that the answer has to be something he’d know without asking Shaula since those who want to conquer the tower may have to defeat Shaula to enter it, so it has nothing to do with battle strength and somebody who Shaula has defeated in Re:Zero’s fantasy world, leading to him pondering of a different Shaula, and after he saw Shaula’s scorpion tail, that sealed the deal for him since Lambda Scorpii, formerly known as Shaula, is the second-brightest star in the constellation Scorpius and represents the stinger or raised tail of the scorpion.

Now for some more theorycrafting. Meili taking to Shaula so soon and basically clinging to Shaula seems surprising to me. Shaula also said that she has a scorpion tail, and maybe that was what she was using to snipe Subaru with in Episode 68. Given Ram saw a magic circle from Earth anime and manga, which shouldn’t exist in Re:Zero’s fantasy world, when she used her Clairvoyance, whatever Shaula was sniping with wasn’t a regular weapon powered by magic stones, which indicates she may be a being created by magic, specifically from someone who hailed from Earth.

Shaula having an affinity with Meili may also be why she didn’t create a huge scene out of Meili touching her tail and why Meili was clinging onto Shaula in the exam room when they no longer needed to climb further. Meili also never referred to Shaula by her action name, opting to call her “naked lady”, showing that Meili might see herself as Shaula’s superior, not requiring showing her the basic respect others get. A regular human even with eternal youth also wouldn’t be able to smell Subaru’s miasma. Thus, Shaula may either be a mabeast or a being similar in nature to a mabeast. And given her scorpion tail was key to Subaru gaining a hint he needed, this could be a part of the grand plan from four hundred years ago that I believe the heroes are enacting to bring about a free future. If Shaula is a mabeast, she had to have been created by Daphne, but if the scorpion tail hint for the test and Shaula’s outfit having Subaru’s tracksuit colours are pointing to anything, it’s also the case that she has a creator from Earth.

When Foxidna presses Subaru on how he figured out the answer, Subaru responds that it’s not a big deal and that it’s not their fault they couldn’t arrive at the solution since only someone from where he was from could know the answer since legends from his homeland talked about the hero, Orion, being killed by a scorpion, which resulted in Orion turning into stars, and that scorpion also becoming a star. When he had jumped up with Beatrice’s Murak before this, he had envisioned the constellations and saw both Rigel and Betelgeuse, the two stars of Orion that are said to shine the brightest, and Subaru chose Rigel since it shines consistently whereas Betelgeuse, which glows extra bright at times, and he took the test question with “touch upon his greatest splendor” as meaning he needed to choose the monolith representing the brightest star in Orion, and the Great Pleiades Library emerges. Subaru is of course dismayed by the enormous size of this library since as he said in Season 1, he’s the type to like to be rewarded for his efforts, indicating he doesn’t think working hard should be rewarded with even more work.

Now for my theory about how Subaru relates to Flügel. Of course it goes without saying that I believe that Re:Zero’s fantasy world is stuck in a cycle of being destroyed by the Witch of Envy and reconstructed as alluded to by Melakuera who talked about the Witch and the corresponding world imbalance and how he has faced world-ending crises countless times.

Subaru’s name is the Japanese term for Pleiades, which makes it fitting that the Seven Deadly Sins are used, and why since the brightest six of the stars are easily visible to the naked eye that there are six dead Witches of the Seven Deadly Sins in the story. The dullest star of the Seven Sisters is Asterope (Sterope I), which is part of the Sterope double star (Sterope I and Sterope II) in the Pleiades star cluster, and given the role Satella has in the story, it’s no surprise that Tappei made the Witch of Envy a separate personality from Satella, and had Satella sealed compared to dead like the others. And given Pandora and Hector exist, that’s 2 additional Witches of Sin outside of the main 7.

I am going somewhere with this beyond what I’ve usually posted. Michael Mästlin (anglicized as Maestlin) was documented to have mapped eleven stars in the Pleiades star cluster before the invention of the telescope in the 16th century. Michael Mästlin was German, much like how Flügel is a German name. Given Re:Zero’s fantasy world takes place in a medieval-ish setting, I theorize Tappei may have incorporated the number eleven in Re:Zero’s given, unless I’m mistaken, there shouldn’t be any telescopes in this world even though stars in the fantasy world aren’t like those from Earth, so Tappei may have decided to be Earth-accurate in making use of the number eleven. It is believed that 9 of these 11 were Alcyone (Eta Tauri), Atlas, (27 Tauri), Electra (17 Tauri), Maia (20 Tauri), Merope (23 Tauri), Taygeta (19 Tauri), Pleione (28 Tauri), Celaeno (16 Tauri), and Asterope (21 Tauri), which are known as the Seven Sisters and their parents.

I believe in the ancient past, an archetypal handsome, conceited, and overpowered hero typical of standard isekai slop in the moment in which he had to make the biggest decision of his life after the Seal in Elior Forest was opened, chose his lover, who had become the Witch of Envy, over the world, leading to the threat that came out of the Seal to be defeated, but the world was then destroyed following his choice to not strike down his lover, and when that hero made his choice, the final boss of the time activated his Authority to make the world extremely biased towards repeating the general path that archetypical hero followed on his journey. I don’t know the exact mechanism that the story can be biased toward following that path, but I nonetheless posit that it exists, and thousands or even millions of iterations of the story of the handsome, conceited and overpowered hero came and went as the world kept getting destroyed and reconstructed as the Hero of the story would have to fit that mold unless an intervention took place.

Thus, assuming the number eleven is important ’cause of Michael Mästlin, the Authority of the final boss in the ancient past was one that lets him/her control the story path to his/her liking, basically a super Authority if you will. I believe the ancient hero of the time also had a super Authority, although I won’t claim I know what it is assuming it’s real, and both the final boss and the protagonist having super Authorities would make the number eleven important.

Okay, after getting that out of the way, I still have more background content to cover, so bear with me. Episodes, 18, 25, and 38 show that Subaru has dormant memories of Satella as shown by how Puck indirectly revealed in Episode 18 the number of shadow hands Satella could generate to Subaru by asking Petelgeuse to summon 1,000 shadows if he truly wants to kill him, half of what Satella could (2,000), how Subaru used a number associated with Satella (2,000) to indicate his appreciation for Emilia in Episode 25 when he said that if Emilia named ten things she hated about herself he’d list 2,000 things he loves about her, which Emilia herself commenting on why he chose that number, and how Subaru suddenly had an upwelling of positive emotion for Satella in Episode 38 that led him to say that he’d save Satella after she asked him to love himself and then some day come kill her, which shows that Subaru and Satella may have a past history together as lovers given just moments ago, Subaru had been calling her an unfathomable monster he could never hope to understand, showing they must’ve had a very positive relationship in the past.

Al, Priscilla’s knight, in Season 3 also referred to Beatrice as Beako much like Subaru does, and I don’t believe that this means that Subaru and Al are the same person. However, I do believe that he and Subaru both originally came from the same soul. As I have said before, I have been researching the names of Re:Zero characters since Episode 22, A Flash Of Sloth, since that title could’ve referred to multiple things in that episode, and what may be relevant is that Subaru’s dad is named Kenichi, which means ‘wise man’. Subaru said in Episode 16 that Flügel’s Tree was planted by a wise man centuries ago, and while this wouldn’t mean something in a different show, its presence in a show with Re:Zero’s long-term planning suggests that Kenichi himself might be Flügel, and given Shaula referred to her master as Flugel the Wise Man, it’d be very fitting if Kenichi were him. Also of note is that Satella developed a separate personality in the Witch of Envy, who can barely talk, and the vocabulary we’ve seen from her so far is limited to “Love you” and “Love me”, and Subaru directly referred to her as the Witch of Envy in that Season 2 episode whereas when we saw Satella in Episode 38, the dead Witches of Sin were calling her Satella, which makes sense given Satella can speak in full sentences. Thus, Satella’s lover four hundred years ago may have also developed a split personality, who was Subaru, and that’s how Subaru can have a different appearance four hundred years ago given Shaula said that she recognized the current Subaru as her master by his scent, not anything else given she recognized the one depicted on the coin as her master, who didn’t look anything like Subaru.

Flügel 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 Flügel 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 Flügel is from Earth. Perhaps Kenichi literally is Flügel, and it would make sense for Flügel to be Kenichi since I stress that Shaula didn’t recognize Subaru by his looks, which shows Subaru canonically had a different body four hundred years ago.

Satella most likely summoned the current Subaru to Re:zero’s fantasy world, but how did Kenichi get there if he is Flügel? Well, wings are symbolic of power, speed, and limitless freedom of motion, and maybe that’ss how Kenichi, if he is indeed Flügel, managed to make his way back to Earth after being in Re:zero’s fantasy world. Perhaps Kenichi has the power to freely travel between the two worlds because he has a limitless freedom of motion, and that would be how he ended up in Re:zero’s fantasy world in the first place. Given Kenichi is so badass and handsome and ripped as hell, he could’ve fit the mold of the handsome, conceited, and overpowered Hero of the story with the power to freely travel between worlds being his super Authority, and he likely gave himself the name Flügel when he arrived in Re:zero’s fantasy world to help himself fit into that world.

As for how Kenichi could split his soul, he likely couldn’t when he was the the Hero of the story of the fantasy world as his soul may have been indivisible since the story required for the Hero to make it to the end and repeat the cycle since dying ’cause his soul was eradicated wouldn’t be permitted as one of the parameters of the story path requires him to make it to the end to bring about the next cycle, meaning he couldn’t split Subaru from himself then, but after returning to Earth and losing his Hero designation, he should freely be able to do that using whatever tool Echidna used to cut her soul off as part of her immortality experiment since he wouldn’t have that privilege he had as he lost his Hero designation. Satella and this group of characters basically hijacked the path of the story in an attempt to save the world. The reason Kenichi couldn’t kill Satella himself was that he would always have a second personality that arose who couldn’t bear to kill Satella since his entire world was Satella, which is why he had to defer the task to someone else. Thus, Subaru being the protagonist of Re:Zero is to make up for him being why Satella couldn’t be killed in the past, making it a true redemption story unlike so many other stories billed as redemption stories when the characters don’t even have to address their character flaws, and thus, Subaru may be one half of Flügel, making Naoko telling Subaru to be half as cool as his dad in the first Sanctuary Trial potential foreshadowing of the situation four hundred years ago. Thus Flügel, the being I believe to be Kenichi and Subaru from four hundred years ago, may have been Shaula’s other creator who came from Earth.

Also of note regarding Michael Mästlin is that he was the first person to publish an account of Earthshine, the illumination of the moon by sunlight reflected from Earth. Given one of the kanji for Natsuki in Natsuki Subaru and Kenichi means “moon”, it could mean that Subaru and Kenichi are both associated with the Moon and that the Earth will always reflect on their fates and stories. Another name for Earthshine is The Da Vinci Glow, and there conveniently is the Da Vinci Crater on the Moon. And historically, Earthshine was referred to as “The old Moon in the new Moon’s arms”, and it may be an Easter egg on why Tappei has possibly set up Subaru inheriting the torch of saving the world from Kenichi.

Given we know Echidna succeeded in creating a soul clone of herself with how Echidna spoke in her own voice in Ryuzu Shima’s body in Episode 49 and how Foxidna herself is almost certainly a soul cone of Echidna’s given Re:Zero Break Time Season 4 Episode 3 had Foxidna calling Beatrice a kindred soul, which could indicate that they’re not just similar in nature but also similar in origin, then it wouldn’t be a surprise if Kenichi, if he is Flügel as I speculate, also did that as well, and Subaru and Al were both split off from Kenichi’s soul, and Kenichi made his sons his soul clones with that explaining why Al and Subaru both call Beatrice ‘Beako’, not ’cause they are the same person but because they were originally from the same soul. It’d also explain why Subaru has dormant memories of Satella despite it not being possible for him to have lived at that time under normal circumstances and why Al also likes being rewarded for his efforts much like Subaru does, all of which shows that Al isn’t Subaru but that his origins are likely similar, and that something is up with Subaru and Al that doesn’t involve time travel or straight up reincarnation, so Al and Subaru may be homunculi or artificial humans who were split off from Kenichi’s soul.

I believe Subaru, and previously Al, is being put through the wringer to fulfill the grand plan I believe the heroes from four hundred years ago implemented, which included Satella, Echidna, and probably Flügel, to save the world from being stuck in a cycle of being destroyed by the Witch of Envy and reconstructed as hinted by Melakuera in the Frozen Bond OVA due to the actions of an archetypal handsome, conceited, and overpowered Hero, and Satella destroying half the world four hundred years ago perhaps being a deliberate intervention that was needed to allow the heroes of that era to deviate from the archetypal story path to pave way for first Al and then Subaru with Al’s creation being a trial run in making the perfect Hero with Al’s failure being a necessary lesson for Subaru in the future and also ’cause Al’s future knowledge will be important in the future. I believe both Subaru and Al may be missing the super Authority that previous Heroes of the story had, in part to keep them honest unlike those that came before them although I don’t rule out that the super Authority is suppressed or sealed rather than being completely missing, meaning it could emerge later.

Why I say Al’s creation may have been a trial-run Hero is that he appeared to be the type of person Roswaal wanted Subaru to be. In Season 3, Al wanted Emilia to be dependent on Subaru and stay out of trouble instead of being her own person with her own contributions, which is exactly how Roswaal intended for things to go with Subaru with Subaru completing all three of the Sanctuary Trials and making Emilia dependent on him for the rest of his life. Al not having his gate shattered, which is why he can use the magic he does, may show that he likely didn’t save Beatrice when he was the Hero of the story and never entered into a contract with her. However, he may have acquired Beatrice’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom when he was the Hero, and that’s how he was able to conveniently time the opening of the Watergate in Season 3 when he did, conveniently kill the rest of Priestella’s Council of Ten, and conveniently wake up Beatrice when he did, and that’d be ’cause he was acting upon advice from Echidna.

I don’t believe that Roswaal’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom truly did the tell the future as if it did, the omission of Otto simply wouldn’t happen. What that shows is that the source of the knowledge didn’t intend for Roswaal to be victorious over Subaru. For those of you who think Echidna was serious about Subaru accepting her contract, consider the following content from Season 2 from my blog post I posted this year: https://thoroughwatch.org/?p=223

Also of note is that in Re:Zero Break Time Season 4 Episode 4, Subaru was hugging Ram tight when they were both asleep. He must’ve been very worried for her given in Episode 69 they were both in poor shape and saved by a mystery person who they didn’t know was friend or foe, so it just shows how much Subaru cares for Ram. Ram being so embarrassed about that was hilarious. And here’s the link to it: Re:Zero, Break Time 70 – English Translated

A Re:Zero Theory: Echidna saying that Carmilla gave non-human beings emotions could be Tappei incorporating an important real-world problem in Re:Zero

Posted on | by anicritic | Leave a Comment on A Re:Zero Theory: Echidna saying that Carmilla gave non-human beings emotions could be Tappei incorporating an important real-world problem in Re:Zero

I see some people viewing Echidna as this honest person who is forthcoming about her intentions, but from what I saw of Season 2, that is not the case, and as for why I believe so:

  1. Echidna said that Satella, the Witch of Envy, killed and devoured the other Witches of Sin, using them as sustenance, which is 100% false since if that were the case, there would be no corpse of Echidna at the Sanctuary. Echidna has almost certainly been spreading this lie deliberately to unite the world against Satella in the future, and she likely had Beatrice unknowingly cooperate with her by having her tell this to outsiders like she did with Subaru.
  2. Ram previously indicated that folklore indicates that the great dragon that protects Lugunica lies beyond a Great Waterfall. Echidna said that Sekhmet, the Witch of Sloth, drove a dragon past the Great Waterfall all for a chance to rest, which is likely referring to the same dragon. I don’t dispute that Sekhmet may have wanted to catch a break, but as for why the info about the legendary dragon’s whereabouts is almost certainly false, if said dragon really were trapped beyond the Great Waterfall, how would the Royal Family have entered a covenant with it since it’d be beyond the end of the world? It doesn’t make sense and appears to be misdirection to keep common folk from seeking out this dragon.
  3. Echidna outwardly made it seem like she really wanted Subaru to enter into a contract with her, but that just doesn’t pass the sniff test based on the entirety of her actions in Season 2, which had a heavy bent toward Subaru rejecting her contract. For one, Echidna hinted to Subaru that the path forward is to have Emilia take the trials when he was determined to take the trials himself by suggesting that he might be able to give the cowardly princess wings when she (Echidna) had no hope of breaking Emilia outside of her shell even after three days of trial and error, which shows Echidna varied up the trial in multiple ways to try to get Emilia to pass the trial. Does that sound like someone who is trying to trap Subaru in a contract to you when she outwardly helped Subaru get through the Sanctuary arc 3 times and by her own admission tried to specifically help Emilia?

The second and third times Echidna showed she wanted Subaru to help Emilia pass the trials is when Echidna said that she gave Beatrice a blank book because she had wanted to see who Beatrice would choose and her follow-up remark to Subaru rejecting her contract. Echidna fully knew that Subaru is the one who would free Beatrice, and she 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. Thus, Echidna clearly knew how evil what she said about her motivations would sound. 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. If you’re still not convinced, think of it this way: A woman tells you she loves you. After this, she punches you in the face, asks the man who bullies you out on a date, and specifically calls you a wimp on social media. Can you agree that this woman does not love you?

Now for the real point of my post, Carmilla supposedly giving emotions to non-human beings is most likely not referring to insects or dragons but actually demihumans since the term non-human beings strikes me as being a term used to other people who aren’t pure-blood humans. And I believe it is highly likely that this information is completely and utterly false. Why that is the case is that it may have been a lie invented hundreds of years ago to discredit demihumans and eventually make them become second-class citizens. A hint to whether this was a lie may lie in which of demihumans or humans learned magic first. If demihumans knew magic first, humans may have learned magic from demihumans and then discredited the demihumans to supplant them as the dominant intelligent species of Re:Zero’s fantasy world. An example of this having previously happened in the real world is North American settlers weaponizing disinformation with the lie of the native peoples of the land being savages to justify the colonizing, displacing, and killing of Indigenous peoples even though the settlers were often the initiators of violence and savage acts against the native population. So demihumans being treated as second-class citizens may have been the reason for the Demihuman War, which was namedropped in Season 3.

This can be gleaned from context from the anime given there were demihuman-only businesses in Season 1 and how demihumans were drawn to the Sanctuary in Season 2 ’cause of the rumour of it being a safe place for demihumans despite it actually being a shoddy place that’s not very well-run, showing there is some underlying tension between humans and demihumans, if not across the whole world than just within Lugunica itself. And I do believe Tappei is savvy enough to include this sort of subject in Re:Zero given how there is so much unreliable narration in this series since it’s a storytelling technique that allows for a twist like this.

Given even insects in the real world can feel emotions, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me that demihumans, whether pure-blood or not, couldn’t feel emotions at any point in history. It makes a lot more sense to me that Echidna spewed a lie, which Carmilla may or may not have been in on, to ensure that demihumans were discriminated against ’cause if people believed they only had emotions due to a Witch, they’d see demihumans as being inherently inferior, needing the help of a monstrous Witch they can’t understand to be on the same playing field as humans, and even then, the fact that they needed external help keeps them inferior in their eyes, especially if people have forgotten that the lie was originally about Carmilla and now attribute it to Satella, who’s the bogeyman for all the world’s evil. Even if the reason demihumans were discriminated against was forgotten over time, they’d still keep their second-class status ’cause of the lie even if it happened to take on another form. Specifically referring to them as “non-human beings” in the first place suggests an intent to undermine them from the beginning to me.

As for why Echidna would try to ensure that the Demihuman War happened when it did, the answer lies in Season 3. The primary reason Echidna would want the Demihuman War to happen would be to set up the current story with the troubles within the Astrea house. The Demihuman War hurt Theresia in having family members die ’cause she wouldn’t take up the sword, motivating her to truly take on her duties as the Sword Saint whereas it was just in name only previously due to her not wanting to fight. Theresia taking up her duties as the Sword Saint also saved Wilhelm from dying in that war, leading him to train hard so that he could surpass Theresia and relieve her of her duties as the Sword Saint so that he could marry into the family and relieve Theresia of the burden of doing something she never really wanted to but was forced into, resulting in the pair starting a family with the birth of Heinkel, who in turn would start of a family of his own with his wife who gave birth Reinhard. Thus, I see plenty of reason for Echidna to be involved in the start of the Demihuman War if one uses critical thinking given it was established that Echidna manipulated many events through Roswaal for hundreds of years, and causing the war that would eventually result in Reinhard’s grandparents getting married and herald the eventual birth of Reinhard would be fully in line with that.

As for why Echidna would want Reinhard to be born, Reinhard is one of the pieces needed to bring about the future in which the world stops being destroyed by the Witch of Envy and reconstructed as hinted by Melakuera when he talked about the world imbalance and Witch and remarked about him facing world-ending crises countless times, showing that he has likely experienced the end of the world countless times. I believe Re:Zero’s fantasy world is a stuck in a cycle of the world being destroyed and constructed due to an Authority or curse that affects the story path the world is following based on a battle from eons ago when I speculate that the Hero of the story in Re:Zero’s fantasy world faced off against the Final Boss of the time that the Hero chose his lover, who would become the Witch of Envy, over the world when the Seal in Elior Forest was opened, and in that moment, the Final Boss of the time activated his Authority or cursed the world to be biased toward repeating this general story path for all time, leading to countless iterations of the world being destroyed before getting reconstructed by a prototypical overpowered but selfish hero, leading to the heroes in the age of Satella starting a grand plan to hijack the story path to give Subaru the best chance of ending this cycle after somehow finding out about this cycle with Subaru being weak compared to past Heroes of the story intentional to prevent him from becoming conceited since Subaru needs to overcome his character flaws unlike those who came before him who never did.

Reinhard is needed to kill Satella in the future when she returns, and Satella and Echidna are likely on the same side given that Satella told Subaru to love himself and then one day come kill her and that Echidna did so much to ensure that Subaru rejected her contract and to shape the world to her liking through Roswaal’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom and also the Witch Cult Gospels since if the not-quite-Tome of Wisdom was the prototype of the Gospels, they may have been made partially by the same materials, such as hair, nails, or body fluid from Echidna, meaning the text from both may come from Echidna’s mind through magic, showing why Subaru’s being put through the wringer time after time again all to be the true hero that defies the dreaded fate of him allowing the world to be destroyed ’cause of his feelings for his lover.

A Re:Zero Theory: Episode 67 indicates the heroes from four hundred years ago were involved in the creation of the Witch Factors

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After Season 4’s first episode, I believe there’s a very good reason to believe this. Episode 67 hints that Foxidna very much remembers Julius even though he had his name eaten by Roy Alphard, one of the Sin Archbishops of Gluttony when the show previously led viewers to believe that Subaru was the only one who could remember such a victim when everybody else forgot, and conveniently, Foxidna also puts it into Subaru’s mind that it’d be a good idea to take Rem with him to the Pleiades Watchtower so that he could have the perk as being the first one she sees upon being cured, which is showing the same sort of manipulation skills as the original Echidna and Tea Party Echidna.

As a refresher to those who don’t remember all my theories or to segue those who have never read my theories before into the meat of my post, there is a basis to believe this given that everything up until Season 2 was planned at least partially by Echidna centuries ago and probably by Flugel too given he made Petelgeuse promise to not take in the Sloth Witch Factor, which was implied by Petelgeuse apologizing to Flugel, most likely so that Petelgeuse wouldn’t until Pandora and Regulus invaded Elior Forest when he had no other choice to protect the love of his life, Fortuna, and Emilia. A similar event involves how a special font was used in the Frozen Bond OVA to denote a female’s speech regarding a contract with Puck in which he would lose his memories and perhaps other aspects of himself if he entered into a contract with Emilia with that female’s speech being revealed to be that of Echidna based on Season 2 reusing that font. That both Echidna and Flugel both made someone promise not to do something only for them to do it when there was no other choice with Regulus and Pandora’s arrival for Petelgeuse and Melakuera’s assault against Emilia for Puck may indicate that one of Echidna and Flugel learned that sort of behaviour from the other, meaning there was an age difference between them. Alternatively, they could’ve just closely collaborated on things like I have speculated, but these things aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.

As Season 2 revealed through Roswaal and Season 3 reiterated, Echidna’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom, however many there are given Echidna might’ve lied about how many copies she made, is the prototype for the Witch Cult Gospels, meaning that they are most likely at least partially made by some of the same materials, and given how Roswaal’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom was not meant to bring about the return of the Echidna Roswaal knew, the same could go for Gospels in not directing their holders to their goals. I don’t buy into the theory that the reason Otto wasn’t in Roswaal’s not-quite-Tome of Wisdom is ’cause he was meant to have died as Ram, Petra, and Emilia all died in Arc 3, and with that being the case, it can be argued that all three of them were meant to have died, so the true reason Otto wasn’t in the not-quite-Tome of Wisdom must have been something else. As a text that supposedly tells the future and can update itself based on current happenings, there’s no good reason why Otto was excluded unless the source of the knowledge of the Tome just didn’t want it to be included, and if that’s the case, Echidna may very well have been responsible for its contents with the common denominator between the not-quite-Tome of Wisdom and the Witch Cult Gospels possibly being that they are made at least partially from a body part or body fluid of hers much like her tea in the tea parties with these texts being connected by magic to her mind/soul since we know the soul is the seat of the mind in Re:Zero, which is why Subaru remembers his past lives even after Returning by Death ’cause his whole body resets to a prior point, but his mind/soul doesn’t.

This implies that the Echidna from four centuries ago, Tea Party Echidna (mostly her), Foxidna, Flugel, and others from that era were driving events from that timeframe until present-day Re:Zero with a common future in mind with examples being Puck being in a contract or oath with Echidna to not enter into a contract with Emilia or lose some of his memories should he choose to, Flugel conveniently planting the world tree known as Flugel’s Tree in the exact spot the White Whale extermination force needed to trap the White Whale’s main body, Petelgeuse apologizing to Flugel in making his decision to take in the Sloth Witch Factor, Roswaal saving Ram and Rem after allowing for their village to be wiped out, and the White Whale leaving Subaru alone in Episode 17 through someone’s order, probably Pandora’s, even though there appeared to be orders to not allow people to inferfere with Petelgeuse’s Ordeal to Emilia, meaning Subaru was allowed to escape from the White Whale so that he could learn about the White Whale’s Fog of Elimination, inadvertently kill Emilia, pushing him to the point of giving up, and see Petelgeuse’s Authority of Sloth: Unseen Hand, so that Rem could give him his From Zero moment and so that Subaru could plan his counterattack against the Witch Cult.

One big thing about mabeasts that we learned in Season 2 is that they were created by the Witch of Gluttony and that they find the scent of Satella and Subaru, irresistibly delicious, showing it’s probably the miasma of the Envy Witch Factor or the Envy Witch Factor itself that is irresistible to them. Thus, given that Subaru being pushed to his breaking point and finding out about Petelgeuse’s power was all conditional on the White Whale chasing after him, that the defeat of the White Whale was also conditional on Subaru being irresistible to the White Whale, and the defeat of the Great Rabbit was also conditional on Subaru being irresistible to that mass of rabbits, Daphne, the previous Witch of Gluttony, and her mabeasts might have specifically been drawn to one aspect of the Envy Witch Factor that I talked about, either partly due to experimentation (from herself or somebody else) given the weird coffin and restraints associated with her along with the weird shape of her arms, which perhaps suggests she is far more than just a normal human with the power of a Witch and that there’s more to the story of her true nature. If I’m right about this, Daphne may be a homunculus of sorts made specifically as part of an overarching grand plan from the group of heroes from four hundreds ago to bring the world to a free future, and she may be the first the host of a Witch Factor given the signs of experimentation on her that aren’t present on the other dead Witches of Sin from Season 2. Now I’ll have to take a detour before getting back to this point.

In my main theory, Satella and the hero group, which includes Satella and Flugel, from four hundred years ago started a grand plan to cause an intervention that would end the cycle of the world being constantly destroyed and reconstructed by forcibly ensuring that the Hero of the story at some point would be weak enough, as in Subaru, since that’d be the best way for the Hero to overcome his character flaws unlike the past Heroes of the story who I posit had everything come easy to them, and that means the heroes are the reason for the Witch Cult’s founding and even why Pandora took over the Witch Cult eventually, and yes, I do consider Pandora to be one of the heroes.

I expect the final boss to be someone with an Authority that allows him/her to control the story path. This would make Melakuera stating that he faced world-ending crises countless times makes sense if the world was continuously being destroyed and reconstructed before the age of Satella. Melakuera remarking about the world imbalance and Witch suggests that the world’s repeatedly destroyed by the Witch of Envy, likely due to the actions of selfish and overpowered heroes of the story of each iteration of the world who choose their women over the world due to never overcoming their character flaws with Subaru saying in Episode 29 only someone who hates the world would choose mayonnaise over the world being foreshadowing of the choice he’ll have to make.

If Satella actually had a contract in which she shares her field of vision with Echidna through a soul, similar to how Satella can read Subaru’s thoughts and can take action against Subaru for doing so, which would explain how Satella knows what should be Subaru’s save points given it’s unlikely for her to remember the exact details from four hundred years ago of the grand plan, meaning she should be getting direction from someone else. As a reminder why it’s literally impossible for Satella to be future Emilia, Satella told Subaru what he gave to her in Episode 38, and Episodes 18, 25, and 38, respectively show that Subaru has dormant memories of Satella given that Puck revealed to Petelgeuse in Episode 18 that if he wants to kill him he needs to summon a thousand shadow hands, half of what Satella could (Half of 1,000 is 2,000), that Subaru used a number associated with Satella to express his affection for Emilia when he said that if Emily names ten things she hates about herself, he’d list two thousand things he loves about her, and after Satella requested to Subaru in Episode 38 that after he comes to love himself that he should one day come kill her, he suddenly had a positive upwelling of emotion for Satella and swore that he’d save her even though he had called her a monster he couldn’t understand shortly before that, which indicates that they used to have a close relationship and were probably lovers. Given Subaru literally has dormant memories of her, it therefore makes it 100% impossible for Satella to be future Emilia, so Emilia and Satella’s relationship is something different than that. This would explain how Subaru hasn’t been trapped in a bad loop that is inescapable, and that’d be due to Satella’s direct collaboration with Echidna.

Thus, I theorize that Daphne may have been part of, as a test subject, in the initial research from the group of heroes from four hundred years ago on how to create Witch Factors, and this is both why mabeasts and Daphne are attracted to Subaru’s scent and why both Subaru and Foxidna are protected from the aftereffects of Gluttony eating somebody’s name or both that person’s name and memories either due to having a Witch Factor or having a high amount of miasma because it was important for story purposes that Subaru be chased by mabeasts and also be able to remember Gluttony victims such as Rem and for Foxidna to also be able to remember those victims in order for Subaru to overcome the challenges he must face and to keep the world on the path the group from four hundred years ago is trying to bring about in which the world is saved and stops getting destroyed.

All of Arcs 1-5 so far (Seasons 1-3) have all developed Subaru’s character in a certain fashion with Arcs 4 and 5 (Seasons 2 and 3) being Subaru’s greedy arc where he tries to reject the type of person Roswaal tried to fashion him to be, and Emilia as well as other characters, whether they be part of the Emilia camp or not, have been developed in ways that may be crucial to the story with Foxidna being perhaps an important driver of this arc’s events in continuing the grand plan in suggesting that the group visit Shaula and for Subaru to take Rem with him with her selling the latter idea very well to Subaru, and I believe Subaru’s fatal character flaw will be dealt with by the end of the story so that he can bring about a future free from determinism.

A Re:Zero Theory: Two hidden mural birds from Re:Zero’s first key visual could point at how multiple forces are conspiring to save the world from its cycle of being destroyed and reconstructed

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2-Hidden-Mural-Birds

This is the first key visual for Re:Zero all the back in 2015, and I think it could highlight some important things. First, I’ve highlighted two depictions of things that are either birds or closely resemble them. Given this is Re:Zero, these two objects, which could very well be birds or were intended to be seen as birds, could be important to the plot. Of note is that two birds were also initially present right as the From Zero moment was about to begin at 17:22 of Episode 18 before tons of them emerged at the height of From Zero and also during Subaru’s speech in Episode 57 in Season 3 when they hung out where Emilia was held captive at 25:37 before flying over to the government office where Subaru had his speech at 25:45.

Here’s a link to the image of the birds in Episode 18:

From-Zero-Birds

Here’s the links to the images in Episode 57:

https://ibb.co/xK0sXz46

https://ibb.co/v4WgfzWQ

Birds were heavily featured even when Subaru was summoned to Re:Zero’s fantasy world:

image-2025-09-19-170608034

So there may have been an unknown force observing Subaru since he was summoned through the birds in addition to Satella, who we know is always watching Subaru.

Given how important the number three is in Re:Zero, it wouldn’t surprise me if there were actually three forces watching Subaru from the moment he stepped out into Re:Zero’s fantasy world. Who could it be if such a thing is indeed happening?

I believe it is Echidna who is the third force that has been observing Subaru since the beginning. Echidna literally said at one point that she had watched Subaru every step of the way of his journey after he was killed by the Great Rabbit, and while it could’ve been a false statement since she has literally lied to Subaru three times already, I’ll share why I believe that she was telling the truth.

We’ve known since the beginning that Satella is choosing Subaru’s save points, which begs the question about how she knows at what point Subaru can make a difference. A lot of anime-onlies believe in the theory that Satella travelled back in time four hundred years to ensure that this current Subaru succeeds, and although I am adamant that this theory is false I will nonetheless use it to support my argument.

Let’s say that this is true and Satella actually is a future variant of Emilia. How would she know in the current day at what points Subaru can make a difference so that he succeeds this time? The answer is that she doesn’t. Even if she knew how the previous Subaru’s run through as the hero worked, that doesn’t mean Satella 100% has an ironclad way of knowing what’s the best point for him to still be able to make the most impact given what failed last time would obviously fail again while what would’ve worked last time may not this time. The only way to know for sure is with future knowledge for this current world, which is why I’m now proposing that Satella has a contract with Echidna in that Satella shares her field of vision with Echidna for some unknown price we viewers aren’t privy to.

If Satella did have this sort of arrangement with Echidna, it’d explain why she makes the save points she does, and it’d be ’cause she consults with Echidna beforehand, who we know to have future knowledge and acts with it in mind as shown when she turned Petra’s handkerchief into a spectral knife for Subaru to kill himself after he revealed RBD to her. Echidna also looked forward into the future hundreds of years ago given she made Puck with the express intention of defeating Melakuera only for Puck to lose his memories so that Roswaal could draw Emilia into his camp with Puck losing his memories of the Roswaal who co-existed with Echidna four hundred years ago, making him oblivious to Roswaal’s Soul Transcription. Evidence suggests that Echidna has been regularly using her Authority since at least hundreds of years ago.

Now I will draw your attention to the rest of the mural’s images, which show a city split in half with destruction to varying degrees all around it with the top right of the sky having cracks, similar to when Echidna’s Dream Castle shattered and when Beatrice’s Forbidden Library disappeared for good. Thus, I propose that the mural is depicting the beginning of the end of the world. I believe that Satella, Echidna, and the unknown force are probably working together to push Subaru to break the cycle of the world being constantly destroyed and reconstructed that has been alluded to by Melakuera in stating he has faced world-ending crises countless times that may be the result of an unrevealed Authority that affects the story path of the world. I believe hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago in the world’s history, an unidentified hero of the past chose his lover over the world in a moment of weakness, dooming it the destruction, and the big bad of the series used his Authority to keep the world biased towards repeating this general cycle, and it’s up to the characters from four hundred years ago to push Subaru to defy the unnatural story path so that this cursed cycle will end, bringing about an age of freedom from predetermination.

A Re:Zero Theory: Echidna didn’t cast the complex spell in the tomb entirely by herself but with an associate as well

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As you might recall in Re:Zero Season 2, after Emilia passed all the trials, she was able to enter the room with Echidna’s corpse, which had a complex, interweaving spell emanating from it. On the surface, it may seem like she alone casted it, but upon thinking it over, I don’t 100% believe that’s the case if one thinks about one crucial detail in how Roswaal spent four hundred years traumatized by his defeat to Hector.

That detail is that Roswaal, Echidna’s most loyal follower, spent four hundred years imitating Hector’s speech pattern, showing that defeat by Hector’s hand caused him to see Hector as being power incarnate likely ’cause Hector caused him to lose the one most precious to him, Echidna. It’s possible Roswaal had trauma from that fight even if Echidna didn’t die as a result of it, but I’ll explain why I believe what I do.

Trauma can manifest in different ways and even different timeframes. One’s relationship to what/who caused the traumatizing incident, one’s relationship to other victims of the perpetrator, one’s stress levels at the time, one’s mental resilience, and one’s temperament all factor into how one processes difficult events in their lives. The question is whether Roswaal’s trauma manifested immediately or over time.

I know for some people, something as small as a bug bite can traumatize them. Whether one becomes traumatized has a lot to do whether the particular event(s) change their worldview. Is it likely for Roswaal to be instantly traumatized after his loss to Hector? I’ll try to answer this by showing why I don’t believe Echidna necessarily successfully repelled Hector from the Sanctuary without lasting physical injuries.

If Echidna had specifically repelled Hector from the Sanctuary, I’m not entirely convinced that Roswaal would see Hector as being power incarnate since Echidna would’ve defeated him. If Roswaal actually lost his beloved, it’d increase the chances he’d view Hector that way, but if Echidna successfully set up the Sanctuary and repelled Hector as well, there’s fewer reasons for Roswaal to worship him like that.

What I mean is that Echidna’s the world to Roswaal. If Echidna had successfully expelled Hector from the Sanctuary, would Roswaal really see Hector as being power incarnate? Smaller things have caused people to be traumatized, so it’s possible, but considering his relation to Echidna, I think Echidna dying by Hector’s hand or as a result of injuries from that fight would be more believable for the ensuing trauma.

We never saw the aftermath of Echidna and Hector’s fight, but there are three outcomes I can see having occurred in light of my proposing Echidna dying due to Hector making more sense, the first being Echidna died in her fight against Hector, the second being she was mortally wounded and cast the spell in her last moments, and the third being she received lasting injuries, dying from complications from them.

In the first scenario, there was no chance Echidna cast the spell in the tomb. For the second, it’s possible she did, but it most likely wasn’t since one’s mind deteriorates with the condition of one’s body, and I believe it’d be too laborious for a dying person to cast it. The third scenario best supports that she cast it, but if she were dying, she may also not have had the mental faculties to do it given the spell’s complexity.

Your mileage may vary, but this makes sense to me taking into account what a person on death’s door is capable of. Thus, given my theory that Echidna, Satella, and Pandora and potentially other characters from four hundred years are all in on a grand plan to steer the world to one specific future, I propose Echidna had assistance in casting the spell, and that person who assisted is a part of that group from the past.

Thus, sussing out who had the capability of casting it and the knowledge of Echidna making the Sanctuary her home may be a future clue to whether my theory about the grand plan to steer the world to one specific future with Subaru being the designated hero who does what all the previous heroes of the story refused to do, ending the cycle of the world being destroyed and reconstructed, is true.

In conclusion, I know it’s possible Roswaal was traumatized even if Echidna had survived with minimal injuries, but I wanted to explore what I described as a legitimate possibility and a genuine thought exercise. Of course future content could contradict this, but given how much of what the characters know about from the period four hundred years ago is false, I won’t yield easily unless a flashback contradicts it.

For the record, here is a list of info that is guaranteed to be false or highly likely to be false that has been spread throughout the story as of Season 3, and I will use logic to explain why the info is false:

  1. Beatrice and Echidna have said that Satella, the Witch of Envy, killed and devoured the other witches of sin, which is 100% false since if that were the case, there would be no corpse of Echidna at the Sanctuary. Echidna has likely been speading this lie deliberately to unite the world against Satella in the future, and she likely had Beatrice unknowingly cooperate with her by having her tell this to outsiders like she did with Subaru.
  2. Beatrice also said that legends say that the Witch of Envy doesn’t understand human language, which was proven false when Subaru said that he’d rather love Echidna than her, which had her flying into a rage. After rewatching Season 2 a third time, I believe the Witch of Envy and Satella are separate personalities given Subaru directly called the being that manifested in the Sanctuary the Witch of Envy, while all the dead witches aside from Echidna referred to the one who manifested in Echidna’s Dream Castle Satella, or Tella, in Typhon’s case. That would explain why she can only repeat “love you” and “love me” in the physical world if she’s a separate personality and why Satella is clear of mind and can speak normally in the Dream Castle as compared to the Witch of Envy that manifested in the Sanctuary. I’m not sure why there are two personalities though. Suffice to say, there is more than enough reason to believe that Echidna and others tried to pin the blame on Satella for everything, likely to unite the world against her at the end of the story.
  3. Ram previously indicated that folklore indicates that the great dragon that protects Lugunica lies beyond a great waterfall. Echidna said that Sekhmet, the Witch of Sloth, drove a dragon past the Great Waterfall all for a chance to rest. Why this info is almost certainly false is ’cause if said dragon really were trapped beyond the Great Waterfall, how would the Royal Family have entered a covenant with it? This fake lore is probably meant to keep people from seeking out the holy dragon.
  4. Crusch called mabeasts the creation of the Witch of Envy, but if mabeasts really were created by the Witch of Envy, of which Subaru smells like, why do mabeasts try to eat him? In Season 2, it was revealed that mabeasts were created by Daphne, the Witch of Gluttony, and that she and her mabeasts find Satella and Subaru’s scent irresistibly delicious, and there’s no way the creator would make beasts that want to eat her, which could have been sussed out in Season 1 with logic.
  5. Echidna said that Carmilla gave emotions to non-human beings, which is demonstrably false since insects likely existed long before she even existed, and we know insects can feel emotions.
  6. Hoshin was believed to have been one of the founders of Kararagi, where Anastasia and others who speak in the Kansai dialect live. In Season 3, buildings in Priestella were constructed with Japanese-style architecture with uniquely Japanese meals served with different names, and Priestella was also noted to be built by Hoshin, leading to Subaru believing that Hoshin was also Japanese, but given the Isekai Quartet movie revealed Alec Hoshin isn’t Japanese and how he indicated that problems from specific worlds should be handled by those who are natives to it, he may actually not have been one of the founders but somehow ended up being credited for the founding of Kararagi and Priestella since it’s an odd statement to make for someone who was isekaied.

A Re:Zero theory: Echidna might have a deep respect for Emilia and Satella despite seemingly hating them

Posted on | by anicritic | Leave a Comment on A Re:Zero theory: Echidna might have a deep respect for Emilia and Satella despite seemingly hating them

The way I interpret Re:Zero scenes is to look at the entire series holistically. Echidna notably cried during Emilia’s 2nd Sanctuary trial in Episode 47, in which Emilia was shown an unthinkable present in which Petelgeuse and Fortuna had frequently gone out together with them going on a picnic with Emilia on that particular occasion. I can’t believe that Echidna had been crying at the sight of Emilia being happy although if she hates Emilia as she claims, it’d make sense since seeing Emilia happy and strong would be infuriating. I don’t know of any woman or man who can hate someone so much that he or she would cry at the sight of her being happy, and so tonight, I’ve formulated an alternative interpretation as I can’t help but believe that something is amiss.

We know based on Petelgeuse apologizing to Flugel-sama before taking in the Sloth Witch Factor meant that Petelgeuse likely promised Flugel not to do so, and that Flugel may have had more Authority in the Witch Cult than Petelgeuse, possibly being a potential founder. Echidna also had Puck enter into a contract with her in which if he entered a contract with Emilia he would lose some of his memories, the tell being when the special font from The Frozen Bond OVA was reused in Season 2 to denote Echidna’s speech, and these two incidents show that both Flugel and Echidna possessed future knowledge and did what they did so that Petelgeuse and Puck would only take in the Sloth Witch Factor and enter a contract with Emilia when there was no other choice, which shows that they were specifically trying to steer the world to a particular future, which we know was 100% true with regards to Echidna for 400 years before the start of the story up until even the end of Season 2 and possibly beyond. Pandora also specifically said that her goal in bringing Regulus to Elior Forest had already been fulfilled, leading to her returning him home with powers, which shows that she specifically brought Regulus to the forest to force Petelgeuse to take in the Sloth Witch Factor, eventually drive him insane by having him kill Fortuna, and have Emilia freeze the whole forest.

So judging by all of this, all of Echidna, Flugel, and Pandora are trying to make a specific future happen, and I’d be surprised if there was no collaboration or knowledge of what the others are doing, which is why I have proposed that they are all on the same side. If that’s the case, perhaps the reason Echidna was crying is that she robbed Emilia of being potentially happy with Petelgeuse and Fortuna. Perhaps, they didn’t have to instigate Emilia losing everything back in the past when that event in Elior Forest happened when Echidna brought Regulus and the Black Serpent with her, and in that sense, Echidna feels guilty for what actually happened, which would be the reason for her tears.

And yes, I know the big thing I have yet to do is suggest why I believe Echidna might actually like or love Satella, and I’ll get to that eventually. We know whereas other Witches of Sin simply call Satella by her name, Echidna calls her Satella, the Witchy of Envy. We know from Seasons 1 and 3 that there is knowledge about the Witches of Win that have been lost to history with Crusch believing Satella created the White Whale when it was Daphne, the Witch of Gluttony, who was revealed to have created the Three Great Mabeasts in Season 2, and that Typhon’s name didn’t become commonplace with how nobody knew the corpse of the witch in Kararagi in Season 3 belonged to Typhon except for Al. This shows perhaps a deliberate intent to conceal or make lost to history information about the dead Witches of Sin, which is an activity Echidna deliberately partakes in as seen by how she said that Satella killed the other witches and used them for sustenance, which some critical thinking debunks since if Satella had done so there would be no corpse of Echidna at the Sanctuary. Thus, I conclude that for whatever reason, Echidna is very invested in making sure that Satella is the bogeyman for all the evils of the world, and this is likely part of her grand plan to ensure that the world, including Subaru, unites to kill Satella at the end of the story.

How does any of this show that Echidna likes or loves Satella? In Episode 49, Echidna spoke in Ryuzu Shima’s voice, saying “Unbelievable. You see this, and that’s the first thing you think of?” after the first thing that comes to Emilia’s mind is getting the original Ryuzu Meyer out of the crystal and taking her to the graveyard. How this is relevant is that Echidna has acted very clinical in how she presents herself to others, so Emilia’s words must have stirred something within her. We know that Echidna can break out of the character she plays as seen by how she said she didn’t want Subaru to think that she was the only one of the witches who was evil, leading to her taking away his qualification for entering the tomb since he was using that as a crutch instead of genuinely helping Emilia. Perhaps the reason Echidna had that thought is despite sounding/being irritated she respects and even admires Emilia’s selflessness and propensity to help others. We know that Echidna hinted that she isn’t even adverse to helping Emilia with how she revealed to Subaru that after three days of trial of error she had no hope of breaking Emilia out of her shell, which shows she tried to help Emilia pass the trial even against Subaru’s wishes since he had been determined to not let Echidna keep making Emilia cry, and that isn’t something you do for someone you actually hate even though Echidna claims that to be the case.

If Satella was a previous heroine of the story much like I have proposed in my main theory, she may have been a lot like Emilia since I expect the heroines to mostly fit the same mold even if they aren’t exactly the same person, and thus, Echidna might have also respected or admired Satella. If my theory about a group of characters from 400 years creating a grand plan to steer the world to a future in which the world is saved, breaking the cycle of the world being destroyed and reconstructed, is true, Satella might have sacrificed all of her life’s potential to help enact this plan by becoming the Witch of Envy, and Echidna might have seriously respected that decision despite the cost it would bring to Satella. If Echidna knows that Emilia is headed towards her life also being sacrificed, maybe that’s the true reason for her tears.