Re:Zero -Starting Life in Another World – 05

So Subaru has started his first repeat of this arc and at least this time he’s quick to come to terms with it. Though it is nice to see that he hasn’t shrugged off the progress he made getting wiped out without warning. But this time at least he’s at least making a plan and that plan is to repeat his actions from before. This may seem pointless but it does make for a good plan as it allows him to look over his actions with more detail and yet despite making all the same moves, things turn out differently than before. Rem and Ram get closer to him this time and things seemly turn out better than before. I believe the reason for this change was simply due to Subaru not noticing that he was making use of knowledge from his first run. He followed the guidelines for cutting potatoes before Ram told him how, he went over to his uniform before being told where it was and other small details that Subaru didn’t notice he was doing but Rem did. They brushed it off with Ram saying that Rem was bothered by Subaru’s messy hair but I doubt that was actually the case. In fact I believe Ram and Roswaal was much more concerned with Subaru this time around as both of them interacted with him more than the first run. It’s possible that due to him acting more suspicious they wished to scope him out more so Roswaal went to the bath around the same time to talk with him there and Ram began tutoring him on reading and writing to get a closer view of him. Perhaps even falling asleep in the middle of the lessons was a plot to see if Subaru would attempt to kill her in her sleep. As for the thing about Subaru being able to speak their native tongue yet not being able to read it, well I don’t really see it as much of an issue. After all you could say that this world speaks english by coincidence but doesn’t write it the same way or simply that whatever translation magic on him only works on spoken word and not on written words. Either way it’s not that important. When America goes to Japan everyone speaks English, when Japan goes to America everyone speaks Japanese so whatever the alternate universe that they happen to land on is fair game.

Well Subaru goes through his week yet again and even manages to do better this time with charming both Emilia and Rem. One particular odd happening was when Subaru mentioned about liking demons more than god’s, Rem practically beamed a smile at him. The way she reacted and her constant reverence for her sister seems to suggest that Ram may possibly be a demon. Or in a world that already has elves, a demon race may also be present in this world and the twin maids happen to be of that race. As Subaru reaches the repeating point it looks like this time Re:zero might end on a heartwarming note as Subaru once again makes a promise to go on a date with Emilia while she is tutoring him. Then the after credits scene happened and let me say, bravo. That scene was really well done and intense. The dark looming feeling of something about to happen and the shocking brutality of his death was a truly impactful moment. This does bring me to my next point though which happens to be a matter of gore. Now the manga and LN didn’t spare any details on the grisly nature of Subarus deaths but the anime has taken a more reserved approach to the matter.

I don’t know if it will be changed in the blu-rays but they try to keep gore to minimum while instead focusing on Subaru’s reaction to it. Truthfully I am not sure what is more effective as the gore does tend to be gratuitous in the manga. What you don’t see tends to affect you a lot more but in this case people might misunderstand about the nature of Subaru’s wound from the attack. You likely think Subaru’s arm was ripped off but you would be wrong. It wasn’t just Subarus arm, his entire left side of his torso was ripped clean off. They did a great shot of showing Subarus pain in the anime but the manga had this one panel which just had Subaru’s despaired face on it and the words “I want to die” bolded over it. It puts home just how much pain Subaru was in but admittedly it’s not what I consider needed. The point to get that Subaru died horribly while still not knowing what killed him. On that matter I wonder, just what is happening here? We have two factors at work. One is a mysterious illness that hits Subaru at his time and causes him to constantly vomit. It’s my base assumption that this is what killed him in the first run. The only particular causes for this could be a type of poisoning or perhaps that dog bite that Subaru has gotten twice now. The second factor is this strange murderer wielding some kind of chain weapon and happened to be going about the mansion’s halls when Subaru was looking for help. This seems unrelated to Subaru’s illness as why would this person feel the need to personally butcher him if he was going to die anyway? My guess here is that two people are out for Subaru’s life but one of them only came into play the second time around. The murder was also exceedingly malicious as they seem to have purposefully wounded Subaru gravely before putting him out of his misery. Taking into account the speed of the weapon, I am fairly certain they could have hit him with a fatal shot from the start before he could feel pain. They deliberately waited for Subaru to writhe in agony for a bit before giving him a fatal blow. The question is, who did Subaru antagonize that he didn’t in the previous run? The likely suspects would be Ram and Roswaal but then who is responsible for Subaru’s illness? In any case, I doubt Subaru is going to walk this death off as easily as he did his last ones.

~AidanAK47~