If the MAL episode count is correct, we have four more episodes before the series goes on break as the second cour will air in January 2021. I swear that the wait between episodes currently is a grueling affair so to have that wait extended into a three month wait is something I dread. But the future is tomorrow and today is the present so one should thank the blessings given today rather than lament the blessing forsaken tomorrow. Besides, Crunchyroll has already begun dubbing the second Season of Re:Zero so I could rewatch the series in dub to tide myself over.Either way the string of truly excellent episodes continues with today’s episode being an engaging experience that I once again lost track of time. What has happened today between the waifu witches and Subaru? Dona tea and biscuits abound so start the kettle and let’s talk.
I may as well use my source knowledge of this one as it is an example of a big change and I feel it’s good to mention the few things that the anime left out. We have Echidna and Subaru banter on a number of things with the primary being the identity of the rabbit that killed him last episode. One of the three great mabeasts whose names are the White Whale, the Black Serpent and the Great Rabbit. An interesting thing of note is that the author of Re:Zero did comment on this episode and mentioned that the name of the Great Rabbit could also be seen as the Numerous Rabbit, which is a more suitable name. Through I do admit that it doesn’t have quite the appeal of calling it the Great Rabbit but I feel that great doesn’t really describe it.(Personally I would have gone with Legion Rabbit) Echidna also mentioned that she does not wish to in any way understand the witch of envy which coming from her is a true declaration of her complete and utter disdain for her. For someone so greedy for knowledge to state direction that they wish to know nothing about someone is a true testament to the hatred she holds. A nice detail I noticed is that the umbrella near Echidna’s table is not around the center but is skewed towards her side of the table, I guess that’s a visual cue to inform us that Echidna is shady? We also have at least a conjecture from Echidna that Return by death has no limit as long as Satella remains obsessed with Subaru. This could be considered a good thing as Satella doesn’t look like she’s ever going to change ship but there is an interesting cavat to this power. Satella only cares about Subaru’s survival, meaning that if Subaru reaches an ending where everyone but him dies, Satella would consider that a win and move his save point. So we could say that the stakes on Subaru have lessened as he can abuse return by death as long as his mental state can withstand it. But the stakes have now moved to other lives and seeing as Subaru’s goal is to save everyone, that does mean that if someone dies in a run where Subaru’s survives then that death will be permanent. To put it simply, now we know that Subaru can never die but confirm that everyone else still very much can die.
We meet not just one but four of the other witches of sin but it’s a bit of a shame as if we were following the web novel then we would have met the remaining two. Still with what we saw the general theme of these witches looks to be “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”. Typhon the witch of pride jumped in to judge whether Subaru was a sinner, a judgement determined by whether he would scream if she ripped his arm off and split him into pieces. No blood on that account as she seems to have broken him like china with her magic. The two conclusions being that Subaru isn’t a bad person but he personally sees himself as a bad person. I guess you could call it a visualization of Subaru’s crippling self esteem issues as he sees himself as inherently broken. Typhon’s interest in Subaru does recall a certain thing where Betelgeuse asked Subaru if he was Pride, in other words the pride archbishop. Typhon’s interest in Subaru could be a sign that he is suited to be a pride archbishop. Our second witch Minerva pretty much has the power of Josukes Crazy Diamond which is quite a unique twist on the role of wrath. A wrath whose a dedicated healer who punches people to cure them. Our last witch Daphne operates on pure darwinism and admits to creating the beasts so people could eat them, provided they could kill them.(The author did confirm in that tweet mentioned before that mabeasts taste like sand so you would most likely throw one back up if you tried to eat it. Making you even more hungry.) Much like the other witches in this episode she operates under a pretty flawed mindset that disregards morality or even common sense. A particular scene that was cut from the web novel was that she gave Subaru a look at her eye which made him feel so hungry that he started eating his arm though considering I do think it was wise to cut that out as having another scene like that so soon would be a bit excessive. Kinda wish they kept the scene of Subaru throwing cookies over for her to eat like an enthusiastic dog though.(As a side note I heard some call Daphne a loli but she’s not. Shes really just a short girl and only a bit shorter than Subaru even looking at the above screenshot) If there are cuts that do hurt the series though it would be the ones that have Subaru making the smarter choices, for example Subaru did ask Echidna in the web novel if she could cure Rem only to have her state that she couldn’t affect or know anything outside of Sanctuary. But also here a shuffling around of events unfortunately had the effect of making Subaru look stupid as meeting Typhon was moved to the point right after Echidna warned him to not touch a witch, only for him to do so literally seconds later. Originally Subaru met all the witches before this and didn’t encounter Daphne until now but they merged the scenes and this is the side effect.
Our last witch to spotlight is the vicarious villainous vixen who has been glimpsed and mentioned but never took center stage. Satella seeming very angry over Subaru being able to talk of return by death has shown up to drown the Sanctuary in shadow as a price for his actions. I will say that if you haven’t watched this scene with headphones on then you have done yourself a disservice and I recommend that you rewatch it here with some and applaud the sound engineers. I am not quite an expert in ASMR but this sent chills down my spine as Satella’s voice comes from all directions before the final “I love you” sounds so close that it’s almost as if she’s an inch away from your ears. Truly that last one sent a shiver through my shoulders. She seems to be out to punish Subaru by killing those he cares about which is something she did the the last time he violated the restriction on return by death. The last scene which is after the credits(I would say to make sure that you are checking after the credits for extra scenes but honestly it should be a given if you made it this far into the show) which confirms that Roswall does know about return by death and seems to have the second true copy of that gospel that he mentioned to Subaru. This does at least explain the large degree of faith that Roswall has for him and his last words are almost a deterministic nihilism. You could once think of Roswall as cruel for how disposable he treats Ram but judging by this he literally treats everyone as disposable, even himself.
As a last note I just have to point this out but if you are an anime only watcher, just ignore all comments on all videos relating to Re:Zero. This season of Re:Zero in particular is just rife with people spoiling the hell out of it. Reddit seems to have put an anti-spoiler policy but as far as anywhere else goes, you are bound to see spoilers for arc 4 and even beyond. It’s annoying really as I see all of this and just wish for the love of god that these idiots would just shut the hell up and let others enjoy the story. And yes, even those who hint at spoilers should take this to heart because people have brains and can very easily guess what you are insinuating. So just shut up or get lost, preferably both in either order.
Last week, I said I thought Frederica’s crystal sent Subaru to the future, but on a rewatch, I saw a speck of snow fly by before he got teleported, which shows he wasn’t sent to the future. He just got knocked out until it was morning. So I now infer that the snow was caused by the Great Rabbit after watching this episode. Subaru thinking back to building full of empty clothes when Echidna said deserted fields are the only evidence the Great Rabbit leaves behind must mean that the Great Rabbit ate every last piece of flesh of the Arlam villagers, Roswaal, Ryuzu, and Garfiel, as well as drinking all of their blood too.
Last week, I also speculated that the mark on the White Whale and the Great Rabbit was an indication that they had an owner, but with this episode’s reveal that they are two of the Three Great Mabeasts, maybe the mark is meant to indicate that special status instead of them having an owner.
The Witch of Wrath, Minerva, is pretty cute, probably the most facially appealing of the Witches of Sin so far. She’s waifu material for sure. I have a soft spot for pretty blondes.
From what I could tell of the Witch of Envy’s appearance this episode, she is not possessing Emilia’s body. You can tell by the colour of her hands and the purple aura around her that this was a spectral projection of Satella’s body. This raises the question of what happened to Emilia’s body though. Was it engulfed by the darkness?
In regards to the snow I believe you are right about it being caused by the rabbits though not in the manner that they literally brought it. In arc three snow was a sign that Emilia is dead and Puck is out freezing the world. So it would suggest that the rabbits killed Emilia and perhaps even Puck.
The author did confirm that out of the witches, Minerva is the least dangerous so if you’re gonna pick a witch waifu she might be one too with considering the others would most likely kill you.
Yeah at this point if you don’t want to be spoiled on anything (not just re zero) the best thing is go dark. Search a character name and the first thing Google’s suggestions will include is that characters name and death if the character dies. YouTube is especially bad at this and so many YouTubers title their videos with massive spoilers either to troll or just for the boost in views. But it’s the internet so it’s not really a surprise.
Also I do like Roswal a lot more after that scene. He is shady but he is not a hypocrite. And thank you for pointing out why Subaru shook hands with Typhon after being told one second earlier to avoid touching or looking at a with. That was odd
Even the official crunchy-roll youtube account is spoiling. Latest video “Satella Appears!” I am sure people loved getting a notification on that before watching the episode. It’s a
tale as old as time but here it’s just way worse. Season one wasn’t this bad with spoilers.
Yeah that’s amazing. Titling the preview as Stella appears. I would get irritated but like I advised, I’ve gone dark on any stuff that I follow. But I do think most people don’t mind spoilers that much. Movie trailers are terrible for spoilers and I think people have just gotten in their heads that having some idea of the plot will be is normal and expected.
Whoa, I’m glad you mentioned that sound came from all directions for that scene. I replayed it with my headset and activating the 7.1 option really makes the scene incredible. Gotta love the attention to such details.
I rewatched this episode, and I think I might have spotted something important. I believe Echidna hinted to Subaru how to do things properly to get past his current troubles. She said she has no hope of getting Emilia to break her out of her shell, but maybe Subaru could do it since he’s intent on doing everything over and over again.
“Even in three days of trial and error, I can’t hold out any hope that she’ll break out of her shell. Or perhaps… you can do it? Since you’ve made up your mind to keep repeating everything, could you give wings to the cowardly princess?”
Echidna implies here that she tried to change Emilia’s trial up (maybe starting from the previous loop in which Emilia went through the trial 4 times), and suggested that maybe Subaru could get Emilia to break out of her shell, doing what Echidna herself couldn’t do, but Subaru mistakenly believes that “Or perhaps… you can do it?” meant that he should definitely undergo the trial himself in Emilia’s place because that’s the mindset he has been operating under for a while, and he has tunnel vision.
Subaru will probably try to liberate the Sanctuary entirely by himself this time, but even if he does, he might not succeed if what Echidna said is actually a hint as to how he should approach it.
Maybe Subaru should encourage Emilia to face what she is afraid of in her trial head-on and not be afraid to face it instead of trying to protect her from everything as he always does.