They still aren’t using the opening, this is honestly quite amazing and we have another 30 minute episode that flies by like wind. Perhaps it’s due to the literal length of the Arc 4 that White Fox was pushed to allot more time to be able to get through it though in that case I wish they allot more to Arc 3 as that needed a bit more time to sort out some plot issues. So today we got a continuation of Emilia’s backstory while splicing in a bit of Beatrix’s and Ryuzu’s which is a bit of awkward placement as we now have two backstories to finish but I guess they thought we might need a small break from Emilia’s. I admit that this episode makes for a difficult thing to talk about as we mainly have a fight between Geuse and the two new arrivals. Regulus is a villain I can’t say much about as his general deal seems to be to act like a triggered social media user to each and every conversation. As a character there just doesn’t seem to be much to him but then again I could have said the same, and likely did say, about Geuse in Arc 3 and now that boy has layers. We even see him obtain an unseen hand from a box containing what I believe was a witch factor and can we just bask in the beautiful irony of a villain named Pandora forcing someone to open a box? Well ok if we are to be pedantic about it, Pandora’s box wasn’t actually a box but was a pithos but whatever.
We have now been introduced to our new villain Pandora who is voiced by the tsundere queen herself, Miss Rie Kugimiya. Well I wouldn’t say that detail has much worth to me as I am frankly not a fan of her previous work and can’t really judge her performance here.(If I am to be blunt, she just sounds to me to be speaking pure monotone the entire episode. Likely the point but I ain’t handing out awards for it.) What does interest me about her is that the minute I saw her use her power I immediately thought that it was the perfect counter to return by death. The strength of return by death is the ability to mold any situation to the most favourable outcome and Pandora has the power to instantly negate any changes to the situation. If she is still around in Subaru’s present that would make her the single most deadly threat to him and if Satella had not taken main villain status I would have thought Pandora to be the last boss of the series. If she is still in charge of the witch cult, or at least seems to be as shown here, then Subaru will likely encounter her in a future arc.
But the most interesting thing to me is that this brings back an old theory I briefly put up in my posts on Season one, namely of Subaru being a Archbishop of Vainglory. In Crunchyroll subs Pandora declares herself the Witch of Vanity though in the wiki she’s listed as Vainglory. This shows that we aren’t restricted to the traditional seven sins and are including the two historial sins, Vainglory and Acedia before they were consolidated into Pride and Sloth. The reason I bring this up is because of the similarity between Return by Death and Pandora’s powers. As a matter of fact she quite literally did return by death this episode with the exception being that it didn’t rewind but rather negated certain events. So taking that into account it could very well be that Subaru’s power is not something that belonged to Satella but is in fact the authority of Vainglory. Though this theory is out if Pandora is still kicking in the present day as I don’t see why Satella would be in charge of it. Aside from that we have the first appearance of the third gluttony beast(At least outside of the OVA) in the black serpent which has me wondering as to how it embodies eating. The Whale ate memory, the rabbit eats matter and so the black serpent seems to be a bearer of disease which perhaps eats away time? If we are going in a pattern of mind, body and soul then is the snake more spiritual erosion?
As previously stated I don’t have much to add on this episode as we got the promise of things going to hell last episode and things most certainly have gone to hell. The last scene being the crescendo to linchpin Emilia’s trauma as we are most certainly going to make the mistake of releasing the seal and trapping everyone in the ice seen in Frozen Bonds. What is being sealed though I wonder, Satella herself would be the obvious answer but that just seems a bit too predictable and we have yet to encounter Puck in this flashback. I heard some saying that they think that Fortuna was reincarnated as Puck but that doesn’t quite explain the gender flip even if Puck never quite specified his gender. If I was to make a guess I would point at Archi as he was entrusted with Emilia’s safety and it could be possible that he was somehow transformed or reincarnated as a spirit. That might explain Puck crying when he found Emilia, because he failed Fortuna’s last wish to protect her. The other missing link is just what twisted Geuse into the monster we saw in Arc 3 that threatened to rip all of Emilia’s limbs off though considering how insane he was and the very likely outcome of this battle, he likely broke or maybe Fortuna is tied to this. It certainly would be miserable if Geuse’s obsession with Satella was in reality a yearning to be with Fortuna again confused in his head. Whatever is coming, I doubt this situation will end happily.
I don’t think Subaru’s power is the Authority of Vainglory. I think it’s actually the Authority of Envy based on my theory of there being a temporal displacement on top of Return by Death when Subaru dies. I’ll explain it below.
My entire theory here hinges on giving White Fox the benefit of the doubt and not assuming it screwed up in animating Re:zero. I believe that, in addition to reloading at a save point, reality is warped so that Subaru and his surroundings within a TBD radius somehow arrived at that point somewhere between a minute and a few minutes earlier each time he dies and that reality is warped to account for this discrepancy much like how the White Whale’s Fog of Elimination can erase a person entirely and adjust people’s memories that involved a person that was erased as well as erasing that person’s material possessions. Why do I believe this to be the case? The primary reason is because of the difference between Subaru’s first loop and his third loop in Arc 1 and because of what happened with Subaru’s ringtone for the Whale hunt.
A stone statue of the insignia was shown right after Subaru’s realization that he was summoned into another world, which then cut to a scene showing Felt running on rooftops and jumping across them with Emilia’s insignia in hand long before Subaru had even met the appa guy, which is where his first save point would be. This suggests that RBD not only resets time when he dies but that there’s a temporal displacement on top of the reset or else he wouldn’t have ever been able to see the the first the first place.
Subaru would not be able to figure out that there is a temporal displacement by checking out his phone after a death since his phone resets with him and would show the same time reading every time he Returned by Death, but it would be possible to figure this out by checking his phone during an event that consistently happens such as his first meeting with Roswaal and the mansion’s residents in Arc 2. However, Subaru did not check the time during these meetings, so he missed the opportunity to see whether he experiences a temporal displacement. I will also post some circumstantial evidence involving Arc 2 and some more damning evidence in Arc 3 that I believe supports my theory.
In the first loop of the mansion arc, Puck awoke after Subaru and Emilia had exercised briefly, and he wasn’t tired in the least. They spoke a bit and then Ram and Rem inform that Roswaal has returned. After his first death, Subaru had time to run around the mansion and find Beatrice so that he could mope in the library. He then left the library and met Emilia outside, speaking to her somewhat briefly, and Puck was visibly tired after waking up. They had time to spare since the twins didn’t come to announce Roswaal’s return. In the third loop, Subaru spent an even longer time with Beatrice, got knocked out of the mansion by Beatrice, and got cleaned by a visibly tired Puck, yet he still had time for banter with Puck before the Roswaal meeting. So he wastes more and more time in loops two and three but still seemingly started the meeting at the usual time. I speculate that in the second and third loops, Puck is more tired because he is waking up earlier than he did in Loop 1, which shows there might be a temporal displacement on top of the time rewind.
Now, here is the big one. During the loop the alliance actually fought the White Whale, Subaru’s phone rang for a while before the whale showed up. The sky was also clear. In the loop directly before that in which Otto and Rem were erased by the White Whale, the area was already foggy and the whale had already attacked by that point. This suggests that Subaru’s phone started ringing a bit too early because it had been running for a longer period of time due to a temporal displacement on top of a reset. If the strike force had been defeated, forcing Subaru to reset once more, everyone might have just deserted him because the Whale would have taken longer to arrive on yet another loop.
I believe that the reason Tappei had Russell Fellow take Subaru’s phone after the subjugation was completed was to prevent viewers from finding out about the temporal displacement associated with Return by Death. This is likely something Tappei intends to keep a secret for future arcs, and I believe there’s enough hard evidence as well as circumstantial evidence from the anime to support my conjecture. Given we know that Echidna indicated that only Satella could tell whether the futures Subaru saw in the second Sanctuary trial were real by using her Authority of Envy, that strongly suggests that Echidna is the one who is looping Subaru all the way back to a save point. I think the small temporal displacement is Subaru’s manifestation of the Authority of Envy. Subaru rewrites reality so that he actually gets a few minutes of extra time every time he dies.
Anyway, here are my thoughts about the episode.
Regulus mentioned that Petelgeuse is a spirit, so I guess that’s how Petelgeuse has survived this long and even knew Beatrice. Given Beatrice has been stuck in a library for 400 years, Petelgeuse and Beatrice probably met around that time or maybe even before that.
Regulus didn’t seem too happy about Petelgeuse taking in the Sloth Witch Factor. I wonder if it has anything to do with Petelgeuse actually being diligent rather than slothful whereas Regulus is super greedy in that he dominates speaking time and has multiple wives, which would indicate he has an actual harem. Subaru really isn’t slothful either, and after Subaru used his Invisible Providence, he coughed a lot of saliva out and felt awful. Maybe how your personality matches up with the Witch Factor you have influences whether you’re a good fit for it. Petelgeuse was straight up bleeding after all from using the Unseen Hand, and he works very hard, which might be the reason it took such a heavy toll on him.
Pandora’s power seems to straight up be the power to rewrite reality given that she undid her deaths and rewrote reality so that Regulus never even appeared, which erased the damage inflicted on Petelgeuse by him. Given that she didn’t overwrite Petelgeuse taking in the Sloth Witch Factor, I would describe her power as the selective rewriting of reality given she doesn’t have to undo everything that happened, only erasing any physical damage Regulus dealt in this situation. I wonder what the limits of her powers are given that she needed to speak to make it so that Regulus never came to Elior Forest in the first place, and she needed to describe a specific situation with knowledge of Regulus’s personal life to send him back home.
I also caught a line from Fortuna that was off.
Fortuna said Al Fula, which is a wind-magic spell, but considering that she sent a huge ice projectile, it should have been Al Huma, a water-magic spell. I think it’s pretty clear beyond any reasonable doubt that this is a mistake regardless of where in production the mistake came from.
So to summerise your arguement on return by death not being vainglories authority, because there os a time displacement when return by death is activated. However I disagree on a simple thing, that the authority of a witch is not the same as the witches power itself but a downgraded version. Vainglories power does seem like an upgraded return by death, doesn’t require death to be activated, can alter events in real time. Such as when she used it to alter Regulus being there, changing events like she never brought him which in turn undid anything he previously did like ripping off Geuses hand.
Your time displacement theroy is heavily dependant on the nature of Anime time=Real time with has numberious holes as well really cannot tell how much time has passed between scene cuts.It’s a heavy amount of conjecture and truth be told, even if return by death had a time displacement I don’t really see how that could effect the plot. And well…it’s completely disproven by the apple saleman as Subaru in Arc three as he is always in front of him. So either there is no time displacement or its so minor to be inconsequencal.
You completely misinterpreted my time displacement theory. I stated that the entire area surrounding Subaru within a TBD radius, meaning Subaru would always be in front of the appa guy, is made to have appeared in that spot a minute to a few minutes before the previous time. So no, the appa guy always being in front of him doesn’t disprove my theory at all because my entire theory hinges on the appa guy being there as a constant. The first loop clearly showed that Felt had Emilia’s insignia long before Subaru even made it to the appa guy, and Subaru being able to see the theft in the third loop of that arc shows one of three things:
Tappei’s writing is inconsistent,
White Fox screwed up in adapting the scenes
There is a small temporal displacement, which is the manifestation of Subaru’s Authority, a weaker version of Satella’s Authority.
And I’ve already stated that I believe that Satella is the one causing Subaru to loop all the way back to a save point given that Echidna indicated only Satella could tell whether the visions Subaru saw in the second trial were real with her Authority of Envy, so if the Authority of a non-Witch is a weaker version of a Witch’s power, then Subaru having a small temporal displacement fits perfectly since his power would just be giving himself a bit of extra time to do things upon death unlike a full reset. Thus, I believe that what is known as Return by Death is Satella activating her Authority of Envy causing Subaru to loop followed by Subaru activating his Authority of Envy, leading to a small temporal displacement in which reality is warped so that he actually somehow arrived at that save point a bit earlier.
It seems likely White fox screwed up. The novel is told from Subaru’s perpective and from the quick skim I did, I didn’t see any mention of little blond girls running across rooftops with the insignia. Either way I just don’t really see how time displacement could be used within the narrative seeing as it could only be a few minutes difference and you seem to be saying it has an area of effect which would need to be big for no one to notice the inconsistency.
Actually I have been thinking but really the only thing tying Satella to Return by Death is that she re-enforces the no telling rule. However Return by Death itself is instantaneous much like Pandora’s power. You mention about Echidna mentioning something but ah I wouldn’t place too much faith in Crunchyrolls subs. They did mistakenly have Echidna refer to herself as the witch of envy at one point after all.
Another reason I think RBD is a product of the Authority of Envy is that Satella was the one who summoned Subaru to the world and prevents Subaru from revealing RBD to others. She should not have access to the Vainglory Witch Factor unless there is some special way to access it that viewers don’t know about yet as I doubt she and Pandora were friends.
But my second point was that the only thing Satella is related to in Return by Death is the renforcement of the no telling rule. However what if that no telling rule is a separate curse? If it was then there is nothing proving that Satella is responsible for return by Death or transfering him to that world. At least I don’t believe she ever said she did and Echidna’s is just assuming she’s responsible.
Whoops, I meant to say that Satella, not Echidna is the one looping Subaru to a save point of her choosing. I think Subaru only has the power to go back a very small amount of time much like how his Invisible Providence only generates one hand.
The whole Vanity or Vainglory thing, I’d just put it down to translation. I’m sure they’re basically interchangeable although saying she is the witch of Vainglory would be more accurate. And isn’t this the witch Satella did not kill. Maybe Satella couldn’t kill her and that does strengthen the possibility of her being the final villain.
Also these episodes are basically two episodes of any other anime. This two cour show is more like three and a half cours of content. Kinda crazy to be honest, but we the fans are really getting spoiled.
I don’t buy into Pandora being the final boss of Re:zero despite her hax abilities because of a few things that have already happened.
Petelgeuse’s Gospel told him that if Emilia was deemed to be a suitable vessel for the Witch that the Witch would be reborn on the coming fated day. Given that Witch Cult Gospels are based off of the Tome of Wisdom, even if they do happen to be defective copies, that suggests that Satella, the Witch of Envy, possessing Emilia is something even the Tome of Wisdom, which tells the true future, foretells of happening.
Satella told Subaru in episode 38 to come kill her one day, and given that her body is immortal, the only way to do that would be by possessing a body that can be killed, such as Emilia’s.
I still see Emilia being possessed and dying at the end of Re:zero’s story, and Pandora will probably somehow have been defeated before that happens.
LOL. hax abilities indeed
But wrt the final boss, it kind of depends. Assuming that the endgame for the witch cult is to have Satella resurrect in Emilia [which can almost be taken for a fact with all the evidence we have] it depends on who is driving the with cult to achieve that. Satella could want Subaru to end her but not be the driving force of her resurrection. And with Pandora seemingly being the one in charge of the witch cult, I think there is good evidence that she is the driving force behind all the major events. It’s also important that Satella didn’t or maybe couldn’t kill her. Perhaps she couldn’t. Now sure we can only speculate on this and Pandora’s motivations behind reincarnating Satella, it definitely leaves a lot of room for Pandora to be the main antagonist.
Vainglory and Vanity pretty much mean the same thing.
They are very similar but not quite the same thing. Vanity is more along the lines of pure narcissism. While Vainglory is more boasting and overvaluing your own capabilties. Like how Subaru knows his weaknesses as a person yet attempts to prop himself up to look better in front of other people.