It’s another thirty minute episode this week but at last we finally get to see the new opening at the halfway point of the second cour. An opening which all I can say is that it’s fine. Look I am not going to give White Fox grief for a lackluster opening which they barely even use and I honestly would say it’s good that they didn’t put too much effort into it. Though my fellow writer informs me that according to the credits they had around 2 unit directors and 14 key animators who worked on it so I guess they did work hard on it? I have doubts on that, not to dismiss the song as the song is good but the visuals are more or less recycled footage with a bit of special effects. There are bits of original content but I spotted quite a number of familiar shots. However I must repeat that I am in no way upset about this as really what is the point of putting effort into an opening that’s barely seen? The content of the show is what’s important and White Fox has not disappointed on that yet.
We conclude the Emilia flashback today and I admit that I expected her past to be much more tragic than this. It is true that having your parental figure die in front of you while the other goes insane is a pretty intense thing for a child but based on how distraught Emilia was over her previous attempts, with it driving her insane at one point, I thought that the freezing of her whole village would be a much bigger deal. Instead it feels more like an afterthought and I can only surmise that with Pandora wiping her memory the only thing she saw in the trial was her yelling die while freezing her village and finding it incomprehensible as to why she would do that. Or that she saw Fortuna and it clashed with the block on her memories causing massive mental strain. Either way this is one of those circumstances in anime which I find to be a little bit of a cop out. Perhaps you can recall some anime where the hero or some other character is accused or admits to causing some horrible tragedy, only for it to be revealed that some villain manipulated them into it against their will? Essentially to feign moral ambiguity only to turn it into a good and evil matter where the protagonist is absolved by the simple fact that it wasn’t truly their fault. Truth be told I often think it to be far more interesting for the protagonist to have truly done it without some one note villain pulling the strings as otherwise it’s like a fake death where the writer wishes to capitalise on the drama of the event without fully committing to it.
In regards to Guese killing Fortuna that was really the expected outcome and the minute he showed up with blood in his eyes I knew full well what was about to happen. Pandora is once again used as the reasoning for his sudden turn along with tricking him into doing it but an interesting point there are some hints of this development in season one as in the scene were Geuse was torturing Rem he specifically points out to Subaru that his actions lead to killing his beloved with his own hands in which Geuse does cry genuine tears perhaps signifying that he is somewhat aware of his killing of Fortuna and condemning himself rather than Subaru. The is also the matter of both Echidna and Pandora referring to Emilia as the witches daughter which a number of people have taken as confirmation of Emilia being Satella’s daughter but this doesn’t really make sense when you consider a few things. For one if she was Satella’s daughter she wouldn’t be half elf but instead quarter elf and from the looks of things Satella was a good bit before her time. Pandora also mentions Emilia’s “real” parents which suggests that she may be Satellas daughter in more of a figurative sense. She obviously has a connection to her but what that may be doesn’t look to be blood and likely has to do with her relation to having the key to the seal. As for Pandora herself I do find her power interesting but her personality isn’t much to talk about. She does share the same disconnection with humanity that a lot of the other witches have, namely in how she honestly believed that having Fortuna killed would somehow nullify the promise and get Emilia to do what she wants. But her general attude just makes it feel like she didn’t really care all that much about opening the seal in the first place despite doing so much to get to it.
The emotional gut punches of the episode didn’t quite hit me like I would have liked as well we always knew the conclusion to this little backstory. I do think that three episodes for a single flashback was a bit too much and I wonder if we are finally going to get back to Subaru or once again delve into another flashback to finish the tale that Ryuzu was telling. I think another flashback after the one we have been through would be too much and if White Fox is wise they will just push forward with the plot and work on the rest of that flashback at a later date. Working on background lore is nice but these last few episodes have provided just as many questions as they did answers. We have a lot of setup but much like the first season’s kings selection, it’s set up for another season and we still have no guarantees on that coming. White Fox’s dedication and effort towards the series makes me quite hopeful and looking at things the series is as popular as ever so a third season isn’t out of the question. Which could have the anime cover arc 5 and 6 if they can fit within another two cour season. The good news is that the light novel which the anime adapts has covered the final part of arc 6 in December so the wait for second three might not be as long as the wait for season two. That said if there is a hypothetical season four that could take quite a while as the web novel is at arc seven chapter ten. Teppei is doing great in that he is still updating the webnovel at a pace of a chapter every three days even with him working on other projects like the anime to air next season by wit studio(Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song) but it is up in the air how long that could take to transfer to light novel and then anime. Not to mention whether funding can be secured for another season. Though that is far into the future and all we can do is follow the words of the count of Monte Cristo, Wait and hope.
I’m Discord buddies with a novel reader, and he says both Arc 5 and Arc 6 are long enough for their own 25-episode seasons and that shoving the two of them together for one season would result in them being badly adapted.
Pandora being able to manipulate what a person sees is a ridiculous power. Given that she can undo her deaths and manipulate what people see, it will be very difficult to defeat her unless the people fighting have some way to counter the possible vision problems and somehow kill her in a way that she can’t undo.
Pandora’s line to Geuse about what happened being the inevitable outcome suggests she might also have some degree of foresight. So that could also be added to her abilities
“if she was Satella’s daughter she wouldn’t be half elf but instead quarter elf”
That would be true if Emilia’s father was a human, but from what we know her father was an elf (Fortuna’s brother), and it seems perfectly possible for a half-elf to be the product of an elf-half-elf pairing (not sure about the rules in the Re:Zero universe, though). It’s true that there are some questions about the timeline, but on the other hand we don’t really know how old Emilia is (elves age slowly) and how long she was frozen, so I wouldn’t say it’s impossible for her to be Satella’s daughter. Which doesn’t undermine your “figurative daughter theory”, of course: my point is just that the Satella theory seems internally consistent as well.
Given that Frederica is only a quarter beast because she and Garfiel had different fathers, I’d say Re:zero’s rules on genetics are the same as what you see in real life, so I believe there is 0 chance of Emilia literally being Satella’s daughter given what we know about Fortuna’s brother being Emilia’s father.
If someone were to say Emilia has the same DNA as Satella, I guess that could be plausible although it would take either some strange experimentation/cloning or Emilia or Satella having the exact same parents, resulting in an uniquely crazy genetic fluke. I could also see another way for Emilia and Satella to have the same DNA that I will mention below. If Emilia and Satella really do have the same DNA, I lean towards Emilia being the result of an experiment which had a yet-to-be-determined purpose as Emilia having a key to a seal must be a development that has some reasoning behind it. Maybe the dragon, sage, and hero sealed Satella in a way that she had no chance of breaking out in exchange for there being a way to free her. I’ve read about a story in which a prison had artifacts that would allow for the prison to be opened if all the artifacts were gathered together, and I could see something similar applying to Satella’s seal. The prison in that story having such a weakness made its defenses stronger and decreased the odds of the prisoners getting out without outside help. Maybe the seal on Satella has a weakness in that someone who is her genetic equivalent could unseal her, although you’d have to force to Emilia to do it since she wouldn’t willingly do it.
In any case, I doubt that this seal will ever be opened as I expect Re:zero’s story to end with Satella possessing Emilia’s body rather than having the seal on her being broken and being killed off by Subaru, Reinhard, and a coalition of other fighters. I do not think Subaru and Emilia will have a future together.
I’m not sure I understand your point about Frederica. She’s a quarter because she’s the child of a human (her mother) and a half-beastman (her father), but Emilia is in an entirely different situation: because her father is an elf, she’d end up as a half-elf at worst (not a quarter), and it seems perfectly possible for an elf-half-elf pairing to result in another half-elf (I don’t think three-quarter-elves are a thing, anyway). But again, I’m not ruling out other theories: I’m just saying it’s a possibility.
I personally do expect the seal to be released at some point: you don’t bring up something like that just to leave it alone. But yeah, given that Satella was already wreaking havoc last season while the seal was intact, it’s not entirely clear what the seal is supposed to seal. Maybe she didn’t have her her full power or something? I’d also add that Satella possessing Emilia’s body and the seal being released aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive: both could happen at the same time (the Witch Cult is looking for a “vessel”, after all, so presumably Satella doesn’t have a body).
Ah, I think I know what you meant now when you said that the rules of genetics are likely to be the same in Re:Zero’s universe. Did you mean that, given standard rules of genetics, the product of an elf-half-elf pairing would have to be a three-quarter elf rather than a half-elf? I can see why you would think that if you were to apply the rules of our universe to the Re:Zero universe, but typically, there is no such thing as a “three-quarter elf” in fantasy worlds: “halves” and “quarters” are creatures with certain distinct properties (half-elves have shorter ears and a shorter lifespan than regular elves, for example), but that is not the case for “three-quarters”. So rather than a three-quarter elf, the product of an elf-half-elf pairing would have to be either a half-elf or a regular elf (though I’m not sure whether the latter is possible): a three-quarter elf just isn’t a thing, regardless of the exact mixture of blood.
But again, that’s assuming the logic of standard fantasy worlds, and the Re:Zero universe may well follow different rules: my point was just that the idea that Emilia is the child of an elf and a half-elf is at the very least consistent.