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EP. REVIEW: Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- [2020-07-13]


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ThatGuyWhoLikesThings



Joined: 04 Jul 2013
Posts: 1000
PostPosted: Thu Sep 10, 2020 9:25 pm Reply with quote
Birriaman wrote:

2. Where’d the knife come from? He mentioned Petra’s handkerchief and then voila, there was a knife. I really can’t make the connection.


The knife is a result of what Echidna did at the end of their tea party. She accepted the feelings present in the handkerchief as payment for him attending the tea party, but then put her own little spell on that same handkerchief, which she described as "a bit of meddling", which let it take the form of a dagger in case of an emergency. Subaru surmises that Echidna knew this would happen, which would mean she could tell what was going on and that Satella was right outside wreaking havoc, so that was her way of giving Subaru an out. Which was smart on her part, seeing as how Satella had no intention of actually killing him, content to keep him trapped in her dark embrace possibly forever.
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Juno016



Joined: 09 Jan 2012
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 10, 2020 11:02 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
Also, it seems that I might end up being proven wrong about Echidna yet again.


Ahahahaha...


Quote:
1. Don’t know about you, but Satella looked JUST like Emilia to me. Even Subaru thought as much since he went into that fright fit when he woke up, saw Emilia, and immediately remembered Satella.

2. Where’d the knife come from? He mentioned Petra’s handkerchief and then voila, there was a knife. I really can’t make the connection.


1. Subaru uses context clues to infer that Emilia's body was snatched by the witch in the light novel.

2. Adding to the above post, the light novel elaborated a bit more. For instance, the light from the handkerchief actually repelled the shadow away from his body for a few seconds, allowing him just enough mobility and sanity to infer what was happening to him, realize the dagger was Echidna's trick, and make the split decision to stab himself with it.
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Yuvelir



Joined: 06 Jan 2015
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 11, 2020 2:51 am Reply with quote
andramus wrote:
Od has been brought up a few times before. Even early in season one. To be honest even reading the novels I didn't fully understand what it was supposed to be but I found this description on a Wiki that might help.

Od (オド): Od is life energy that dwells inside of a living being from birth, making it the opposite of mana, which is magical energy that exists in the environment. It varies from person to person in terms of quantity and size which represents the lifespan of an individual. It also serves the purpose of storing some portion of mana that flows through the gate, so having a large capacity is especially beneficial to those who can use magic. Od can be used in place of mana to cast magic, however unlike mana, using Od is like using your own lifespan, and so it isn't recommended.

Huh. I always understood Od to be some sort of mana bladder. And Puck having it chockfull of mana in Memory Snow meant he had to wildly release mana.
I guess I got it partially mixed with the Gate.
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Agent355



Joined: 12 Dec 2008
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Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready...
PostPosted: Fri Sep 11, 2020 4:02 am Reply with quote
Lots of questions after episode 35:
—Even when Satella causes the events leading to Subaru’s demise, Return by Death takes him back before those events. How much control does Satella have over the cursed power she gifted Subaru? Does this mean all witches have limits to the powers they bestow?

—Who was the original Ryuzu Meyer, and what was her connection to Echidna?

—What is Garfiel’s deal? He changes demeanor in every loop.

—I’m assuming Subaru has chosen the “flee/hide” option for dealing with the mansion assassinations. He convinced Frederica and Petra to leave and hide (presumably taking Rem with them), and now all he has to do is convince Beatrice to leave the mansion. It might work to at least get him to a different save point without anyone dying, but that assassin still has a job to complete...
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Yuvelir



Joined: 06 Jan 2015
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 11, 2020 4:20 am Reply with quote
Agent355 wrote:
—I’m assuming Subaru has chosen the “flee/hide” option for dealing with the mansion assassinations. He convinced Frederica and Petra to leave and hide (presumably taking Rem with them), and now all he has to do is convince Beatrice to leave the mansion. It might work to at least get him to a different save point without anyone dying, but that assassin still has a job to complete...

He's fully intent on dying, he's just trying to minimize casualties.
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Taederias



Joined: 20 May 2018
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 11, 2020 4:38 am Reply with quote
Quote:
I can never trust the good intentions of a character whose ultimate goal is immortality.

Putting aside whether we know it's "the ultimate" goal, on the other hand I could never trust the sanity of someone with that much power whose goal isn't immortality.

Or to be more accurate, if someone that powerful doesn't even attempt immortality, doesn't have it as a goal then surely that must not be normal. I mean, IRL we don't have such convenient magic and solving the issue of aging can not realistically be done by any single person, so you don't regularly see people have that as a stated goal; but if it were within reach then of course I too would want to be immortal.
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OrdepNM



Joined: 14 Nov 2018
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 11, 2020 6:04 am Reply with quote
Yuvelir wrote:
Immortality through cloning. I guess you can't know literally everything if things are still happening when you die.
Although there's the cruelty of trying to overwrite the sould of Ryuzu Mayer. Or was the first one also manufactures? What's the deal with "Mayer" sounding so similar to Mathers? Why a half-elf specifically?


Ryuzu Meyer was a real person that Echidna put in that crystal stasis thing. She then used her being as the basis for the empty husk clones she was researching, with the intended goal to create a good enough vessel to fit her soul, so it's not that Echidna was trying to replace Ryuzu's soul with her own, the copies she created already came soulless. The problem she ran into is that her soul was too grand for the intended vessel so it would overflow, the first time she tried she ended up creating something altogether different. By the time she died, Echidna was looking into soul compression but then, as they say time ran out. (this last part was skipped content from the adapted volume).

Another thing that bears consideration is something Garfiel said in episode 3. He scoffed at the name 'Sanctuary' and referred to the place as "just a dead-end testing ground". This hints at the true purpose of the Sanctuary, a secret facility (the barrier makes people who don't know about the sanctuary get lost in the woods) for a Echidna to conduct this line of research.

Yuvelir wrote:
I had to double-check, but she still looks exactly like Emilia to me. Same ears, same eyes, same bangs, same voice, same every recognizable feature under that heavy filtering.


I meant that her clothes were different (triangle pattern going from her chest area to her neck, spiky pattern choker, different hair accessory, etc). Given that the books said nothing about clothing and the agreed upon explanation is that Satella possessed Emilia's body, I was expecting to see Emilia's clothes and not just her likeness. Granted, given everything the Witch does, on the spot wardrobe change ala magical girl is definitely within the realm of possibility and things we'll see later could explain how it came about, but it suprised me enough to check the books to see if I overlooked something and there I noticed that I indeed overlooked that Subaru himself offers an alternative theory, that the Witch used her time and place bending powers on herself. This, being true (its just a theory tough) would imply that the seal holding the witch in place is less capable of holding her than people assume.

Yuvelir wrote:

Huh. I always understood Od to be some sort of mana bladder. And Puck having it chockfull of mana in Memory Snow meant he had to wildly release mana.
I guess I got it partially mixed with the Gate.


Calling the Od a mana bladder isn't all that wrong, with the added bit that it also houses your life essence. There is an additional od called Od Laguna that could be described as the od of the world and in which all mana returns to periodically. Besides using this mana to give a degree of stability to the world (if the Od Laguna runs short, natural catastrophes like tornados, earthquakes and draughts become more frequent), mana flows from the Od Laguna to every od connected to it, at a rate corresponding to the person's Gate (bigger Gate, more mana flowing in). When mana is expelled from the Od through the same gate, it can be altered to create magic or it can power magic stones (that's actually how stoves work in ReZero, toilets too... Yes someone asked). Once spent, the mana lingers in the atmosphere where it can be harnessed by spirits and spirit users (spirits are not connected to the Od Laguna thus need atmospheric mana or a contracted spirit user's borrowed mana, tough Beatrice can also drain mana from people) but will otherwise flow back to the Od Laguna restarting the circle.

Agent355 wrote:
Lots of questions after episode 35:
—Even when Satella causes the events leading to Subaru’s demise, Return by Death takes him back before those events. How much control does Satella have over the cursed power she gifted Subaru? Does this mean all witches have limits to the powers they bestow


Just my interpretation but I assume she just didn't deem this result worthy of having it stick. She didn't set out to completely ruin the sanctuary and kill everyone permanently, but rather to make a show of force and prove to Subaru that nowhere, not even Echidna's castle of dreams, is safe to talk about RBD in.
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Yuvelir



Joined: 06 Jan 2015
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 11, 2020 6:37 am Reply with quote
OrdepNM wrote:
Ryuzu Meyer was a real person that Echidna put in that crystal stasis thing. She then used her being as the basis for the empty husk clones she was researching, with the intended goal to create a good enough vessel to fit her soul, so it's not that Echidna was trying to replace Ryuzu's soul with her own, the copies she created already came soulless. The problem she ran into is that her soul was too grand for the intended vessel so it would overflow, the first time she tried she ended up creating something altogether different. By the time she died, Echidna was looking into soul compression but then, as they say time ran out. (this last part was skipped content from the adapted volume).


OrdepNM wrote:
Just my interpretation but I assume she just didn't deem this result worthy of having it stick. She didn't set out to completely ruin the sanctuary and kill everyone permanently, but rather to make a show of force and prove to Subaru that nowhere, not even Echidna's castle of dreams, is safe to talk about RBD in.

Such semi-conscious choices would mean that the Satella we saw strolling wasn't so much her as some crazed remnant of her obsession.
On the other hand, Stella being in that delusional state would also mean that she isn't sane enough to make strategic choices about her blessings/curses.

That said, the removal of that "blessing" was up in the air until it did not happen and now I'm even more intrigued about how the save points are set.
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Juno016



Joined: 09 Jan 2012
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 11, 2020 7:54 am Reply with quote
Yuvelir wrote:
now I'm even more intrigued about how the save points are set.


Echidna explained the save points as being points where Subaru isn't "trapped" by death, meaning they'll be as early as necessary for him to be able to figure out how to escape death and move on, and he will never be stuck in an impossible loop to overcome.

I'm personally of the mind that Satella is still in control of the power and can take it away if she wants, but some kind of indecisiveness (as in, she has a very small bit of sanity left to "respect" Subaru's choice as long as he was still in her clutches) caused her to hesitate to take it away at that moment. I agree with OrdepNM that her ultimate goal wasn't to give up on Subaru's future by melting him into that hive consciousness, but rather to scare him. She just went overboard in that very moment because he angered her talking about the other witches.
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Showsni



Joined: 13 May 2008
Posts: 641
PostPosted: Fri Sep 11, 2020 9:07 am Reply with quote
One thing I wonder about this loop is whether Subaru's save point updates to after the second tea party. If not, then Echidna et al would lose the knowledge of the second tea party (if he dies again), as currently the reset point is set directly after the first tea party.
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OrdepNM



Joined: 14 Nov 2018
Posts: 242
PostPosted: Fri Sep 11, 2020 9:28 am Reply with quote
Between this last incident and the time she crushed Emilia's heart, I think there's 2 things we can deduce about the Witch of Envy: she's conscious of the punishments she administers and fully capable of escalating if necessary and 2) seal or no seal, she's fully capable of taking form in the open world and restart her swallowing spree (tough I suppose we can question her sanity, both when taking this decision or in general). This tells me that trapping Subaru into the hivemind consciousness is likely not a result she wants or deems appropriate. If that wasn't the case, nothing seems to keep Satella from just swallowing him much sooner than this, or even jusy try manifesting again right away as the steel handkerchief enchantment wouldn't be kept after a RBD.

This tells me that Satella actually wants Subaru to achieve something that is currently out of grasp, ence RBD and the strategic placing of save points at places that allow Subaru to strengthen his resolve over multiple tries without actually setting him up to failure. Thus, wether it was a rash decision, a crazed decision, a scare tactic or something else altogether, I doubt that trapping Subaru in her hiveworld would have been permanent, tough I suppose we may never know how she intended to re-set Subaru on her desired path.

BTW, don't forget to watch ReZero Break Time this week for some extra cute Petra antics. It's on Kadokawa's YT channel and translated in the comments.
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Yuvelir



Joined: 06 Jan 2015
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 11, 2020 9:51 am Reply with quote
Juno016 wrote:
Echidna explained the save points as being points where Subaru isn't "trapped" by death, meaning they'll be as early as necessary for him to be able to figure out how to escape death and move on, and he will never be stuck in an impossible loop to overcome.

Well, yes, that explains the intent of the save points but it doesn't fully explain how.
I mean, for those specific points to work that way, Satella (or whatever is acting as her agent) needs to know that Subaru will be in mortal danger soon and that it's still far away enough to work it out. Which means that Stella has some powers that are more impressive than "can lead the world to ruin". It means that either:
1-She has extreme clairvoyance about the future, being able to know its ramifications and from where it's possible to reach the optimal conclussion. It isn't too farfetched, considering the gospells basically tell the future.
2-compatible with 1, she actually exists out of time, living both in the present, past and future all at once (which might explain her present obsession with Subaru?) which is quite some god-level existence.
3-She can time travel and is pretty much bringing knowledge from the future back into the past. Although this feels like a more hands-on approach to setting the save points.

On a tangent about Satella's consciousness, her warnings/punishment don't feel so much like a conscious choice ("Subaru is blabbering out right now, must scare him") as a curse placed on top of a curse, so it triggers automatically wehenever the first curse is alluded to, making itself stronger the stronger the transgression is, funneling out more and more of Satella's smelly dark magic.
What were the rules about curses in this world again? It also is kind of a smart move: if the second curse prevents Subaru from letting anyone know about the first curse, then he can't have someone like Beatrice removing it.

Showsni wrote:
One thing I wonder about this loop is whether Subaru's save point updates to after the second tea party. If not, then Echidna et al would lose the knowledge of the second tea party (if he dies again), as currently the reset point is set directly after the first tea party.

We already know that Echidna knows what Subaru knows.
In the previous episode, we learned that Echidna has witnessed everything that Subaru has been going through across several timelines, including his deaths and Emilia's many failed attemps.
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OrdepNM



Joined: 14 Nov 2018
Posts: 242
PostPosted: Fri Sep 11, 2020 10:25 am Reply with quote
Yuvelir wrote:

Well, yes, that explains the intent of the save points but it doesn't fully explain how.
I mean, for those specific points to work that way, Satella (or whatever is acting as her agent) needs to know that Subaru will be in mortal danger soon and that it's still far away enough to work it out. Which means that Stella has some powers that are more impressive than "can lead the world to ruin". It means that either:
1-She has extreme clairvoyance about the future, being able to know its ramifications and from where it's possible to reach the optimal conclussion. It isn't too farfetched, considering the gospells basically tell the future.
2-compatible with 1, she actually exists out of time, living both in the present, past and future all at once (which might explain her present obsession with Subaru?) which is quite some god-level existence.
3-She can time travel and is pretty much bringing knowledge from the future back into the past. Although this feels like a more hands-on approach to setting the save points.


So, this was changed in the anime but in the LN, the most egregious save point that was placed so far was right by Rem's bedside. Subaru doesn't find her in the courtyard but already in bed and when he's left alone in her bedroom he stabs himself with a knife.. only to end up sitting in that exact same place maybe a minute before. While that does sound ridiculously gamey if you don't think about it much - and thus why they probably changed it to the carriage, it does sorta imply that someone has its finger on the quicksave button or, like you said, knows the future and plans accordingly. That said, I still believe the save points are set by Satella as the ideal jump points for Subaru to strengthen his resolve and grow as a person. Like, it wouldn't make sense to have him beat the White Whale again after it was defeated as Subaru learned all he could about himself from that encounter, it would just be retreading, so she allowed the save point to move to after the fight. Ditto with the first trial. I think Satella sets these save points and doesn't allow Subaru to move past them until he grasps whichever truths she wants him to grasp. She likewise blocked his attempt at redoing the last few days and save Rem so he wouldn't use her as a clutch anymore and would grow on his own.

Yuvelir wrote:
On a tangent about Satella's consciousness, her warnings/punishment don't feel so much like a conscious choice ("Subaru is blabbering out right now, must scare him") as a curse placed on top of a curse, so it triggers automatically wehenever the first curse is alluded to, making itself stronger the stronger the transgression is, funneling out more and more of Satella's smelly dark magic.
What were the rules about curses in this world again? It also is kind of a smart move: if the second curse prevents Subaru from letting anyone know about the first curse, then he can't have someone like Beatrice removing it.


Curses require being placed by physical contact and can only be safely removed before they're activated and/or by killing the caster. Curses are also the product of Shamans, which fwiw, Satella is not known to have been. I admit its an interesting theory tough, if we stretch the definition of what "physical contact" means alittle.
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Yuvelir



Joined: 06 Jan 2015
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 11, 2020 11:21 am Reply with quote
OrdepNM wrote:
Curses require being placed by physical contact and can only be safely removed before they're activated and/or by killing the caster. Curses are also the product of Shamans, which fwiw, Satella is not known to have been. I admit its an interesting theory tough, if we stretch the definition of what "physical contact" means alittle.

Well, the beasts created by Daphne and attributed to "the Witch" can also place curses, so I assume that even is that's the common setting, that "skill" might not be so strongly limited to that "character class". Although Re:Zero in particular might have its own term for other variants of what's commonly known as a "curse".
Although if they're indeed shamanistic curses, I guess Subaru is out of luck as both have been activated several times.
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John the Dark Lord



Joined: 19 Jun 2020
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 11, 2020 4:02 pm Reply with quote
Yuvelir wrote:

We already know that Echidna knows what Subaru knows.
In the previous episode, we learned that Echidna has witnessed everything that Subaru has been going through across several timelines, including his deaths and Emilia's many failed attemps.


Correction: Echidna can't see timelines. She knows what Subaru knows because she can read his memories. In the LN at the start of the second tea party, Subaru even noted that the hint was right in front of him: the first test would be possible only if Echidna could see the memories of others.

I know this sounds like a pointless distinction since the final result is still the same - Echidna knows everything Subaru knows - but you should keep this in mind for later. Otherwise something she will say in the last episode of this cour will come across as nonsensical.
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