Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- [2020-07-13]
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Izanagi009
 Posts: 464 Location: Pittsburgh, PA, USA |
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I must confess i'm of two minds of the current Re:Zero season
On the one hand, it's quite tense emotionally and seeing Subaru try to save everyone feels like an old fashioned greek tragedy. On the other hand, I'm feeling like the death and despair is getting a bit much and I'm not sure if any ending to this loop will be satisfying to the audience fully. I'm not sure, it's just a sense of excessive. As for Emilia, not sure if accurate but I'm getting Sakura Matou vibes now: nice sweet girl with unhealthy tie/attachment to the male lead and a dark secret. |
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Seagloom
Posts: 276 |
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Gotta admit, today's episode surprised me. I never thought Echidna was trustworthy, but she came across as downright sociopathic after having to fess up about her motivation for contracting with Subaru. Probably the closest to being immoral among the witches, and winner of the manipulative mastermind crown. She even outdoes Roswaal who is passively allowing a book to dictate his decisions.
It's a pretty interesting shift since there hasn't been anyone I could point to in this series as a potential overarching villain before. Up to now antagonists have been flunkies without a long term plan like Elsa or Petelgeuse; and Satella's motives have been too abstract. That revelation aside, Echidna's big speech came across as a little silly until what she was saying sank in. Felt a little too hammy. It fit with the idea that she was was holding back her true nature but still... damn. >.< I could barely take Subaru's reaction seriously because of that. Can't wait to see Satella next week. Presuming she has more to say than "I love you" this time. The idea that Subaru may not have been rewinding time and could actually be hopping to a new parallel timeline with each death is both chilling and depressing. If that’s how RBD works then it means only one timeline gets a golden ending. Ouch. |
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Yuvelir
 Posts: 1558 |
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I don't know how to feel about Echidna now.
Up to this point, she had been a pretty interesting character. She seemed sympathetic, but also it was obvious that she had other goals. She didn't fall in any place of the moral spectrum because her morality is just so out there, her moral code is "being Echidna", but she wasn't crazy either, as she was very logical and also pretty human. Sure, her final speech keeps most of it but it removes those vital parts of the end: her brain doesn't seem to be that much in control of her desires, making her more beastly, and her human part wasn't genuine, as all her emotions and reactions were fabricated - without enough emotional intelligence to actually be fully manipulative with them (she tries and succeeds, of course, but her clumsiness keeps betraying her and only succeeds because of Subaru's delusional naivety). She is a monster, as Subaru said, rather than the "human outside the realm of humanity" that she seemed to be, which IMO is a more interesting way to write these mystical and dangerous but also humane witches. Speaking of the plural part... well, Everyone Is Here! Carmilla definitely isn't what I expected from the sin and namesake, but so it happens with the others. She isn't as extra as them so I'll take this cute and shy kid. As for Sekhmet, she basically looks and acts how I expected, so she was a good emotional anchor for me. Satella, Echidna and her seem to be the only ones interested in keeping up with the "witch" look. Now, at this point it seems obvious that hanging out with witches is dangerous and unadvisable. Not only because of their powers, but because of their twisted minds, they'd be dangerous even without powers. We've spent enough time in the headspace of Satella, Echidna, Typhon and and Daphne to know how they're so dangerous, but I'm curious about the others. Carmilla's passive skill is deadly, sure, but I wonder what part of this crybaby could be a threat to a normal person. That submissive and "safe" personality must be misleading but I want to know what it is hiding. I need the knowledge. As for Minerva, honestly, this tsundere ally of justice seems more like a threat to herself than anyone else! What part of her priorities and morals could be dangerous? As for Sekhmet... well, we basically know nothing about her. I just hope it isn't just "uses disproportionate force when irritated". And finally. Authority. Echidna confirmed that return by death is the Authority of Envy. This is the name that Petelgeuse's invisible arms, Regulus' blast or Batenkaitos' memory/identity eating got, and they seem to be closely related to witch factors (I recall Puck mentioning Satella produced WAY more arms than Petelgeuse. I guess this was after consuming Sekhmet). So I guess this is a soft confirm that Subaru also has the witch factor of envy, and I guess that he could potentially be the Sin Archbishop of Envy (although Petelgeuse said that only Pride's identity was unknown soooooo...). Now, here's what intrigues me: could the witches use the Authorities themselves or can they only be used by those who get their "blessings"? So far we've seen 4 of these authorities and none being used by a witch (besides Satella using Sekhmet's).
Not holding back, but rather she didn't know what she should be doing. She was hammy because she didn't know how emotions work. She didn't know what the proper emotion for her speech and desires was so she just went full ham. On hindsight, all her reactions have always been pretty exaggerated. Which is easy to sleep on because every character in this series reacts... amusingly to Subaru's shenanigans. |
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Seagloom
Posts: 276 |
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Her passive skill is way beyond deadly when you consider her personality is so disarming. Subaru would've easily succumbed to it if he wasn't warned. On top of that, he had the presence of mind to see through her illusion. Given her reaction that's an unusual occurrence. She could easily kill most people without them even knowing why or how it happened.
I mean, I get she doesn't know how emotions work. She clearly sees them as a practiced behavior to act as camouflage. I just didn't think she was improvising emotions in that moment. That speech struck me as unfiltered Echidna. Pages back I mentioned that she's a bit of a braggart and this to me was another example of it. Echidna strikes me as the kind of person who wants to show off their knowledge constantly, but holds back either to achieve a specific result or to avoid alienating others. Whenever she has been supportive, flirtatious, or coy, it struck me as calculated. But when showing off she seems excessively passionate even compared to her other behavior. |
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John the Dark Lord
Posts: 232 |
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She really is not. The anime cut it, but in the LN when Echidna revealed she could let Subaru meet the other 5 witches, she told him that if he treated them the wrong way, they could be safe, dangerous, very dangerous, extremely dangerous, and absolutely dangerous. Minerva is the safe one. Sekmet is dangerous, Typhon is very dangerous, Carmilla is extremely dangerous, and Daphne is absolutely dangerous. Just to be clear, this is not a ranking of strength. It's based on their personalities and authorities. It's not mentioned in-story, but the author has provided us with the actual strength ranking of the witches: Satella >> Sekhmet >>> Typhon > Daphne >> Echidna > Carmilla >>>>> Minerva. The reason Minerva is dead last in both should be pretty obvious: since her authority is the power to heal those she hits, she has no offensive capabilities whatsoever. |
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Probablytomorrow
Posts: 164 |
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Good on Subaru for passing that trial, as that was a wild one!
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Yuvelir
Posts: 1558 |
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Just to be clear, I wanted to see how they're psychologically dangerous, since most of them seem to be dangerous people even without their powers. Like Satella is obsessive and ambitious, Echidna has no regards to human emotions (or life), Typhon is kind of a sadist and Daphne... is fucked up on several levels.
If Minerva and Carmilla were stripped of their powers, how would they be? All the others would remain dangerous or unpleasant, surely those two wouldn't be able to carry on as normal people, would they? Like, maybe Carmilla could turn off Faceless Bride but she doesn't because she enjoys the suffering it causes?
So those powers they have showcased ARE Authorities. I guess that answers my earlier pondering about whether witches are able to use their own Authorities. On that note, do they only have one Authority each or several? Other than those, the kind of skills that can be showcased in this world are IIRC Arts, which are learned/trained active special skills like Reinhard's super attacks or Emilia and Julius' spirit arts, and Divine Protections which are (semi?)passive skills gotten at birth or some such, like Otto's ability to listen to animals or Crusch being able to detect lies. So, Authorities, do they fall into any of those? Some are extremely active, like Unseen Hand and the authorities of Greed and Gluttony, and thus harmless as long as the user wishes so, while others like passive and problematic like Return by Death (mostly? I guess the savepoint setting is very much active, even if not by the user) and Faceless Bride. I really would struggle to call those passives "blessings" lol And all these Proper Names remind me, the witches take after their sins way more than I expected (specially considering how Petelgeuse was anything but lazy). Sekhmet's sloth, Satella's envy (or rather jealousy) or Daphne's gluttony are pretty self-evident, Minerva not so much because she isn't violent or aggressive, but she seems to be always angry... in a rigteous and caring way, I like her. And then there's Echidna whose unsatiable thirst for knowledge isn't what most people would think of for "greed" but the effects are all the same. So... what about cute little Carmilla? Is her "lust" a straightforward desire for sex or does she take the Echidna route and instead it's more like a desire for affection? P.S.: was Subaru really in danger near Carmilla? Afterall that wasn't his actual physical body as he was inside Echidna's soul/mind dimension |
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Seagloom
Posts: 276 |
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Echidna told Subaru in episode #34 that while he can't die in Windows XP land, he can still suffer permanent trauma. It's why Minerva had to heal Subaru after Typhon smashed him to pieces. Otherwise his mind would think he was a pile of immobile flesh lumps even if his body clearly wasn't, rendering him disabled. If anything, he is actually in greater danger in Echidna's pocket dimension than he is in the real world since RBD won't reset his condition. |
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OrdepNM
 Posts: 243 |
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So, before anything, Happy Birthday to Emilia-sama! As a curiosity, the author actually confirmed something several people thought might be the case: the original plan was to have Season 2 start on Subaru's birthday (April 1st, *insert joke about him being a joke here*) and conclude on Emilia's birthday, September 23rd. Alas, it wasn't meant to be.
Anyway, yeah, Echidna. I think I've been waiting for this episode more than any other, not so much because the material is my favorite parts or anything but because watching the community fall for her shtick hook line and sinker was starting to feel like seeing someone being obviously led into a scam but having no way of letting them know. Much like Roswaal's snow duplicity is written in a way that fools both the character's in universe and the audience outside of it into assuming Emilia and/or Puck must be involved, Echidna's antics are meant to put Subaru at ease and give him just enough to wrap him around her finger, in preparation to popping the question (think just how much she infiltrated his thought process these last few episodes) and at the same time engross the audience by making her quirky, witty and memeable, exactly the kind of things that carry well with the target audience of the show, and boy did it work. But yes, it's all an act. Echidna is less a person and more of a virus that feeds off knowledge and tries to spread in whichever direction knowledge may be found. Consequences don't even factor into her thought process and she uses every stratagem in her book to acquire more of her fix. You can't really put her on the good and bad spectrum because ultimately she's a creature of impulse. And that leads us to Subaru, who let's face it, was a mark from the day he stepped into her Castle of Dreams. His RBD ability is like the ultimate knowledge gathering tool if you look at it from that angle, think of someone going through every possible route and trying to see every existing scene and dialogue line in a large, complex and extremely gory Visual Novel with tons of bad endings and you'll get a pretty good idea of what kind of future Echidna envisons for Subaru. On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have the way she treats those that don't have much to offer her in terms of unanswered questions, we didn't see much of that yet as every conversation she had so far was with Subaru, but we can already get a preview of that in what she did to Beatrice, whom, lacking any further use to Echidna, was set up with a truly cruel "social" experiment with absolutely no purpose besides "hey, let's see what happens" and she can't even comprehend what's messed up about that. Some extra musings: Last week people wondered if Subaru's conscience was still around when mindbroken Emilia kissed what little was left of him. I guess we can confirm it was. The second trial has had what I guess I'll call a funnel progression every adaptation. In the web novel it started as a long-winded exploration of several bad endings. Then the light novel came and those several were pared down somewhat. Now the anime is here and pairs it down further to basically 3 short scenes. I mean it gets the point across in a time-economic way so I can't complain much but during the loop where Rem kills Subaru, in the web novel, Emilia actually slaps Roswaal in the face. After last week's episode I'm sure everyone would like to see that. During the scene where Subaru kills himself in Crusch's courtyard, Emilia must probably be the most confused person in the world. Subaru affirms his feelings for her and they finally patch things up, shortly after he starts flipping out over someone she can't remember and as soon as they get to Crusch's he throws everything away and offs himself. It truly boggles the mind from anyone else's perspective. Honestly, showing the rabbits devouring him might be kinda mean, there's literally no point since no one else witnesses it. "Hey, remember that one time you were devoured by killer rabbits? Well, rooooooooll footage!" I think people can now have a deeper understanding of what happened to Emilia last week.. The trials scour your memories for anything they can sink their claws into and if they catch anything, they can turn your brain into mush. Subaru had a decent time with the first one because of recent events but the second one completely floors him due to his particularities. It's certain that had Echidna and Carmilla not intervened, he would have become as mindbroken as Emilia. Minerva saves Re:Zero with a superhero entrance! Ok, it was a team effort but still, yay for Minerva. I didn't check side by side but that absurd "cart before the horse" speech of Echidna goes on for an ungodly amount of time in the books. I was curious how they would translate "Echidna does long as heck diatribe on how she'll use RBD while holding a Y pose as Subaru sllowly realizes how messed up she is" into something visually stimulating but I'm happy with the results, the last shot with her smiling gradually changing from excited to dreadful was great. Last week I wondered about the decision to add a purple flame pattern to Emilia's eyes, as that's an image commonly associated with the Witch of Envy in the show and would surely confuse viewers into thinking she was possessed again. Now it becomes more clear what they were going for as the shot with Echidna's "true face" also adds the same purple flame pattern to her outline. Please note the differences in response between all the witches to Satella's arrival: Typhon and Daphne seem happy and/or excited (or just childish I guess); Minerva and Sekhmet are surprised, Carmilla is scared for her well-being and Echidna is the only one that appears genuinely angry.
When it comes to Carmilla, the operating word is "passive", all her authority abilities appear to be passive and she's mostly driven by a sense of self-centeredness and self-preservation. Like Sekhmet, she honestly just wanted to be left in peace, but due to her ability, which makes people see what they want to see and attunes them to their feelings to such an extent they forget to breath or wouldn't notice if someone stabbed them, that was never going to happen.
It really shouldn't be a suprise to anyone that she was the first one of the witches to be taken out.
Authority is in fact the name given to abilities connected to the power of the witches, granted by the Witch Factor. Minerva's healing ability is the Authority of Wrath, Daphne's ability to create mabeasts is the Authority of Gluttony, Typhon's ability to well... do what she does... is the Authority of Pride, and so on and so forth. Authorities are something of an abberation of the rules of this world as they don't come from Od Lagna, which bestows Blessings and feeds people's Gates but rather comes from the Witch Factor. The Sin Archbishops use Authorities because they have the dead witches Witch Factor in their bodies. How the Authority manifests is also dependent on the person itself, someone possessing the Witch Factor of Wrath wouldn't suddenly be able to heal like Minerva did as that was her own skill, born out of the Witch Factor and her personality and particularities, while any such person would develop skills more appropriate to themselves. This is why Lye and Daphne's abilities don't align and why Minerva's ability is so un-wrathful on the face of it, they're molded by the kind of person they are. Also, it would be incorrect to say that Satella used Sekhmet's ability, as her Shadow Tendrils aren't necessarily the same as Petelguese's Unseen Hands (they're more well.. tendrils than hands, they consume matter they're in contact with, they can be seen and they can split in multiple directions like the way she killed Garfiel). I'm pretty sure if she could use other witches abilities, she would have surely healed Subaru at that point.
No such thing exists. Remember, Satella is alive in the real world, just sealed, she still has the Witch Factor of Envy, thus only she can use the Authority of Envy. Last edited by OrdepNM on Fri Sep 25, 2020 7:16 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Probablytomorrow
Posts: 164 |
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I interpreted Petelgeuse’s sloth to be on an entirely ethical level. He blamed others for his own killings. He knew the difference between right and wrong, but he refused to practice it, because abiding by a code of principles would take effort. He preferred to give Satella all the responsibility for his actions. |
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killjoy_the
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I don't think he did. Echidna bailed him out. This episode made me finally like Echidna. This is exactly the sort of evil I like - somewhat oblivious to the fact that they're evil, just purely obsessed with one thing. Reminds me of Elmer from Baccano and somewhat Izaya from Durarara. |
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Yuvelir
Posts: 1558 |
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Oh ho ho, that's the kind of myth making that I love spoiler[this very Japanese concept that if enough people believe in something, that something becomes real. That's supposedly how many a god and every "kai" is created, and how the difference between god and yokai is worship. What I take from this story is that Carmilla's passive delusional power was born from the collective violence and self-delusions of a population that arbitrarily put her at the center of them. The delusions gathered around her, she was "blamed" for them and thus she became the Witch os Lust. I love it. The "lust" in there is faint and foreign to her own psyche, but central to her origin. This passive queenly status would also explain Echidna's rumor about her - that she gave beasts the ability to love - as basically any living being becomes attracted to her one way or another. I'm sorry for the poor little girl that did nothing wrong, but her story is interesting. Also, what a village!] |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18187 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Yeah, the visuals on that scene were especially effective, easily the highlight of the episode for me. But then, just about everything that Echidna does in terms of visual expressiveness in this episode seems deeply consequential. I have already come to like Echidna as a character, and this did not hurt her one bit. Her thirst for knowledge always seemed too benign for someone called the Witch of Greed; seeing this side of her is fitting. I'd probably have to list her now among my favorite characters for the year to date. |
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Number 6
Posts: 46 |
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The witches' reaction to the appearance of Satella poses an interesting question as an anime only who's really holding back on reading the WN and the LN. According to the lore and Echidna's words, Satella killed/devoured the other witches and got their Authorities but as we've seen, they seem to be all in this Sanctuary as souls, robbed of their bodies and freedom. So, the question is, do they like their current situation and, therefore, are they grateful or angry at Satella?
Typhon seemed happy to see her but she's really a kid, changing her mood at a drop of a hat/Subaru in pieces so I can't tell. Daphne was roused to excitement/hunger when she appeared and if you remember, in her talk to Subaru, she wanted him to hurry up because she'd rather be sleeping to avoid the hunger. I assume Sekhmet would just rather sleep and not be bothered by anything. Comments in this thread have alluded that Carmila would rather be left alone as well, but for different reasons, and she was scared of her. Minerva was simply surprised and/or vigilant and Echidna was gritting her teeth and has verbalised her dislike, if not outright hate, for her. Having said this, whether or not the version of history I know is true, it seems to me that the only one that dislikes this "confinement" seems to be Echidna because it doesn't let her satiate her greed for knowledge. |
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Yuvelir
Posts: 1558 |
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Thinking back, one of the things that endeared me to Echidna back in her first appearence is the fact that she is a witch. So far I had been working with the theory that the seven witches were the demonized heroes of this story. After meeting all of them, yeah, they're no heroes (other than Minerva) and I suspect that this world's past has nothing but factions of villains and people struggling to survive amidst the chaos.
Oh, and back to Satella's stolen powers, when puck mentioned the appendages, I thought they were literally the same thing as what Petelgeuse had (only better because she is the one who bestowed them onto him), not tendrils with a different function. In a similar note, I recall it being told that "The Witch" created magical beasts. Might this actually be Daphne herself or Satella with a slightly different version of Daphne's authority? |
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