Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- [2020-07-13]
|
Goto page Previous Next Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Showsni
 Posts: 641 |
|
|||||||||||||
In the web novel, each of the dead witches gets a little snapshot of their history in arc 6 as a kind of aside. To wit; Typhon: spoiler[Her father's job was an executioner. He saw the world in terms of black and white, good and evil, and tried to instigate the same worldview in his daughter, by making her watch all of his executions. So she determined that sins needed a fitting punishment; but she had no way of knowing what was a sin. One day she broke her father's cup, and confessed her sin to her father, expecting to be beheaded; but he told her owning up to it was the right thing to do, and forgave her. So she realised the only balance to measure the weight of a sin was inside the sinner's own heart; people knew when they had done wrong. So she went around questioning people, and always found the same answer; sins worthy of punishment lived in their hearts. So she tore them to pieces (her father included) and moved on. The 『Witch of Pride』 questioned sins, delivered punishment, and cast judgement upon sinners.] Minerva: spoiler[She was always sensitive and crying due to the strife and war she saw in the world around her, cursing her own lack of strength to make a difference. So she struggled to her utmost to become strong, to gain the strength to stop people fighting. Finally she stood on the pinnacle of strength, but the more she fought against people who raised their swords the more came, until she entered a spiral of violence, with blood running down her arms. Eventually she despaired, and sank into a madness of rage against the world that refused to stop fighting and robbed people of their lives. She dived into the fray and punched everyone in the face, and for the first time made a difference, healing their wounds and returning life to the earth as she robbed their battles of meaning. People's tears stopped and they praised her but she had already moved on to find other people to save, until no one would cry anymore and her own tears could finally stop. The『Witch of Wrath』, who had declared war on sadness itself, continued to run ever, evermore.] Sekhmet: spoiler[She was born into a clan that desired nothing more than the second coming of its founder, who they revered as a god, and a return to their prosperity. To that end they carried out all sorts of inhumane atrocities and taboo rituals, but the child given birth to bitterly disappointed them by failing to be the second coming they desired, so they abandoned her to the wild. Despite not even being able to talk she managed to survive, catching and eating animals, drinking muddy water, and grew to adulthood in the wild. Rumours spread of the wild woman, and men came and captured her. She lost the need to struggle to survive and spent days merely living exposed to their desires. She gained language, emotions and humanity; they treated her as their precious jewel, adorning her body. One day she brought them all together and snapped their necks, killing them all in an instant. Then she returned to her home clan and wiped them all out to the last member, smiling from her heart for the first time as she heard their weeping and wails. Leaving their bodies unburied she returned to the home the men had kept her in and courteously buried all the men, then relaxed in utter bliss; nobody would interfere with her now, so she can fall asleep. The 『Witch of Sloth』 continued to indulge in everlasting inactivity, untiring peace.] Daphne: spoiler[The governor of the area fell victim to an incurable disease, so he gathered lots of people to his castle and carried out taboo experiments to try and prolong his life. One of the people was Daphne; all her memories were torn away by the experiments, but he managed to succeed in his experiments on her, and was delighted at his results. When she became aware, she was alone in the castle, starving to death, but unable to die, and tied by constraints. She ate everything she could, the furniture, carpet, stone walls, and vomited it up, and ate it again, constantly on the verge of death by starvation but unable to die. Finally, she saw an illusion of a horde of dogs; so she devoured them, then vomited them up, then devoured them... When she noticed, the castle was full of repulsive beasts. They spent days in eating and being eaten by each other, until at some point the beasts had eaten her constraints, so she crawled out of the castle, and the beasts left it too, flooding everywhere on the earth. The 『Witch of Gluttony』 gave birth to the horde of Witch Beasts, and continued to starve from inexhaustible starvation.] Carmilla: spoiler[She was an ordinary village girl from a loving home. One day powerful men came to the village and desired her; but the villagers put together an army to get her back, and burned down the stronghold of the men with a troop led by her fiancé. People in the surroundings armed themselves against them, and more people rose up claiming it was for her sake, until the country, neighbouring countries, the whole land were ravaged by the war. Her existence was spread as the origin of it all, and her renown was touted as a beautiful woman of the heavens. There were cheers when she raised a hand, stampedes if she appeared in public, tears of joy if she spoke a word, with no one actually looking at she herself. Finally the land was overthrown, and amidst the piles of corpses in the burning capital, atop the captured castle her fiancé knelt and declared all this was done for her. She left without a word; she had merely wanted the original happiness in her quiet village. But wherever she went everyone loved her, desired her, was crushed by her and brought to ruin, without really seeing her. The『Witch of Lust』sought the love she lost, and continued to be loved by the love summoning ruin.] Echidna: spoiler[She worried about everyone in the world; to her, nothing was hidden from view, but everyone was a struggling child needing protection. It would be easy to subjugate the world, but instead she sought to shelter it from harm. But she was unable to save everyone; she could see every solution, but lacked a way to solve every problem. So she fell into despair as she realised it was impossible to save everyone. But then she realised, she just needed to find other who shared her wish to help her. Even if she had to walk a path paved with corpses and sacrifices, she believed she could prevail, to gain a sufficient amount of knowledge to save everyone. The [Witch of Greed] bled avarice in the wake of her yearning.] |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
ThatGuyWhoLikesThings
Posts: 1008 |
|
|||||||||||||
I don't really understand why people are posting information from way later in the series that has very little to with what's going on right now. Anime viewers won't even get to Arc 6 for at least another 3-4 years, assuming we even get further seasons. Theorizing is cool but this isn't that. |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
OrdepNM
 Posts: 243 |
|
|||||||||||||
I do have to agree, I posted the Carmilla backstory (spoiler-tagged of course) a few days ago after getting abit carried away in conversation and while the person I was replying to seemed to appreciate it, afterwards I kinda felt I maybe shouldn't have. That said, those excerpts that appear latter in the series are largely a compilation of worldbuilding/mythbuilding/backstory things the author had been discussing on his twitter for years before, just not in a very structured manner (and to complicate matters, there's details he discussed on twitter way back when the witches were introduced but then left out of their arc 6 bio in the web novel)... So it's not the biggest deal imo, specially when the alternative is basically "Do you want to know more about this ancient history topic that's only tangentially related to the main story and primarily meant for worldbuilding nerds? Wait 3-4 years min, if we get there at all." But yeah, I suppose I would advise people who are anime only to only read those excerpts Showsni posted if they're really interested in the topic and are basically hovering over the Re:Zero wiki button wondering if it's ok just to read the witch's page or something, because that's how you'll get the spoilers that actually matter. |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
Yuvelir
 Posts: 1545 |
|
|||||||||||||
|
A point I forgot to mention before: Petelgeuse was a cautionary tale for Subaru about what could happen if he fell into his self-serving delusions and self-pity. And right in the next arc, both Roswaal and Echidna are simultaneously trying to make him fall in that kind of insanity. They're trying to turn him into a slave of obsession like Petelgeuse.
On Roswaal's note, it's a bit disappointing that such a smart guy is so slavishly following the Tome of Knowledge instead of being more cautious or trying to exploit it (wait, didn't Echidna only have knowledge up to 400 years ago? How could she create something that reads the future?).
That would be me. Also for the definition of Authorities. Fortunately I realized what kind of spoilers could come from there in time. I wish I didn't read Echidna's though since she's obviously much more important. Usually I'm not that much into worldbuilding, but since the witches have such a strong presence and the show has been spreading tiny pieces to dress the place and hint at the truth of it all that I can't help but indulge in the knowledge. |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
OrdepNM
Posts: 243 |
|
|||||||||||||
While that's true, it should be noted Petelguese and Roswaal have different brands of obsession. Petelguese was entirely driven by his supposed abstract love for his top waifu, blindly following the Gospel wherever it led him while assuming those were Satella's own commands and... well that was about it, he had no particular goals or aims in sight besides a vague notion that he must blindly support his waifu. This lack of aim or direction to his actions makes him truly a slothful person. Roswaal on the other hand has goals, or more specifically, a goal, and he's convinced that in the pursuit of that one goal, everything else is secondary and expendable. Everyone has wishes and many people have their one greatest wish, but most people wouldn't weight that one wish of theirs above the rest of the world - Roswaal would tough, and that's why he's a greedy person.
That's a topic for the second cour.
Well this is a weird one. In the web novel version of the story, we're indirectly told how this works in the scene where Subaru learns he can talk about RBD with Echidna and the exact mechanics are discussed/confirmed by Beatrice in the scene where we learn her Tome of Knowledge is empty. But that's been cut from the light novel version of events, so I'm not sure where that leaves us. I suppose it could still come up later as I haven't read the last 2 volumes of the arc, which haven't been published in English yet, so I don't want to treat it as skipped content as it could still come back, so I don't know... Maybe someone who's more familiar with Volumes 14 and beyond can say if spoiler[Memories of the World] is ever introduced in the series or if it's been completely cut. One also has to consider the "defective" tomes of knowledge, which the Cult calls Gospels: where they came from, how they work and why they are defective.
I don't think it will matter that much outside of serving as the basis for an Echidna prequel short story and furthering one's understanding/appreciation of her character, but yes, I suppose the one for Echidna warrants a special warning to not read given that she's a much more active player in the story. |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
Valjean Lafitte
Posts: 62 |
|
|||||||||||||
I'm real scared to click that spoiler. Even if you say it was all but revealed in the Frozen Bonds OVA, I don't recall there being even a hint at who gave Puck his powers. If there was, I'd sure like to know where I missed it. |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
OrdepNM
Posts: 243 |
|
|||||||||||||
At the very start of the OVA, you hear the terms of Puck's original contract being set ("To protect her, that is the reason for your existence" etc) . The voice reciting them should be familiar... Is what I was going to say, but then it occurred to me that they only added the narration of that bit in the Blu-ray release of the OVA, while Crunchyroll streams the theatrical release, where it's just text. Nevermind then, my bad, I had completely forgotten but yeah, in the BR release that part is fully voiced so it's known, even with only anime-knowledge, who set those. |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
Valjean Lafitte
Posts: 62 |
|
|||||||||||||
Thanks! After viewing the relevant portion of the BR release through... certain means, all I can say is that I'm really annoyed that Cruncyroll doesn't stream this version. All throughout this season I've been thinking back to the Frozen Bonds to try to see if I could glean any extra insight from it, and boy would it have been nice to have known that all this time. |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
#915498
Posts: 1 |
|
|||||||||||||
|
I was interested in the small change they made regarding Subaru's first death after Rem's memories were taken. It was interesting they sort of hinted at the book's version of the death while taking a completely different route.
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
OrdepNM
Posts: 243 |
|
|||||||||||||
BR license was probably much more expensive, simple as that. As for hints in the Frozen Bond, for this cour I can go ahead and say there aren't a lot besides that. Next cour tough, that's another story. |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
Yuvelir
Posts: 1545 |
|
|||||||||||||
Maybe there are no hints, but at least there are red herrings? |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
OrdepNM
Posts: 243 |
|
|||||||||||||
Well, The Frozen Bond is about Emilia's past and the First Trial is also about Emilia's past. This cour, Emilia's First Trial has been stuck since episode 3 and we haven't come any closer to finding out why it's stuck, let alone unstucking it, but obviously we'll have to get going with that part of the plot at some point (or well, Subaru hasn't really gotten any closer to unstucking anything all season, it's sorta all been downhill on every front if we're being honest). I won't say that The Frozen Bond has all the answers, it doesn't. In fact, the questions it raises are more important than its answers, but if you consider all of it, the said and the unsaid, consider what the First Trial is about and sprinkle some of the understanding we gained about how Echidna rolls, and it's possible to make an educated guess about what's going on with Emilia. Either that or tune back in January 
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
Yuvelir
Posts: 1545 |
|
|||||||||||||
|
Was Satella there at all? It feels more like she lent her powers to Emilia. Heck, Typhon calls everyone by nicknames, but when it came to her she was just "anoko". Unless Emilia IS Satella afterall. Nobody referred to Satella by name. (where has Emilia been all episode though?)
Just as I was wondering what Subaru's mental struggles were right now, Satella worded it for me: Subaru needs to ALSO save himself instead of being just a vehicle for the salvation of others. He might have passed the first trial and Rem gave him some self-confidence, but he still isn't fully over his self-loathing and complexes. And finally Satella paralelling Beato's situation - how long-lived she is against her wishes (?), how she wants to die, how Subaru wants to save her. I wonder if there's any significance to that beyond strengthening Subaru's resolve. Then Roswaal reveals that he was the one to order the assassinations... to nobody's surprise (except Subaru's). When he lent him help to get to the mansion safe, it was just to crush him. But he's finally living up to the villain role he always seemed to be. And hey, I kept saying maybe he has been going for centuries. And alas, he says he was enchanted 400 years ago (which sounds a lot like Petelgeuse). Ram's mention, however... what exactly is his "hope" relating to her? A very useful and versatile tool? As for the final moment, the way the scene was directed I expected Otto to be possessed by Echidna but in the end it was something pretty... different. What a way to end the cour. P.S.: Echidna also remarked that Carmilla appealed to Subaru AND used Faceless bride... as if she had the option not to use it. And how exactly did Daphne prolong Subaru's life? Sure, she's all about feeding, and creating and taking life but it's kind of a stretch. |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
killjoy_the
 Posts: 2459 |
|
|||||||||||||
|
Daphne physically stopped Typhoon and Sek-whatever from interfering while Minerva did her thing
|
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
|
OrdepNM
Posts: 243 |
|
|||||||||||||
|
Quite alot to unpack this episode.
I think most people expected the first cour to end with the conclusion of the tea party, do a normal runtime for once, with both OP and ED, maybe extend the scene where Subaru hears all the words of appreciation for himself with some recycled footage (rather than just voices) and largely use the LN script in its entirety. I think that was, in fact, the plan at some point as ReZero tends to show its title cards at the end of the episode and this time it showed at the midpoint. Regardless, in the end this chapter got the usual "abridged" treatment as most scenes do and they went ahead and adapted roughly 30% of volume 13. Judging by the content of volume 13, I reckon they'll do 3 more episodes, which then leaves 9 episodes for volume 14 and 15. I'm officially somewhat puzzled at why they adapted Volume 12 in 3 episodes as several scenes could have used the extra breathing space and there wouldn't need to be any cut scnenes, but it's also true that the tail end of Arc 4 has some of the best and most important scenes of ReZero so far, so I hope they use that slack they built up here to give the second cour some more breathing room. Time will tell. On to the episode itself, right after the mask falls on Echidna and the lovely maiden at heart is proven to be anything but, it turns out that... Satella was a pretty nice person all along? The show uses alot of imagery, expectations and Subaru's own thoughts on the matter to sell us on the idea that Satella must be someone evil or deranged, but when we finally get to hear Satella unfiltered, in almost a reverse of Echidna, she ends up being a pretty reasonable person with Subaru's best interests at heart... and really, what has she ever done? Without her, Subaru would have died at the ends of Elsa in the loot house and that'd be that for his story, but she keeps bringing him back and giving him yet another chance, not to die and suffer all over again, but to get another shot at happiness, and all she asks in exchange is to keep her involvement secret. There's clearly clearly alot more to Satella than meets the eye and there's even more that we don't know, but it's a nice bookened for the cour that after several episodes of Echidna trying to wrap Subaru around her finger, in the end it's Satella's hand, of all people, that he takes. That, or at least the scene afterwards with Patrasche being adorable, would have been the place to end the episode for me, but we're going further still. Honestly, the scene with Roswaal works better when paired with follows after the episode cut point, but right away we can glean some things: As many have surmised, it was Roswaal who gave Elsa and Meylee their orders, not just now mind you, but all the way back to the first episode of the show. The secret party who wanted to buy Emilia's insigna? Roswaal. The person who paid Meylee to put the village children in peril? Roswaal. The person who always seems to go away when they'd be most useful? Yup. The whole show so far has been essentially one large gauntlet setup by Roswaal, all leading up to this moment, all for the purpose of shaping Subaru, who's existence Roswaal knew from the Book of Wisdom before he first showed up, into who Roswaal needs him to be - the person in whom he can deposit all his hopes and expectations. Talk about the long con. And yeah there's something about 400 years again, that number sure pops up often. Extra musings: When Satella enters the "tea party", in both the WN and LN, Minerva is the one who approaches her to try to determine her state of mind. In the WN Minerva also notes she was the closest one to Satella back in the day. This surprises Subaru, who can't understand why the other Witches aren't making any moves. Echdina claims to be all in favour of crushing Satella there and then, but won't make a move because if she dies here, that'll truly be it for her. The other Witches aren't afraid because they've long made peace with their deaths and are ready to move on. In fact, the other witches (skipped content for this volume, but spoilered on the off chance that it actually gets adressed later on) spoiler[don't hate Satella at all, their only grudge is with The Witch of Envy, who is a split personality of Satella, supposedly born out of taking an authority she's incompatible with. I guess they cut this from the script for the same reason they cut "Al was also isekai'd", it's a too early reveal for something that's late game, but make of that what you will.]
The Witches have great banter tbh, I wish a bit more of it could have been kept. Subaru's decision to bite his own tongue and bleed to death is a bit of a gamble. It hankers back to that old question of "if you die in your dreams, do you die for good?". The Castle of Dreams is a dreamworld, his body is still in the Sanctuary. If he dies in there, there's no guarantee he won't be stuck in some kind of limbo, out of the reach of RBD. This is a much different action from his attempts at hard-reseting at several points this season, he actually means it. (Tinfoil time) Echidna notes that it's no secret why Minerva decided to help Suabru (this was adapted in the anime) and shortly after, Sekhmet asks Daphne why she got involved when, unlike Minerva, she has no reason for doing so (this was only partially kept). In the WN, Minerva herself states she has her own reasons to help Subaru. On first glance, this seems to be in reference to Minerva's views on healing, but there's something about the phrasing, which always uses words like "helping" or "getting involved" instead of "healing". This, and the fact that her initial intervention, to stop the pact, has nothing to do with healing, has led people, in particular fans of a somewhat popular theory, to wonder if they're actually referring to something else in Minerva's priorities. During the goodbyes sequence, you can see Sekhmet and Typhon close together. It's not really touched upon in the anime but they have a bit of a mother-daughter relationship. That's also how Daphne pins both of them down and grants Minerva an opening, the Centipede Coffin has no head for thinking and so is not affected by Typhon's authority, while Sekhmet won't do what she did to Minerva if Typhon is in the way. You can tell this rubs Sekhmet the wrong way because she gets up. Back in the real world, I believe this is the first time we explicitly see Otto use his blessing, which is to talk to animals in their tongue. Clearly not all blessings are made the same. Meanwhile Patrasche is officially a tsundere. Turns out Roswaal's clown makeup can be removed magically! That is information not even the books had iirc. I do recall some passages about Ram helping him put it on so it's probably not an on/off spell tough. There's a whole cut scene after the one with Roswaal, before Subaru meets Otto, where he meets Emilia. I like this scene alot so I wrote a summary for those who'd like to know, but on the off chance that they adapt it out of order or use parts of it in another scene, I'll keep it spoiler tagged. spoiler[ Subaru meets Emilia while in deep thought about what Roswaal said, the scenario is reminiscent of their encounter in episode 10. Emilia notices Subaru is distressed and tries to get him to open up, but he deflects and changes the subject to her trial and ask if she feels better. She claims she does, apologizes for causing trouble for everyone and admits she may have butted into something without being prepared to face it, and that part of her really wants to run away. Subaru latches onto this and starts ranting that maybe that's fine, that she shouldn't force herself to walk a path she didn't choose, that no good comes from facing something head on if it'll just beak you again, that Echidna, Roswaal and Garfiel are just self-centered jerks who want him to do things their way rather than let him choose his way, etc. As he grows distressed, Emilia hugs him and waits for him to calm down. After he does, Subaru apologizes for his outburst, complains that nothing is going right and that they probably won't be able to get out of there without the Trial. This surprises Emilia but then Subaru notes it'd be better if he could take the trial in her stead, but he couldn't find a way to do it, for which he apologizes for being useless, but promises he'll keep trying because he doesn't want to make her go through hardships. Emilia finally cuts him off and tells him that she appreciates him wanting to look out for her, but that she doesn't want him to look for loopholes, that even if this was foisted on her by others, she set her own goals and is working hard to achieve them, rather than making excuses. She tells Subaru he doesn't have to do something all the time, that she can do her best if he, who loves her, is watching, so in this, she just wants him to "Please, watch over me as I do my best. -That's what I want you to do for me, Subaru". After they say their goodbyes, Subaru runs down the hill in distress (like in the episode) and when he trips and falls, he realizes that in all his considerations so far, he never even factored in the possibility that Emilia could actually pass the Trials, he'd always been looking for solutions around it or trying to clear the Trials for her. He realizes that, in truth, he'd actually been the one who believed in her the least, he had fallen back on the same bad habits as back in the Royal Selection meeting and without realizing, he was well on his way to thinking like Roswaal. That is when Otto runs into him.] Finally, since the Witches were such a presence in this cour of ReZero, I'll close it off by sharing some funny Q&As with the author related to them:
Typhon called her Tella at the very end of last episode. They refer to her as Satella and Witch of Envy at several points in the novel (as you can read above), but I guess it was a funny coincidence borne out of taking a bit of a hatchet to the script.
Taking a stroll like in episode 10. It's kinda annoying they cut her entire scene.
Satella was trying to convey to him that he's also worth saving, etc, but he wasn't listening, so Carmilla used her authority to allow Subaru to see the point Satella was trying to make, rather than just listening to her words, which clearly wasn't getting the job done.
As I noted above, she created the opening against Sekhmet that let Minerva get to Subaru to heal his tongue. |
||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group