Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- [2020-07-13]
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Iron Maw
Posts: 490 |
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Slights correction, Huma is also a water element confusing enough as we see Rem cast several of its tiers, so there is some crossover.
As some who loved these 3 episodes more than she did ad they have been among S2's best I'm gonna defend Kim here. She has been super positive on the S2 as whole (not to mention a fellow LN reader of the books) with only some of that enthusiasm taking a dip here & there. Kim also far from hates these episodes, she is just fairly fatigue from how long this section has ran wasn't prepared for that length. She even admits that she would enjoyed this more had marathon the 3 episode together it would have come across less repetitive to her as memories events would be less blended together. That said I do think she was had been viewing the episodes in the wrong way, Emilia's past is part of the plot advancement, its not happening in a vacuum. Overcoming Echidna's trials & satisfying her curiosity prerequisite for breaking through this complex seasonal conflict. That means our characters must confront their personal demons our they can't move on. Subaru had to do this first part now Garf and Emilia need to do it, because Roswaal's ambitions is dependent on their failures to do so. While freeing the Arlam villagers, liberating the demi-human trapped in Sanctuary before the rabbits get them and saving Frederica, Petra as well as Beatrice from assault of assassins sent are important end goals for this arc, the personal conflicts here are just as vital because will shape the futures of Subaru & Emilia beyond this arc. They are intertwined with each other. Anyway if she does a potential rewatch when this all said and done I hope then she will appreciate these episode more in the future a long with other aspects of how this has been constructed more. In the meantime I hope enjoys the rest of season because there more coming in breaking deadlock, as Subaru said to Roswaal, his plans are now going off rails with should not been possible happening. I'm just happy a lot of other people like it at least, whatever adaptation issues aside. |
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Juno016
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Watched the new episode live. Feels like they shortened the Ryuzu flashback a little. Was really fun to see Roswaal spoiler[fly off the handle quite a bit as he felt threatened and insulted.] Bout time.
Next episode will be neat when we get to have a really nice Emilia and Ram moment, as well as a really satisfying Ram and Roswaal moment. The next English volume of the novels is coming March 2nd, so the anime will likely pass slightly over I've read, but I look forward to seeing how this arc ends! |
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Valjean Lafitte
Posts: 62 |
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Excuse me, but aren't these major spoilers? My brother and I have made a weekly ritual of watching Re:Z ero together, and when I told him about the book quotes you mentioned here he got annoyed because the anime has been deliberately vague about the connection between Emilia and Satella (in other words, we have no way of knowing whether or not spoiler[Pandora is being literal when she calls Emilia "Witch's Daughter").] But here you are writing about it without even using spoiler tags... what gives? I think you think are anime watchers are meant to know this (and a cursory glance at spoiler-free discussion threads on Reddit, MAL, and other fan hubs would prove that 99% of fans don't know about this, and I think the anime has been purposely vague), fine, but some spoiler tags would be nice next time. I mean, you usually do spoiler tag major spoilers in your posts, so I was a little shocked when you wrote that there was nothing major in terms of cut content, and then wrote about that completely unspoilered. |
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pip25
Posts: 150 |
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Wait, who the heck is this Hector? Until now, I was under the impression that these witches are among the strongest beings around, and basically the only thing they need to worry about is each other. But now this guy appears out of the blue and everyone's suddenly saying that even Echidna can't defeat him... What's going on?
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ThatGuyWhoLikesThings
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Hector is also a witch, specifically representing Melancholy, one of two legacy sins (the other being Vanity; fwiw, there are no more sins period, so based on IRL historical context, he can be considered the final witch). But because he's a male, he's referred to as "Warlock" instead (the subs call him "Devil" which AFAIK isn't technically a wrong translation, but isn't accurate in this context). Hector attempting to hunt Echidna down is the exact reason why she formulated a plan to put up a barrier. Because she knows that stopping him is otherwise impossible. |
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OrdepNM
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First and foremost, the rules of the site regarding spoilers, as told by the mods in this very thread, are that cut content from the source material are fair game after that content has been adapted in the episode. I've been doing these roundups of skipped/changed content since early in the first cour and considering that this review column is written by a mod and another mod (Key/Theron) is a regular here, I doubt I'd have "gotten away with it" for so long if I was in transgression. Now I know different people have different definitions of spoilers, some people would get upset if I said "next season they will introduce new characters", so maybe I should just blanket everything in spoiler tags to be all inclusive, but ultimately I do want people who are interested to engage with it and not have everyone avoid it out of fear that I wrote like the end of the story, so I stick to some standards. I stick to content that grants more world building; clarifies details that might be overlooked by the anime; is fuel for speculation or is just a cool/funny exchange that didn't make the cut. When considering mentioning full scenes, I take into consideration the likelihood that they may still get adapted at some point. For example, there was skipped content in the 2 non Emilia segments of the 2 previous episodes that I didn't address because I considered they might still bring them back this episode. If I consider the likelihood that it will be fished back in later episodes to be low, I'll mention the context and retell the contents under spoiler tags, like a scene between Subaru and Emilia in episode 13 that went ultimately unadapted. If I am extremely secure in knowing there's no way they'll go back to adapt that scene, I'll just retell it, like the scene between Archi and a Finger 2 episodes back. What I leave completely unmentioned is "unavoidable skips", things that are almost surely going to be important at some point but the anime skipped, probably to cut down on the time differential between tease and relevance. For example, something important about Satella was skipped in episode 13, I didn't even mention it. I consider my track record pretty good considering I make these weekly, the only egg in my face was in the first episode in this cour iirc. I said previously that they had skipped the mention that Frederica left the Sanctuary to create a support network for when the people there were freed - and they went and told it in a flashback in episode 14, way after it happened. It's minor, it's only there as a counter to Garf's earlier assertions that Frederica fled the coop and washed their hands of everyone she left behind (which were already fairly subdued in the anime which is why I assumed they would skip it entirely), but I still apologized to the thread because it was a bad call even if it was within the site's rules. There was also the Guese being a spirit thing, which I forgot the anime didn't establish during season 1, but considering in the following episode the anime had no qualms about calling Guese a spirit with no setup or explanation, apparently also forgetting they skipped that, I feel vindicated for at least explaining where that comes from. To address the excerpts you quoted, 1) We glean no new information from this. The comments about Emilia's gate and mana are self evident to anyone watching the scene (she is doing magic that surpasses even Fortuna, at age 7) and has a cursory understanding of ReZero's magic system. The stuff about Emilia being a "Witch's progeny" is incredibly cryptic and more importantly, a double retread since Echidna had already called Emilia the exact same thing 1 episode back and Pandora herself, in the anime and the book, called her the same thing early in the episode. Ultimately I mentioned this as skipped content to clarify something that people actually wondered about in this thread, wether this was magic or spirit arts, this because they skipped the scene where Pandora pulls the lesser spirits from Emilia, which is there to inform the reader that Emilia at that moment has no spirits on her side. 2) This is literally a list of key "happenings" in the flashback from Pandora's perspective, ie the things we just saw happen. Again, the comfirmation of Emilia's bloodline only makes sense to Pandora herself, we're no closer to knowing anything about it besides, again, what both Echidna and Pandora already told us in the anime, that Emilia is "a Witch's daughter", which you're free to take as literal or figuratively as you wish as Pandora makes no further clarification. I mention this exercpt as it could serve as the explanation for a potential plothole: if Emilia was frozen next to the Seal, why wasn't the seal visible when she was defrosted? The quoted excerpt may imply that Pandora moved it, tough I must stress that the narration doesn't say "and then the seal went poof", the seal isn't mentioned again in the flashback so it's ultimately unclear and my own speculation. 3) this is the closest you might come to a point as this excerpt does give you somewhat new information: Echidna does know Emilia's real mother... Except of course she does, she called her "Witch's daughter" as soon as she walked into the tomb, whatever and whomever she meant by that, of course she knows the person she's talking about, unless you think Echidna is just trolling Emilia and is just saying that to try to get a reaction despite having no idea who her mother is... Which would be kinda off brand for Echidna the devil of knowledge incarnate, she doesn't seem like the kind of person who trades in outright lies. All of these take place in the flashback of the 1sr trial. I considered the possibility that the anime will go *back* to this flashback and say "actually, a few more things were said during these exchanges" to be outright 0%, and considering nothing unskippable and unavoidable was said in this excerpts, as I stated above, I feel sharing them without the spoiler tag was the right thing to do, in order to share them with the larger number of people possible and hopefully help them further their appreciation of the episode, if they might benefit from it. Also I find it puzzling that you accuse me of making the connection between Emilia and Satella clear when anyone following this thread knows I'm rooting for that connection to be "nothing but a close semblance" and I'm a strict defender of Minerva as Emilia's mother, which just to clarify is literally just my theory as someone who reads the web novel which is not the final version of the story and reads the English LN translation, which the anime is gonna catch up with next week. This assertion that I betrayed the anime's vagueness about Emilia and Satella's connection is in no way suportted by anything you quoted but more importantly, I'd be the one arguing against that connection, not making it. Ultimately I do apologize if you felt spoiled by what I wrote in those quoted excerpts but after going through my entire process for writing these skipped content roundups and addressing each point you raised separately, I dont feel I've written anything even remotely spoilery and see no reason to revise the way I do things. Like I said above I dont want to just blanket everything in a spoiler tag unless told to do so by a mod, as that tells nothing to the reader about the severity of the spoiler and effectively drives away basically everyone in the thread, but what I can do is put a title on top and put like a - - - separator at the end so people uninterested can just skip it if they don't want to take the risk. Last edited by OrdepNM on Wed Feb 17, 2021 10:17 pm; edited 5 times in total |
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Yuvelir
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It was funny to see that grayscale scene with Roswaal's rosy cheeks being the only hint of color. And I called it, there was no way Roswaal would get so personal about Echdina and his revenge if there wasn't some sort of continuous consciousness from 400 years ago to the present, specially considering how much the purpose of the Sanctuary is facilitating something like that. And how convenient that he just happened to find someone perfect to be his excess mana vessel, after the Cult attacked that village for no known reason, hmmmm.
Anyway, now I'm more curious about his past. His one obsession is Echidna. His goal is to kill the dragon. The dragon that sealed Satella. The Satella who "ate" his beloved Echidna. If I weren't more inclined to trust Satella than the dragon and the hero as the actual good guy, I would say it makes no sense that he wants to kill the one who avenged his darling! As for Echidna, I swear I can NEVER get a read on this woman, probably on purpose since those telling eyes of hers were hidden the entire time. At the end of the previous cour all her actions, her experiments and her treatment of Betty were framed as dark and self-serving, but what we've seen here, while not completely selfless, were also more benign, the worst of it being a last resort and being capable of showing human emotion (before Hector, whom he didn't need to fool!). I guess you can NEVER trust the words of a witch, no matter which one it is. And speaking of hector, that was one hell of an addition to the lore right after we have been introduced to puppetmaster Pandora. At first I had a very different idea, as his clothes very closely resembled Fortuna's from that angle. Then he starts beating Roswaal and hey, that doesn't look like magic but rather more like an Authority... and an Authority it was. The Warlock of Melancholy/Sorrow, I really, REALLY wasn't expecting a man to get such a role. Between The Witches and the Secret Witches, this arc has just been throwing that which I thought would be drip-fed throughout the story. Anywaaaay. Something I did notice is that Hector's clothes, face and some of his mannerisms are very similar to modern Roswaaaal's. I wonder who possesses that witch factor right now. And while a bit upsetting, it's not so surprising that Echidna can't hope to stop Hector, not all witches are made equal and we haven't seen anything to suggest that Echidna is particularly threatening. As for Subaru's side, I guess his keikaku didn't go as doori? I doubt he went there just to retell him his own backstory. |
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OrdepNM
Posts: 243 |
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Skipped Content from the Light Novel
Most skipped content is not from this episode actually, but rather from the previous 2, specifically those 2 small segments unrelated to Emilia's trial. I wanted the whole sequence to play out to see what was adapted and what wasn't. With that, - During the Slice of Life segment in episode 18, Ryuzu talks briefly about her life and life in the Sanctuary. Before coming there she had a short life where "the bad overweighted the good", which was a common story for most of the first residents of the Sanctuary like her. At the time, the common term for halfs like them was "Cursedbloods". The residents were dedicating to creating a home for themselves in that place. Echidna visited once in a while and the people always thanked her, but she always replied with "Think nothing of it". -Roswaal was Echidna's pupil in magic arts, he's already surpassed the goals she set for him and he's very eager to impress her. -Guese isn't present but he comes and goes to tutor Beatrice in manners and spirit mattters. She claims she doesn't like him but Echidna chuckles and says it's his job to be disliked. -The grayscale scene and following cute scene between Roswaal, Betty and Ryuzu is a first for Re:Zero as it's actually the first time the anime adapts content from a side story (OVAs nonwithstanding). Specifically, this bit comes from "Kremaldy Forest Team: Days That'll Never Return". I can't comment on how the adaptation went as I haven't read this short story (it's a shop exclusive). -The books Ryuzu is reading were provided by Echidna, who arranged for books for those who can't read but would like to learn. (Also note how Betty is still playing the same endless hallways pranks from 400 years ago) -The after-flashback discussion at the entrance of the tomb that happens at the end of last episode is fairly longer. Ryuzu is somewhat dejected from discovering that her duty and responsibilities and life's work were built on lies, but Ram cuts her off by noting that despite how it begun, it couldn't have been all a lie, as duty alone couldn't have been all that kept her going this long. The guys are all surprised by how uncharacteristic Ram is in that remark. -Shima begun objecting to the Sanctuary's liberation after seeing Ryuzu Meyer's memories, as she wanted to honor Meyer's final wishes. Nevertheless she concedes that after 400 years, perhaps it's time. Subaru thinks back to the royal selection ceremony and claims that it's possible they'll face some bitterness if they leave the Sanctuary, but that when Emilia is the ruler, she'll live up to her words and work to turn "the whole world into a Sanctuary for them". -Beatrice hasn't been back to the Sanctuary ever since the events in the flashback, the clones never met her. -The confrontation with Roswaal is very similar, except that it happens after the flashback has fully played out and thus it doesn't have to serve as a framing device. At a glance, the only missing line is at the very end, Garfiel takes one last look at Roswal before leaving and says "-Stupid jerk.". -The narration notes that both Subaru and Emilia are doing their "finger to the sky pose" at the same time. ---
Like it was said above, Hector is indeed a male Witch, or rather a Warlock, representing the sisn of Melancholy. Echidna's authority of greed is not particularly well suited for combat like say Sekhmet's so against a fighter like Hector (how his authroity works isn't made clear but based on the vague descriptions we get I have a feeling it's something like Deconstruction, things he targets become undone), she can only rely on her personal talent for regular magic, so it's not a fair fight even between two Witches.
Anything's possible, tough from Roswaal's comments last episode about his "war paint", I get the impression he puts on that persona and getup as a bit of a reminder/self-punishment for his biggest failure. At least his maaaaaaanerisms go straight out the window as soon as he loses his cool this episode.
As mentioned a few times, they rearranged the timing of the flashback somewhat. In the LN it's fully told by the time they confront Roswaal, so Subaru doesn't have to retell him is backstory at all. As for his keikaku, he basically wanted to try the diplomatic route one last time before the metaphorical swords are drawn or, as he puts it:
Roswaal's answer can be summed up as "lol no". |
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Covnam
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Hmm, couldn't help noticing Hector's affectations when comparing to the present Roswaal as well.
Also interesting that Echidna's face was obscured the entire time in the flashback... |
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Yuvelir
Posts: 1558 |
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Thinking back to last week's Break Time, there are two crucial details that I didn't notice and that seem like they would be a big deal:
-Echidna and Betty were living at a pretty large palace. I don't know whether that was before or after the Sanctuary, but that might hint at some kind of political power. -Petelgeuse was already part of the Witch Cult and on a very important mission a ways before Satella devoured the other witches and got sealed. At the bare minimum this indicates that the Witch Cult's ultimate goal isn't (or wasn't) to bring Satella back to freedom and life. Crazy Petelgeuse made it seem like it was so, but that wasn't even HIS original goal! And thinking about Roswaal, I know what he wants to do, but I don't know what he wants to achieve. His actions are focused on turning Subaru and Emilia into codependent puppets to get access to the throne, which in turn gives him the power or the chance to kill the dragon. But what does that achieve re:Echidna? Is that the key to undoing some event? Does that let him work a miracle and bring her back to life? Or is his ultimate goal plain and simple revenge (either because the dragon itself is to blame or as a stepping stone to finish off Satella)? |
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Sven Viking
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Re: Zero: Schindler Edition. |
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Juno016
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Okay, to help bring context: 1) The anime kinda mentions this, but Echidna, Beatrice, and Roswaal come and go to the Sanctuary, but don't live there. We actually only somewhat recently learned Echidna lives... ♪on an island, in the heavens~ The blood of my ancenstors flows inside me~♪ ...ahem. ( ;ﾟ³ﾟ) What's the deal with echidnas and gems and floating islands anyway...? 2) My personal theory (based solely on what we know up to the point of the anime) is that the witch cult has a greater goal that requires the witch authorities or something all around at once, which thus requires Satella. Satella probably realized this and requested the dragon, the sage, and the sword saint to seal her away to keep her away from the cult. It would also explain why Emilia isn't allowed to see Geuse (until it becomes apparent he's going to keep her safe) and why Satella told Subaru that he would have to kill her someday (if she has an authority and he needs the other authorities, that will be inevitable). Plus, it would ALSO explain why the other witches said it was normal Satella (not crazy Satella) that killed them, probably to save the world from Pandora by taking away their authorities or something. Eventually, Subaru would be given the other authorities and face Pandora. We know Pandora has reality bending powers, but the author confirmed they have limits. If the seal was created by an authority, maybe she can bend all but other authorities. Thus, Subaru's authority to rewind time would be the Thanos to Pandora's Scarlet Witch in Endgame while his other authorities would be irremovable and he could fight her with them. Again, though, my personal theory. I've been working on this for a while and absolutely waiting for it to get ripped to shreads in the next few arcs. Lol |
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Valjean Lafitte
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I appreciate that you addressed each of my concerns. Thank you. Though I'm not sure that such long response was necessary, as it seems more defensive than is warranted. I was not formally "accusing" you of making the Satella/Emilia connection crystal clear, I was just stating the conclusion that those excerpts left me with. I apologize if any offense was taken. Anyway, while 1) and 2) indeed only imply that Emilia has a witch's blood, it's hard to read Echidna's comments in excerpt 3) and not assume she's talking about Satella given that she's the only witch anime viewers know so far who Echidna would describe in such unflattering terms. Maybe I'm missing something, but given Echidna's reaction to Satella's presence earlier this season, that seems to be the implication. |
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Showsni
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Well hey, we got an Ending! What's next, an Opening and Ending in the same episode? Nah, that would be crazy.
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Iron Maw
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At least the ED very good! |
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