Isekai Quartet 3

Episode 11

Each season of Isekai Quartet, our heroes partake in a stereotypical school event and are led to believe that coming out on top will grant them a way home. Inevitably, though they win, they remain trapped in the school world. However, this time is a little different. The class actually gets their hands on the very item that brought them to this world in the first place: the red button. However, when they push it, expecting to go home, nothing happens.

While this button could be a fake, this doesn't seem to be the case. As Tanya notes, she hears the button's chime inside her head, the same as she did when she pressed it in her war-torn world. So if the button is indeed the real thing, we're left with the question: Why didn't it send our isekai'd heroes home?

The idea most of our heroes latch onto is that it's broken—but that's likely not the case, and there are multiple other likely possibilities. The most basic centers around the fact that the button has only one confirmed use: bringing people to the school world. Logically, if that's all it does, as everyone is already in the school world, it does nothing when pushed.

Another possibility is that the desires of the person who pushes the button factor into it—that you have to truly want to return to your world to do so. While Subaru states he wants to return to the Re:Zero world, there's always the possibility that, somewhere in his fractured memory, he knows what awaits him regarding Rem's situation when he does—preventing him from wholeheartedly wanting to go back. Likewise, Aqua implied in the previous episode that she didn't really feel any need to return to the KONOSUBA world, so she wouldn't have activated it either.

However, the possibility the anime implies the most is that the button is not broken and, in fact, worked as intended. This ties back into the first episode of the season, where Ainz explains to Roswaal his belief that all the Isekai Quartet characters are copies of their originals rather than the originals themselves—and that they are being influenced by their originals. Ainz hoped that, if they could not return to their worlds, they could at least influence them in return—pass along the positives gained from their not-so-normal school life.

When Roswaal hands the button to Ainz, he says, “I pray it ends in the result that you and I want.” It's only after Subaru (and Aqua) pushes the button that Ainz realizes what Roswaal was referring to. This is why he suddenly bursts out into laughter. The button can't send them back because it never transported them in the first place. It simply copied their minds—their souls—and allowed their originals to continuously influence them. By pushing it again, perhaps now the connection is two-way. From here on out, in moments of danger, pain, or suffering back in their respective series, maybe the originals will find a little bit extra inner strength to help them through it—strength provided by the multiverse-spanning friendships they were never meant to have during the silly school life they never experienced.

Rating:

To wrap up the season here are five moments in this episode that made me smile:

• Delta headbanging while playing the cello as the other members of Shadow Garden look on disapprovingly.

• Tanya giving an order to Albedo and Albedo following it—showing how well-respected Tanya is amoungst Ainz' people despite being human.

• Rem inviting Julius, her fellow in gluttony erasure, to join the band.

• Kazuma remembering Yunyun specifically when it's time to head home.

• The whole credits montage of famous movie scenes—but specifically the Mad Max homage with Darkness screaming in joy while being strapped to the front bumper of a car.

Isekai Quartet 3 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.