I want to protect her smile.
Impression
I thought Subaru was going to die at the end there. Is this the end of the first arc? I guess we’re following the standard light novel adaptation rules if it is. It feels like we’re moving onto greener (and hopefully less painful) pastures now that Elsa has been dealt with and Emilia will be taking Subaru home with her. I wonder why Elsa decided the only option was to slaughter them all? I can understand her attacking Emilia on sight, but why did she want to kill Felt and Rom while she was at it? Maybe she realized she could have gotten the insignia for free by killing them all (and there’s always the possibility that she’s just motivated by her desire to disembowel people). And all this time I was still hoping that talking it out was a potential solution. I actually envisaged Subaru succeeding by avoiding Elsa outright somehow, especially as we had no way of knowing how strong Reinhard was until now – although avoiding a confrontation might have been impossible if we take the theft for granted. It would mean bargaining with Felt would be necessary, and so nothing would have stopped her waiting for Elsa to show up to negotiate. Unless she was made to give it up by force, that is (and harming lolis is forbidden).
I really liked the fight scene. It was tense at all the right times, had lots of ups and downs and was filled with a surprising amount of banter. I had a slight worry that critical moments like these would end up with lots of deflated tension due to Subaru and his Revival, but surprisingly my concerns were unfounded. It’s true that there’s less at stake (in that even if he dies he gets to try again) but the reason it still manages to be exciting is that it’s annoying to re-do a loop. And it’s painful for him. All the effort and progress made by Subaru goes to waste if he’s forced to reset the loop, and that’s what’s at stake here – the fact that he’s so close to grasping success and breaking through to his ‘happy ending’. I also started thinking about what would happen if he only half-achieves his objectives from his point of view. Say Emilia gets killed by Elsa. Subaru will most likely reset, because his ultimate motive is to return the insignia to an alive Emilia. But what if Felt died? What if Elsa had killed Rom in their current loop, and Reinhard then arrived to drive her away? If Rom had died, would Subaru have considered his current loop a success? So my point is – will Subaru ever eventually be forced into making difficult sacrifices like that? If everything in a particular loop goes perfectly save for that one slightly insignificant guy having died tragically, will Subaru reset for their sake or just press on forward?
Anyway, Reinhard too stronk. He can make swords crumble into dust! If he hadn’t shown up, they would have been goners for sure. Him and Puck saved the day – although I’m expecting some questions from either Puck or Emilia in the future about how Subaru knew about Puck’s existence and time limit. As well as an explanation as to why Reinhard reacted so badly upon seeing Felt with the insignia. His issue clearly wasn’t that Felt stole the insignia – he already knew that. But for some reason it felt (ha ha) like there was a significance in Felt herself having stolen it and presenting it to Emilia in her hand. Can it only be handled by half-elves or something? Why does that have anything to do with her family name and age? If she’d stolen it from Emilia in the first place, wouldn’t that imply she’s perfectly capable of touching it? Don’t hurt her! She dindu nuffin!
Oh man I didn’t even consider the fact that she was human and holding it up u might be right maybe she’s from some royal human bloodline
I hope Felt stays relevant after this. If Emilia is taking Subaru away I don’t see them returning to the slums, so Reinhard taking in Felt might be a way of keeping her around in the story.
I just noticed she was wearing a glove when she held it out so I’m not so sure now. We’ll find out eventually.
I don’t think this is the end of his pain/dying since it would make his unique ability useless and non-relevant which would be stupid.
She probably wanted to kill them regardless for the joy as a murderer (just because you throw in another piece of flesh into the lions cage doesn’t mean it wouldn’t eat it as well); remember how rom (and maybe felt) got killed in the first cycle desprite Emilia and subaru not beeing there.
Maybe she knows something about the importance of Emilia(her insignia) and the secret behind Felt(why would Roland react that way)
Roland probably saw something like an insignia on Felt and reacted because she is a special child like from an evil sect or illegitim child from a noble-house which would be a common appearance in stories were a child is “thrown away” and has no memories.
From what I’ve seen in this is episode there are most likely only 2 half-elves in this universe: Emilia and Satela, the envious witch.
I am preparing my heart for the coming of the Loli-Queen Ｏ(≧▽≦)Ｏ
P.S.: props. for the decision of dropping OP/ED for more content and better pacing even it has 25episodes
I don’t think we’ll be running to any pacing problems with White Fox around. I don’t know whether it’ll proceed at a rate of 3 episodes per LN (or arc?) and how that’ll play out in the future but, if they’re willing to arrange a one-hour special for the sake of good pacing, we’re probably in good hands.
WAIT, WHAT? A LOLI QUEEN?!
I’M GOING TO PREPARE MY HEART TOO 😀
“It feels like we’re moving onto greener (and hopefully less painful) pastures now that Elsa has been dealt with and Emilia will be taking Subaru home with her.”
Heh. Heheh. Heheheheh. Oh man, you have no idea the physical and psychological horrors that poor Subaru is going to endure, trying to keep himself and everyone around him alive and safe… 🙁
THAT is going to be some psycho horror but also a point where maaaany people will drop the anime because they can’t comprehend what he is going through even though the LN/anime is showing it :/
I-is it wrong that I’m excited?
Subaru is a strong guy, I’m sure he can take a fatal wound or two (or five). What I’d rather not see are his friendships unravelling and people he knows and cares for dying in horrible ways in front of him. I’m more affected by the second-hand emotional despair than him getting disembowelled.
Just… prepare yourself. This arc was kind of a warm-up: we saw very basic versions of things that can go wrong. That first cycle actually contained several of them: he became pretty close with Emilia, but then lost all that when he reset, and even now hasn’t really recovered it (yeah, she’s grateful to him, but he’s a stranger who saved her for reasons she doesn’t understand, not someone she spent all day growing close to). He saw someone he cared about die because of his actions (Emilia, unthinking and undefended, walked into Rom’s building and was killed by Elsa). And, of course, he died painfully.
He’s going to be unable to form lasting friendships, because he will die and everything will reset so it never happened, but he will remember everything. He’ll remember being close to people, but they won’t, and when he’s unable to get as close to them again because he’s busy trying to prevent whatever killed him, it takes a toll on him. And… worse things will happen. I want to give hints so you can understand how bad it can get, but it’s better to see some of this on your own.
On the plus side, from the stuff I’ve seen, he hasn’t given up yet. He’s determined to break through the bad ends and get the good end. He gets pushed into despair at times, but he hasn’t surrendered yet.
the third arc is where the pepole dropped the LN so you can say the second arc will be warm up as well
People have dropped the LN? Is that a bad thing?
Don’t spoil, but I only really drop LNs when they end up boring me so much I lose interest in them. Other than that, it would have to be something I find really disagreeable (with the plot, characters or otherwise) to the point where I can’t take reading it any more. The last time that happened was with that piece of crap Arifureta.
Apparently Japanese readers apologized for dropping it since they couldn’t handle the events that happened in that arc.