This is too cruel.
Impression
Why am I even watching this? Just to suffer? I don’t know how much more of this I can take. And why is it Rem who suffers the most?! She did nothing wrong! Seeing Ram and Emilia dead, Petra with her eyes gouged out and Rem stabbed through the head was bad enough. It was as bad as I thought it would get, actually. But that fucking piece of shit Betelgeuse twisting Rem’s limbs while mimicking her screams of pain made my stomach turn more than any other death has so far. And holy shit, that wasn’t even the worst part – the fact that she somehow crawled her way to Subaru and used the last of her own blood to break his chains before dying meant that she was actually still alive during all that suffering. Is this how they’re maintaining the shock factor across all these deaths? Excessive cruelty? Just because we know they can come back to life if Subaru rewinds time, each death becomes more gruesome for the sake of our despair? I don’t know how this Betelgeuse dude is going to die at the end of this arc, or whether he’s even going to die at all. But I swear to god, if or when he does, it had better be full of pain, torture and suffering. I’m not going to accept any less. And I hope Subaru will agree with me.
I’m still reeling. What an episode. It’s at times like this that you feel nothing but sympathy for Subaru – all the frustration and irritation that I’ve had for him in recent episodes has vanished entirely. I suppose I feel lots of pity for him too, and I hope that he can somehow find some way out of all this, although I really have no idea how on earth he’ll succeed without external help. Nor can he just avoid Betelgeuse or stay far away from him in order to keep his life – if he doesn’t do anything, the witch cultists will undoubtedly attack the mansion and everyone will die. I’m not sure what ends up happening to Roswaal and Betty, but presumably they fail to stand their ground and die as well. Anyone who approaches the mansion anytime after that ends up being killed by an enraged giant Puck, who for some reason has lost all rationality and will freeze anyone on sight no matter who they are. It genuinely surprised me that both of Subaru’s deaths this episode were because of Puck – you’d think it’d be due to Betelgeuse or one of the cultists, but they’re only indirectly at fault for causing the entire mess in the first place.
My next question (my main question, really) is why. Why is all this even happening? If Betelgeuse worships Satella, why is he even doing this to Subaru? I thought Satella’s scent was going to be Subaru’s biggest protection this arc, because it’d cause the cultists to avoid him – last week they even fucking bowed to him in respect! Wasn’t that because they recognised he was someone important to Satella? So why did they run off with him in the second loop? Is it because Rem was with him? I’m kicking myself for thinking that he could have possibly even used their help somehow, or bargained with them. What changed? He’s loved by the witch they worship, right? I’m also confused by why Betelgeuse thought he had something to do with Pride – presumably one of the seven deadly sins, as Betelgeuse himself is Sloth. Does he (or is he supposed to) even like the sin he represents? He hates slothfulness, right? Not that I would expect anything this insane motherfucker says to make sense.
I’ve got two more things to say about him. The first is that he’s voiced by Matsuoka Yoshitsugu, which is an absolutely mind-blowing revelation. Matsuoka is one of those seiyuu who’s often criticised by many (including me) for not having any range beyond his Kirito voice – but his Betelgeuse was incredible, so much so that I didn’t believe it was him until I checked for myself. It’s totally out of character for him given the sort of roles he tends to play, but it’s really quite remarkable. Second, his odd comment about Subaru pretending to have lost his mind was rather thought-provoking. Was he really faking it? I’d have been suspicious too if he’d only started acting like that after being captured, but what reason would he have to pretend in front of Crusch and Rem? Or is Betelgeuse’s definition of insane just too different from Subaru and his current mental state?
I can probably come up with more to say if I felt like it, but I think I’m done. I was planning to start watching some stuff from the new season after writing this, but I’m not even in the mood now. I’m just going to go get a good night’s rest, and hopefully wake up in the morning without Subaru’s screams of anguish echoing in my ears. I could also do without thinking back about Rem’s dying breaths and her confession of love to Subaru in her final moments, that was fucking suffering. Rem is such a good girl ;_;
In high school DxD Matsuoka also voicing crazy swordsman and that was awesome. That not his fault most protagonist he ever played were too 1 dimensional make his voice act no variations. There other anime I forgot where Matsuoka play as villain, he is really good as villain.
Oh yeah, the crazy white-haired dude. Matsuoka is pretty nice for villains, I’m feeling more open towards him now. It’s just that he’s played -so- many generic MCs, sometimes with more success than others. Kirito is one of his better ones, actually (and if nothing else he has earned and will continue to earn a shitload of money off playing Kirito).
After this episode was over I was sitting there in shock for a while thinking.. what the fck why? so much pain and suffering but damn this was soo good. All those emotions, those screams and just wow.
Guess what I found out? Rem’s torture is the CENSORED VERSION. in the LN he gets cut in half, loses a few body parts before that and even an eye.
For now he is in rage/revenge mode which we all know will never go well. I can only hope he learns that he is not some fancy hero and will ask others (crusch and the knights) for help because if not I can only see more suffering incoming.
Betelgeuse is simply crazy and won’t accept a broken man such as subaru as broken, setting his min. level of crazyness so high that it’s a wonder how you could be alive. He is just so insane that everything below that level doesn’t seem to count for him.
Let’s think back a bit; Didn’t Satelly, the witch of ENVY, absorb all 6 of those sins? Why would he call himself Sloth and Subaru Pride? Is he legit a follower of Satella, considering that he is envious of all the love between Rem and Subaru.
The two scenes which stood out to me the most were Rem’s ‘dai… suki…’ and the very last scene where Subaru’s head falls off and snow continues to pile up over his and Rem’s corpses as the dark red credits rolled. I don’t think I could have taken an uncensored version of the torture.
He won’t be able to do anything without Crusch at the very least, he’ll have to swallow quite a lot of his pride to ask the knights for help so they might be a later resort. Maybe Priscilla or Al, or Reinhard in his capacity as a friend and not a knight?
It wasn’t mentioned in the anime but I think I mentioned it once already.. or at least gave a hint. Be careful if you want to read this.
[spoiler] Subaru and Al have a special relationship. The hint in here was: How did Al know what a Kansai dialect is when Subaru was mentioning that our candidate mrs.greed (not actually the sin but her character) has a kansai dialect while talking and Al said, that dialect is very common where she is from.
If you haven’t guessed it already, Al is not from this world either. They talked about it when priscilla and Al were picking him up heading towards the ceremony [/spoiler]
I think we will at least 1 more round of suffering before he wakes up from his rage and asks others for help.
Rem has a frighteningly powerful healing ability, though, her Oni nature may contribute to it. That or Beetlejuice (coined after the thought of a well-deserved squashed-like-a-bug death) knows how to really bend the rules of nature with his killing methods.
As for the cultists, I wondered very much how many of them still serve Beetlejuice willingly as I’m sure at least some started out that way. Concerning your line of thought that Subaru might employ them, he may still be able to if the cultists are ultimately serving Satella through BJ and don’t truly care for serving him. The big problem there though would be how to convince them since their current master is quite powerful and would likely hunt traitors down. Of course… there is Elsa.
BJ clearly can’t discern between being mad and being broken out of your mind, but as for his comments on slothfulness to Subaru (the one underling should’ve really searched for Rem more sadly) it may be an comment on his lack of power despite his “blessing” by Satella, which may lead him to struggle with using distasteful means of enhancing his magical power. Of course, no one seems to be able to discern his ‘return from death’ so Subaru has great power as it is already.
On KA it was reported by one user who often tries to shine more light on the episodes without outright spoiling things that (I spoiler-mark this simply because I don’t remember it being mentioned) [spoiler]Satella is the Jealous Witch because she was the witch representing envy… and absorbed the other witches?[/spoiler] So I’m not sure how Beetlejuice can take up that mantle of sloth, unless he seeks to be he representative of slothfulness when she “returns”. It was also suggested that Satella’s stench tends not to fall upon people who are normal like Subaru, yet BJ has suspicions of him being pride… We never did find out why Satella marked him intentionally or not and this may be a clue.
In the end, I believe. I don’t despair while watching. I refuse. I believe in Subaru.
Her healing ability is what unsettled me, because it meant she was still alive during the limb twisting. I just hope she was already unconscious from what Betelgeuse initially did to her. Beetlejuice is an excellent nickname, but I think nicknames are too good for him. Insults are better.
Elsa is an absolute darling compared to this fucker. At least disembowelling happens quickly, right? I wonder what her place in all of this is. She, too, wanted to kill Emilia back in the pawn shop, but she feels slightly different to a standard witch cultist. The generic cultists remind me of the Gomorins in Kiznaiver, I’m always wondering what their faces are like under their hoods.
I clicked on that spoiler out of curiosity, and thankfully I’d already come across that particular fact. It might have been mentioned in passing – one of the fairy tales Subaru was learning to read, maybe? It’d explain why there are so many deadly sins but seemingly only one witch that all the cultists rally around, although you’d think the Sin Archbishops that aren’t Envy wouldn’t gravitate towards Satella. We’ll probably learn more about that soon.
The whole Satella = Emilia thing might explain why he was singled out, and in turn it could be the pulling factor behind Subaru’s intense loyalty and attraction to Emilia. I wonder if Satella is cute? Asking all the important questions here 😀
This episode was so great, it left me shocked that I can’t even watch another anime for the rest of the day..
still this is my fav anime of the year
That’s how I felt. I wanted to watch a bunch of other stuff, but I just went to sleep instead after that. And during all of Monday I couldn’t stop thinking about Rem dying in his arms. It was actually a really effective episode.
My theory is that Puck can sense emotions and thoughts to a certain degree. If so maybe it somehow knows about Subaru’s ability and is killing him in the hope that he can come back and make things right. The first time he died the voice said “You’re too late.” The second time the voice said, “Sleep, Along with my daughter.” Those comments seem to portray more disappointment than anger.
I think it’s confirmed that Puck has some sort of mind-reading ability, back during the start of the mansion arc he was talking to Emilia about how Subaru had no malicious intent despite his shady background and genuinely wanted nothing but to rub his fur.
So it’s a very plausible idea, although it’d have been nice if Puck had given him some help or said something a little more concrete instead of just killing him cryptically. Better Puck than starving to death while chained up though.
It was confirmed that Puck is able to read the state of emotions by touching others, which is why he could tell that subaru was putting up an act while suffering a lot on the inside. Also that is letting him know that subaru is pretty much living for the sake of emilia at this point, so letting him encounter emilias corpse would literally kill him, so better end his suffering than and there. too bad subaru can revive and remembers.