I almost feel sorry for him.
Impression
You have no idea how glad I was to see Ricardo within the first few seconds of the episode. Hearing the shopkeeper’s voice for a second during that flashback rush scared me out of my wits. As I said though, it’d be near-impossible to properly conclude the arc within the time we have left if we went all the way back to the White Whale battle, so it makes sense to have Satella update Subaru’s save point for him. Isn’t she sweet? Did anyone else love how Subaru basically cucked Betelgeuse to his face by talking about how intimate he was with her, and how he could go visit her whenever he wanted? I don’t think I’ve ever seen him that pissed ever before. It was technically the truth as well! I really hope we get another glimpse of Satella before the end, although it’s unlikely as Subaru would have to die for that to happen. For some strange reason, my headcanon has developed her into a cute yet lewd girl who is head over heels for Subaru. A complete yandere, but really cute. Something like this, maybe.
Isn’t Satella a cute? I want her to grip my heart Anyway, Subaru has had a perfect run so far. He’s basically milked the previous loop and all the knowledge he gained during it for all it’s worth, and therefore he’s made all the right noises. He’s managed to stop Ram from interfering by preempting the issue with the blank letter, and instead of confronting Sloth straight away he chose to covertly meet up with Emilia first. That encounter was actually quite interesting – it felt like Emilia wanted to have had a say in the matter about the mining rights and all that, and she looked rather forlorn to learn that it was all decided without her input. Petra definitely knew the hooded messenger was Subaru, and I have a feeling that Emilia did too by the end of the scene. It’s nice to see her and Puck again at any rate – it’s a little unfortunate that Wilhelm (using the surname he had as a bachelor for some reason) left with her as he can basically one-shot Betelgeuse, but at least both Emilia and Rem are out of the way and no harm can come to either of them. Which is kind of the point of Subaru going through all of this.
So everything is solved apart from actually killing Betelgeuse, which doesn’t appear to have been adequately dealt with at all. Julius says they should kill all the fingers before attacking Sloth, which is a perfectly sound tactic save for the fact that he could just then jump into Subaru once all the fingers are dead. Another option is to just restrain him, but that doesn’t fix the core issue. And I don’t know about the rest of them, but I sure wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if he’s not properly dead and merely locked up instead. Satella also isn’t going to help with killing him, as okay as she seems to be with her cult getting wiped out because of Subaru.
One thing I have noticed, however, is that Betelgeuse seemed as frantic and as pissed off as when Puck killed him during that one loop. I think the fingers were all dead then too, but I do wonder whether his rage is to do with Julius being a spirit arts user and the fact that spirits are his natural enemy. He sounds cornered, in other words, but I’m not sure what it is that’s changed. It could also just be that Subaru taunted him enough about his relationship with Satella. It’s amazing how much he’s learned – he knows exactly how to deal with Betelgeuse and everything that pushes his buttons, it’s a completely different power dynamic to the Subaru that was chained up in his creepy torture dungeon madly screaming his name over and over again. The only thing missing was Subaru introducing himself as Pride.
He could also have learned more about the KKK by quizzing Betelgeuse and pretending that he was a believer in love, but I guess he’d be asked to produce his Gospel at some point and so it’d be hard to keep that up for too long. We do now know that the Ordeal is all about testing Emilia to see whether she’s a fit vessel for Satella to revive into – it’s a bit weird that the test involves trying to kill her, but these guys are all insane anyway.
Novel readers say the Re Zero anime’s adapted all content from the available published light novel versions, and is using the source webnovel material to close off the season. The anime’s covered the 1st 3 webnovel arcs, while the remaining 3 arcs are still unpublished as of now. Unless they choose to directly adapt the webnovel, it may be a while before a Season 2 is made which adapts the printed physical novels.
The later arcs do answer some mysteries about Satella, although her connection to Subaru still remains unexplained.
And yes, Satella’s madly in love with Subaru (emphasis on mad).
Hmm, interesting. Do you know if it’s standard precedent to adapt from published light novels only? It’d make sense, especially since the point of an adaptation is to promote sales of the source material and it’d be a waste if said material never existed for people to buy.
As far as recent adaptations are concerned, one anomaly I can think of would be SAO, where I remember they took a side story from Volume 8 to pad out the early half of S1. I can’t recall whether Volume 8 was published back then though – and at any rate, A-1 did that to fill up a single episode instead of creating entire seasons filled with WN content. If anything, it’s similar to what Re:Zero is doing this time with its finale.
For Wilhelm his ties to knighthood and the van Astrea family died the moment his wife and the white whale died. Remember when subaru asked him because of his honor for killing betelgeuse from behind? he didn’t care.
I want to leave something for you to think about
Why was the Letter blank? When was the last time something went missing? When was there a moment where there is no equal amount of despair coming after so much happiness? What bad things come to mind when you think of respawning at a new checkpoint?
Good luck and prepare for the internet to melt next week
I guess he only ever did it for his wife. I’m actually so glad Subaru’s save point was updated so that Wilhelm landing the final blow became canon. They could have done better to make us more invested in his backstory, but somehow it still managed to be one of the most emotional non Rem-related moments of the series.
Wasn’t the letter blank because whoever wrote it got fogged by the Whale? So the writing (part of the proof of their ‘existence’) vanished, but the letter did not as the paper itself would have existed regardless.
Hang on… I guess it would depend on when exactly they wrote it. It would only be the Whale’s fault if the letter was sent prior to the battle, but I’m not confident (nor am I certain that they ever told us) of the relevant timescales. And as for despair, each arc has ended relatively happily, right? It’s the end of the entire anime, so everyone’s smiles will be protected, right?
…R-right?
I always imagined her looking like Emilia, mostly because Beatrice stated she was a half-elf with silver hair, and Emilia’s the only one we have to go off of, and Petelguese wanted to use her as a host for Satella too.
I’m not sure Emilia knew, because remember Roswaal created that hood specifically to avoid recognition. Although she may have had a guess that it was him, she never called him by his name.
I think his rage is sort of both, that spirits are his natural enemy and everything Subaru said about Satella.
Yeah I don’t think that’d work either due to him asking to show his Gospel. If he had one though, it could probably work.
On a side note, I thought Subaru sort of sounded like Hachiman, but Hachiman’s seiyuu plays Julius. It’s pretty interesting in my opinion.
I’d imagine so too, yeah. Assuming that Satella isn’t Emilia (which she shouldn’t be) they should still share some physical similarities. Although who knows anything about her really, or whether the hatred society bears for her is just one massive misunderstanding. Maybe the cult have been doing evil things in her name and just claiming it’s all for her sake. I don’t know, it could be a crack theory or a possibility, but we have no way of finding out until we learn more about her.
Maybe he could have killed a finger and taken their Gospel? He knows how to handle Betelgeuse so well now that he’d be able to profit lots if he had the time and energy.
His Julius voice is a lot more… orthodox? Hikki has that permanently snarky tone to his voice that a righteous knight of Lugunica would never adopt! Also, speaking of Oregairu, the long-awaited 10.5 OVA is next month! Much hype. As a devout Iroha worshipper I don’t know whether I’ll still be diabetes-free after it.