I Cried, Cried My Lungs Out, and Stopped Crying / The Meaning of Courage

A week goes by so fast! And January is ending!

So with that, this week's starting too! Last time, what happened to Natsuki Subaru after he manfully jumped off the cliff!? He died!

"Return by Death" carries over your mental state from just before, so naturally, right after dying with his arm messed up, he still carries that pain over from just before, and this time too, after jumping, he's carrying over the state from right before the jump.

For the record, setting-wise, the punchline to last time's jump is that he "failed to die instantly," but fortunately, I suppose he was unconscious.

The fact that he's become much more efficient at getting work done really shows Subaru's impressively high learning ability in a subtle way. His high morale also plays a part.

Basically, everyone living has a gate, but their quality varies wildly. In the story, Roswaal has the best gate, while Anastasia has the worst one.

"Yin Magic" and "Dark Magic" have pretty different nuances. Dark Magic feels super offensive, but Yin Magic is completely specialized for debuffs. Still, even if Subaru could use offensive Dark Magic, it feels like his survival rate would be lower than with Yin Magic.

In fact, Subaru's sense of "I'm good at imagining things!" isn't wrong. Imagination is important for using magic. It's better if you can picture the result of the magic you use. It's like free throws in basketball. Image training matters.

"Rather than hearing 'I'm sorry' over and over, the other person will be happier if you say 'thank you' just once" is actually a pretty important way of thinking for Emilia.

As Roswaal is wary of, Rem's tendency to rush ahead is backed by a fair amount of proven trust and results. Rem tends to shoulder things alone, so she hardly even consults Ram.

Beatrice is explaining witches right now, but saying "Are witches like sorcerers?" is like saying "Is the president one of the idols?" so Beatrice was probably very much thinking, "This guy..."

But at this point it wasn't really worth calling him out on it, so instead of arguing, she chose to explain.

Back at the start of Arc 1, Emilia introduced herself to Subaru as "Satella," but at that point Emilia didn't want to drag Subaru into things, so she gave him "the Witch's name" to make him think, "I'd better stay away," and push him off. But Subaru was a total scatterbrain, so it didn't work.

It looks like Subaru's spirits are up because he's reached some rough conclusions about the "curse user" situation and Emilia's feelings, but Kobayashi-san's performance here is so unrestrained that I really love it.

You can vaguely see that something is going on with Subaru mentally, but the fact that no one in particular tries to do anything about it is, well, a very spirit-like sensibility.

I'd never really thought about it before, but I feel like breaking that vase just now probably wiped out Subaru's monthly pay.

That Puck applique felt good enough that it could've been turned into merchandise. I kind of want one.

I'd never really thought about this either, but this may have been the first time Emilia gave someone a lap pillow, if you exclude Puck curled up in a ball. She may have gotten a lap pillow from Puck before, in a way like that alley scene in Arc 1.

That familiar vibe Puck had there probably means it wasn't the first time he'd taken that form and given someone a lap pillow. And since Emilia didn't comment on that form at all, maybe she's used to seeing it...?

The more banged-up Subaru gets and how much his bangs lift up affect each other... well, that was just me talking nonsense. In Arc 2, his bangs were down even in the bath scene, but it's nice to see him like that once in a while too.

Now that he's cried and screamed it out and feels better, it's time for a reflection session with Beatrice.

"Contact with the target" is one of the rules of curses, but there are characters who exploit that rule, so look forward to what's ahead.

By the way, Emilia is bad at waking up, so she usually dozes in bed for about an hour. On the other hand, Subaru can get moving five seconds after getting out of bed.

Subaru said, "Don't you have any shame!?" in response to "It's a lap pillow" and "It is a lap pillow," but I feel like he completes the whole set later on...

The main adults of Arlam Village who touched Subaru's body were the "Youth Group Leader," the "Muraosa," and the "Rejuvenated Granny," but Muraosa isn't actually the village chief, he just looks like one. The real village chief is Rejuvenated Granny.

By the way, the real name of the "Youth Group Leader" is Makiji Arlam, and he's the grandson of Milde Arlam, aka Rejuvenated Granny. Also, Rejuvenated Granny and Muraosa are sister and brother, so they were all family.

That barrel was hard to bring back from the village, but while Ram aside, Rem could carry it one-handed. Subaru carried it himself because of his pride as a man, though.

Even if it was to have Beatrice examine him, the fact that he actually goes through with the idea of "Let's get cursed and find out" already shows signs of Subaru's bad habit of reckless hands-on action.

From everything he's experienced so far, Subaru thinks, "Roswaal is wary of me or having me watched," so he turns that around in negotiation by basically saying, "I'm going to do what I want, but are you guys really okay with just leaving me alone?"

I think Emilia-tan's nightwear is one of the cutest outfits in the whole adorable wardrobe-change series.

Bondrewd...

The anti-mabeast crystals set up around Arlam Village are pretty common items, and the basic image is that, like LEDs, they normally don't run out unless something goes wrong. So if one has fallen, that means something happened, but Subaru doesn't have the knowledge to infer that much.

Because he gets along with the children of Arlam Village in every loop, Subaru feels very close to them too. At this point, in terms of affection, there's probably no gap between them and the mansion staff.

Through all the loops so far, you could say this is the first scene where Rem truly trusted Subaru. Incidentally, even the original author isn't really sure where the iron ball comes from.

Whether the ones lying outside the forest are there because everyone managed to escape as far as the hill, or because they were thrown somewhere easy to find. If anything, I picture it being closer to the latter. "If Nee-sama had been watching over us" refers to the 'Clairvoyance,' doesn't it?

Petra and the blue-haired girl (Meili) also have quite a strange twist of fate between them.

At the anime script meeting stage, Subaru and Rem's pinky promise here was right on the line between staying and being cut. It seemed likely to be cut because of time constraints, but producer Yoshikawa-san fought pretty hard to keep it in.

Not just here, Yoshikawa-san really worked hard to preserve the details in the part of Re:Zero covered by the anime, so there are a lot of places where that helped. It was the same in discussions for season 2 as well. It's been a huge help.

Naturally, Subaru was picturing the puppy that had been in the village, so he wasn't expecting something the size of a large dog to show up here.

This is Subaru's one and only solo win...

The mabeast is called an Ulgarm, but iron balls powerful enough to blow away its torso are being hurled around with total abandon. If you get hit by one of those, your eyeballs will go rolling.

The puppy isn't a juvenile Ulgram at all; if anything, it's more in the commander position. There also aren't that many Demon Beast individuals that can use magic, so that puppy is a rare specimen.

It feels like Rem's combat power with her horn out is about double what it is when it isn't.

Oh, the ending has a nice arrangement.

Maybe because it's my own anime, but I've started watching the credits really carefully. Naturally, names I know keep scrolling by one after another. Amazing, these are the people who make anime!