Each One's Promise

Well, it's almost time for the broadcast to begin. Please be warned that during the airing, the author may get extremely noisy with live reactions and repeatedly say things that verge on spoilers. I'll be tweeting with the hashtag below, so it's best to mute it. That's what the hashtag is for, so it'd be better if other people didn't use it.

Gyaaaaah! Rudy is talkinggggg!!!

It's staaarting!

The scene is immediately after episode 25, right in the middle of heading to the royal capital after finishing the battle with Petelgeuse.

Petra's cute little resistance around here is nice. I honestly can't remember when I decided to add Petra as one of the regular cast members. Maybe around episode 14?

Rare for once: since there's no window to close, the gratitude toward Otto properly gets conveyed all the way to the end.

"They're talking about something important... I have to listen for the sake of the future...!" (Petra)

This whole part was something I wrote on the Web about seven years ago already, can you believe it...?

All right, scene change: now we're with the Rem/Crusch part, returning in triumph to the royal capital after the White Whale battle.

It wasn't possible to bring all of the White Whale back, so they only brought back its head as proof of the subjugation. They froze the body to keep it from rotting, but that got blown up in episode 25, haha.

By the way, mabeast meat tastes like absolute crap, so White Whale meat isn't edible either! The whole concept of the White Whale is that it's a creature that causes trouble for people just by existing!

"You're a woman who's bad at smiling" is one of Crusch-san's lines that I like quite a lot. If you want to know more, maybe check Ex1: "The Dream the Lion King Saw"?

Crusch-san reacting immediately to something so sudden right from the start, and the knights responding just as quickly, is admirable too.

Now then, it's his turn to appear!!

Kyaaaaaaaa!! Regulus-saaaaaan!! Just shut up alreadyyyy!!

You can really tell that a big part of Regulus-san's way of speaking is all those "Come on now"s.

Crusch-san's one hit on Regulus-san had enough power to make even the White Whale scream back in the White Whale battle, and yet it did absolutely nothing. That's the kind of opponent he is.

After having her arm blown off, Crusch-san's consciousness grows hazy. Even in that state, the fact that she's calling out "Ferris" by name really shows how much she trusts him.

Aaaaaah! Batenkaitosーーー!! Cry because you're hungryyyy!!

Considering Petelgeuse had already come around this area, having two more Sin Archbishops there on top of that is hell on earth.

Regulus-san is a pacifist!

After the battle against the White Whale, Rem has almost no strength left. But Rem wouldn't be Rem if she didn't push herself here. She has resolved to fight with every last ounce of her strength.

In pure close-quarters combat ability, Batenkaitos is one of the very best even among the Sin Archbishops, so an exhausted Rem can't beat him. And on top of that, he's with Regulus-san, who's among the absolute strongest in Re:Zero, so they were up against the worst possible opponents.

If you take a closer look at Rem's battle flashback before "GOCHISOUSAMADESHITA," you might notice some unexpected images mixed in.

It should have been a triumphant return after defeating the White Whale, but instead it became a return home with perhaps even more casualties than the White Whale battle. During the fight with the Sin Archbishops, Anastasia's camp's Iron Fang sensed the danger, withdrew from the battlefield, and came back with reinforcements. That's why the damage was kept to a minimum. Of course, even so, it was still a lot.

At this point, Subaru resolves to fight Petelgeuse once again in order to get Rem and the others back. Or rather, even so, he'll seize the best possible outcome.

The restart point here is different from the books and the web version, and this was the first of those "I should've handled that myself" moments that came up during the anime meetings. Pretty early. Coming back here was the most shocking part, so I'm glad we got to do it in the anime!

This may surprise you, but that was only Subaru's second suicide so far.

Timing-wise, Rem and the others were attacked around when Subaru and the others were holding their meeting on how to defeat Petelgeuse, so in fact, by the time he had already Returned by Death once during the battle with Petelgeuse, it was already too late to save Rem.

You might have felt relieved when Petelgeuse killed him and the save point turned out to be after the White Whale, but it was properly a second drop waiting underneath. At that point, he was in a situation where he could only save either Emilia or Rem.

Puck here, just like in Bond of Ice, is divulging information in violation of his own contract, so the setting is that he was walking a very fine line.

Crusch-san here really gives off the sense that she has "changed," and Iguchi-san did an absolutely wonderful job.

Needless to say, Ferris is pushing himself to the point of death. Because Crusch-san has forgotten something she must never forget. Oh? Is that also in EX1, "The Dream the Lion King Saw"?

As Puck explained, the Authority of "Gluttony" has various patterns: devouring someone's "name" erases them from the memories of those around them, devouring their "memories" gives them amnesia, and devouring both cuts them off from the world. It's basically table manners.

Ferris's voice is so cute it could kill you, yet among the knights his personality is about as nasty as Subaru's. That's cute too.

Even if someone's "memories" are taken, I think their essential nature can't be taken away. But as the author, I think "memories" are the foundation that shapes a person, so in that sense, I think it is a kind of human death. What Hiruluk said was right. When a person is forgotten, that is when they die.

Ah, for now, the "Nameless Knight" is unrelated.

The only one Ferris believes in is Crusch-san. Other than that, the only thing he can rely on is the power of his own healing magic, so if he doesn't believe that it can return Crusch-san to normal, his heart will break. That's why he has no reason at all to continue the alliance with Subaru and the others.

Because the core memories that shaped Crusch-san are gone, the influence of those memories shows in how she has chosen a feminine outfit appropriate to her appearance. It's not that Ferri-chan chose the dress.

At this point, Wilhelm-san said they should continue the alliance for the sake of avenging Crusch-san, but he has another motive in his heart besides that.

On Wilhelm-san's shoulder, there had been a wound from the "Divine Protection of the Grim Reaper" that his wife Theresia gave him when they parted, but after his wife's death, that wound, which should have healed, began to throb again. Wilhelm suspects that something connected to his wife's death is there.

By the way, Natsuki Subaru wakes up easily, but he's unbelievably bad at falling asleep.

Emilia is the opposite: she falls asleep easily, but she's bad at waking up.

I really love scenes where someone "cries a little." I just can't help doing them.

Ever since Rem fell into this state, Subaru hadn't been able to cry even once until now. He finally managed to cry.

If the end of Episode 16 was the previous time—when everything was taken from him and he swore to take it all back from the Sin Archbishop—then I think it feels really good to compare it with the difference in his expression here.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's 30 minutes early!?

As always, no OP or ED! My apologies! Let's hope for it next time!

And with that, thank you for Re:Zero episode 26! Amazingly, after four whole years, that finally wraps up Arc 3! That's right, Arc 3 actually wasn't over yet. In the books, volume 9 ends cleanly only after this point, and from the next part onward it goes into volume 10, the contents of Arc 4. Ahh, finally one proper stopping point.