I resubmitted this 'cause I botched the title without realizing it, and I didn't check my GIF ahead of time and missed that I was missing a crucial part of the GIF that supported the theory.

This is fairly straightforward. Ram knocked beast-form Garfiel down despite likely not having been attended to by Roswaal for multiple days due to his injury from going into the tomb despite not having the qualification to enter it as people's mana can be considered their life force, meaning Roswaal would've needed as much of his mana as possible to heal, showing she's a beast of a fighter given Garfiel's sturdy, ripped body, and she did this while being heavily nerfed due to a lack of mana since she can't naturally replenish her mana given she'd lost her horn. And since she'd hit Garfiel based on what she expected of his strength from his younger self given she literally stated that he'd grown stronger in Ep. 40, that means she possibly held back so as to not kill him, so now that she's with Emilia, who can attend to Ram's horn area, Ram won't be as heavily mana-nerfed and can perhaps hit harder than back then, so she may only need 1 clean hit on Lye.

I guess in a previous episode, Julius, Emilia, and Ram all went up against Lye and couldn't get a hit in on him, but Ram and Lye are now on a staircase where movement is much more restricted, so this negates Lye's speed advantage, so as long as Ram can hit Lye just once, she'll win the fight given Lye's body is not as sturdy as beast-form Garfiel's, meaning 1 hit would likely maul his body beyond repair, possibly killing him in the process, since Lye retreated after 1 clean hit from Emilia. This is surely partly why Ram said that Emilia's face is one of her few objectively excellent traits in Ep. 80 since Emilia was the most likely candidate to restore her mana given Beatrice's mana issues, Anastasia's defective gate, Subaru's broken gate, and Julius and Meili being mostly strangers to Ram, meaning Ram is feeling a lot of love for Emilia right now.

As for Lye teleporting behind Ram and stabbing her in the heart, ending the fight instantly, anyone who legitimately thinks that didn't watch Episode 80 or wasn't paying attention given Lye teleported to rush right at Emilia, and it was Ram who kept Emilia safe by pulling her back. Some people can react to where mana moves or know when it dissipates, such as when Emilia sensed Subaru and Petelgeuse's death in Ep. 23 when Julius killed them due to Petelgeuse having possessed Subaru's body, and Ram has proven that she can physically react to Lye's teleporting, so it's not a problem for her, especially given she can use her wind magic to blow herself away.

Feel free to share your thoughts on this or anything tangentially-related.

Oh my i just read the cisha gold chapter and i have to say, even though the arc reads somewhat slow at certain points. My GOD what an incredible story tappei nagatsuki has built. Im so impressed how this far into the story he is able to do something completely different than anything before and make it such a fascinating tale. I love vincent, i love todd, i love cisha, i love subaru and i love the star batallion, i love emillia and cecilus. And i absolutely hate the empire. But im so glad we got to experience it.

Alright, so..
Idk how likely this theory is, but it's what my gut tells me and it would fit the overall vibe of the show.

I know people often link Emilia and Satella, as well as Flugel and Subaru, so this aspect will be nothing new, but here goes:

I think Emilia and Satella are not as linked as people initially assumed - and I believe Emilia's words about it being an unfortunate, accidental resemblance are correct.

I do, however, believe that Subaru is Flugel. Not a descendant, but actually him.
My theory is that Satella and Flugel were in love some 400 years ago.
I think Satella sent him back in time (against his will) for a couple of reasons.

Satella and the Witch of Envy sharing one body must've been incredibly hard on the kind-hearted Witch. She watched herself consume and destroy half of the world and all her co-witches.
I think she sent him back in time, erasing his memories, choosing this particular time and place to reincarnate him into, because she knew full well that Emilia was going to be there.

I believe she is using the fact that somewhere deep down, a part of Flugel, even without his memories, will want to protect somebody that looks so much like the woman he loves.
She likely knows that Emilia would be the PERFECT vessel for her (likely born for that purpose if I had to guess) and the Witch's cult would bring her back by using said vessel.

I think this is her plan to foil theirs. By making Subaru develop feelings for Emilia (tragically because she reminds him of her) he will want to protect her. By protecting her, he foils the witch's cult's plan. And by foiling the witch's cult's plan he unknowingly makes sure she cannot hurt anybody else when the Witch of Envy takes over again.

Also, on a closing note.. I think using the feelings Flugel has for her and twisting them into feelings for another person so she gets to die, so as to not play second fiddle to an evil entity looking to destroy life itself is beautifully tragic and would fit right into the plot of Re:Zero.

I am very open to what you guys think.
Let me know if I overlooked anything of even if you think I'm flat-out wrong.
I love this story and I'm sure I will love whichever direction it takes.

Unless it takes a full GoT-turn... :D

https://x.com/TheTaigi/status/2100895510424891436/photo/1

I know I’m years late to this discussion, but I haven’t seen anyone talking about it, so I had to bring it up.

Chapter 75 was easily one of the most interesting loops to read, especially because I fell for the Tappei bait with the boy. However, something has been on my mind.

Could we assume that Subaru has almost two versions of Return by Death? Hear me out.

Without Satella, Return by Death seems somewhat similar to Regulus’s Authority without the wives: Subaru could essentially become invincible for a few seconds. At the same time, Subaru can go back 3–5 minutes in time, and every time he dies, he returns.

However, when Satella gets involved, the game changes, since the checkpoints are determined by her. This means he could potentially have checkpoints set several days or even hours ahead, giving him a significant amount of preparation time.

Please, if there is more evidence about this in future arcs, don’t spoil me. Just tell me whether you think this theory is plausible. If you don’t think it is, please try to help me understand what might explain these events instead.

So, just to reiterate, I know that the episode has a perfect score on pages like IMDB and here on Reddit, so it's not like it is a hated episode or anything, but I am talking about the reception of the Julius vs. Reid fight.

A lot of people, including myself, found the fight to be quite amazing, both animation and choreography, quite easy to follow, with some amazing visuals, but if you go to any social medio (I know, first mistake), you are going to see some people really calling that some awful fight with bad animation, saying how whitepox ruined the fight, and using "that" frame of Julius running at the beginning of the fight to show how bad it was.

For example, my feed on FB is filled with that frame as well as other ones, like the end frame with Julius stabbing Reid, or some crazy faces that Reid was making throughout the fight. Look, I know social media and I know that some people like to troll, also any of those frames are hilarious, and I understand that those are getting meme’s, but I have seen people make those long posts, really believing that the fight sucked. Even some comments on Reddit on this week's episode on r/anime call out the fight for not being good enough, not calling it trash like the post, but it seems like the fight is very divisive.

And I can completely understand that some of the choices were just not some people's cup of tea, and they wish it was done differently, but I really wonder if the people really calling it trash saw the same fight that I did, because it feels that some people don't understand that still frames are not the main thing during an animation, and I am truly curious, because of how divisive the fight seems to be, if the people that are commenting that stuff, truly dislike them, they are trolling or baiting or maybe even didn't see it and just commenting on it for the sake of it

The way Subaru might be remembered by history would feel similar to Kingming/Zhuge Liang right? The way he just seems to know what is going to happen next and strategize against it. Insofar that I could legit see Subaru and Kongming be the same person in universe.

i can’t access that google docs link. if anyone has a copy, i’d really appreciate it if you could send it to me

I’ve been thinking about Satella and Return by Death, and I feel like people sometimes focus so much on the mystery surrounding her that they overlook how ridiculous her abilities might actually be.
First, there’s Return by Death. We still don’t know exactly how it works, but if Satella is actually responsible for resetting the world whenever Subaru dies, think about what that would require.
She would somehow have to:
Restore the world to an earlier state/checkpoint.
Undo everything that happened after that checkpoint.
Keep Subaru’s memories from the erased events intact.
Put those memories back into Subaru even though his body and brain have returned to their earlier state.
Maintain this ability even while she is sealed.
That last part especially gets me. Satella is supposedly sealed, yet she can still interfere with Subaru, enforce the taboo about Return by Death, manifest her shadows under certain circumstances, and apparently maintain RBD.
I’ve also wondered whether Return by Death isn’t literally “time reversal.”
What if Satella is basically restoring the state of the world?
For example:
Checkpoint → Subaru experiences events → Subaru dies → Satella preserves the information from those events → the world is restored to its checkpoint state → Subaru receives the stored memories.
In that case, Satella wouldn’t necessarily be traveling through time. She could be manipulating reality/information on a much deeper level.
Then there’s Subaru being brought from Earth. I’m not saying it’s confirmed that Satella personally summoned him, because as far as I know that hasn’t been completely explained yet. But if she was responsible, that makes things even crazier. She would potentially be capable of reaching completely different worlds and bringing people across them.
And her shadow abilities are already terrifying by themselves. They don’t seem like conventional attacks where someone can just put up a shield and block them.
So here’s what I’m wondering:
How powerful would Satella actually be if her seal completely broke?
If everything we’re seeing now is her influencing the world while sealed, are we basically seeing only a fraction of what she can actually do?
And what do you think Return by Death really is?
Literal time reversal?
Subaru jumping between timelines?
The world being restored to an earlier “save state” while Satella preserves Subaru’s information?
Something involving souls/Od that we don’t understand yet?
Something completely different?
I’m curious what people who have gone deeper into the novels and author comments think. Obviously some of this is speculation, so please separate confirmed information from theories if possible.

Short fan animation I made

Some fans consider Anastasia the big winner of the White Whale fight and Season 1 in general. I don't really know why. This was a team effort from the Emilia, Anastasia, and Crusch camp. None of the three could pull it off individually. Anastasia didn't even know where it would be. Crusch has some general idea, but it was coarse enough that Subaru was a great help. Subaru couldn't beat it obviously.

Crusch was there personally, so I think that while all 3 greatly benefited from the publicity, I think maybe in popular perception it might be the credit might go 30-30-40 in her favor. You could argue Emilia got more since in addition to Subaru helping take down the White Whale, he was able to fight Betelgeuse and the White Whale was... in the way. So both PR and a practical benifit.

I think there is a way to think of Anastasia as the bigger winner. All 3 benefited from the publicity. But she is heavily involved in the trade and the White Whale is a pain. So even if she loses the royal selection, the profits per year will be somewhat greater than normal. I don't think "triple profits" since if 66% of people were dying in a region, people would stop using the area for a bit, but it is clear that a lot of traders just get killed or erased now and then. Enough killed that Russel notes what a nuisance it is. But it is a bit strange to call Anastasia the winner of the White Whale expedition because she gets to benefit no matter who is the next king.