(Nitsuj): Hello everyone. Nitsuj here and joining me is the always deadly Seras. Today we look at the second half of Re:Zero S3. When we last left the anime, the city had been invaded by the Witch’s Cult and their archbishops. Subaru and the others have regrouped and are now going on the attack. Can Subaru and the others defeat the archbishops and save the city? Let’s find out.
Episodes 9-12
(Seras): Well the second half starts off well enough with some unexpected fanservice from Priscilla. We then head out into the city where Otto has been given the unfortunate task of retrieving the book of wisdom (Nitsuj: Was it wise to send him after it? (Seras): He survived this long, he’s got high luck stats). As he sneaks through the city he runs into Felt and a few others getting ready to fight Lye (let the feast of a 1,000 deaths begin). Wilhelm and Garfiel take on Capella, but before they get to her they have to defeat the two masked fighters with one of them being an asura and the other being the Sword Saint herself, Theresia who isn’t a walking corpse (Nitsuj: Well this will be an interesting conversation). Priscilla and Lilianna go to face Sirius (Nitsuj: Just as crazy and mummy-hot as I remember). We then go to the main story we’ve been waiting to see, Subaru and Reinhard crashing the wedding. Reinhard takes on Regulus who apparently is invincible so Subaru and Emilia have to figure out why while Reinhard keeps him busy (and the wives just stand there afraid to do anything. What does he have on you? Scene here: https://youtu.be/uimA0X9mc3I?si=cc03_YdHu0hMEJs8). Meanwhile, Felix and an unconscious Crusch get a visit from Capella.
At the start of episode 10, Capella plays mind games with Felix by having him stab her while she looks like Crusch. Felix is able to conquer the mind game and wants to know how to cure the dragon blood, but not even Capella knows. Crusch gets up, revealing herself to be Anastasia in disguise and revealing that this was all a ruse. They knew Capella would be coming so she prepared a trap for her (she fights like a merchant). Meanwhile, Subaru, Emilia, and Reinhard are busy fighting Regulus. They keep trying to find his weakness but have no luck until Emilia reveals that whenever Regulus touched her she felt nothing. Subaru then has Reinhard check his heart for a pulse and discovers that he doesn’t have one. This helps Subaru figure out his weakness and just in time because he launched Reinhard into the air and it’ll be sometime before he returns (Nitsuj: Do what you gotta do Reinhard). Subaru reveals that Regulus can stop time on his body (it’s hard to explain. It’s like a downgraded version of Gojo’s power from Jujustu Kaisen. He can stop things from harming him. Except instead of creating an infinite space between him and the object, he just stops its flow of time. Scenes here: https://youtu.be/2_9gkYe15Ls?si=7RpLaohLPuh_CScy).
Episode 11 gives us Lilianna’s backstory. As a child she traveled with her family who were traveling musicians. They stuck to small villages as not to attract the ire of performers in the city. When the group broke up and settled down, she decided to continue traveling to one day become the Minstrel King (spinoff confirmed). We then see Priscilla defeat Sirius using the Yang sword, one of the strongest swords in the world. It can control fire and slash whatever the holder wants it to slash (scene here: https://youtu.be/riyjyyXPqhw?si=lvuvUlwkclU69dl4). Lilianna also saves the citizens with her singing.
In episode 12 we return to the Regulus fight where Subaru instructs Emilia to convince his wives to fight against him (divorce his ass). Naturally, they’ve all developed Stockholm Syndrome. Any hope they’ve had at defeating him in the past has been crushed, so why should they have hope now (Nitsuj: Because the main character is here)? After a little talk, Emilia is able to get them to be honest with themselves on how they feel about Regulus (it’s very therapeutic in a way, https://youtu.be/2mzRm3USgmo?si=Pnt2Ey9bVCM5uavK). So yeah, the women are the source of his power but they’re not sure how until Emilia checks the heart of one of them and discovers that he attached pieces of his dark heart to each of them (Nitsuj: That can’t be healthy). This means that in order to beat him they have to kill all of his wives. Emilia freezes all of them in ice but there’s one more wife that’s still breathing, her. Even though Regulus rejected her he still put a piece of his heart on her but Subaru uses his powers to pull it off meaning he’s mortal now (which means, he can bleed. Which means, he feels pain. Which means, he can die). Emilia unleashes some revenge for the wives before Reinhard returns and buries him alive to kill him (scene here: https://youtu.be/Gif3cxfwEWQ?si=3pe-MMwAW9BDfq47).
Episodes 13-16
(Nitsuj): Episode 13 sees the momentum continue to shift into Subaru and other’s favor. We mostly focus on Garfiel taking on the asura where we go all out on the animation near the end of the episode for the fight as Garfiel is able to pull through and get the win (scene here: https://youtu.be/Quk8CNE9Dmw?si=cyAREHVk6nwWSe2n).
We get more action as well as emotion in episode 14 when Wilhelm takes on his wife Theresia (Seras: Nice name). The two are evening matched until Heinkel shows up and distracts Wilhelm by calling him dad (definitely not the word I expected to hear coming out of that man’s mouth). So Wilhelm gets pierced through the leg and Theresia focuses her attention on Heinkel who is beyond shocked to see his mom alive (Seras: Flashbacks to childhood sword training). Wilhelm desperately crawls to protect his son (really? You want to protect this asshole? (Seras): It’s his son. He’s an asshole but he’s his asshole) but Reinhard arrives to save his dad (well this is quite the family reunion) and for the second time in his life kills his grandma (scene here: https://youtu.be/GtFqJpCrwCQ?si=GwJWc0Am6QyHEKR_,he’s going to need a lot of therapy after this). As Theresia dies we see her life story. At the tender age of 12 she became the Sword Saint much to her shock as she thought it would have been her older brother who’s been training for this day her whole life (https://youtu.be/hvW33wqBZZk?si=V4ohwXOHmyhh8mWw&t=4). Despite not becoming the Sword Saint her brother was very supportive and vowed to protect her as she was thrusted into a life she never wanted. By the time she was 14 she was sent to the frontlines of war where all of brothers and uncle died. The title became a burden to her until Wilhelm showed up, defeated her, and the two got married. Wilhelm soon became known as the Sword Demon and became a pillar of the kingdom in place of the Sword Saint. The two would go on to have a family until the White Whale showed up and Theresia was forced back on to the battlefield where she lost the power of the Sword Saint and met Pandora. Returning to the present, Wilhelm and Theresia share one final moment with each other before she dies in his arms.
We begin episode 15 with Otto and others taking on Lye and failing horribly. Julius is having his own problems against Roy who calls him brother recalling past events the two shared with each other but Julius has no recollection whatsoever. While that’s going on Anastasia’s group crumble the city hall building directly on Capella in an attempt to kill her (Seras: If it were that easy to kill them we would have done this a long time ago). Sure enough it doesn’t kill her and reconstitutes herself in front of them (Seras: Reconstitutes? (Nitsuj): I know words). Rather than fight them, she instead takes her leave which Anastasia chalks it up to the Gospel. She does leave them some monsters to fight, but they get taken out by Reinhard. Back with Otto, he figures that Lye’s broken abilities come from all the people he consumes (just like Kirby except he can use them whenever he wants). Lye keeps taking them down until he gets ready to steal Otto’s name and erase him from everyone’s memories. Luckily, Beatrice arrives to save him. When it gets revealed he’s the one who stole Rem’s soul, Beatrice and Otto get ready to kill him so that Subaru never meets him (because if he does, he won’t stop until he is dead).
In the final episode, Beatrice and Otto take on Lye. Felt arrives with their secret weapon, Echidna’s staff (Seras: Is it wise to use that crazy bitch’s staff? (Nitsuj): Probably not, but craziness must defeat craziness). Lye tries to eat Felt’s name but convulses because that’s not her real name. Beatrice activates and fires it at Lye dealing major damage. Before they can finish him off, a third archbishop of Gluttony named Louise appears (just how many archbishops of Gluttony are there?). Seeing everyone exhausted and barely hanging on, Beatrice wisely let’s Louise retreat with Lye and they city thus brining an end to the battle for the city (Seras: All things considered, we came out on top. While two archbishops got away, we killed one archbishop, caught another one, and the city is still standing. (Nitsuj): I’ll take that win). Subaru, Emilia, and Beatrice go to interrogate Sirius and figure what the goal of the cult is (revive the witches by the sounds of things), but they get no answers from her. She doesn’t care about the cult or their goals, all she cares about is reviving Petelgeuse, who she believes is in Subaru (Seras: He might be, we did have that one walkthrough). She does warn them to watch out for Gluttony though as they seem to be targeting him. After that, they reunite with Julius who is shocked when Emilia doesn’t recognize him meaning he got his name eaten by Roy while they were fighting. As the city begins to rebuild, those who were victims of Capella’s experiments are put into cryosleep until they can find a cure.
Final Thoughts
(Nitsuj): And that was ReZero S3. How was it? Let’s break it down.
(Seras): Out of all the seasons this easily the most straightforward of the bunch in my opinion. The first half serves as setup as we see not one but four archbishops of sins invade the city and takeover. Each one is more dangerous than the last and having their own objective. While Gluttony is probably the most dangerous of the bunch, I did like how we got to see each one and the havoc they were causing. Once everyone finally does regroup, figure out what they’re dealing with and form a strategy, we move on to the second half and get the counterattack.
(Nitsuj): Speaking of the second half that’s where we get all the action of the season as we move from battle to battle with both sides getting worn down in the process. While Subaru’s side has their wins, the cult gets their wins as well. However, overall, Subaru’s team are the ones who come out the winner as they were able to prevent the cult from achieving their goals, managed to kill one of them, and even capture one which hasn’t been done before. Yes, they suffered their fair share of losses and trauma but they’ll recover or find a way to fix it.
(Seras): As far as characters go we got to see a lot of them this season. My favorite was learning about Reinhard and his family. His connection to Wilhelm, his dad, and the burden he carries of feeling responsible about his grandmother’s death and even killing her a second time by his own hands is haunting, but he did it anyway because he knows that’s his responsibility as a knight. Subaru also stepped up in a big way this season. He rarely used return of death ability and even when he did it was because of a situation he didn’t fully grasp or out of his control entirely. He stepped up as a leader, uniting everyone, and even encouraging them when all seemed lost. While he’s still not the strongest person in the room, he’s the one you can count on to rally everyone and come up with a plan to get the win. Along with Subaru, we also see Otto step up as strategist with his own way of fighting and gathering information that others may have overlooked. It’s refreshing to see a side character earn his keep without having to constantly fight.
(Nitsuj: Everyone else also plays their role in the second half perfectly. The action is good. While it’s not mind-blowing, I like how everyone takes on their opponents and tries to defeat these somewhat immortal crazed beings in creative ways and aren’t afraid of them because of their immortality. The music was a miss for me this season. It has it high moments with Lilianna’s singing but other than that it was honestly missable at times. I don’t if was because I was too absorbed in the story or because the volume was low, but the music just didn’t cut it for me this season. The animation was nice. The city was beautiful, the lighting effects, the camera angles, and the way they animated the day to night scenes was very good. While there’s really no major stand out moments, the animation was solid throughout the course of the season.
Final Score
(Seras): My final score for this season of Re:Zero is an 8.5/10.
(Nitsuj): I’m giving this season a 9/10. I like how straightforward it was and how it managed to keep the story moving forward while still focusing on multiple characters and exploring their characters as well.
(Seras): A fourth season is set to come out this spring and we’re looking forward to seeing what happens next. Will Subaru come face to face with the gluttony archbishops and how will he respond to them when he finds out they’re responsible for Rem’s state. What other archbishops will we see and what Rem’s connection to the witches and why. There’s a lot of questions in this series to explore and that’s one of the reasons why it’s one of the best isekais out there to this day.
(Nitsuj): Thanks for reading and we’ll see you next time on Project Nitsuj.