Welcome to My 5 Favorite Anime Blog Posts from 2023 Week 14!
Every week, I visit over 300 anime sites looking for posts that celebrate amazing moments in anime or otherwise blow me away with their wit and charm. I hope this list helps you find some of them!
You can see a list of the sites I check here: Massive List of Sites!
Anime Evo
Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Bakuen wo! – 01 [First Look]
Have you watched the first episode of KonoSuba: An Explosion on This Wonderful World! yet? This spin-off series chronicles Megumin’s life before she met Kazuma, Aqua, and Darkness. Now, you might be apprehensive about this show’s chances, given how much of the humor came from the characters. Can Megumin handle the pressure all by herself? FlareKnight, from the site Anime Evo, gives the first episode his usual thorough, thought-provoking treatment. I gotta say, I think he has a good handle on how Megumin did! See if you agree!
Confessions of an Overage Otaku
HIDDEN PROTAGONIST: SATSUKI KIRYUIN
Do you remember the first time you watched Kill-la-Kill? The distinctive animation caught my attention and the characters guaranteed I’d be back week after week. But there was something else that impressed me even more, and it’s how the writers handled the plot — particularly the real protagonist. The Overage Otaku, on the site Confessions of an Overage Otaku, explains how the show pulled off this skillful execution of plot magic. And yes, I’ll call it magic because of the effect it had on me. See what you think!
Kvasir 369
Ancient Magus Bride: Season 2 – Episode 1 Review
I really, really hope you like The Ancient Magus’ Bride Season 2, and the reason is simple. I freaking adored everything about what’s come so far, and the first episode of the next season is shaping up to be every bit as good! So if you don’t like it, I’m afraid there’s a certain percentage of my narration here that’s not going to hit your strike zone. So, if that’s the case, sorry in advance!
I was really happy to find this post by KVASIR369 on the site Kvasir369. It’s not just because I thought the insights were spot-on (they were). It’s not only because of the vivid description of what unfolded in this episode (and the description was, in fact, vivid). It wasn’t even that KVASIR369 expressed an appreciation for the show and its lore (which happened, too). No, it was how all of that combined with KVASIR369’s comparison of the anime to the manga. And that’s just a ton of fun to read!
SOULCIAL DREAMIN’ ENT.
Goodbye, Don Glees
I joke about my ever-growing back-log, but the truth is, I’m always looking for the next show that’ll rock my world. I know every new show can’t be Re:CREATORS, but it might be the next Gate! So this post by Drey on the site Soulcial Dreamin’ Ent. intrigued me. It was about a movie called Goodbye, Don Glees — a movie I’d never heard of! Based on Drey’s description of the movie, it sounds like exactly the kind of thing I’m looking for! Now if I can just make time in my schedule…
Starting Life from Zero
The Witch From Mercury: Boldly Going Where Gundam Has Never Gone Before
Do you know what makes a story great? What makes a story that will stand the test of time? Okay, there’re a lot of things, and you can tell I’m just trying to build drama, so I’ll just come out and say character. Amazing characters will make a story memorable. If I mention Hamlet, you know exactly who I’m talking about. But if I mention George, would you remember him from Knight of the Burning Pestle? Doubtful — though I suspect there are some geniuses out there that would. I have some intelligent readers.
That’s one of the things that struck me about Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury: its characters, especially Suletta and Miorine. There’s more to it than that, of course. There’s an element of history, or gravitas of the character’s circumstances. Mari’s post on Starting Life from Zero does a much better job of describing it than I do — especially the character part! If you enjoyed the series at all, I think you’ll like this one!
Want to Read More of My Favorite Anime Post Lists?
Want to explore more amazing anime blog posts? Check out the previous editions of My Favorite Anime Community Posts!
Want to Read Favorite Posts from Other Sites?
- Anime Feminist: Weekly Round-Up, 29 March – 4 April 2023: Feminist Scholar Ueno Chizuko, Good Smile’s Right-Wing Connections, and Disability in Sports Manga
- Lesley’s Anime and Manga Corner: Anime and Manga Blog Posts That Caught My Eye This Week (April 7, 2023)
- Phoenix Talks Pop Culture Japan: March 2023 Monthly Favorites
“I wonder how Puck perceives the time changes. I believe I remember him mentioning it to Subaru just before Subaru encountered the need to invoke a save point. Is it possible Puck is tired because he’s experiencing multiple iterations and is not getting reset?”
I don’t recall Puck mentioning anything to Subaru about a save point, but I might have to rewatch Episode 1 to confirm that that is the case.
“Have you worked out what’s driving the alterations in the space or time displacement factor? Is it something Satella is doing? Is there another entity? Or is it just an innate property of this continuum?”
As I said in my post, I believe that Subaru is causing the spacetime displacement after Satella sets his save point and rewinds time to that point with her Authority of Envy. I speculated that the spacetime displacement is a weak manifestation of Subaru’s Authority of Envy. Given that his Authority of Sloth can manifest one Unseen Hand as opposed to hundreds of hands as was the case with Petelgeuse, it would make sense that his Authority of Envy would only affect spacetime on an order of somewhere between 1 to 3 minutes instead of the larger amount of time that Satella can because Subaru is not meant to be powerful.
I wish I could recall more clearly, but Puck seemed aware that something was going on when Subaru was frozen solid, and Puck was losing his sanity because Emilia had died.
As far as Subaru himself affecting space/time — unless he has an innate sense that lets him see spacetime in the third person, so to speak, would he even be able to visualize the change? I’m not disputing your theory; just wondering about its implementation.
Though if Subaru’s power manifests itself in terms of space/time instead of multiple hands, that might at least explain where the power’s going. Unless Subaru’s just weak?
Maybe season 3 will give us some more data to consider.
I don’t recall Puck being aware of something while Subaru was frozen solid aside from Emilia being dead, saying that Subaru was too late.
After seeing the 2 replies you’ve made to me here, I feel there is a misunderstanding between us, so I will attempt to give full context to what I’ve been saying before. I think Subaru can both have his Authority of Sloth: Invisible Providence, which manifests one shadow hand from his body as seen from his fight againat Garfiel, and also an Authority of Envy, a power with a TBD name that affects spacetime on an order of one to three minutes. Beatrice has hinted at this possibility when she asked Subaru what happened to the Witch Factor the Sin Archbishop of Sloth, Petelgeuse possessed after Subaru killed him, which suggests that it is possible to have more than one Authority by killing multiple Sin Archbishops, for example, even though Sin Archbishops we’ve seen so far have only had 1 Authority. I did specify that I believe Subaru could have the Authority of Envy without the Envy Witch Factor though since it appears Witch Factors affect the soul, which is why the dead Witches of Sin still have their Authorities even though they no longer possess the corresponding Witch Factors, meaning if Subaru’s soul has touched Satella’s that he should have the Authority of Envy as well.
So to answer your question, I don’t think Subaru needs to be able to visualize a change in spacetime. I believe that after Satella uses her power to bring Subaru back to a select point in spacetime, Subaru uses his power to warp reality as if he arrived at that point in spacetime a minute a few minutes earlier. He would not need to visualize anything as it would be how his power interacts with Satella’s power. I don’t know how far into the story Tappei will demonstrate a scenario where my theory could be proved, but it would involve Satella not using her power when Subaru’s body physically dies. Given how much she loves him, I don’t know if she’d do that willingly.
I think I mis-remembered the opening conversation in episode 18. I just rewatched it, and what I thought I remembered wasn’t there. Either that, or I have mixed up multiple scenes.
That’s likely, in any event.
I’m still trying to build a working model in my mind of the difference between an Authority and a Witch Factor. So it’s not surprising I lack the framework to piece this all together.
I may be wrong, but I think a Witch Factor is what makes changes to your soul so that you can use an Authority, which would be why Petelgeuse gained the ability to use the Authority of Sloth: Unseen Hand after he took in the Sloth Witch Factor and why Subaru developed the Authority of Sloth: Invisible Providence after the Sloth Witch Factor chose Subaru as its new host when Subaru killed Petelgeuse.
TCrow, I have a working theory of RBD. I can’t remember whether I’ve posted my first iteration of it on your blog before where I described RBD as a temporal displacement on top of a time rewind, but the gist of it is that I believe that RBD is not just a time rewind but a time rewind in addition to a spacetime displacement. I believe describing it as a spacetime displacement is more accurate after thinking about it. I have updated my theory after accounting for Season 2’s content.
My entire theory here hinges on giving White Fox the benefit of the doubt and not assuming it screwed up in animating Re:zero, and I’m confident that everything was intentional. I believe that, in addition to reloading at a save point, reality is warped so that Subaru and his surroundings within a TBD radius somehow arrived at that point somewhere between a minute and a few minutes earlier each time he dies and that reality is warped to account for this discrepancy much like how the White Whale’s Fog of Elimination can erase a person entirely and adjust people’s memories that involved a person that was erased as well as erasing that person’s material possessions. Why do I believe this to be the case? The primary reason is because of the difference between Subaru’s first loop and his third loop in Arc 1 and because of what happened with Subaru’s ringtone for the Whale hunt.
A stone statue of the insignia was shown right after Subaru’s realization that he was summoned into another world, which then cut to a scene showing Felt running on rooftops and jumping across them with Emilia’s insignia in hand long before Subaru had even met the appa guy, which is where his first save point would be. This suggests that RBD not only resets time when he dies but that there’s a spacetime displacement on top of the reset or else he wouldn’t have ever been able to see the the theft in the first place in the third loop given that he had time to pass out in front of the appa guy’s shop and see Emila pass the appa guy’s shop and have a brief conversation with her during the third loop.
Subaru would not be able to figure out that there is a spacetime displacement by checking out his phone after a death since his phone resets with him and would show the same time reading every time he Returned by Death, but it would be possible to figure this out by checking his phone during an event that consistently happens such as his first meeting with Roswaal and the mansion’s residents in Arc 2. However, Subaru did not check the time during these meetings, so he missed the opportunity to see whether he experiences a spacetime displacement. Subaru asking Rem and Ram what the date and time were in Episode 6 showed that Subaru just did the bare minimum, which is to see what time it was when he started his save point, but he made no effort to discern whether there was anything more to RBD. I will now post some circumstantial evidence involving Arc 2 and some more damning evidence in Arc 3 that I believe supports my theory.
In the first loop of the mansion arc, Puck awoke after Subaru and Emilia had exercised briefly, and he wasn’t tired in the least. They spoke a bit and then Ram and Rem inform that Roswaal has returned. After his first death, Subaru had time to run around the mansion and find Beatrice so that he could mope in the library. He then left the library and met Emilia outside, speaking to her somewhat briefly, and Puck was visibly tired after waking up. They had time to spare since the twins didn’t come to announce Roswaal’s return immediately
. In the third loop, Subaru spent an even longer time with Beatrice, got knocked out of the mansion by Beatrice twice, and got cleaned by a visibly tired Puck, yet he still had time for banter with Puck before the Roswaal meeting. So he wastes more and more time in loops two and three but still seemingly started the meeting at the usual time. I speculate that in the second and third loops, Puck is more tired because he is waking up earlier than he did in Loop 1, which shows there is a spacetime displacement on top of the time rewind.
Now, here is the big one. During the loop the alliance actually fought the White Whale, Subaru’s phone rang for a while before the whale showed up. The sky was also clear. In the loop directly before that in which Otto and Rem were erased by the White Whale, the area was already foggy and the whale had already attacked by that point. This suggests that Subaru’s phone started ringing a bit too early because it had been running for a longer period of time due to a temporal displacement on top of a reset. If the strike force had been defeated, forcing Subaru to reset once more, everyone might have just deserted him because the Whale would have taken longer to arrive on yet another loop. I also believe that the reason Subaru saw Russell Fellow in Episode 16 is because Subaru died enough times to finally witness Russell leaving Crusch’s mansion, and that would be because of the spacetime displacement. You know what they say. Once is by chance, twice is a coincidence, and three times is a pattern. There’s no way White Fox messed up in animating Re:zero 3 arcs in a row.
I believe that the reason Tappei had Russell Fellow take Subaru’s phone after the subjugation was completed was to prevent viewers and Subaru himself from finding out about the spacetime displacement associated with Return by Death. Now what implication does this have on the story?
With all of the evidence I have gathered, I therefore propose that Return by Death is Satella setting a save point and rewinding time with her Authority of Envy while Subaru uses his Authority of Envy after that to warp reality as if he arrived at the save point at an interval somewhere between a minute to a few minutes earlier (probably a few minutes). Before I get into the nitty gritty, I have to address the elephant in the room. If Satella has the Authority of Envy and is still alive, does that not mean she has the Envy Witch Factor, making it impossible for Subaru to also have that Authority? Judging from the anime, no, there is no need for Subaru to possess the Envy Witch Factor. We know from Echidna’s dream castle that all of the dead Witches of Sin have their Authorities even though they are long dead, which shows that Witch Factors affect the soul, so as long as Subaru’s soul has been affected by the Envy Witch Factor, he could have the Authority of Envy even without possessing the Witch Factor.
But how could Subaru’s soul have been affected by the Envy Witch Factor you ask? What we have seen in Episode 17 of Re:zero is that the Witch emerged from Subaru to kill Emilia when he attempted to break the Taboo since he was willing to accept some pain. Given that Subaru’s entire body resets when he dies, souls in Re:zero are what carry memories, not brains, and since Satella can read Subaru’s mind and know what his intentions are, their souls have probably touched at some point in time to create such a mind link, even if that only happens when Subaru’s body dies or when Subaru breaks the Taboo. If that’s the case, Satella’s Envy Witch Factor has definitely made its mark on Subaru, and he acquired the Authority of Envy, possibly when his body physically died for the first time.
And why couldn’t all of this just be Satella’s power? The main reasons I believe Subaru has a part in RBD are that Satella would literally be undefeatable if RBD truly was the manifestation of her full power (Even the strongest characters from multiple anime with MCs that have the capability of one-shotting Satella working together would not be able to defeat her and with her wish being to finally be killed off, it couldn’t be only her power as that would make killing her an impossible task) and because we’ve seen that Subaru has a weak manifestation of power in his Authority of Sloth, which summons a single Unseen Hand as opposed to Petelgeuse’s huge number of hands. If his power were to be similarly small in its manifestation for the Envy sin, it would be the perfect fit for him.
I believe that the reason Tappei had Russell Fellow take Subaru’s phone after the subjugation was completed was to prevent viewers and Subaru himself from finding out about the spacetime displacement associated with Return by Death. This is likely something Tappei intends to keep a secret for future arcs, and I believe there’s enough hard evidence as well as circumstantial evidence from the anime to support my theory that Return by Death is Satella setting a save point and rewinding time with her Authority of Envy while Subaru follows that by using his own Authority of Envy to warp reality as if he arrived at the save point at an interval somewhere between a minute to a few minutes earlier (probably a few minutes based on how much time he had with Beatrice and Puck in the third loop and because of the ringtone ringing before the White Whale arrived). If I’m right, RBD should more precisely be called More Than Just Return by Death, but Subaru never figured out the intricacies of his Authority because he didn’t think critically about small little differences between loops.
Given that we’ve only seen how Subaru’s Authority of Envy interacts with Satella’s Authority of Envy, it’s hard to say what would happen if Satella didn’t use hers, and it was just Subaru using his. Whatever Subaru’s true Authority does in isolation is probably limited to affecting space and time at some interval between a minute and a few minutes assuming my theory about the spacetime displacement is accurate, which I believe is highly likely.
Sorry for the delay! I wanted to reply before now, but real life got in the way.
I have been thinking about the comment, though!
“much like how the White Whale’s Fog of Elimination can erase a person entirely and adjust people’s memories that involved a person that was erased as well as erasing that person’s material possessions.”
It’s almost as if that method is part of this continuum. Subaru’s RBD is simply a call to to that method, to use programming terminology.
“or else he wouldn’t have ever been able to see the the theft in the first place”
I’m following your logic. It makes sense.
“but he made no effort to discern whether there was anything more to RBD.”
From Subaru’s perspective, that makes sense. The whole experience had to be overwhelming, so him not pausing to scrutinize it is a realistic character detail.
“Puck is more tired because he is waking up earlier than he did in Loop 1, which shows there is a spacetime displacement on top of the time rewind.”
I wonder how Puck perceives the time changes. I believe I remember him mentioning it to Subaru just before Subaru encountered the need to invoke a save point. Is it possible Puck is tired because he’s experiencing multiple iterations and is not getting reset?
“Once is by chance, twice is a coincidence, and three times is a pattern. ”
Have you worked out what’s driving the alterations in the space or time displacement factor? Is it something Satella is doing? Is there another entity? Or is it just an innate property of this continuum?
“With all of the evidence I have gathered, I therefore propose that Return by Death is Satella setting a save point”
Never mind my last question. I had ready your comment several days ago; so it must have been what triggered my question. Satella is a logical choice.
” If I’m right, RBD should more precisely be called More Than Just Return by Death, ”
So, more like a save point with a save game editor. He can return to an adjustable time and location. I wonder if the editor can change other factors?
You have not only an interesting theory, but a solid body of work to back it up! i’m looking forward to seeing what evidence season 3 presents for you to analyze!