That night, it was not only Jin whose mentality was shattered by the plot of Re:Zero. There were thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of fans suffering through the exact same emotional collapse.
To anime fans in Japan, stories about adventures in another world usually followed a familiar pattern: straightforward, exhilarating, light-hearted, exciting, designed to entertain without demanding too much from the heart. The protagonist might suffer, might stumble, might be beaten down by life and grow through hardship, but in the end, he would still reach his goal and claim some kind of happy ending.
But Re:Zero was nothing like that.
Here, the protagonist was killed in ways that were brutal, humiliating, merciless… and by the very girls he had chosen to protect with everything he had, the very ones he had already started to see as friends.
What kind of development was that supposed to be?
Perhaps, in the following week's seventh episode, Natsuki Subaru would open his eyes once more and return to that mansion. Perhaps he would see the blue-haired and pink-haired sisters again, looking at him with those same innocent, sweet expressions, as though nothing had ever happened.
But would that still be the same?
How could it possibly be?
That night, "Rem stock" crashed like a market in total freefall. The affection so many fans had built for her over the last few weeks sank all at once, and NatsuYume became a full-blown battlefield. Furious comments exploded one after another, each more heated than the last.
"This Rem is a poisonous woman. How the hell did I ever manage to like her? I really must have been blind."
"In the end, Emilia-tan is still the only one who's worth anything. She's the only one who's always gentle with Subaru from beginning to end."
"I cried watching this. It's been a long time since an anime made me feel this awful. If I were Subaru, I'd just give up. In the first loop, he already died and learned the mansion was dangerous. In the second, all he had to do was wake up and leave, screw everyone else. But no, he stayed, became friends with Rem and Ram, worried about their safety… and in the end, the one who killed him in both the second and third loops was Rem."
"So that means Rem was the one who killed Subaru in the first loop too, right?"
"Obviously. She sensed the Witch's scent on him from the start and was suspicious right away. She just didn't want to cause trouble because of Emilia, so she killed him quietly in his sleep. In the second loop, since he didn't sleep, she went straight for him with the flail. In the third, it turned into a full-on torture session with the flail, and then Ram joined in with the blade. Total execution."
"This episode made me feel suffocated. Sure, the protagonist can't fight, doesn't know swordsmanship, can't use magic, and doesn't have a spirit contract, but he's genuinely a good person. He treated Rem, Ram, Emilia, and even Beatrice with sincerity. He never had bad intentions. So why wouldn't those two at least let him explain himself? In the second loop, Rem smashes his head in. In the third, Ram finishes the job."
"At this point, I'm willing to call Subaru the most miserable anime protagonist of the year. Six episodes aired, and he's already died five times. This is insane."
"The first time was when the assassin cut open his stomach. The second was the exact same thing. The third was the curse. The fourth was the curse plus having his head crushed. The fifth was getting beaten half to death by Rem and then having his neck cut by Ram. Not a single one of his deaths was painless."
"Honestly, if Ram had just cut his head off immediately in the fifth one, that would've been merciful. The worst part was that his whole body was already destroyed before that. That's just too cruel."
"To me, the pain from Rem's blows wasn't even one percent of the pain Subaru felt when he realized how much she hated him. Even while she was striking him with that iron chain, he was still trying to smile, still trying to explain that he had no ill intentions and that she had misunderstood him. What truly broke him was when Rem said, without hesitation, that both she and her sister despised someone carrying the Witch's scent."
"Who was the seiyuu in this episode? That performance was absurd. I honestly can't imagine how someone reaches that emotional state to record a scream like that. In Subaru's final desperate cry, and in that unfinished 'I love…,' you could hear how attached he'd become to the two sisters, to the mansion, to everything he had found there. And then it ended. Ram's final strike didn't just sever his head from his body - it must have cut through every last hope he still had. In the fourth loop, he'll probably part ways with everyone in that mansion for good."
"And good. He should leave them behind. Screw those people. Subaru should just walk away, help Emilia only when she needs him, and that's it. Ram, Rem, Roswaal… if all of them vanished, I wouldn't care."
"I used to like Rem at first, but now I can't stand her. Arrogant, refuses to listen, looks adorable on the outside, but inside she's crueler than most people. I've honestly gotten to the point where I think the assassin is better than her."
"The crazy part is, I actually do like the assassin. I'd be fine if she became the heroine instead."
"As long as Rem doesn't get a happy ending after this, I'd even accept that."
Alone in his bedroom in the villa where he lived, Sora read those comments one after another online. A faint smile lingered at the corners of his eyes, restrained, almost wicked. It really was entertaining to watch Japanese fans fall, one by one, into the exact same emotional traps he himself had once fallen into before crossing into this world.
Just as expected, after the sixth episode of Re:Zero aired, the entire internet exploded against the two sisters.
Especially Rem.
In the earlier episodes where she had been given more focus, she had seemed adorable enough to win over an entire legion of fans. And precisely because of that, the contrast with the image she presented now - mercilessly slaughtering the protagonist - felt all the more devastating.
What was truly incredible about Re:Zero was exactly that. In almost any other work, if a female character stirred up this level of disgust in the audience, she would be doomed forever. It would not matter how hard the story tried to redeem her afterward; the impression would stay behind like spilled ink on white paper, impossible to erase completely.
But Rem was different.
In his previous life, Sora himself had hated her at first. The moment she appeared on screen, he would get annoyed. Yet as the mansion arc progressed, his impression of her slowly changed, until his fondness for her rose to the same level as what he felt for Emilia. And once the story reached the royal selection arc and the subjugation of the White Whale, his heart had tilted toward Rem completely.
Emilia might have been the cutest girl in the entire series.
But Rem…
Rem was the sky of that story.
With that mischievous satisfaction in his heart, Sora went to sleep.
The next morning, aside from continuing to draw the collected storyboards for the latter half of Re:Zero's first season, he also took out a notebook during lunch break and began writing something else.
Sumire noticed the unusual behavior and approached him with curiosity.
"Kantoku, what are you doing?"
Without even looking up at first, Sora answered casually,
"I'm writing an extra story for Re:Zero."
"An extra?"
The confusion on her face was genuine.
Because it was Sumire, Sora was willing to explain. If it had been anyone else, he probably would not even have bothered.
"When you watch this anime, have you never thought about one thing?" he asked. "What if, during that fight against the Bowel Hunter, Subaru had never received help from the 'Overpowered King'? How would that story have turned out?"
Sumire blinked a few times.
"'Overpowered King'… you mean Reinhard?"
"Exactly."
Sora nodded and continued,
"Or think of another possibility. In the mansion arc, if in next week's episode seven Subaru manages to escape with Beatrice's help… and instead of making the final choice to try and save everyone one more time, he simply loses all trust in the world and sinks into darkness… what would happen then?"
Hearing that, Sumire brushed her smooth hair behind her ear and fell silent for a few moments. Her gaze held no answer.
"I… never thought about it."
"But a lot of people will," Sora said with a smile. "And that 'a lot' is a huge number. So what I'm writing is exactly that: Re:Zero's alternate routes. The if routes."
If. "What if."
In other words, branching destinies for Natsuki Subaru born from different choices.
Those were based on the parallel lines written by Re:Zero's original author, Tappei Nagatsuki, after the series became a phenomenon.
"What I want to prepare first are the Pride and Wrath routes," Sora explained, finally setting down his pen for a moment.
Of course, this was not some sudden whim. In truth, he had been thinking about it for very practical reasons. It was part of his plan for the future Blu-ray release.
His idea was to split the Pride route into several chapters and, once the Blu-rays reached the point where the Sloth Archbishop appeared, release that material as a special bonus with the physical editions. He would only need to tone down the Gluttony Archbishop's role in that line a little, so as not to reveal too much about his abilities too early.
Likewise, the mansion arc itself, which was currently at the height of its weekly broadcast, also had an alternate branch known as Wrath.
Sora intended to write it alongside the others and release it later as a bonus for the mansion arc Blu-rays.
In the Pride route, Subaru does not receive Reinhard's help in the first arc. After being killed nearly a hundred times, he breaks from the inside, loses all hope, and ultimately allies himself with the assassin. From there, he grows into the most brutal and chaotic figure on the continent, the kind of man capable of plunging an entire age into terror and war. In the end, he uses schemes and strategy to defeat Reinhard head-on - the most absurdly overpowered character in the whole work - and then willingly dies at Emilia's hands, ending the Witch's cycle and allowing her to ascend as a hero and claim the throne.
The heroine of that route was none other than Elsa, the villain.
As for the Wrath route, it began from the fourth loop of the mansion arc. After Rem's death, Subaru flees the mansion, is hunted down by Ram, and eventually grows into a cold, merciless purge king in another country. In that case, the heroine of the route was the older sister herself - Ram.
Sumire listened to all of it and could not hide her surprise.
"Kantoku… the anime's Blu-rays haven't even started selling yet, and you're already thinking about brand-new story content to include as bonuses?"
Bonuses in Blu-ray releases were common enough. That alone was nothing unusual.
But releasing entirely new narrative material directly tied to the main work was something else entirely. Especially when the main anime itself was already being received so well. If the if routes failed to live up to expectations, the effect could easily become the opposite of what he wanted. The risk was real.
And yet, Sora merely smiled.
"This time, the opponent is just too strong. If I want the Blu-ray sales to surpass Dragon's Breath, I need to consider every single factor that can add value to the work."
At the mention of that title, Sumire's expression darkened a little.
To surpass Dragon's Breath…
In all of Japan, perhaps at that moment there were only three people who truly believed Re:Zero still had a chance to turn the tables in the second half: Sora himself, Sumire, and Yumi.
Then Sora spoke in a calm but steady tone.
"Last year, I spent the whole year in second place. This year, I only want first."
That very afternoon, the Southern Alliance Network released the ratings for Re:Zero's sixth episode.
4.61%.
At first glance, it did not seem like much of a jump compared to the previous episode.
But ratings growth did not always show up immediately. Sometimes an episode exploded in discussion, the internet caught fire, the conversations piled up, curiosity spread among viewers… and only the following week did that effect truly show in the numbers. There was always a delay.
And the fact was simple: after episode six aired, the scale of the online discussion and commotion surrounding Re:Zero was far greater than what the previous episode had generated.
On top of that, the reruns of episode six over the next few days posted numbers far above the reruns of episode five. It was not a small difference. It was a visible gap.
In mid-August, one week later, Re:Zero's seventh episode aired right on schedule.
An entire week.
A full seven days.
No one but the fans themselves could truly understand how they had survived that wait.
The previous episode's cliffhanger had left them hanging over the abyss for an entire week, and now there was only one thing they wanted: for episode seven to start as soon as possible.
They wanted to see Natsuki Subaru open his eyes in the mansion arc's fourth loop, get up from that bed, and this time ignore Rem, ignore Ram, ignore Roswaal.
All he had to do was leave.
If those people had already decided to see him as a spy for the Witch Cult, then why should he still care about any of them?
"Subaru, this time you need to act like a man. Don't give those two an inch."
"If it were me, the first thing I'd do after waking up would be kill both sisters."
"Even better - run away with Emilia."
"Not bad. Bring Beatrice too. I still like her. Sharp tongue aside, she's way better than Rem and Ram."
"I've got a feeling that Roswaal guy is no good. He might actually be a villain."
"Last week I cursed out Kantoku Sora, but I think this week he's finally going to act like a human being and ease up."
"What a shame for Re:Zero. It's so good. In any other season, it would easily be the dominant anime of the cour. It just had the bad luck of going head-to-head with Dragon's Breath…"
"I honestly don't think Dragon's Breath is better than Re:Zero. Sure, I cursed out Kantoku Sora last week too, but that was only because he's too cruel and made the protagonist suffer on an absurd level. Other than that, I'd call Re:Zero a masterpiece of the year. As long as it maintains this quality all the way to the end."
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