At that moment, countless anime fans across Japan sat frozen in front of their televisions, staring blankly at the screen, their minds still trapped in that scene from Re:Zero. The instant Subaru Natsuki, smiling faintly, threw himself off the cliff to end his own life refused to leave their heads.
It was then that many of them finally understood where the true charm of that protagonist lay.
Subaru was not a saint. Nor was he some naive fool. What he had was something else entirely: purity. An almost absurd kind of resolve. You could wound him ninety-nine times out of a hundred loops of Return by Death. But if, in just one of those loops, you managed to reach his heart, truly help him, and earn his recognition as a companion, then the moment you were in danger, he would slam the brakes on his own life without hesitation. He would die as many times as it took to come back and save you.
That was Subaru Natsuki.
On the night episode seven of Re:Zero aired, the search term "Subaru Natsuki jumps off the cliff" shot to the very top of the NatsuYume forum, pushed there by thousands upon thousands of fans. For viewers who had spent years watching shallow isekai anime built only on cheap power fantasies and instant gratification, Re:Zero had long since stopped being just another interesting seasonal premiere. It had dragged them all the way in.
"This is the first time I've ever watched a protagonist kill himself and thought it was this insanely hype instead of depressing. Subaru Natsuki is a real man."
"Nothing but respect for Subaru. That guy throws his whole life into it."
"Honestly, if it were me, I wouldn't have gone back to save Rem. Sure, as a viewer, I wanted him to rewind for her. But if I were Subaru, I would've dropped everything and run. There's no way I'd gamble my life just to find out whether I even had a fourth chance left."
"Exactly. Anyone who plays games gets it. In tons of games, reviving has limits. Think of Void Knight - you start with five lives, and if you die, you lose all your coins too. If I were in his shoes, I'd never take that risk."
"And that's exactly why this protagonist destroyed me. I cried watching tonight's episode. It's been two or three years since an anime made me tear up like this."
"After getting this far, all I can think about is how much is buried underneath everything. From what the story has shown so far, Rem and Ram seem to have a blood-deep grudge against the Witch Cult, while Subaru, after returning from death, carries the Witch's scent on him. I can understand why they treated him that way. But if I were the protagonist, I could never be so magnanimous that I'd use my own life to save Rem."
"This Kantoku, Sora, is terrifyingly good. When I first heard he was doing an isekai, I lost interest immediately. I thought it would just be another soulless TV commission. But after following it for a month and a half, all I can say is this: true talent is still true talent, no matter the genre. Even an isekai feels fresh in his hands."
"For me, episode seven of Re:Zero is the dividing line of the summer cour. Until tonight, I still thought Dragon's Breath was better, but after this episode, Re:Zero has officially taken first place in my heart."
"You too? I felt exactly the same. Watching Dragon's Breath is exciting, but watching Re:Zero actually makes you stop and think about life."
"The problem is that Sora has a cruel streak. For weeks now, he's been ending episodes right at the most important moment. I know anime Kantokus love doing that, but the way he cuts the episode leaves my chest feeling tight."
"You'll get used to it. Because if this quality holds until the end, this is going to become the ceiling for Japanese isekai anime."
After episode seven aired, thanks to that legendary cliff scene and the perfect insertion of the song at the climax, the NatsuYume forum was nearly swallowed whole by Re:Zero-related threads over the course of the entire night. The momentum was so intense that many people in the anime industry began to feel that something was off.
The discussion around Re:Zero was getting too loud.
It was already nearing the end of August. Under normal circumstances, the pecking order of the summer cour should have already been locked in: Dragon's Breath sat firmly in first place in the ratings, Re:Zero held second, and the flagship titles from the other three networks were squeezed into the third through fifth slots. And yet, at this point, Re:Zero was beginning to give off the impression that it still had not reached its peak. On the contrary, it felt like the show was only now starting to accelerate in the middle of its run.
No one was rash enough to claim that it was already threatening Dragon's Breath, whose ratings had climbed to 5.35. But even if it remained in second place, how much of that gap it could close still mattered - and it mattered a great deal.
At noon, Southern Alliance TV released the previous night's numbers. Episode seven of Re:Zero had posted an average rating of 4.78 across the fourteen prefectures where it aired. That figure alone was enough to draw attention, but what truly put the industry on edge was the context surrounding it. Episode six had already ignited heated discussion the week before. Now, with that delayed surge in ratings stacked on top of a nearly unanimous online reaction screaming that Subaru Natsuki was "a real man," the scent of a breakout hit was growing far too strong to ignore.
When episode six aired, it had already triggered a sizable wave of discussion among anime fans. But after episode seven, that wave turned into something much larger. The volume of conversation surrounding Re:Zero was no longer losing to Dragon's Breath in the slightest. And with the ratings climbing to 4.78, the atmosphere became delicate.
Because between 4.78 and the 5.0 barrier, there was barely any distance left at all.
The previous year, Natsume Yuujinchou had been stuck in that very gap for nearly a month without ever managing to cross it. The reason was simple: Tokushima TV had limited reach, and when it mattered most, it lacked the power to spread the show to a broader audience. This time, the situation was different. Southern Alliance TV operated on another scale entirely. Its response speed was different. Its promotional reach was different.
The people in the network's production department had never imagined, at the start of the season, that Re:Zero would hit such an absurd number in just seven weeks. But the moment they realized what was happening, they moved fast. They contacted Sora, immediately increased the number of Re:Zero commercials during prime-time slots, and, without the slightest hesitation, cut several mediocre dramas from their dead-hour programming to begin rerunning Re:Zero from episode one through seven.
For fans who had not managed to keep up with the story in real time, it was the perfect gift. With the anime exploding in popularity, plenty of people rushed to find out what all the noise was about. And after binging the reruns in those off-hours, the next step came naturally: joining the live-viewing crowd every Friday night and helping push the ratings even higher.
Before long, tension spread through the entire industry. The staff of Yume Animation, the production department at Seiun TV, Southern Alliance TV itself, Touga Kuze, Natsuyuki Shirasawa, Ryo Yukishiro, and many other names in the field began watching the numbers with growing intensity. In a single cour, it was already rare for even one anime to break past 5.0. Two of them doing it at once was something almost no one ever saw. To find a case like that, one had to go back to the winter cour four years earlier.
Inside the production department at Seiun TV, team leader Shiori - who had once already fallen out with Sora - wore a dark expression. The success of Dragon's Breath was, in large part, one of her achievements. The series dominated the summer cour market and served as the perfect showcase for her professional record. But if Re:Zero also broke through the 5.0 barrier, it would inevitably steal part of the attention that belonged solely to Dragon's Breath.
The market's evaluation would shift along with it. Dragon's Breath would no longer be viewed as the untouchable and singular champion of the season, but as one half of a two-way struggle between giants. And that was unbearable.
Worse still, both works were two-cour series. Their rivalry would not end with summer; it would continue into autumn. If Re:Zero managed to hit 5.0 while still in the summer cour, then who could say how far it might go afterward? Anime running beyond twenty episodes always carried the possibility of exploding in the second half - all it took was one legendary episode, one devastating sequence, one perfectly timed narrative twist. There were too many examples of that in the Japanese industry to dismiss the threat as overblown.
Only then did Shiori truly feel a pressure that was difficult even to describe.
If she had managed to bring Sora into Seiun TV back then, none of this would be happening. It would not have mattered whether he created Re:Zero there or worked on the second season of Natsume Yuujinchou; either way, the result would have been an asset to the network, not an enemy standing in front of her. Now, the more brilliantly Sora performed, the heavier her earlier mistake became - treating him with disdain and slashing his terms at the negotiating table.
"Enough of this nonsense," she muttered to herself, forcing a cold smile. "Dragon's Breath had a ninety-million-yen budget. Re:Zero had fifty million. Only an idiot would believe a production like that could lose. And even looking ahead to the autumn cour, if either of them still has room to grow, it's Dragon's Breath."
In the office of another anime company, Touga Kuze pulled his gaze away from the rerun of episode six of Re:Zero currently airing on Southern Alliance TV. Beside him, Natsuyuki Shirasawa wore a grave expression.
"What do you think?" he asked.
"If I look at it purely from the standpoint of screenwriting... the construction of this work is genuinely ingenious. One reveal pulls the next into place, everything locks together like a chain. And the way the characters are handled..." She stopped halfway through the sentence.
Because what came next was far too difficult to say aloud.
Better than Dragon's Breath.
Even without finishing the sentence, the thought was obvious. Aside from the protagonist, Re:Zero also had figures like the apple seller, the Bowel Hunter, the trio of thieves, Rem, Ram, and Beatrice - characters who appeared for only a few episodes and still left enough of an impression for viewers to remember their names. In contrast, there were plenty of assembly-line productions on the market where, after finishing the season, the audience could barely recall the protagonist's full name, much less those of the supporting cast. At least in Natsuyuki Shirasawa's eyes, when it came to handling secondary characters, Re:Zero clearly surpassed Dragon's Breath.
"And in terms of direction, this work is mature in every sense." Touga Kuze's face no longer carried the indifferent chill it once had; now it held a quiet gravity. "I have a feeling we celebrated too early."
"Dragon's Breath isn't alone this summer cour," Natsuyuki Shirasawa said softly. "Re:Zero could easily catch up by the end of the season... or even surpass it in autumn."
On Wednesday, Sora was invited onto a variety show on Southern Alliance TV to give Re:Zero another round of promotion. On Thursday, he appeared at a major anime convention in Tokyo wearing Reinhard's knight armor - one of the most absurdly overpowered looks in the series - as a special guest of the event. With Southern Alliance TV on one side and Yumi's family animation studio on the other pushing the campaign with full force, the news spread across the entire internet in less than a day.
On Friday, episode eight of Re:Zero aired without issue.
In that episode, Subaru Natsuki, already in his fifth loop of the mansion arc, finally resolves to save everyone. Piecing together the fragments of information he gathered from the earlier loops, he arrives at the reason both he and Rem kept dying from a curse in those previous timelines.
The point they had in common was simple: on the fourth day, both of them would go to the village near the mansion and play with the children there.
In earlier loops, Subaru would go with Rem to the village. After returning, he would end up cursed and die. But in the previous loop, he had not gone with her.
And because of that...
The one who died was Rem.
The source of the curse was inside that village.
It was information that could only exist because the protagonist had paid for it with the sacrifice of four lives.
In truth, beyond its immediate impact, the mansion arc served another crucial purpose for Re:Zero: planting seeds for the future. Roswaal's sudden change in attitude during Subaru's fifth loop, for example, was already laying the groundwork for the stunning reversal that would come later in the Sanctuary arc. And this was also the part of the story that truly brought two essential characters to the forefront: Rem and Ram.
Especially Rem.
Everything she showed in this arc was still only an introduction. Her true god-tier moment had yet to arrive, in the next arc.
Although episode eight did not deliver the same explosive narrative shock as episodes six and seven, its ratings still continued to rise.
This time, Re:Zero reached 4.87.