What They Say:
“Fanatical Methods Like a Demon”
After his heroic act, it seems like the village is finally safe, although the same cannot be said about Subaru. Beatrice tells Subaru that he only has half a day left because he has been cursed a lot of times and it’s not possible get rid of all the curses.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
You can now let out that breath you’ve been holding: Subaru survived the ordeal. That’s not to say it’s all good and settled, though. Even if the village and the kids are all safe, Subaru and Rem are still in danger in different ways. Subaru getting mauled by the dogs resulted in him getting so many curses that it’s no longer possible for Beatrice to “untangle” them. As per Rem, she felt guilty for Subaru getting injured for saving her so she chose to go to the forest alone to kill the mabeasts (now called ‘Ulgarms’) before the curses activates and Subaru gets killed. How the tables have turned, huh?
Even if this episode was more about action and story progression, there was still a lot of time for conversations. The dialogue, although good, is one of the few aspects the series needs to fix: it often feels like it’s just dragging out for no reason, something that is a common problem with light novel adaptations. That’s not to say the exchanges between Subaru and Ram were pointless. On the contrary, they did not only offer us more insight into Ram’s personality, but also into the twins’ backstory. For one, we learned that, unlike her sister, Ram is hornless. We are still kept in the dark as to what horns really mean to “demons” (Crunchyroll is still using quotes for that translation), but we can begin to understand some things like why Ram seems to be less competent than her younger sister or why she gets tired so easily in battle. When Rem tried to kill Subaru because of his scent in Episode 7, she said the Witch’s Cult were responsible for what had happened to Ram in the past. All of these signs (including the parallels from the “Blue Ogre, Red Ogre” story) indicate that an explanation for the twins’ past is overdue before we move on to the next arc.
The action scenes were brilliantly animated, and the direction showed once again that Re:Zero’s fighting choreography is on point (I still remember that first-person shot followed by a 360º sequence in Reinhard and Elsa’s fight in Episode 3). Even if Subaru barely used the sword they gave him (so much for “the sharpest sword in the village”), it was very clever of him to experiment with the limitations of telling others about Return by Death to lure Rem and the Ulgarms. Sure, he still feels a lot of pain and he lets out more of that Witch scent, but what’s this series without suffering? Sadly, we didn’t get to see the outcome of the “battle” either as White Fox gave us another cliffhanger, but at least this time it was more well-done because of all the previous build-up in the last seconds of the episode. Will Rem use her horn too?
As a final note, I would like to mention that this is the first time we have gotten both the opening and the ending in one same episode, making it feel much shorter than usual. This is probably due to the studio wanting to give both songs a final rendition before they change them for the second cour of the season.
In Summary:
“Fanatical Methods Like a Demon” is about exposition, execution and getting things done. The fact that Subaru has gotten so far leads us to believe that this is the loop where he gets it right. All signs seem to point towards the arc coming to an end pretty soon, and hopefully we will get more backstory on Ram and Rem’s past before it concludes.
Grade: A-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll