Episode 25 Analysis from Mitrospeed:

Alright here we go.

I won’t go into detail about the contents of the episode because the same rule as last week still applies. I have no idea what the light novel changes and I really don’t want to add things that don’t have any actuality anymore.

We see Julius and Subaru making use of their shared senses and if you think about it Julius moves according to what he can see of himself in 3rd person. It’s almost like he’s in a 3rd person game lol.

Yes Petelgeuse is able to use earth magic and at a really powerful level on top of that. Still it is the stones he got from the merchants that make the way free forJulius.

Subaru eventually let Petelgeuse possess himself. Because of his previous encounter with Satella he knows that she is extremely fixated on him and that she punishes any misstep. So Subaru tried to do misstep after misstep while Petelgeuse possesses him to doom him. It’s actually more powerful than any direct attack could be. Petelgeuse who lives for the love of the witch is rejected by her. His entire reason to live just crumbled away.

About how Petelgeuse’s possession works. Well Petelgeuse is a spirit, yes and he takes control over someone’s body by forcing a contract on them. That’s also why Ia left Subaru in episode 23. Petelgeuse is a far stronger spirit and he forced himself into Subaru creating a contract with him. 
It’s important to note that the Gospel is eventually blank. It’s like that for a reason, can’t go into detail on that one. Just remember this  :)

You might be wondering why Otto and Subaru could ride their carriage like that. Well let’s say that the blessing of wind protection is extremely strong. It creates absolutely no wind pressure within the area of effect and allows you to travel in a comfortable way. This exact blessing is also the reason why Petelgeuse was forced back when he tried to catch the Gopsel. Even tho he was rejected he’s still obsessed with Satella.

"No matter how many times I have to die - I’ll definitely save you" This phrase is incredibly important as it appear on every single volume of the LN. It’s also way more important than the context of the anime implies at the moment.

Well most of this episode is pretty straightforward so let me jump to Subaru & Emilia’s dialogue at the end. We witness how for the first time Subaru applies the things he has realized about himself on Emilia. He acknowledges that the majority of his intentions were straight up wrong and marked by entitlement as if he was some kind of destined hero but he also stays true to the intentions that were true and noble.

On the other side Emilia has been avoided and cursed for her entire life. For her to have someone who takes her as she is despite her origins is a first for her and surely overwhelming. The world is basically biased towards her and judges her according to that bias but then there is this one person who not only cares about that bias, he even talks smack about the people who do.

I love the phrase the novels use there so let me quote it.

"Under the setting sun, an outlander and a silvered hair half elf continue to exchange their feelings.

Many loops of despair and sadness that continued for a long time, finally overcame them and achieved this quiet, peaceful time.

This is just a story to reach those quiet peaceful time. This is just a story with long lost winding roads, where feelings intervened

A boy without self confidence, letting his feelings known to a girl without self confidence. This is just a story to try his best for a purpose like that."

I think you get that I wanted to get over the contents of the episode as soon as possible because I can already imagine the war that is going on everywhere.

I guess now is the time that we reminisce about the show as a whole. I’ve got to address some thing that should be considered when we talk about this season as a whole.

Note that this season merely adapts about 10-15% of the story ( not including spin-offs like Ex Novels, Tanpenshuu, Single Chapters ) which is essentially the start of the story and not more. There is only so much a story will do at such an early state. The majority of characters are only past the introduction and set up phase, the world building is really subtle and no definite plot has been established yet, only set up. To be honest this entire season was one big prologue ( 1-18 ) and the transition/set up ( 19 - 25 ) for the meat of the story which starts with the 4th arc. I see some people criticizing this series for something that no start of a story will cover to that extent. In this case their expectations simply don’t match the dimension of this whole story.

And now to the fact that they didn’t adapt the entirety of the ending that Arc 3 has.

First off we have to make a distinction. They didn’t skip anything, they simply didn’t got as far as to reach these scenes. Volume 9 consists of Chapter 1-6, 2 interludes and one fragment. Episode 24 adapted Chapter 1-3. Episode 25 adapted Chapter 4+5. What’s left are 2 interludes, the fragment and Chapter 6. So to make clear they didn’t mess with the source material and cut something, they simply stopped earlier than the definite ending of arc 3.

Just to be clear I won’t talk about what happens in the rest of the third arc because once again the LN is not released and it would be a spoiler anyway. I can’t deny tho that because they ended it where they did the whole feeling is different.

Personally I’m not mad or disappointed with it. Of course I wanted them to all of it but I’m not bummed out that they didn’t. In various interview it was said that they discussed the ending of this season ever since the anime production started which tells me that it changed A LOT. Throughout the production you’re bound to face problems that delay certain processes. As a result you have to make spontaneous changes that affect the overall story. The script writers themselves said that usually Re:Zero wasn’t meant to be a 25 episode anime. They planned to do Episode 16-18 and 19-21 in two episodes but they couldn’t do it without butchering it completely. So to invest two more episodes for events most likely overthrew their entire plans for the ending. All these problems and delays piled up to a point where they couldn’t adapt the ending of arc 3 in its entirety.

They had two different choices. Cut down all of arc 3 and stuff it into the time you have left or only adapt to a certain point but do it properly. Personally I think they did the correct choice with this. Cutting and butchering the content only to end it where you initially wanted it to end would backfire hard on them when they planned to do a sequel. Scenes that you cut down and which are dependent on time & place are nearly impossible to implement later on. Instead they decided to stay true to the source and adapt what they can properly.

It’s basically comes down to this. Do you want an incomplete and low quality product now or do you want to wait to get it in complete and in top quality? I surely can wait if it means that they will adapt it properly.

Now that I think about all people hang themselves up on is the principle of a season. "It had to be like this because it’s the end of the season" "How can they start a second season with this?". In the narrative sense no time between season 1 & season 2 passes, the story is continued without a break. If you don’t even think about seasons and watch episode 25 of season 1 and episode 1 of season 2 back to back it would mean little to nothing.

The problem some people basically have is that they can’t get what they want right here and right now. The expectations that they put on themselves or the expectations that were put on them by others were not met and because of that they’re now upset. I mean they have any right to be upset. But I think that we never really had any true certainty that it would end where we wanted it to end. It was all based on assumptions, especially since we had no definite source material ( LN, no not the WN ) to orientate ourselves at.

So yeah that’s my stance towards this. I’m perfectly fine with this ending. I’m a very patient person so I’ll wait until the missing parts will be added in a possible sequel. But hey that’s just me  :)

Oh about the fragment chapter I talked about. As many of you might have seen the various Subaru & Rem pictures from their "IF Chapter". Yes the author included this alternate reality as a fragment chapter in the 9th volume. It’s not the entire thing and most likely just a tease. The reason why I think that is because a 270 pages long Rem IF chapter that has been refined and extended by the author will be included as a bonus once you buy all 9 BD/DVD volumes.

The most frequently asked question now would be „Will there be a second season?“ and the answer simply is "We don’t know yet". Until there is an announcement that a second season has been greenlit we can’t say anything for sure. What we can do is picking up on hints and base our assumption on them.

Personally I think that a sequel is more likely than it is unlikely. And no this season’s ending does not effect a second season in any way.

Yes they didn’t get as far as to finish the entire third arc but that doesn’t make a sequel less likely. It simply shifts the place where season 1 ends and season 2 starts. The narrative structure itself won’t be affected because no time would pass. For us it’s a wait yes but one mere rewatch is enough to recreate the feeling of a smooth transition.

Usually the safest way to determine whether a sequel is possible or not is to look at the production committee and see if they got enough revenue from this production to earn a good amount of money. If I recall it correctly MF Bunko J ( Producer ), Kadokawa ( LN Publisher ), Tv Tokyo ( Tv Publisher ) and a 4th company with minor investment.

Kadokawa and MF Bunko J should have gained a lot of revenue for the more than 1 million sold copies throughout the anime’s airing.

Tv Tokyo benefitted a lot from relatively high quotes for late night anime and the additional quotes from the weekly Re:Zero show.

On top of that we have the BD/DVDs which have a realistic shot at a 10k average at the moment. Volume 1 is scratching at 12k, Volume 2 should have reached 11k by next week, Volume 3 is guaranteed to break 10k as well and the estimate of Volume 4 has already surpassed the one of Volume 3 which was the highest one so far. Overall the feared „ticket drop“ ( The usual drop after the first or second volume because there is no event ticket anymore ) is close to non existent which is an achievement in itself.

Oh and lets not forget the various other sources of income such as merchandize, licensing, the newly announced visual novel and contracts for ad campaigns.

So if we talk money and business this production certainly has been a success for the companies involved. Knowing that this is the biggest hurdle to overcome in regard to a sequel things are looking really bright!

If we don’t talk money then it also looks very good. People at Kadokawa love this story and they’ve seen great potential in it with the way the pushed for a LN adaptation and an anime adaptation soon afterwards. The only backing this series had was a small one from the Web Novel community but Kadokawa took the risk and went for a 2-cour anime adaptation. The relationship between Tappei, the publisher and the animation studio was also nothing you see very often. Sure authors care about what happens in the production of the anime that will advertise their work but it’s rare to see that an author takes such an active role in it. Tappei frequently joined script, dubbing, production and composition meetings and gave his input, he even wrote several lines in the script. A good working relationship is as important for success as it is skill and heart so this is definitely a plus. On top of that Tappei voiced his wish that he wants his entire work to be adapted.

Now about the "when?" Once again all we can do is making assumptions based on the information we have at hand.

Compared to other LN releases Tappei is extremely fast. This is mostly due to the fact that the WN material he has written in advance requires not a lot of changes and editing. Tappei and his editor brushed through the first 3 volumes ( Arc 1 + 2 ) and released them back to back in a monthly pace. Once arc 3 hit alongside the plans for an anime production the release slowed down a bit. Arc 3 underwent the biggest changes so far which is still not a lot aside from series composition. Still it took longer than the previous arcs and combined with the task of taking part in production the release slowed down. The thing is with the 9th volume and the end of the anime production both of these things are not more. Tappei wrote Arc 4 with the knowledge that it would end up as a LN so he used the gained knowledge from his editor to craft the story in an already refined way. In other words we are back to the Volume 1-3 situation. Volume 9 will release in a few days and Volume 10 comes out next month so yeah Tappei returns to his monthly-bimonthly release pace.

The 4th arc should translate into about 9-10 LN volumes so it should take about a year maybe 1 1/2 at the most for Tappei to finish the 4th arc which would fill out an entire 2 cour season on its own.

So take this with a grain of salt but I expect a second season 2 to happen in Spring or Summer 2018.

And that’s pretty much it. I’ve basically got nothing to say anymore. Well except to thank all of you for all the nice comments and the amount of gratitude I received on a weekly basis. I know that reading what I wrote and the amount I wrote was tedious at times but in the end it was only out of good will so I hope you can forgive me for the text walls  :D

I might not be able to answer everyone individually so let me say it right here and right now. Thank you and you’re welcome  :)!

HOLY DAMN - I'm sorry mods for the frequent questions. I wish I could be earlier to avoid the loads of comments about my whereabouts but I simply take too long  :/ 
Anyway thanks for staying patient with me and now you're finally released from this hell...for a while  :D