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ladylovelylemons · 9 days ago

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Re Zero Arc 6: Who are you?

I haven’t really done any long analysis posts yet (or even re:zero posts) but I just finished arc 6 and I have so much to say. This is by far my favorite arc. There were so many amazing chapters. I keep thinking it can’t get any better, and then it does.

Theme: Memories

Fitting for an arc titled “the corridor of memories”, the central theme of this arc is memories. Many of its characters have either lost memories (Subaru, Ram, Echidna/Anastasia) or have been forgotten (Rem, Julius, and later Emilia)

There’s also a broad theme of identity. Memories is tied to identity, and a lot of characters are struggling to find out, exactly, who they are.

I decided to go down each character and talk about how the theme relates to them

Ram

Ram’s issue here is that she’s forgotten about Rem, her little sister and an important part of her life. Even though she doesn’t remember Rem, she’s still important to her, and she often gets angry about her.

We learn more about Ram’s past, about how she was believed to be the reincarnation of the oni god. However, that fact never mattered to her— all that mattered to her was that she was Rem’s sister. That’s where she finds her identity.

Ram uses her clairvoyance to connect with Rem and defeat one of the gluttony siblings. She never cared about her horn, but she uses her power to protect Rem. Even though she doesn’t remember her, Ram is connected to her twin sister.

Meili

Meili is presented throughout as being a kid who doesn’t really understand what she’s doing. That’s why Subaru forgives her so easily— she’s just a child who doesn’t know much better.

Meili is still a ruthless assassin who resorts to murder to solve her problems. Her identity has been as an assassin for all of her life, so she doesn’t know much else. Subaru and Emilia reach out to her so she can form a new identity.

Echidna/Anastasia

For a good chunk of arc 6, Echidna is wearing a mask of Anastasia and pretending to be her. She fakes a lot of innocence to seem non-threatening, but is actually pretty ruthless.

Echidna is established as being non-trusting. She doesn’t reveal her true identity to Julius until he finds out by accident. However, she later somewhat regrets that she didn’t try to form a bond with him.

Despite her non-trusting nature, Echidna apologizes to Subaru as she’s dying in one loop. This is pretty significant, as she has a lot of reasons to doubt Subaru, but she forgives him instead.

On Anastasia’s side, she’s asleep inside of Echidna for most of the arc. It’s later revealed the reason why was because she knew that if she woke up, then she would forget about Julius. In the end, Anastasia does wake up and forget about him, but is able to reforge her bond with him.

Emilia

Out of all the characters, Emilia is the one with the least issues this arc.

Emilia’s kindness is something that’s pretty influential this arc. Her kindness towards the amnesiac Subaru is what kicks off his character development and wanting to save everyone instead of only wanting to save himself. And her wish for “everyone to get along” saves the day thanks to Volcanica.

Late in this arc, Emilia has her name eaten by Gluttony and no one remembers her. However, she isn’t too upset about this, as “the person [she] wanted to remember the most l” (Subaru) did remember her. She keeps fighting nonetheless.

Julius

The main problem that Julius has is the fact that no one remembers him. The bonds that he had made are all gone, except for Subaru, and eventually that’s gone too.

Julius is full of doubts because he has no footing to stand on. Because everyone’s memories of him are gone, his identity is gone. Deep down, he feels like he’s no longer a knight. This is pointed out during his fights with Reid many times.

After his second fight with Reid, Subaru is there to lend a beaten-up Julius his shoulder. Julius refuses it, however, trying to stand on his own. Subaru forcefully helps him anyway. Subaru thinks how Julius is in a similar position to how he was after Julius beat him up in front of a crowd. Remembering how lonely he felt, he makes sure he will not let Julius be alone in this moment.

The identity of Julius is heavily tied to being a knight. His entire personality is built around being knightly. However, Julius thinks of himself as a fake knight, even calling himself a “paper tiger”. He wasn’t even a noble to begin with, and only became so after his parents died. Still, he decides to cling to this role he chose for himself.

Julius is able to fight Reid after reaffirming his identity not as a nameless knight, but as Julius Juukulius. He reforges his bonds with both Anastasia and his quasi-spirits (which become actual spirits). He decides he won’t just wait around for everyone’s memories of him to return, but that he’ll reforge the bonds that were forcefully broken. It is at this point that he can really call himself “the Greatest Knight”.

The Tower Keepers: Reid, Shaula, and Volcanica

Reid and Shaula are both keepers of the tower. Although Shaula’s an ally, and Reid is not.

Reid is built off of memories. He is based off of a point of the first sword saint’s life. He’s pretty confident in himself, and really doesn’t care about most things.

Shaula has been waiting in the tower for 400 years for her “master”, who she mistakes as Subaru, to appear. She is the keeper of the tower, and nothing else.

In the end, Shaula turns into a giant scorpion, her true self lost. When defeated, she breaks apart, leaving nothing but a small scorpion that isn’t even her. However, Shaula is able to confess her love in her last moments in her true form, not as a giant scorpion. And the tiny scorpion left is red, the color of love— Shaula’s feelings still getting through.

Volcanica is a dragon who has lost his memories. He can only repeat the same words. He mistakes Emilia for Satella. He’s compared to an old man with Alzheimer’s. Volcanica‘s self is very shaky and weak, as well as his perception.

Gluttony Trio

For one thing, Louis has never left Old Lagna and instead takes over the bodies of her brothers (and also the place of Subaru). Basically, she takes the identities of others because she doesn’t like her own.

Roy and Ley eat the names and memories of others. Basically, they take away identities.

Louis’s wish is for a new life, a new identity. She wants to find the perfect one. She thinks she’s found it in Subaru, but she’s greatly mistaken. Ironically enough, she does get a new identity, just in a different way

Louis takes and Subaru’s place and basically uses a clone of herself with Subaru’s body and memories prior to transporting. She creates a brand new identity for herself, but the identity still isn’t hers—even if it’s Louis inside, the identity is still Subaru.

After living as Subaru, Louis is left a mess. Her mantra of “want to become happy” is changed to “don’t want to die”. She does have a new identity, but not in the way she wanted

Subaru

Decided to save the best for last

Subaru loses all of his memories prior to transporting. His identity is changed, as now he’s as he was before. This actually shows just how much Subaru has changed, with how different the amnesiac Subaru is.

The amnesiac Subaru has a huge case of imposter syndrome. He treats the original Subaru as someone different from himself. At one point, he even thinks his original self is a murderer. Subaru thinks so lowly of himself, he can’t comprehend this version of himself that everyone speaks so highly of.

Subaru goes nuts and at one point considers killing everyone. This is in part because he read Meili’s Book of the Dead. Meili is basically infecting him, her thoughts constantly overlapping with his own.

Subaru starts to believe in himself when others believe in him. During one loop, Julius, Echidna, Beatrice, and Emilia help Subaru snap out of his anger and paranoia. Emilia asks him for his name, and he answers “Natsuki Subaru”—the one whom Julius entrusted, Beatrice believed in, Echidna forgave, and Emilia wished for. That is his new foundation of self.

Subaru goes through quite the dilemma when he finally meets Louis. He is given the choice of either returning to his original self, and therefore letting his current self disappear, or never get his memories back. He can’t stand “dying” and losing the bonds he made with the people he had grown to love. Yet at this moment, Rem tells him to stand up, because he’s her hero. Subaru decides to fight Louis and her brothers, losing neither his current or old self.

Subaru goes through many, many loops to find the correct way to save everyone. Nothing seems to work. After looping many times, he finds his own Book of the Dead. Then, he relives those deaths and memories of Subaru when he first landed in the new world. After reading, the old Subaru appears—because both Subarus now have the same memories, and have reached the same peak.

The amnesiac Subaru tells the original Subaru that he’s a great person. In this way, Subaru has actually learned to love and value himself. The old Subaru takes on the new Subaru’s memories, and they become one.

Through all of his tumultuous experiences, the bonds he made with others, as well as reading his own Book of the Dead, the amnesiac Subaru was able to reach the same point as his current self. This was how they were able to basically fuse. The amnesiac Subaru was the same Subaru as before, but at the same time, different. How he reached his own growth was different, yet also very similar, to the original Subaru

In conclusion, Subaru lost his identity and was able to find himself.

#Whew #This was basically an essay lol #Re zero #re: zero #re: starting life in another world from zero #Rezero #Natsuki Subaru #Emilia #Ram #Julius #Anastasia #Echidna #Meili #Arc 6 #Shaula

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got-into-worm-by-mistake · 5 months ago

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Arc 6, Reflections

A lot of people will talk about about how with or after Leviathan, people stopped liking Worm, or felt like the work really changed after that, and there's something to that, to an extent.

But honestly, Arc 6 feels like the real sea change here, the real shift. Maybe post-Leviathan will to, but with Arc 6, the last nails in the coffin of the idea 'Taylor the Hero' is done.

I feel like it's quite likely, just as there were people who kept powering through the dark and despair hoping it would get better (spoiler alert: It doesn't), there were people who were counting on Taylor's eventual turn to heroism.

And here, Taylor has burnt her bridges with the heroes, and basically burnt her bridges with dad now, and decided... nope. Fuck it. I pick friendship and what Coil is offering and friendship and the one outlet I have left over the heroes.

As she notes, if she'd had someone she could have talked to sooner, maybe it works out. Maybe she makes it work, maybe she doesn't, maybe she finds a way to keep going.

The thing is, if she had turned on Coil and the Undersiders right now... what would it have accomplished? She doesn't actually know the truth of Coil's rather broken af power, so it's impossible for her to give the heroes adequate information. She just screws herself over, honestly.

Like, I've seen a lot of people say that if someone reads worm and comes away thinking Taylor is completely correct in what she does and really did make the best choice, they're wrong, and I'm right there with that take, because I mean - fuck, no, none of this is the best choice she could make with the information she actually had.

And yet, when you look back on everything, in hindight... maybe my opinion will change as I keep reading, but it's hard to imagine a universe where Taylor hands all this over to the Protectorate and quits villainy and even tries a run as an Indie hero (I mean, really, her actual list of crimes - not counting what she does to ABB gangsters or Lung, which, I mean, bad, but context - is really minor at this point) actually works out?

Like, maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but there's a lot of AU work that needs to be done to ground all that, because taking down a guy like Coil isn't easy. Because doing all the things she ends up doing down the line is far, far from simple.

I mean, I've read AUs where things get wrapped up easier, in very different contexts, and though I often enjoy them, sometimes they do feel like it's all... a little too easy? Just a bit?

Not always, not every time, but like, the Wormverse does run on 'it gets worse' and 'people constantly making bad decisions', so on the one hand a fic where neither of those narrative principles holds quite as strong a grip, it makes sense that these problems might be more easily solved.

On the other, it kind of cheapens the canon narrative and the hard choices the characters make, if the problems really could be solved that easily, you know? It's like in Buffy fics where the Scoobies somehow defeat and utterly destroy Wolfram and Hart with a plan so stupid they clearly rented it from the ACME corporation. Because that makes sense.

(Well, I say fics as if there's more than one fic that did this that I know of. Just the one, and I'm still fucking salty about it. *grumble*)

Anyway, circling back on topic - the point is, as much as I want to yell at and shake Taylor for this choice, for not turning in what she knows, I can't blame her because A) I get why she picks her friends over anything else (maybe if the transfer to Arcadia was going through, or if the School actually punished the Trio she might have held out some hope for normality) and B) Honestly, this probably is the path to actually stopping Coil, given what's available to her at this point.

She doesn't know it's B, not yet, but I'm pretty sure.

I do wonder what the live slug reaction to this was though, by the fandom. Were there people who dropped the work believing the prospects of Hero Taylor were now gone? Were people still hoping for Taylor to pick Hero path down the line by now?

Did the tantalizing promise of what Coil represented, narratively, keep people in, and going?

Certainly would have me, I think. But I'm not, and never can, reading this blind, so... who knows.

#Kylia Reflects on Worm #Arc 6 #Worm #Wormblr #Taylor Hebert

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