#I can't complain about the LSW subtitle thing too much

[ridiasfangirlings]

Do you have any favorite "this scene is super meaningful if you've read the manga/short stories/other side material" easter eggs from the anime?

The whole episode 12 of ROK has multiple callbacks to LSW and unfortunately the English subtitles kinda flubbed two of them. The title being Knuckle Bump is the obvious one (especially since there’s no actual knuckle bumping that happens in the episode itself, so the title feels a bit weird otherwise) — this is something middle school Yata and Fushimi would do, most notably when they’re planning to interrupt the jungle Christmas party. When the title was announced in the preview part of the previous episode pretty much anyone who’d read LSW was immediately like ‘the Sarumi episode is coming up next!’ just from the title, which I think would be less obvious if you weren’t familiar with the novel. Similarly within the episode, the part that the English subs translated as ‘Fushimi Saruhiko is a stand up guy’ was actually Yata specifically using the word ‘sugoi,’ which in LSW translations was more often translated as Yata calling Fushimi ‘amazing’ (that whole ‘when have you listened to me with shining eyes and called me amazing’ thing that he says to Aya uses the same word). It’s a pretty simple moment but I think it was definitely intentional as a callback. Also at the end after Yata leaves, when Fushimi thinks about how Yata hit the mark calling Munakata Fushimi’s King, the subtitles also skipped this one — and to be fair I can see why, if you don’t know that the wording is intentional — but he specifically says ‘100 point answer’ in Japanese, referencing the ‘0 or 100 points’ that Fushimi uses for Yata in LSW.

There’s also a little subtle bit I liked in S1 with Totsuka’s death. In episode six we get the whole extended flashback to when Totsuka was still alive and there’s one transition I recall liking a lot, where we see Totsuka smiling with a little shine on his earring and then the scene shifts to present day, with Mikoto in his cell and the same earring shining. While the transition I think is intended to kinda infer that Mikoto is wearing Totsuka’s earring it’s really only clear if you’ve read Memory of Red, where it’s pointed out that Mikoto takes Totsuka’s earring after he dies. As I recall the shine on the earring was also a red color too, which a regular viewer would assume is just a symbolism thing with Mikoto being the Red King, but Memory of Red reveals that some of Totsuka’s blood is inside the hollowed middle of the earring. The scene doesn’t linger on this one which is something I really liked, it very much feels like something where if you’re anime-only it’s easy to overlook but if you’re caught up on the side materials you really get hit with the full emotional effect of the moment. 

Also from season one, possibly one of the biggest Easter eggs is just the ending theme itself. ‘Alone, in a Cold Room’ is sung by Neko’s voice actor and the lyrics are very sad and lonely in a way I think doesn’t make as much sense if you’re not aware of her backstory. In particular I feel like the title and references to the lonely room are probably intended to bring to mind the moment when little Neko realizes that she’s been using her powers on her ‘parents’ all this time and she’s curled up in her closet, wishing that they would accept her and take her hand again even though she’s not their real daughter. I don’t know offhand if Gora’s ever mentioned that the song was specifically supposed to be about that moment but I feel like it fits too well to not be intended as a reference to that part of Neko’s life, that viewers would only know about if they’ve read the supplemental material.