Re:ZERO arc 3 ethics are paradoxical
I find arc 3 darkly comic because of Emilia saying things like, “I’m not even allowed to bring Rem.” Does she not see how this would sound to him, and she expects him to keep a promise here? It is darkly comic in that she is saying this about a person who acted cold and distant to her until Subaru arrived, the very person who tortured and murdered him multiple times. I wonder just what “lesson” Tappei was trying to convey with regards to Subaru to the reader, because it really comes off as him trying to paint Subaru getting upset over how he was being treated and not putting up with Emilia’s obliviousness as this profound moral failing or “male entitlement,” while Emilia is let off because [backstory].
Given Puck is a major cause for Emilia’s nature and Puck is (supposedly) the author’s self-insert, it’s like he’s the in-world representation of the author’s hypocrisy: punishing Subaru in the loop where Emilia lies dead in his arms for not doing anything, while also being the cause of Subaru and Emilia’s separation in Memory Snow, where he guilt-tripped Emilia into distancing Subaru (and most of all, never telling her about the Witch Cult). I have also seen some people accuse Subaru of being incel-coded in that one arc 4 loop where he rags on himself, thinking he believed in Emilia less than Roswaal did, despite him dying over and over again and being objectively right not to believe in her, considering her memory block, and considering the whole arc was about him calling out Emilia for running away and being selfish.
My problem is really less with the author (who I’m hoping has plans for addressing the emotional threads from arcs 3 and 4 in arcs 10-12) and more with the fandom’s interpretation of Subaru and Emilia. It’s like there’s a collective illusion, so to speak.
I learned about this thing called the Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics: it says that by merely interacting with a problem, you will be blamed for it, whether or not you brought marginal benefit. For example, in extreme weather conditions, hailing taxis is impossible, so instead of there being NO taxis, say Uber or Lyft introduce surge pricing, so drivers are more willing to pick people up. Now people can pay extra and have a taxi or not, which is better than the status quo of no taxis despite infinite willingness to pay. And yet Uber will get piled on for this. Subaru is basically like Uber in arc 3: piled on for improving things for Emilia, while Emilia, Roswaal, and Puck escape judgment because their mistakes all stem from failing to interact with the problem in the first place. Subaru’s active imperfection benefits people and is criticized, while Emilia, Roswaal, and Puck’s passive failures get far less flak.
Of course, close readers can pick up on what Emilia’s flaws are. The issue here has more to do with how often people defend Subaru as the deconstruction of the isekai MC against outsiders who critique him, yet within the fandom, arc 3 Subaru gets a ridiculous amount of criticism.
I think this also has to do with how Tappei does worldbuilding. If you’re a Game of Thrones or Ex novel fan, it might be a little disappointing how little Subaru or Emilia seem to engage in politics post arc 3. The royal guard and noble attendees were present in the main story only to the extent that they allowed the author to paint Subaru in a bad light or provide Julius an excuse to punish him. The sociopolitics has weight in one novel, but it isn’t followed through properly, like showing us the conferral of honors ceremony, or at least having someone like Rickert talk to Subaru and Emilia once or twice. That is to say, the royal guard and noble attendees were merely stage props in the isolated play that is LN 4, and Subaru got brutalized because he refused to be an actor (i.e., put up with appearances) and wore his heart on his sleeve.
The whole story can be viewed as a theatre sequence, where each sequence (spanning a chapter, a novel, a phase, an arc, and even the whole story) is somewhat self-contained in the things it cares about, particularly with regards to the worldbuilding. If unintentional, this would be a critique. If intentional (and it may be, considering the explicit usage of theatre verbiage in the story: “stage,” “curtain,” “characters,” “actors,” “audience,” “performance,” and so on, plus the whole Observers business), it might explain the inconsistencies within the story. The effect of characters being “actors on a stage” is further amplified by Return by Death, which makes both Subaru and the reader dissociate from the people around him.
To me, Subaru’s suffering in arc 3 and its “lessons” only apply when viewed on a surface level, when viewing everyone as actors. When viewed as real people and judged through any objective notion of morality, Subaru comes out as the least sinful. “Might makes right” (the logic that underpins Priscilla and Julius at the start of the arc) directly goes against the theme of self-love; what Subaru and Emilia want from each other goes against what Lugunica (represented by Julius, who is a full-blown native disconnected from the grander aspects of the story, and subsequently disillusioned by those very aspects upon losing his Name) tells them they should want. Am I reaching here? I don’t know.
In my view, events of Re:ZERO can always be analyzed from two perspectives: the “theatre” perspective and the “real person going through real shit” perspective. The former (what the author often conveys to fans via unreliable narration and dialogue) is where one tends to take things at face value, for example, Subaru comparing his actions in LN 4 to Petelgeuse. In the latter perspective, this comparison is insane, because we know why it’s happening: Subaru is being shaped into treating himself as a disposable tool by Roswaal, he takes everything on himself, so rather than blame the actual root cause (Emilia’s profound inability to accept people, her incompetence as a friend and liege, and Puck being a horrible parent), he blames himself, believing he had been “imposing his love.”
The former perspective is what dominantly shapes much of the fandom’s character judgments. Subaru’s insecurity, stemming from things we can all relate to, is painted as ugly, while Emilia’s far worse and far more alien insecurity is painted as tragic or noble. Subaru’s actions, taken in the heat of the moment while swept up by emotions, are painted as the height of selfishness, while the buildup in LN 4, where Emilia takes Subaru’s kindness for granted and doesn’t treat him as an equal for her own ends and issues, is considered justified, despite her truly owing him so much.
It is as though Tappei has deliberately, collectively gaslit a big part of the fandom into believing certain things for the sake of bringing it all down when RbD is revealed to Emilia. That would be my wild theory. Or it could just be that the Re:ZERO fandom is bad at reading subtext lol, that also works.
