#balleroy

A big part of it was probably the fact that it didn’t feel like it had much stakes. We seemingly had Subaru losing his sense of self a bit because of Olbart and im being shrunken for an extended period of time, but that wasn’t really touched on after that, and on top of that, 2 major antagonists just switched sides halfway through to fight with the living. I get it for Eugard, but I’m still a bit confused about Balleroy.

Additionally, bringing in Halibel made the whole arc a lot easier, and although I like the character I feel like he was kinda just there to even out the odds a bit. Same with Anastasia and Julius, they were kinda just there to bring in Halibel and then didn’t do much else after that aside from a huge rainbow shield thing, and most of the characterization, albeit some of the best in the series, happened in the middle of a battle.

Even with the war being way more fair because of Halibel’s existence, Subaru still died a ton of times trying to get the best outcome, but the problem is we’re not shown any of that. It’s implied heavily, but for the majority of the arc we’re following the successful loop, the one where Subaru knows exactly where to place everyone for the best odds of success, which kinda diminishes on the whole “overcoming insurmountable odds” part of the show, even if we know that logically, Subaru lived through hell a amount of times potentially in the thousands, having to listen to his friends pleas every time he reset via suicide.

Somehow though, even with the exceptionally large amount of characters introduced in arc 7 and 8, it was honestly easy to care about all of them (with the exception of Palladio and Lamia, who felt like they were just kinda there as a plot device). Madelyn and Balleroy’s subplot ended beautifully with her having to finally accept his death, Yorna and Eugard got a brief happy ending, every time Cecilus and the rest of the Pleiades Battalion appeared I was honestly pretty happy.

Now to have a smooth transition to the stuff I really wanna talk about:

Holy hell. Arc 8 was a rollercoaster the entire time that had to stop in the middle of the ride for maintenance (Phase 3).

There were some moments that honestly really moved me, but there’s two in specific I absolutely need to bring up, being the death of Balleroy and Moguro and the ending.

Honestly, even though I didn’t think too much about either of those 2 characters, the duo of Balleroy and Moguro almost had me tearing up. There was just something about their ending that felt so, so amazing to read. Maybe it was the fact they were willingly charging towards their death to save everyone else, maybe it was that I had started to really like the characters without realizing, I don’t know, but it was beautiful.

On the other hand, we have her.

Priscilla, possibly my least favorite character in s1 is now permanently one of my favorite characters in all of fiction, right up there with.. uh, Natsuki Subaru, and Emilia, and Vincent Vollachia, and Wilhelmina, and Heinkel, you get the idea.

I was.. half expecting it, admittedly I did get spoiled, but while I was reading the final chapter I was genuinely thinking “Oh, I guess I got lied to. Honestly kinda glad.” The whole chapter was genuinely one of my favorites before that scene, and I really liked seeing Priscilla finally seeming to open up to people, finished amazingly with her and Al dancing under the stars while a slightly drunk Subaru sang for them.

And then the sun rose.

And then, one of the most emotionally impactful scenes in all of Re:Zero was thrown in the form of a compete curveball.

I don’t think any words can do ‘Curtain’s Close- “Priscilla Barielle”’ justice.

This is what cemented it as one of the best in the whole series, this is what made me spent 40 minutes writing a tumblr post that not a lot of people are probably gonna read when I should really be sleeping, this is what made me love arc 8 so much more then I had previously.

This entire time, Re:Zero felt like a story that shied away from permanent character death. Of course, it made sense given Subaru’s RBD, but in the end everything always worked out somewhat well for the main characters.. after Subaru dies in incredibly horrible ways over and over, even killing himself in arc 2, in that weird gray zone between 3 and 4, in 4 after Satella shows up, and SO much in 7 and 8 that it’s blatantly said in one of the chapters the leading cause of death so far is himself, with the exception of maybe Olbart.

And now, a major character, one extremely important to the whole main objective of the series is dead after having some of the best writing in the entire story. Everything from her getting captured, to descending from the sky after somehow escaping the prison, to the final scene had me gradually starting to love Priscilla more and more.

I said this a bit ago but I wanna restate it, I loved seeing her open up. I loved seeing her Soul Marriage activate on everyone fighting in the capital, I loved seeing her interactions with Subaru in the finale, and I loved her, Al, and Subaru just have a great time together.

And I loved seeing her give one final speech to the pair from beyond the great waterfall, preventing Subaru from killing himself again while Al begged him to jump off the railing, and getting Al to confess his love while he hugged her. It was enough to make me want to cry, even if I didn’t- and reflect in the form of spending about 50 minutes now writing a tumblr post.

Still, even with all that, I don’t think I’ve done the scene any kind of justice to how impactful and amazingly well written it is. It’s really something you gotta read for yourself to understand fully, which I’m hoping everyone who may be reading this now has already done. But, well, disorganized thoughts out of the way, I can’t wait for it to be adapted, because when it does I get the feeling I’ll find it a lot easier to cry then.

It feels weird to say thank you to a fictional character, but thank you, Priscilla. If there’s anything to take to heart from your character, it’s to learn to love the world, and be loved by the world.

The sunset of Arc 8, Curtain’s Close- “Priscilla Barielle” is over, one of the brightest flames in the story being extinguished.