r/anime

Having caught up to S4 Part1 and finishing on an absolute banger of an episode that reaffirmed that Emilia truly is the GOAT , something completely obvious dawned on me for the first time. That Emilia is the only girl Subaru could ever truly love.

I couldn't put it into words in previous seasons but i always knew that that was the case, and this got me wondering why exactly it felt that Emilia was the one for Subaru and not Rem or some other girl.

With so many parallels to S1 in S4 it felt that the author was pointing out something obvious that we should've picked up in the beginning and if we didn't, then we should definitely understand now that the roles are reversed in S4, with Subaru forgetting and everyone else remembering.

So it got me thinking. What exactly was it that got Subaru to fall in love? In season 1 you could say that it was fate or coincidence or his only connection to the new world that got him to fall in love, but in S4 all of that is gone. In S4 he distrusts everybody after the amnesia incident and funnily enough, Emilia is the second to last person he begins to trust again, yet he fell in love with her all over again.

It was puzzling at first but the more i thought about it the more obvious it became.

The reason Subaru fell the first time and the second time is Emilias' unconditional love.

Maybe calling it love from the get go is a bit dramatic, but Emilia at her core is a very loving and caring person. She wants to believe in the goodness of others and does unconditionally care for those that surround her. I might not be remembering all the details as it's been literally 10 years since season 1 but she is basically the ONLY person in the whole series that is like this.

The reason this is what sets her apart, is Subaru's specific circumstance, which is Return by Death. As we've seen until now ALL the relationships that Subaru forms are created through numerous failures and deaths. In the end he does gain everybody's trust BUT all that trust is circumstantial and we all know that in a lot of cases people outright dislike him when they first meet.

All his friends and allies were gained though pure circumstance. Yes he did create the circumstances in which everyone would trust him but it is precisely because he had to create the good outcome that makes everyone sub-par compared to Emilia.

To really drive the point home let's go back to season 1 and remember what life was like for Subaru in the Roswaal mansion.

When he first started working there Ram, Rem and Roswaal naturally didn't trust him even if they didn't let it show. In the first loop he dies mysteriously , but in the second loop at the mansion ,regardless of his behavior, we all know that Rem kills him in cold blood. She doesn't ask him anything. She doesn't even try to get his attention or even investigate what he's doing walking around the mansion at night she simply kills him in one hit. In the 3rd loop he tries to outsmart the (at the time unknown) killer and again gets brutally tortured by Rem and mercy killed by Ram because they thought he was too suspicious. Only in the 4th and 5th loop does he gain their trust but ONLY because he knows what would happen and how to navigate the situation to not have them be apprehensive enough to kill him.

During that entire time, all of those loops, what did Emilia do ? How did she treat him? The answer is: The same way. Every single time she believed he was trying his best, every single time she believed he was working for their sake. In the loop where he starts vomiting because he's so stressed and overworked to get everyone to like him so he doesn't get killed again, even though for Emilia it's been barely days since they first met, she KNOWS and BELIEVES that Subaru is so distraught because he's doing his best for them. She can't understand why but she believes in him. Something that NOBODY does for Subaru. Yes Rem ended up believing him, yes Rem did fall in love with him when she understood him. But it took Subaru 5 different tries and 2 direct kills from Rem to create the circumstances in which she would believe and care for him. But Emilia never needed any of that. She always believed in him and always unconditionally cared for him regardless of his weird behavior .

What happened with Rem happens to an extent between most characters in Re Zero and Subaru. They don't trust him, they might even dislike him, and he has to try again and again to create the situation that convinces them he's trustworthy. But Emilia always believed in him. Even in the first ever loop where Subaru slows her down with his selfishness, even in the loop where he calls her Satella (although she was pissed at him for a while) she still didn't want to think that he would call her Satella with evil intention.

All of that is reconfirmed in season 4. By throwing Subaru back to his original self from episode 1 and burdening him with the trust and expectations of people he's never known, Emilia again treated him the same. She believed every time he said he was amnesiac and trusted that he was a good person without him having to prove it. Echidna and Ram basically prove what i previously said by turning on Subaru because the circumstances dictated that they should be suspicious of him. The only reason Echidna forgave him was because he proved he was the same person, but again Emilia didn't need any of that. When she understands that Subaru's memories are truly gone and they might really die she chooses to be there for HIM, not the Natsuki Subaru everyone remembers but the Natsuki Subaru that is in front of her right then and there. She reminisces their time together from the beginning and in that moment Subaru realizes that Emilia always cared for him and eventually fell in love with him. Not the Natsuki Subaru that was capable to overcome everything but the one that has always existed. The selfish useless damn bastard that tries his best for those he cares about.

Other girls might try and Tappei can write as many IF stories he wants about Subaru ending up with Rem or other girls, but the one and only true love for Subaru has always, and will always be Emilia.