As a titan of the isekai anime genre, Re: Zero - Starting Life in Another World wields the godlike power to keep Natsuki Subaru stuck in a fatalistic sandbox, where the sands of time set a whirlwind of paths in motion. With its abundance of high-stakes scenarios and magical abilities, Re:Zero packs in the drama in a way few isekai gems can.
Much of the dark wonder that makes Re:Zero such a delight is the “Return by Death” ability that Subaru experiences as both a blessing and a curse. Serving as the narrative engine, the ability compels Subaru to navigate life and death as if he were in a video game with hard save points, paving his path to success with a trail of unspeakable horrors. These particular resets and IF routes struck fans as some of the absolute worst.
In terms of its psychological weight, this reset is arguably one of the most traumatic deaths that Subaru has experienced so far. What makes this reset particularly scarring for Subaru, thanks in no small part to Roswaal, is the mean irony that crowns it. Emilia’s long-sought kiss arrives from the place of a devastated self and reaches the severely wounded Subaru with the freezing touch of certainty that nothing but death follows her kiss.
On his way to such a heart-wrenching rock bottom, Subaru also takes in all the gruesomeness of watching his friends getting savagely killed, not to mention Great Rabbit’s flesh-eating delights being enough to break the toughest of minds. This horror resets with one of Subaru’s saddest deaths in Re:Zero greeting him as he succumbs to his wounds near Emilia, embraced by the shadow of what he longs to have with her.
This macabre reset takes Subaru and some of his companions for a stroll through the subterranean tunnels beneath the Augria Sand Dunes. As they navigate their way through the depths of the underground world that lies unseen below the sands, they discover that the caverns make things dark not only for their vision but also for their minds. They walk into the sector of the tunnels that is generously saturated with the Witch of Envy's miasma, the toxic mana that is quick to drive the group into madness.
Unlike many of Subaru's gruesome resets, this one doesn't have the immediate presence of any villain per se. Rather, the villain figure in this scenario is the mind-altering nature of miasma, which unleashes the absolute worst that lurks deep in the murkiest waters of the unconscious mind. As a result, Subaru and his companions slide into a severe state of paranoia that resolves itself in psychotic behaviors toward one another. It doesn’t take long before savagery gets the best of everyone in ways that further make Subaru’s deaths in Re:Zero snowball into one complex case of PTSD.
This reset gets Subaru stuck in the militaristic Vollachia Empire and plunges him into a stay in Chaosflame. As if entrapment in Olbart Dunkelkenn’s self-sufficient festival of savagery and mind games weren’t enough to make the stay in Chaosflame unforgettable, Subaru’s inability to stay dead gets taken to the next level. With his soul affected by an altered state, Subaru’s respawns arrive like one merciless glitch of mean irony that would make some of the worst anime deaths seem not that bad after all.
The “Return by Death” ability begins to thrust Subaru back into the world at the time of his last save point, exactly 10 seconds before a massive explosion that is certain to obliterate his childlike form. This simmers and boils Subaru in a hellish loop of being blown up after respawning in rapid succession. Naturally, this nightmarish scenario pushes Subaru's mind to the very brink. After all, Subaru can’t seem to catch his breath all the while his childlike body endures one explosion after another with no capacity to do much about it in between.
سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://gamerant.com/rezero-worst-resets-and-if-routes-for-subaru/
