Literature / Re:Zero

The only thing worse than dying once is having to die again.^note Center: Subaru Natsuki, Clockwise from top-left: Emilia, Puck, Ram, Rem, Felt, and Beatrice.

"Let us start here... from zero."

—Rem

Re:Zero, full title Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu ("Re: Starting Life in Another World from Zero") is a light novel series written by Tappei Nagatsuki and illustrated by Shin'ichirō Ōtsuka. Originally a Web Serial Novel that was first self-published on the site Shousetsuka ni Narou in 2012, it was picked up for print publication by Media Factory in 2014.

Subaru was an Ordinary High-School Student on his way back from a snack run one day, when he suddenly finds that he's not in Japan anymore. When he looks around, he realizes that he's in an archaic fantasy universe. Luckily, he lands in a populated town. Unluckily, it's not all that safe. His life is saved thanks to the efforts of a half-elf named Satella. Subaru decides to repay her by helping Satella recover a trinket that was stolen from her, and begins to develop feelings for her as they spend time together.

And then they're both murdered.

And then Subaru wakes up exactly where he was when he first appeared in the fantasy world.

Subaru eventually realizes that every time he dies, he goes back to a certain "checkpoint" in the story. Once he's dealt with the threat to his life, he tries to live peacefully in this new world until a new threat arises and a new checkpoint is established. Unfortunately, every time a threat is dealt with, the checkpoint is immediately established, so if Subaru can't deal with whatever is threatening him without undesired consequences, he's stuck with them.

Despite the fantasy premise, it soon becomes apparent that the series is a Psychological Horror thriller, and that there's going to be less swordfighting and action and more death and despair.

The series was adapted for the spring 2016 anime season and is being directed by Masaharu Watanobe and animated by White Fox; a second season was announced at AnimeJapan 2019 and was originally set for an April 2020 release, but was delayed to July 2020 due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. In March 2023, a third season was announced. The published version of the light novels has been licensed for publication in the west by Yen Press. People who can read Japanese can read the original web novel here.

Crunchyroll is streaming the anime, which can be viewed here for audiences worldwide except Asia.

Spin-Off media includes:

Anime & Manga

• Re:Zero − Starting Break Time From Zero (Re:ゼロから始める休憩時間(ブレイクタイム), Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Break Time) (2016, 2020): A series of shorts featuring Chibi style versions of the characters.
  • Re:Petit − Starting Life in Another World from Petit (Re:プチから始める異世界生活, Re:Puchi kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu) (2016)
• Re:Zero − Starting Life in Another World − Official Anthology Comic (Re:ゼロから始める異世界生活　公式アンソロジーコミック, Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu Kōshiki Ansorojī Komikku) (2016-2018)
• Isekai Quartet (2019-): The main characters are part of the Crossover alongside the casts of The Saga of Tanya the Evil, KonoSuba, Overlord (2012), and as of the second season, The Rising of the Shield Hero.

Light Novels

• Re:Zero Ex (Re:ゼロから始める異世界生活Ex, Re:Zero Kara Hajimaru Isekai Seikatsu Ex) (2015-)
• Re:Zero Prequel: Bond of Ice (Re:ゼロから始める前日譚 氷結の絆) (2016): A limited edition short story that was included in Re:Zero BD 1. Adapted as OVA in 2018 and as a manga in 2020.
• Re:Zero x KonoSuba Crossover (Re:ゼロから始める異世界生活 x この素晴らしい世界に祝福を!) (2016): Crossover with KonoSuba.

Video Games

• Re:Zero -Starting Life in Another World- Death or Kiss (Re:ゼロから始める異世界生活 -DEATH OR KISS-, Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu -Death or Kiss-) (2017)
• Re:Zero -Starting Life in Another World- INFINITY (2020): A roleplaying game for mobile.
• Re:Zero -Starting Life in Another World- Lost in Memories (Re:ゼロから始める異世界生活 Lost in Memories, Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu Lost in Memories) (2020): An RPG for mobile. Closed down in 2023.
• Re:Zero -Starting Life in Another World- The Prophecy of the Throne/Re:Zero -Starting Life in Another World- The False Royal Election Candidate (Re:ゼロから始める異世界生活 偽りの王選候補, Re:Zero kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu Tsuwarino-ō-Sen kōho) (2021): A Tactical Adventure game developed by Chime and published by Spike Chunsoft for PlayStation 4, PC, and Nintendo Switch.

No relation to Aldnoah.Zero, Fate/Zero, Resident Evil 0, Re:CREATORS, ReLIFE or Re-Kan!.

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Re:Zero provides examples of:

# — C

• 2D Visuals, 3D Effects: Some of the villagers in the first episode are CGI, while most of the show is 2D animation.
• Abhorrent Admirer: Satella (or rather the Witch of Envy personality) is dangerously obsessed with Subaru and in one loop in which she possesses Emilia's body, she chases after him while gliding with her arms out toward Subaru as if trying to hug him and shouting "I LOVE YOU!" over and over again. Subaru, for his part, can only feel extreme fear and revulsion about the mere thought of getting hugged by her and would prefer to be eaten by the White Whale.
  • Sirius is like this for Petelgeuse. And after absorbing the Sloth Witch Factor, Subaru is mistaken as the object of her affections.
• Accidental Murder: Subaru accidentally gets Emilia killed in one of the loops by successfully spelling out the nature of Return by Death.
• The Ace: Reinhard is singularly the strongest shown character in the series. As a testament to his strength, Reinhard was able to defeat Elsa with a sword that he randomly picked up off the floor. Later on, he's able to easily take on the nigh-invincible Regulus and is shown to be able to defeat Puck in his beast of the end form in a failed loop.
• Achilles' Heel: Regulus is seemingly invincible throughout the story, however he has one major weakness: his "invincibility" is tied to the hearts of his "wives". So if his wives' hearts are temporarily stopped by Emilia's freezing magic, his immortality shortens from perpetual to only lasting a few seconds.
• Action Girl: Emilia, Rem, Ram, Priscilla, Crusch, Felt, Yorna,
• Action Mom: While Fortuna is technically not a mother, she did raise Emilia for a good portion of her childhood. She was also a skilled ice mage like her niece.
  • Yorna is this, since it's revealed that she's Priscilla's mother and is one of Vollachia's Divine Generals.
• Action Survivor: Subaru is just a hikikomori with no supernatural powers or fighting skills who suddenly finds himself involved in several deadly situations after getting transported to another world. He does have the power to get revived after dying, but his lack of any other real skills forces Subaru to learn how to get out of the messes he gets himself into and save his allies.
• Adaptational Gender Identity: Ferris has an Ambiguous Gender Identity but is suggested as being female-identified. The anime treats him as a Wholesome Crossdresser.
• Adaptation Distillation: The anime is this by rearranging certain events to make the flow better as well as removing exposition like Al being from another world and foreshadowing like a woman implied to be Satella appearing between Subaru's loops. The light novel itself does cut out quite a bit of chapters from the original web novel.
  • This is particularly noticeable in the example of the interaction between Subaru and Rem, whose Ship Tease is markedly reduced compared to a light novel in order to simplify the romantic line.
• Adaptive Ability: Reinhard's ability allows him to gain blessings in response to the situations he is placed in. In addition, these new blessings don't disappear afterward, allowing him to stack abilities to become almost invincible. During a trip to Volakia, Julius witnessed him fighting off a small army of Half-Human Hybrids without a scratch despite their unique fighting styles, noting that it was due to the combination of the 'first-sight blessing', allowing him to instinctively understand how to react to an attack he is seeing for the first time, and the 'twice-seen' blessing, which enables him to react with greater speed to an attack he has witnessed before, making it functionally impossible to hit him with a new or repeated attack, especially with his insane physical abilities.
• Actor Allusion: In the preview for Episode 18, Rie Takahashi as Emilia starts talking and acting exactly like Megumin from KonoSuba, even almost fully saying her explosion catchphrase at the end. It makes the Fandom Rivalry mentioned on YMMV even more ironic. Doubly so when the author of KonoSuba actually wrote the episode 18 preview himself, as well being friends with Tappei Nagatsuki himself.
• Adopt-a-Servant: Rem and Ram are orphans who lost their parents when the Witch Cult destroyed their hometown. Roswaal then took them in and had them work as maids at his mansion.
• Adorably Precocious Child: Hetaro acts with the maturity and wisdom of someone much older than himself. Though as a vice captain, he has earned his position.
• Advertising Campaigns: Episode 18 gets one here. This is especially surprising considering that almost no series, let alone a single episode, gets this level of promotion.
• Advertised Extra: While not a minor character in the long run, early promotions of the anime adaptation bill Felt as part of the core cast.
  • Rem has become the center of a lot of promotional art and products as a result of the growth of her popularity among the fans. Leaving aside the third arc, Rem is not treated as a main character within the series and she hasn't even participated in a good part of the story ever since she fell into a coma.
• Aerith and Bob: The names in the fantasy world mix fantasy-like names, like Rem, Ram, Crusch or Roswaal, with real-world names coming from different languages, like Emilia^note Pretty common in Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, Beatrice^note Pretty common in French, Reinhardt or Wilhelm^note Both pretty common in German.
• Affably Evil: Petelgeuse. He is always overly polite and respectful to Subaru until finding out the boy's real intent and trying to use Unseen Hand to rip him apart. Made all the more horrifying in that Tappei Nagatsuki stated that he's the nicest of all the archbishops. Let that sink in for a moment...
• Affectionate Gesture to the Head: Following the 2nd arc, Subaru begins petting Rem's head when he praises her, showing their now close relationship.
• Affectionate Nickname: Emilia is called Lia by Puck, EMT (Emilia Maji Tenshi^note  Roughly, Emilia Mega Angel) by Subaru. The English dub adds another from Subaru with Mili, used whenever the Japanese version uses Emilia-tan.
  • Beatrice calls Puck "Nii-cha" (a very affectionate form of "big brother") or "Bubby" in the translation.
• A Hero to His Hometown: Kenichi Natsuki is something of a local celebrity in the community he lives in, getting along with everyone from high schoolers to the elderly, resulting in his phone having thousands of contacts. This is deconstructed on Subaru's end, as he can't live up the (perceived) expectations of being Kenichi's son, leading to him being a Hikikomori prior to the story.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Shaula has a built-in program that forces her to maintain the rules of the Pleiades Watchtower even if it would be detrimental to her own interests and those of her friends.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg:
  • In direct contrast to his prideful nature, Subaru is willing to lick Priscilla's feet in order to gain allies to save Emillia. It doesn't take, and all it does is disgust her.
  • In Arc 4, he begs Roswaal to call off Elsa's and Meili's assassination mission at the mansion. Roswaal coldly refuses as he's going to do whatever it takes to push Subaru into the deep end.
• Air Whale: The White Whale, natch.
• Albinos Are Freaks: Emilia's silver hair and amethyst eyes make her a social pariah because she's a dead-ringer of the evil Witch of Envy Satella.
• Alcoholic Parent: Due to his wife falling into a coma and his mother dying in the battle against the White Whale, as well as detesting Reinhard's perfection at everything, Heinkel resorted to heavy drinking, which further ruined his relationship with his son.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Several. Rem is in love with Subaru, but he only has eyes for Emilia, who doesn't respond to his advances. Similarly, Ram is in love with her master, Roswaal, but he's obsessed with Echidna, the witch of greed. Sirius also has a one-sided obsession with Petelgeuse.
• All-Loving Heroine: Emilia is kind and helpful to everyone she meets, including those who discriminate against her just because of her resemblance to Satella, and she'll give her all to protect people from danger.
• All the Other Reindeer: Thanks to her status as a half-elf, as well as for her heavy resemblance to Satella, the Witch of Envy, Emilia is a subject of prejudice among many people, even among the royals and some townsfolk. This causes problems for her as one of the chosen candidates for the throne.
  • Felix was mistreated for his demihuman features in the past, accused of being conceived by an affair as both his parents were human.
• Always Save the Girl: Subaru will always do what it takes to help and save Emilia and later Rem even if it means dying over and over again.
• The Aloner: Until Roswaal welcomed her into his mansion, Emilia lived at the frozen Elior Forest with her spirit Puck and the frozen elves being her only company. While she had the option of leaving the forest, Emilia felt responsible for looking after the frozen elves and the people from the human villages around the forest would never take her in anyway because they were afraid of her resemblance to the witch Satella.
  • Shaula guarded the Pleiades Watchtower for 400 years, with her only interaction being the Witch Cult members that she has to kill every so often.
• Always Second Best: Wilhelm had this relationship with Theresia before eventually mellowing out and getting romantically involved with her. It is subverted when he finally becomes strong enough to defeat her in a duel.
• Always Someone Better: In their backstory episode, it was revealed that Ram was actually always the superior twin sister, not Rem. So much that Rem always felt inferior towards her as a result, and their village's constant praise of Ram didn't help matters either. It was only after Ram's horn was sliced off from her that the scales were turned around.
• Amazing Technicolor Population: The giant multi-armed people have blue skin.
• Amazon Chaser: Garfiel mentions to Subaru that he likes strong girls who can fight for themselves, which is why he's attracted to Ram.
• Ambiguous Situation: As of the end of Arc 6, Louis has somehow acquired a physical body, gained amnesia and reverted to a child-like, underdeveloped behaviour. She became stranded in Vollachia along with Subaru and Rem, completely at the former's mercy. Subaru is not happy in the least about this.
  • Also, the founding of the Witch Cult and who the other founder is besides Petelgeuse.
• Amnesiac Hero: Emilia remembers very little about her childhood with the other elves of the Elior Forest and her clearest memories are those from after she was released from her ice prison by Puck. This is an important plot point in Arc 4 as Emilia must face her own past as part of her first trial and in many loops, her mind breaks from not being able to bear her painful memories.
  • Also happens to Subaru for a major portion of Arc 6.
  • Rem, once she reawakens at the start of Arc 7, has lost almost all of her memories.
• Amnesiacs are Innocent: As a result of eating her own copy's memories, Louis' mind is reduced to that of a toddler and she gets very attached to Subaru. Despite her actions prior to her memory loss, Subaru tolerates her as he understands she isn't a threat in her amnesiac state.
• Amnesiac Lover: Rem finally wakes up from her coma after Lye's death, but due to her memory being eaten, she can't remember Subaru. He's ready to start their relationship anew, but Rem distrusting him because of his Witch's scent once again makes it difficult for him.
• Ancient Conspiracy: The Witch's Cult.
• Ancient Keeper: Ryuzu Meyer watches over the sanctuary. Similarly, Shaula watches over the Pleiades Watchtower and maintains the trial there.
• And Now You Must Marry Me: Regulus frequently forces women to marry him, having had almost 300 wives already. Currently, he plans to make Emilia his 79th wife.
• Animal Assassin: Apparently, Meili uses Demon Beasts to kill her victims. In one of the loops, Meili admitted that she had killed Petra with "one bite".
• Animal Eye Spy: Ram's Clairvoyance allows her to see through the eyes of animals in her vicinity, using them as security cameras as Subaru puts it.
• Animal Motifs: Butterflies for Echidna and Beatrice.
• Animorphism: Frederica can transform into a large leopard beast, and Garfiel can transform into a large weretiger.
  • Shaula can transform herself into a colossal scorpion any time a rule of the tower is broken.
• Anonymous Benefactor: Pandora supports the Witch's Cult through various means, such as providing powerful warriors like Theresia van Astrea and Kurgan as puppets. However, Pandora's relationship with the cult isn't quite clear because members are forbidden to speak of her despite knowing of her existence and she is addressed with high respect.
  • Satella is one for Subaru by bringing him to Lugunica and giving him his power.
• Anti-Magic: EMM, one of the spells developed by Subaru and Beatrice, creates a field that negates all sorts of magic.
• Antiquated Linguistics: While not nearly as noticeable in the anime, in the novels Emilia tends use out archaic words like "dullard" or "dunderhead" that a lot of old people would use to play on her actual age.
  • The four main Ryuzu speak in an old-fashioned Japanese that is used by the elderly, as an indicator of their real age.
  • Priscilla speaks in a regal and antiquated form of Japanese, including the use of the archaic feminine pronoun "warawa" for herself.
  • Melakuera spoke in a robotic manner while also using archaic pronouns.
• Anyone Can Die: Due to Subaru's ability, nobody has plot armor as they can all come back. Whether they can "come back" complete, especially after Subaru hits specific checkpoints where he's stuck with his choice, is a different question.
• Apocalypse Cult: The Witch's Cult, or at least Petelguese's faction have the goal of bringing back the Witch of Envy. Subverted, in that the different archbishops of the Witch's Cult all have their own independent goals.
• Apocalypse How: Invoked by Subaru, twice, in the third arc. In one loop, the audience is only given a sense of foreboding towards it when a massive creature erupts from Roswaal's mansion and beheads Subaru with a glance. In a later loop, it is revealed that by getting Emilia killed, Subaru inadvertently breaks Puck's contract with her. This causes Puck to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge and freeze the world over, causing anywhere from a Class 2 up to a Class 5. That's right, getting Emilia killed is The End of the World as We Know It. Or at least until Reinhard gets off his ass and does something.
• Arboreal Abode: Before being taken into Roswaal's mansion, Emilia's home was a hollow tree at the Elior Forest.
• Arc Villain: Several, usually tied to one or more arcs.
  • Arc 1: Elsa.
  • Arc 2: The Mabeasts attacking the village and Meili, who's controlling them. Rem also acts as an antagonist for a portion of the arc, before Subaru manages to earn her trust in the final loop.
  • Arc 3: Petelgeuse and the Witch's Cult.
  • Arc 4: Several. Roswaal and Echidna are the two main instigators of the conflict. However, the Great Rabbit and Elsa and Meili serve as two secondary antagonists. Garfiel and Ryuzu also serve as antagonists until Subaru manages to earn their trust, similar to Rem.
  • Arc 5: The Witch's Cult.
  • Arc 6: Similar to arc 4, there are several concurrent antagonists. The tower itself acts almost like an antagonist, and towards the end of the arc the group is attacked by the Archbishops of Gluttony and the Witch of Envy.
  • Arc 7: Cisha Gold, Todd, and, at the end Sphinx.
• Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?: Echidna interprets one of Subaru's serious gazes towards her as something quite different from what it was meant to be. She starts talking about how they can't do such a thing since he is living and she is dead, and when he corrects her misunderstanding she ends up pretty disappointed.
• An Arm and a Leg: Al's missing his left arm.
  • Ricardo's fight with the archbishop of gluttony Roy Alphard in Arc 5 costs him an arm, not that Roy was anywhere near satisfied with that.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Roswaal is the Margrave of the Mathers territory as well as the strongest court magician. He is also the one who sends Elsa to steal the insignia, thus setting off the plot.
• Artificial Family Member: Beatrice is a spirit created by Echidna, the Witch of Greed. Beatrice views Echidna as her mother and has been very much affected by losing her. She also considers her fellow spirit Puck to be her brother.
• Artistic License – Physics: Averted. While in other shows someone would stab a sword into the cliff to stop from falling, the sword in question would not break. In Re:Zero, the sword breaks immediately (as it should), but not before slowing down the momentum to survivable levels.
• Ascended Extra: Otto and Petra both become major secondary characters after joining Emilia's camp. Starting in Arc 4, Garfiel and Frederica both become this too.
• Asshole Victim: Arc 6 shows Elsa Granhiert's past. When she was a 10-year-old child, she stole from a dealer out of starvation. After he realized that she was a girl, he tried to assault her. But Elsa was able to slit open his stomach with a piece of pottery, so that his bowels emerged. This type of killing was later also preferred by Elsa when she became a professional assassin.
• Assimilation Backfire: Once Louis Arneb eats Subaru's memories and finds out about Return by Death, she thinks that's the ideal power to have the most perfect and happiest life since the user can undo any of their mistakes and failures. Wishing to steal Return by Death, Louis creates a copy of herself and uses it to possess Subaru's body. Louis then discovers that she vastly underestimated the critical mental damage and trauma experiencing your own death over and over again causes. After she's out of Subaru's body, Louis doesn't care about having the perfect life anymore; all she can think now is how much she doesn't want to die again.
  • After breaking into the Pleiades Watchtower, Roy tries to devour the soul of Reid Astrea, the legendary original Sword Saint. However, it quickly becomes apparent that Roy literally bit off more than he could chew, as Reid's soul overpowers Roy's, effectively resurrecting the legendary swordsman.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The White Whale.
• Attention Whore: Many of Subaru's early actions were driven by his desire for attention, given that he received very little outside of his parents back in his original world.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: His disguise as Natsumi was very convincing. Apparently back in his old world, he'd crossdress a few times to stand out and draw attention to himself, so little wonder he has experience there.
• Audience Surrogate: Being new to Emilia's magical world and having no magical abilities to his name aside from Return By Death, Subaru is meant to be the relatable view-point character.
• Auto-Revive: Reinhard has the Blessing of the Phoenix which brings him back to life if he is killed once.
• Award-Bait Song: Rem's Image Song "Wishing" by her voice actress, Inori Minase is introduced this way in ep 18, to a powerful effect.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Roswaal is able to deduce that Subaru is capable of time looping simply by watching him being shocked over the deaths of Ram and Garfiel, whom Roswaal had just killed in front of him, yet lack any grief.
  • Even from Arc 1, Subaru has been a master of this skill. Just from paying attention to his opponents, Subaru has been able to recognize critical weakpoints in fights allowing for surprise upsets. Add in Return by Death, he is the one of Re:Zero's most terrifying characters to alienate if given enough information to screw over someone.
    • In Arc 1, Subaru managed to memorize Elsa's attack pattern well enough that he was able to stall her long enough to get support it the form of Reinhard.
    • In Arc 2, after being killed by Rem's flail, he manages to make a defense by using his tracksuit to distribute the weight, allowing him to survive a few hits that would have killed him in any other circumstance.
    • Also in Arc 2, Subaru notices that creatures that have relation to the Witches of Sin become aggressive in response to his scent. As a result, he abuses this to draw aggro from the mabeasts in order to figure out where Rem is.
    • In Arc 3, Subaru notices that several merchants leave to and from the Karsten Manor. He realizes that these merchants are peddling weapons with Crusch Camp in order to fight mabeasts based on comments made by Anastasia. He leverages this information to gain an army to fight the White Whale.
    • Also in Arc 3, Subaru figures out how to counteract Petelgeuse's possession by intentionally calling upon his curse to inflict damage on both of them.
    • In Arc 4, Subaru deducts that Roswaal is doing a power play simply based on knowledge that he should know what happens if unqualified people attempt the Sanctuary's Trial and went with it anyway.
    • In Arc 5, he's able to deduce Regulus' ability and how to counteract it during their big fight.
• Ax-Crazy: Elsa Granhiert, who disembowels her victims when she kills them and takes absolute glee in doing so. And later in the third arc we have the bishops of the Witch Cults, who, for all intents and purposes, are all completely unhinged in various flavors of crazy.
• Background Magic Field: "Mana".
• Badass Adorable: Emilia. She is a magician first and utmost, but the prequel Snow Bonds shows that, before becoming a spirit mage, she could handle her own against small mercenary groups armed only with her demihuman strength as a half-elf. Anyone who thinks she is defenseless quickly realizes that good people don't have to be weaklings.
  • Her familiar puck looks like a cute little cat. But he has a monstrous, huge shape in which he can cause enormous destruction.
  • Ram and Rem look like two nondescript, not particularly tall girls in their early or middle teenage years. However, both are very strong and can effortlessly mow down opponents who look much stronger and also destroy weaker monsters with ease. Rem in particular shows it when someone threatens Subaru.
• Badass Normal: Subaru is a normal human aside from his reset powers. He did work out a lot on earth, so he can hold his own in a normal fist fight, but there are some very powerful and dangerous people in the fantasy world.
• Best Her to Bed Her: Wilhelm van Astrea married his wife Theresia after he was able to defeat her in a swordfight.
• The Bet: Subaru makes one with Roswaal in Arc 4. If Subaru can clear the Arc in that particular loop without making a contract with Echidna, getting Garfiel to join his side, and have Emilia pass the trials by herself, Roswaal will fully support Emilia in her attempt to become King. Should Subaru fail, he will be forced to attempt to clear the Arc as the Gospel has spelled the future out as.
• Better to Die than Be Killed: Subaru sees this as his only option when in the clutches of the Witch of Envy as there is the possibility that he will be absorbed, making Return by Death unless someone managed to kill the Witch of Envy, something that even the 3 strongest characters in the universe failed at centuries ago.
• Betty and Veronica: Subaru's two potential love interests: the royal candidate and half-elf outcast Emilia (Veronica) and the humble maid Rem who loves him and supports him unconditionally (Betty). Subaru is leaning toward Emilia, but openly admits he would like to have both her and Rem if he's allowed to.
• Big Damn Heroes: Reinhard does this when he shows up at Old Man Rom's shop after Felt runs around town asking for help.
• Blade Brake: Subaru jabs a sword into a cliff face to arrest his fall. However, even though it drops his momentum to non-lethal levels, Surprisingly Realistic Outcome happens when the blade breaks, causing him to free fall the last few feet.
• Blade Run: In the successful attempt on the battle with Elsa, she perches atop Rom's club at one point. She points out that this is only possible because of his ridiculous strength.
• Blow You Away: Ram. She can create blades of wind and attack her enemies in this way.
  • Crusch also can generate strong wind attacks with her sword.
  • Roswaal is also able to use wind magic among many other types of magic.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Witches of Sin and the Sin Archbishops of the Witch's Cult are frequently mentioned as having internal thought systems and ways of life that are completely incomprehensible to everyone around them. Interestingly, Subaru is also frequently discussed with the same terms.
• Body Double: Chisha Gold often acts as Vincent Vollachia's double. According to Vincent, following his fleeing from the capital, Chisha is the one who makes public appearances in his place.
• Bodyguard Crush:
  • Subaru has a MAJOR crush on Emilia, and will go to extreme lengths to not only protect her but also defend her honour. The Lady and Knight relationship between them forms the backbone of his motivations throughout the first few arcs.
  • Rem has one on Suzaku, developed during their time together throughout Arcs Two and Three.
• Body Surf: Due to being a spirit, Petelgeuse has an ability that lets him possess the bodies of compatible people in the vicinity every time his current body is killed. Unfortunately, this includes Subaru.
• Born Winner: Reinhard, who since his time of birth, had been blessed with a lot of gifts that would basically let him win in any and all situations, according to Emilia in one of Break Time specials.
• Bottle Episode: Aside from a brief scene at the beginning, Episode 18 focuses solely on Subaru and Rem, and they spend three-quarters of the episode up on a roof while Subaru has a Darkest Hour Heroic BSoD and Rem tries to talk him out of it. The animation is actually extremely good.
• Break the Cutie: Subaru gets hit with this multiple times. Strangely enough, the classic video game scenario of teenage boy whisked away to a magical world to help a beautiful girl—complete with a new ability to return to a save point and redo things if you die—isn't very much fun to actually live through. It means you die (usually painfully) whenever you mess up, sometimes the people you've grown to care for die before you do, and precious memories you've made with new friends vanish from their minds after the next reset if you haven't made it to a save point before you die again. Suffice it to say he does go catatonic for a while after one particularly bad incident where he comes back to the manor and finds everyone he was trying to protect slaughtered before he's flash-frozen to death. Unfortunately, being catatonic just makes the next go-round even worse.
• Breakout Character: Rem is beloved by the fans for her more fleshed-out personality when compared to the main heroine Emilia, and her cuteness. Her loyalty and unconditional love for the main protagonist has made many to consider the relationship between Rem and Subaru as the Fan-Preferred Couple. In fact, despite the apparent Ship Sinking when Subaru admits that he loves Emilia following Rem's own confession, Rem might not end up as a Romantic Runner-Up as Subaru mentions he wants to marry both girls in the novel. There is also a "What If" chapter featuring Rem and Subaru becoming a couple. Rem is so popular that a hug pillow of her had to be delayed due to unanticipated demand. She has also won multiple character popularity polls, earning 50% of the votes in Crunchyroll.
• Breather Episode:
  • Episode 18, which, while just as intense as episode 15 in a way, has far less gore, death, and despair than any of the previous episodes as well as giving Subaru his Heroic Second Wind to try once again to be a hero.
  • Episode 19 which brings the return of the humor that characterized the earlier parts of the series, as well as having no gore and death.
  • The Memory Snow OVA, set between Arcs 2 and 3, which gives us plenty of humor and heartwarming moments for Subaru and Co.
• Broken Tears: Subaru sheds broken tears often, as his powers allow him to revive and loop back in time after being killed. He has witnessed his own death and failures in saving his friends countless times.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: The Witch Cult members who are brainwashed by the Gospel if they have the necessary characteristics.
• Break the Cutie: Subaru, oh so much. Every time loop wears on his sanity and conscience a little more each time.
• Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl: Zigzagged. Subaru typically isn't the type to brood and goes out of his way to be energetic and encouraging to the people around him. But when the pain and trauma from of his numerous deaths from failed loops threaten to crush his spirit, he specifically desires Rem to comfort him but it's because he knows she wouldn't let him continue to brood and would get him back on his feet to move forward.
• Brown Note: The White Whale can release a sound that makes other people go insane or flat-out kill them if they can't resist.
• Butt-Monkey: Subaru is one during the story's more lighthearted moments.
• Cassandra Truth: An especially notable and tragic example of this happens with Rem. She can literally smell this world's version of the Devil on him and therefore has pretty good reason to assume he's working for her. In the loop where they confront each other, nothing he says, even when choking the words out through his tears, manages to change her mind.
  • Another example would be the time Subaru tries ask Crusch for help to fight the Witch's Cult and is ignored due to the Witch's Cult spreading false rumors about where they'll appear multiple times.
• Cast from Hit Points: Magic spells consume the user's mana, which is basically the user's life energy. As such, reckless usage can easily tire out or even kill the user in the worst case scenario.
• Casting Gag:
  • The fact that Yoshitsugu Matsuoka and Inori Minase played potential couple in the other fantasy shows, which can make episode 15 a little narmy.
  • A fierce battle between Elsa and Reinhardt in the third episode may also suffer because of this, when you start to think of them as Tomoya and Kotomi from CLANNAD. Moreover, for Nakamura, Reinhardt is the already second absurdly Memetic Badass role in his career after Tatsuya Shiba.
  • This isn't the first time that Yui Horie and Sarah Anne Williams has voiced a cat person. But in the latter's case, it's pretty much different.
  • In the Latin American Spanish dub, this is not the first time we hear Ricardo Bautista (Subaru) voicing a main character being abused by the rest of the cast, except this time, it's NOT Played for Laughs at all.
• Cat Girl: Felix/Ferris Argyle has a cat's ears and tail due to having demihuman blood. Despite being introduced as a cat boy, there are some hints that Ferris may identify as female.
• Central Theme:
  • Loneliness, isolation, trauma, how that can have an effect on a person, and ultimately overcome all of that.
  • Even the weakest person can have the greatest impact on the world around them.
  • The expectations of manhood vs. what it means to be a man.
  • It's fine to be selfless, but there is a such thing as Senseless Sacrifice. You need to take care of your own person too.
  • No matter how much you stumble or fall, you can always get back up and start over again... from zero.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The story starts off relatively light hearted in the first arc where that stakes are low and the main problem is solved relatively easily. Then comes the second arc which starts to test Subaru's mentality and psyche. Then last comes the third arc, as well as the end of the prologue, and starts the beginning of Subaru's journey and assaults his psyche like a battering ram and if he fails, he has to watch the slaughter of an entire village as well as his loved ones.
• Chekhov's Boomerang: Subaru's cell phone. It was originally used as a bargaining chip for Emilia's insignia, by pretending it is a Metia that freezes a moment in time. Later, Subaru once again pretends it is a Metia, this time as one that predicts the future and uses it to explain where he gets his information about the White Whale that is normally impossible to know ahead of time in order to gain the cooperation of Crusch to save Emilia.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Emilia's cloak. Subaru received it in Episode 13 after she leaves it with him. It comes in use in Episode 24 to disguise himself when meeting again with Emilia.
  • The blank letter. Serves as the first sign that Rem was attacked by the Archbishop of Gluttony and erased from existence.
  • Pristella’s Metropolitan Government Hall's Radio. It's used prior to the climax for Subaru to give a Rousing Speech to everyone in the city and was mentioned early in the arc for announcements.
• Chekhov's Skill: In episode 12 it is stated that ground dragons have a blessing which allows them to remove air resistance for them and their riders. Subaru accidentally discovers that this blessing doesn't work if he were to move too far away from the ground dragon. This effect comes back when Petelgeuse tries to catch the gospel that Subaru threw, making him drift far enough that the blessing no longer works. It leads to his death as it opens him up to multiple attacks from Subaru.
• The Chessmaster: Vincent Vollachia.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: Reinhard, who was mostly minding his own business, does this to save Subaru in the alley, and later to save him and the others when Elsa attacks them.
• Cleaning Up Romantic Loose Ends: After becoming an Official Couple with Emilia, Subaru's Unresolved Sexual Tension with Rem is put on standby after the latter is promptly put into an indefinite coma and erased from everyone's memories by the Archbishop of Gluttony. It promptly restarts once Arc 6 emphasizes how much she means to him, and once she's finally awoken for Arc 7, how her amnesiac self still experiences lingering feelings for Subaru.
• Cliffhanger: By the end of the season, an episode that doesn't end on some sort of twist is more surprising than one that does.
• Cloak of Defense: When she was hired by Roswaal L. Mathers, the assassin Elsa Granheirt was given an enchanted cloak that could protect its wearer from any offensive magical attack. However, the cloak had two drawbacks; Firstly, it only worked once and would dissipate after negating an attack; secondly, it only worked against spells intended to harm her physically and could be bypassed by indirect Shamak magic.
• Close on Title: Every episode shows its title at the end.
• Colossus Climb: Wilhelm does this to the White Whale to severely injure it.
• Combat Pragmatist: Natsuki Subaru exploits every minor advantage he can to try to get the upper hand in a fight. In addition to his Return from Zero ability, he's not afraid to throw sand in his opponent's face or black out the area with magic to gain an advantage. More often than not, this fails to sufficiently undermine trained opponents. Subaru tends to triumph when he applies the trope strategically, gathering friends and allies who can take on the enemy together.
• Comically Small Demand: Some of Subaru's requested rewards for saving people's lives include asking for Emilia's name, petting Puck's fur whenever he wants, and being hired to work in Roswaal's mansion as a butler. In the last case, it's pointed out to him afterward that he could've asked to be a VIP guest at the mansion for as long as he wanted. Apparently, he hadn't even considered it.
• Cosmic Plaything: Subaru just can't catch a break, as exemplified by the fact that his life is essentially a series of time loops wherein horrible things happen which end in him and his friends dying painful deaths. Sure, eventually he's able to figure out a new solution... but that only nets him a new checkpoint to respawn at when things escalate once again a few days later. And he can't tell anyone about his "Return by Death" curse either, leaving him to suffer the mental pain of it all alone.
• The Confidant: Rem acts like this to Subaru during the third arc. Subaru is at his lowest point, finds himself at the depths of despair when he thinks everything is lost and there's nothing he can do about it. Rem is there to listen to his troubles and give him the courage to not give up and try again.
  • Emilia also acts as this during the second arc while giving Subara a Lap Pillow.
  • Echidna serves as this for Subaru as well, when it's revealed that he can tell her about Return By Death.
• Court Mage: He dresses like a clown and acts like a fop, but Marquis Roswaal L. Mathers is Court Magician to the nigh-extinct royal family of Lugunica with good reason.
• Cringe Comedy: Subaru seems to have almost no inhibitions, which frequently makes him come off as a complete fool on the occasions where it doesn't get him killed.
• Crossover: With the cast of KonoSuba. Both authors took the two heroines of Re:Zero and put them in the KonoSuba universe. On Tappei's part, he wrote about Emilia, while Akatsuki wrote about Rem.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Hoooo boy. A lot of Subaru's deaths are so gruesome that you think the author has it out against him or something.
  • That's not to say that the characters around him don't suffer death in various brutal ways as well. However, Subaru has the added misfortune of actually remembering all of his deaths in vivid detail, which takes its toll on him.
• Curse: In this setting, curses are spells that once activated cannot be undone. But they require physical contact with the target to initiate.
• Cursed with Awesome: Played with. Subaru's reset powers are useful, but he remembers the pain of every death he experiences, especially if they're not quick ones. A good portion of the story is dedicated to how many drawbacks his powers have, such as all of the people he'd worked hard to befriend suddenly forgetting him, the horror of knowing about impending disasters without being sure if he can actually avert them, and his lack of control over save points meaning he can get stuck permanently with terrible unforeseen consequences. Because of this, most people view it as a curse, including him.
• Cute Monster Girl:
  • Emilia from is a beautiful half-elf with silver-white hair and pointed ears. Subaru thinks she is the prettiest girl he has ever met.
  • Ram and Rem are two oni. Neither of them are visually different from humans, except that they have red (Ram) or blue (Rem) eyes and hair. And when they fight, a big horn grows on their foreheads.
  • Frederica is a quarter of an animal person, and because of this she has sharp fangs in her mouth. Subaru thinks she'd be a really pretty woman if it weren't for those fangs. Plus, she can turn into a giant panther too.
• Cuteness Proximity: Puck often gets treated in this fashion by Subaru and Betty.

D — H

• Dance Party Ending: Season 2 closes with a ball at Roswaal's mansion to celebrate Subaru being made Emilia's official knight and the final scene is Subaru dancing with Emilia.
• Dark Action Girl: Early on the major threat is Elsa Granhiert. She's a polite raven-haired beauty with exceptionally eccentric fashion sense. She is also a ruthless assassin with a disturbing appreciation for the beauty of her enemies' guts and the combat skills to put up a decent fight against one of the most powerful knights in the kingdom.
  Elsa: If I lose my fangs, I’ll use my claws. If I lose my claws, I’ll use my bones. And if I lose my bones, I’ll use my life.
• Darker and Edgier: While the series starts off relatively dark compared to some contemporaries, Arc 3 is when this really sets hold in the series itself and it doesn't let up from there. It's an example that's done right, as well.
• Dark Fantasy: While the setting starts off being similar to that of a traditional High Fantasy, the experiences that Subaru goes through, in addition to factions like the Witch's Cult, send it straight into this territory hard.
• Daywalking Vampire: The assassin Elsa can move in daylight without harming her. In the fight with Garfiel, he calls her a vampire, and she actually bites him in the neck shortly afterwards.
• Death-Activated Superpower: Natsuki Subaru's ability is to return to a "save point" after death. His save points are unpredictable and can change at any time against his will. This power often leads many people confused about his mentality and emotions, as Subaru is unable to speak of it.
• Death by Disfigurement: Given the nature of Subaru's powers, when he (or one of his friends) loses a limb or an eye (which happens pretty often), it's a pretty safe sign of an incoming death - followed by a new loop.
• Death Is Cheap: Both downplayed and deconstructed. Subaru has the power to come back from death (more like respawning), but even if you know that you'll be alright afterwards, being gutted hurts like hell, not to mention that dying is a primal fear that doesn't just go away. And if one near-death experience is enough to trigger PTSD, multiple complete-death experiences are sure to do the job.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Zigzagged. Subaru finds out that he's stuck in a "Groundhog Day" Loop, so can resurrect and restore back to a previous time before the incident that killed him. Unfortunately, any pain he feels while dying is still with him along with his memories, so he tries to avoid getting himself purposefully killed.
• Decon-Recon Switch: Of the typical NEET protagonist found in Trapped in Another World type stories. Showing first what would happen if a NEET from our world actually wound up trapped in a strange world filled with powerful people and gained a special power, then later showing what it would realistically take for that person to become a hero in this scenario. Because Subaru is weak and unskilled he gets killed very early on and comes back to life only because of his special power (which doesn't lend itself to combat). After going through several cycles of this he starts exhibiting signs of PTSD from all the trauma. In addition, his lack of social skills ends up causing serious problems for himself and Emilia later in the story, prompting a self-inflicted "The Reason You Suck" Speech where he acknowledges all of his failings and how powerless and useless he is. He gradually becomes a hero in his own right by learning from his mistakes, relying on his wits, using the information he gains through each cycle to his advantage, and relying on people that are stronger than him to make it out of battles alive.
• Deconstructor Fleet: The series takes great pains to critically examine many tropes present not just in the typical NEET Trapped in Another World plotline, but aspects of high fantasy and the concept of supporting cast. Rather than a straightforward fantasy of 'fight monsters' and 'defeat a great evil' the driving goal of the series is more political in nature, and both the characters and the setting have complex, interlocking backstories that Subaru (and the audience) learn about as time goes on. In fact, the Witch of Envy (who would normally fit the role of Big Bad in this type of story) was defeated centuries ago and is implied to be what summoned Subaru in the first place, with much of the challenges faced arising from the legacy left behind by both her and her fellow Witches.
  • In general, Subaru being Trapped in Another World makes him a sort of Audience Surrogate, which means that there are many aspects of the background, culture and values of the world that he is woefully ignorant of. Most stories tend to gloss over this outside of some exposition dumps, but here this is something that actively hinders him since it leads to misinterpreting several peoples actions due to lacking the context that most there would consider common sense. It also makes survival much harder since many of the dangers of the world are considered so obvious to the people there, they see no reason to explain them to him, leading to a few cases where his death could have been avoided (or at least delayed) with some basic knowledge.
  • Subaru is pleasantly surprised that his magic affinity is Yin, which is remarked to be incredibly rare. Unlike in most cases of the Super Power Lottery, it's rarity actually makes it less effective, since there are so few users, knowledge of how to use it is much less widespread or documented compared to the more common elements.
  • Unstoppable Rage is picked apart through different characters in Arc 3. While it does grant someone much greater determination it also greatly hinders their ability to think rationally and strategize properly, ultimately making them less effective in most situations. In particular, Subaru is unable to muster up any allies since it makes him appear unstable and Betelgeuse falls for several obvious traps when goaded.
  • The White Whale takes a look at the idea of a random encounter boss from a video-game and shows how terrifying it is applied to a realistic setting. Entire convoys of merchants go missing, supplies and lives lost and it's ability to Ret-Gone people further muddies the waters with no reliable way to anticipate its movements. While there are some precautions in place akin to highways, as a whole the beast is treated as a natural disaster that can claim anyone who does not use the proper roads. Even attempts to deal with it directly are difficult since in addition to the vast amount of manpower and equipment needed to fight the thing, determining where it will be is an extremely difficult task in of itself, making an assault a logistical nightmare.
  • Arc 4 begins to deconstruct Subaru's Not Afraid to Die and Conditioned to Accept Horror attitude. As he becomes increasingly casual about using Return by Death to gain himself and his allies more advantages, he unnerves his friends at how little he seems to care for his own well-being. While he may have come to terms with facing pain for a greater cause, this leads him to underestimate the importance he has to other people, being surprised when they show concern for him and acting independently without fully informing others, causing them to worry in his absence.
• Deconstructed Character Archetype:
  • Subaru deconstructs Groundhog Peggy Sue. While in most stories such an ability allows a character to solve problems with ease, either by using the loops to become strong enough to defeat any foe or using foreknowledge to foil any enemy plans, here several shortcomings are presented.
    • First the 'save points' are set automatically, and usually within a few hours to a few days to the event that kills him, leaving him little time to train, since his physical abilities also reset. What's more, while he may learn some details of their plans, he can still be blindsided by things he wasn't present for in the last loop, and villains are unlikely to gloat about their plans to a random victim they kill.
    • That's not even going into the psychological impact from dying has on him, and as a result rather than doing so deliberately to learn new information like in most cases of the trope, he's even more scared of dying since it's just pain with the promise of more pain in the aftermath.
    • While he does strive to save his friends, more often than not he fails and has to watch them die horribly, and at the start of several loops has to deal with people he considers good friends treating him like a stranger. This leads to a sense of isolation, since he knows when people's lives are in danger, but has to be careful about how he tells them for fear of them just ignoring him, or worse, suspect him of being the cause.
    • All of the above results in him becoming a psychological and emotional wreck as early as the second arc, and spends an entire loop in the third in a state of catatonia.
  • Garfiel deconstructs Determinator. His resolve to keep the people of the Sanctuary safe from any outside threats is impressive, but how he goes about it involves preventing anyone from leaving, and he has little hesitation harming others to do so. This same mindset prevents him from acknowledging the flaws in such an approach, or even considering that he might be wrong, forcing others to take extreme measures just to get him to listen. It's later revealed that this resolve comes from being forced to witness his mothers death, and was ultimately undertaken so he wouldn't have to face the reality of the situation, leaving him stuck in a state of denial for years.
• A Degree in Useless: Subaru has studied a wide range of very minor things which are not really useful in his new life, such as doing a cat's cradle, making bamboo dragonflies, musical accompaniment (and singing), sculptures, bed-making, ironing, sewing, cooking, sign language, tongue-twisters, othello (reversi), crossdressing, and so on. He also reveals knowledge of astronomy that turns out to be useful to interpret important characters' Stellar Names.
• Defunct Online Video Games: Re:Zero: Lost in Memories
• Deliberately Monochrome: Seikatsu IF has Subaru see the world colorless (save for a few people) after he develops an aversion to people, believing that he will never be loved due to his murders by Rem in arc 2.
• Demihuman: They're a species of anthropomorphic humanoids who are common denizens of Lugunica. They come in many different species of animals, and range from very animal-like, to just a Little Bit Beastly.
• Detect Evil: Some non-human characters can smell the "Witch's Scent/Miasma" on people who have received favor from the Witch of Envy, or are otherwise somehow connected to her. This serves as an immediate tip that a character is not trustworthy or a threat. As Subaru's Return by Death ability was given to him by the Witch, he passively carries the apparently unpleasant stench.
• Developing Doomed Characters: Weird example. Subaru and the audience remember everything, but all that character development every other character went through before every one of Subaru's deaths gets reset back to his latest "save point" - no matter how positive it was for them. Thus, "doomed" is only temporary in this case, but it spans multiple arcs across the series.
• Devoured by the Horde: Subaru gets eaten alive by a swarm of Killer Rabbits in one of the most horrifying ways he's died so far
• Dirty Old Woman: In the Rem IF novel, Subaru's repeatedly smacked on the butt by the old women of Kararagi. Apparently, he has a figure nice enough to get a reaction.
• Dishing Out Dirt: Garfiel Tinsel's Earth Blessing gives him super-strength, instant armor, and recovery.
  • Al is also shown using earth magic several times.
• Disturbed Doves: In episode 18, a flock of white doves are shown to compliment Rem's speech of love and devotion to Subaru.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: Who is the shaman who curses people to death in the second arc? The dog. Yes, in the most literal sense, The Dog Was the Mastermind. Of course the real reason the dog was brought to the village was because of Meili, the little girl with blue hair.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: What Subaru considers his efforts in arc 3. He manages to get through without anyone dying, but certain characters have lost their memories, which Subaru considers acceptable losses as he doesn't think that he could pull it off again. It bites him when he discovers that Rem was sent into a coma with nobody remembering her and the latest checkpoint is just after it happens. As a result, he cannot go back to save her.
• Doomed Hometown: The village that Rem and Ram were born in. Additionally, Arlem, the town where Subaru lived for a month, becomes this and is up to Subaru to save.
  • You can added Elior Forest to this for Emilia.
• Door Stopper: The Web Novel version of Re:Zero has a word count of around a few million and about 400 chapters. In comparison, The Lord of the Rings has less than half a million words. And it's only half finished
  • Arc 4 of the web novel qualify by itself, being longer than the previous three arcs combined
• Dragons Are Divine: Volcanica, the Divine Dragon, embodies this trope to a T. Though it is unclear whether the dragon is actually a deity, he certainly has the power to claim such a status. Volcanica is seen as the guardian of the Dragon Kingdom of Lugunica, the primary setting of the story, and is worshipped by the populace, having forged a covenant with the old royal family to protect the Kingdom from all external threats centuries prior. Volcanica also created three lesser breeds of smaller dragons for humans to use, and was instrumental in sealing the Witch of Envy to prevent her from ending the world four hundred years ago.
• The Dreaded: For the world as a whole, the Witch's Cult, the Witch of Envy, and the Three Great Mabeasts.
  • For Subaru specifically in Arc 7, Todd. The feeling is mutual.
• The Dulcinea Effect: Subaru practically invokes this after getting Trapped in Another World; being Wrong Genre Savvy, he figures he must be there to protect some cute girl, and after seeing Emilia searching for her insignia, he figures it must be her and decides to help her. The trope doesn't truly kick in until the two of them are murdered by Elsa the Bowel Hunter, triggering Subaru's Return by Death for the first time, at which point Subaru becomes determined to (and eventually unhealthily obsessed with) helping and protecting her. Ram and Rem come to feel that Subaru is acting like this towards them but in their case, they have only known him for a day, but Subaru (and the audience) has actually known them for quite a bit longer. This being a Deconstruction, he's called out on this trope at every turn, even by Emilia herself, and ends up going through absolute hell.
• Easily Forgiven: Subaru can be surpisingly forgiving about being murdered. Being killed by Rem once doesn't prevent Subaru from falling in love with her. He's also quite happy to see Puck for the first time after the spirit killed him, declared his intention to destroy the world, and killed him again.
• Eaten Alive: Subaru suffers this fate at the jaws of a horde of Killer Rabbits. He gets better, of course, but the mental trauma is so severe that he spends several minutes after his revival bashing his head against the floor, trying to overcome it.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Witches. They're all extremely powerful and linked to a primordial sin and depending on which can range from Knight Templar to The Sociopath.
  • Puck's true form.
• Elective Monarchy: What Lugunica has come down to as all of the possible successors have died.
• Elegant Gothic Lolita: Beatrice, Roswaal Manor’s Magic Librarian, who wears very elaborate and frilly dresses clearly inspired by lolita fashion.
• Enigmatic Empowering Entity: The Witch of Envy gives Subaru his Return by Death, the single most enigmatic ability in the series as well as the most powerful, as it allows Subaru to keep trying after his deaths in a world of demigods.
• The Epic: The story of Re:Zero follows Subaru's quest to make Emilia the king of Lugunica, while he faces insurmountable odds, deadly enemies, ancient mysteries, as well as Subaru's journey from being a wimpy NEET teenage shut-in transported from another world to being a true hero.
• Epic Fail: Subaru's third "life". He starts by passing out, then after waking up inadvertently insults Emilia by loudly calling her Satella in the middle of a crowded street (something which, to rub salt into the wound, also makes him seem to be an accomplice of the insignia's theft that happens shortly thereafter) and finally gets fatally stabbed by the alley thugs who didn't even want to kill him.
• Even Evil Has Standards: The alley thugs trio have no problem threatening, robbing or beating up Subaru, but when they accidentally stab him fatally, all three freak out and flee the scene in horror before someone sees what they did.
• Everyone Has Standards: Deliberately evoked by Julius in his duel with Subaru. While the knights start out cheering to see Subaru get his just desserts for insulting them, they become increasingly uncomfortable with the scale of the beatdown and feel Julius went too far.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: When the main character dies almost every other episode, it's pretty likely that everything is trying to kill.
• Evil Smells Bad: The Witch of Envy and the people given favor to or connected to her have a foul scent, which only certain characters can smell. Since Subaru's Return by Death ability is given to him by the Witch, he also has this scent, which makes the other characters having a hard time trusting him.
• Extra-Long Episode: The first episode was double-length. For the rest of the series, the show had many instances where either the OP or ED sequence (or both) was skipped, allowing the studio to squeeze additional time into the episodes, and in some instances even commercial breaks were skipped. This allowed for many episodes to have runtimes that were closer to 26-27 minutes long (vs. the typical 21-23 minutes a normal anime series would get). In what must be some kind of record, the last ten episodes of Season 2 were all over 29 minutes long.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: Literally every death, save a few that aren't shown on screen.
• Fan Edit: There is an edit of the entire of the anime that removes all of the loops, giving an outside perspective of how insane Subaru looks when he resets.
• Fantastic Racism: Half-elves are sometimes treated differently, because Satella, the jealous witch, was a half-elf, according to legend.
• Fingore: Betelgeuse's defining trait is to bite on his own fingers whenever he's aggravated, hard enough to even rip the skin off.
• Fish out of Temporal Water: Not only is Subaru in an entirely new world, the era seems to be a late medieval time period.
• Flat World: The world Subaru is teleported to is a flat world that is closer to a diorama instead of a globe. The Great Waterfall marks its end, and beyond it lies supposedly an abyss.
• Fog of Doom: The White Whale creates white fog that erases people from existence.
• Foreshadowing: The White Whale first appears in episode 16, but was mentioned way back in the first episode as part of Old Man Rom's password. This makes one wonder if the other parts of the password, involving poisoning a rat and a noble dragon lord, might also hint at something even farther into the plot. (Subaru does get "poisoned" by a spell in the second arc, and some other characters have mentioned an apparently important dragon.)
  • Subaru's death in episode 18 also subtly foreshadows Petelgeuse' ability to possess people upon death, something that directly leads to Subaru's later death in episode 23.
• Formula with a Twist: Re:Zero asks the question, what if the Genre Savvy Hikikomori was given a power that's closer to a curse than a blessing? From there, a full-on Deconstructor Fleet occurs where the protagonist's lack of power and unsavory personality traits are closely examined, even as he is forced to go through significant Character Development on his personal quest to be a hero.
• Fountain of Youth: Olbart's Ifanitlization Technique manipulates the victim's Od and makes them physically younger.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: Of the main characters, Subaru is Sanguine (cheerful, energetic, kind, eccentric yet impulsive and insecure at the same), Emilia is Melancholic (fragile, ostracized and somewhat distrustful but remains kind, selfless and all-loving), Rem is Phlegmatic (calm, polite, kind and supportive) and Ram is Choleric (cocky, sarcastic and a good analytical and logical thinker).
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: The first opening has lots of this, foreshadowing Satella's influence on the plot, Daphne creating the Mabeasts, and the villains of the later arcs.
  • Episode 11 also has a brief flashback of Frederica, who has not yet appeared in the LN and does not appear in the current airing of the show.
  • Just before she is defeated by the Archbishop of Gluttony at the start of season 2 the audience is shown 2 frames of Rem from her If chapter; one with her children with Subaru, Rigel and Spica, and one with her smiling in Subaru's arms. Giving those who have read or are just familiar with Rem Natsuki If one Hell of a gut punch right out the gate.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Roswaal.
• Friend to All Children: Yorna Mishigure has a soft spot for children. Subaru tends to line up with this as well.
• From Bad to Worse: Subaru and the allied forces of Crusch and Anastasia have trouble fighting the White Whale and are completely disorganized. Then two more of them appear.
• Functional Magic: The story features three distinct forms of magic, though only one of these is seen as "proper" magic, while the other two are considered to be powers of a different sort, albeit all three are supernatural:
  • Magic with a capital M is a combination of Rule Magic, Force Magic, and Inherent Gift magic. Every person in the world is born with a Gate, a piece of their soul that allows them to store and channel mana through their body. Each Gate is aligned with at least one of the six elements - Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Yin (Shadow), and Yang (Light). Though every person is born with the potential to cast spells, not everyone has a Gate capable of such a feat, and most people allow their talent to remain dormant for their entire life. Those who decide to study and learn to control magic cast spells by focusing on their Gate, imagining their desired effect, and speaking the proper spell (which usually involves a signature word associated with each of the elements (Goa for Fire, Huma for Water, Dona for Earth, Fula for Wind, Shamak for Yin and Jiwald for Yang). The caster can also choose whether he wishes to utilise his own mana or to forge a contract with a Spirit and draw mana from the surrounding atmosphere.
  • Divine Protections are an Inherent Talent distributed to all beings at birth by the Od Laguna, a mysterious thing which is variously speculated to be God, the Soul of the World, or the Creation Box. Allegedly, Divine Protections are received by the people "loved by the world", and cannot be tampered with, copied, or removed. They are simpler to use than proper magic and can take pretty much any form, however, most of them are barely perceptible to their holders. The ratio of Divine Protection holders is 1:100 for useless ones, 1:1,000 for useful ones, 1:10,000 for somewhat rare ones, 1:100,000 for really useful ones, 1:1,000,000 for unique ones, 1:10,000,000 for more than one, and the existence of those with more than one Divine Protection is considered strange. Anyone with a Divine Protection can also learn magic.
  • Authorities are the dark inverse of Divine Protections - themed after the Seven Deadly sins, only nine Authorities are known to exist, yet all nine can become exceptionally powerful if wielded by the correct user. Upon the user's demise, the Witch Factor carrying the Authority will try to find its way into the nearest compatible host, unless preemptively sealed. Authorities cannot be inherited by people with Divine Protections, and should the user be incompatible with the Authority, usage of it will likely result in physical and mental deterioration. Historically, the Authorities were inherited by the Witches of Sin, a collection of highly compatible individuals, until Satella, the Witch of Envy, went insane after taking in an incompatible Witch Factor and swallowed up her fellow Witches along with half of the world, before being sealed away. However, versions of all the authorities found their way back into the world and are now held by the Sin Archbishops, chosen commanders of the Witch's Cult dedicated to Satella's worship.
• Genre Relaunch: Although Re:Zero and KonoSuba were written by close friends and were conceived as satire of the then-dying and discredited isekai genre (specifically the overabundance of Cliché Storm and Marty Stu that was all too common), the commercial success and critical recognition of their anime adaptations in 2016 led to the mass resurgence of this genre to anime-mainstream soon after, with most of these new adaptations and works ironically playing the genre straight.
• Genre Shift: The series starts off seeming like another Trapped in Another World romance anime, but then Subaru and his primary love interest are murdered. Things still seem up when he tries to get around what causes their deaths, but the real tone sets in after he dies a third time. The first episode was nearly an hour long and Crunchyroll split it into two parts in order to better maintain this effect. Fans of the novel looked at the promotional art and compared the marketing to offering a child an ice cream cone with nails hidden inside of it.
• Goldfish Poop Gang: The three alley thugs, Ton, Chin and Kan, are encountered by Subaru multiple times throughout the first arc. Their threat to him range from mildly dangerous, to absolute bumbling pushovers.
• Grand Romantic Gesture: To encourage Emilia before she undergoes Echidna's trial that caused her so much fear before, Subaru writes loving messages all over the walls of Echidna's tomb to make a giant love letter for Emilia.
• Great Big Library of Everything: Flugel's library that contains the memories of every dead person in its shelves.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: Due to Subaru's Return By Death, no one will ever no know about the struggles he faced when trying to save everyone. However, unlike most examples, people still remember the results of his struggles.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: Subaru's "power" consists of him reverting back to an earlier point in time, with him remembering everything that happened in his previous life. Though useful, especially since all the other characters have no recollection of any of their previous interactions with him, he still tries to avoid getting killed, as he also remembers the pain from any wounds suffered before dying.
• Guile Hero: Most of the fun of Re:Zero comes from the fact that Subaru has nothing on his side but immortality and guile. In each of the arcs, his ability to resolve it instead of dying horribly comes from his ability to figure out how to recruit or manipulate the various antagonists into doing his job for him.
• Half-Breed Discrimination: All demi-humans are discriminated against to a varying degree, but Half-elves take the cake because Satella, the most infamous witch, was a half-elf.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Emilia is a half-elf with silver hair. Although her parents are rarely mentioned, it is made clear that her father was an elf and her mother was a human.
  • Garfiel is half human and half beastman. He has a fierce and belligerent personality, and can transform into a giant humanoid tiger. His half-sister Frederica is three-quarters human and one-quarter beastman. Despite this, she can still take the form of a giant panther.
  • In Sloth IF, Subaru marries the oni Rem. They later have children who are half human and half oni.
• Hammerspace: In episode 9 of the anime, Rem pulls out her morning star weapon out of nowhere, to Subaru's surprise.
• Happy Ending Override: Arc 3 is probably the darkest arc of the story with several gruesome deaths from both Subaru and Rem and Puck nearly destroy the world. At the end, Subaru completes his mission to save Emilia and the village from the witches cultists, confesses to her and even plans to reveal to marry both her and Rem. However, he realizes too late that Rem was attacked by Ley Batenkaitos and not only falls into a coma, no one except Subaru can remember her.
• Harem Genre: Noticeably averted, given the genre. The only woman Subaru seems interested in is Emilia, who herself doesn't consider him a possible love interest until the finale. The only other people in love with him are Rem (whom he eventually falls in love too) and Satella.
• Headbutt of Love: A big one on episode 21 between Subaru and Rem after the battle with the White Whale.
• Hell Is That Noise: The White Whale call and the sound effect when Subaru resurrects from death.
• Heroic Suicide: During some grim loops, Subaru tries to kill himself to go back in time and try to save more of his friends before he reaches a new checkpoint.
• Hero Killer: Elsa Granhiert, the lady who kills Subaru and various other characters at the thief's trade shop several times.
• Hidden Depths: Literally the entire cast of the show. This is especially poignant considering that the show initially looks extremely generic and each character looks like one archetype or another.
• High-Class Fan: Priscilla Barielle is an arrogant aristocrat who's always dressed in an opulent black and red dress with a matching folding fan. The only times she doesn't have her fan in hand is when it's stored in her cleavage.
• High Fantasy: Though it doesn't look like one from the onset and has many traits of Dark Fantasy, Re:Zero becomes this with the introduction of the Myth Arc, backstory, and true villains.
• High-Pressure Blood: Various characters who are slashed will often spurt out blood in this fashion.
• Historical Villain Upgrade: The Witches are nowadays regarded with both dread and loathing, so much so that merely saying their name is taboo. However, as Subaru and the audience came to find out, none of the Witches are truly evil with most of them having different concepts of morality and some of them had good intentions when they were alive. Even Satella is a far more sympathetic character than history tells her to be. In Satella's particular case she suffers from having her own Jekyll-and-Hyde situation in the form of the Witch of Envy personality.
• Hope Spot: A staple of the novel. If anything begins to look too favorable for Subaru, expect shit to go down soon.
  • A good example is the transition from Arc 3 to Arc 4. After so many troubles, Subaru manages to defeat the Witch Cult, take his revenge on Betelgeuse, defeat the White Whale, gain the approval of the knights and the other Royal candidates, and gain the forgiveness and acceptance of Emilia. Arc 4? Rem gets her existence UnPersoned by the White Whale, Crusch gets incapacitated, Subaru is unable to undo these incidents, members more dangerous than Betelgeuse and Satella and Echidna show up.
• The Horde: The Great Rabbit, which consists of a horde of normal-looking rabbits that eat anything that moves in their vicinity, including themselves.
• Humiliation Conga: Episode 13 is basically a twenty-minute length one for Subaru, good god. First he speaks out of turn at a royal meeting and proclaims himself to be Emilia's knight in front of actual knights and feel that he has insulted their chivalry code. Julius then questions Subaru's credentials to be a knight despite his lack of noble status. Subaru then tries to save face by insinuating that knighthood is nothing special. He's then kicked out of the palace hall in front of an obviously disappointed Emilia. You'd think that'd be enough, but nope; Julius challenges Subaru to a duel to defend his knight's honor and beats the shit out of him in front of everyone while he futilely tries to fight back. Even his ace in the hole has no effect as he's too much of a novice for it to be effective against an experienced fighter like Julius. The last scene is Emilia giving him a What the Hell, Hero? for disobeying her requests while still trying to proclaim it was "for her sake" and calls him out on his selfishness and tells him in no uncertain terms that she wants nothing more to do with him, and Subaru ends the episode alone and despondent.

I — R

• I Cannot Self-Terminate:
  • In episode 23, Subaru gets possessed by Betelgeuse and asks Felix and Julius to kill him. They reluctantly agree to do so.
  • Episode 32 starts with Subaru angry at Beatrice for saving and prevent him from committing suicide as he desperately tries to avoid a checkpoint in a failed timeline. However he is killed by Elsa shortly after. The same episode presents a much more agonizing version when Garfiel imprisons Subaru for three days. Subaru spends this time reminiscing on all of his failures, wondering if everyone in the mansion has already been killed and most of all, wishing for death.
  • Contracted spirits are unable to commit suicide since it counts as a violation of their pact, an action contradictory to their nature. This is a source of agony for Beatrice, who spent centuries waiting for someone to kill her.
• Identical Stranger: Emilia is said to heavily resemble the evil Witch of Envy, Satella, who was also a half-elf with silver hair like her.
• I Lied: What Subaru tells Rem when she asks what Subaru's cellphone does and how it knew when and where the White Whale would show up.
• Image Song: Rem has one, "Wishing", which played during the latter part of Episode 18. Additionally, the second ending theme, "Stay Alive", is one for Emilia; Word of God mentions it's meant to represent Emilia's lonely life after returning to the mansion without Subaru.
• Interspecies Romance:
  • The human Subaru falls in love with the half-elf Emilia. In the middle of the second season, they have their First Kiss.
  • The Oni Rem falls in love with Subaru. While he never stops loving Emilia, Subaru grows strong feelings for Rem too.
  • In the past, the Spirit Betelgeuse (before he went crazy) was in love with the elf Fortuna.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Beatrice, who drains Subaru of his mana and insults him when they meet for the first time, doesn't seem to like it when Subaru, or anyone else for that matter, feels down. In her own way, she tries to comfort Subaru when she sees the distressed look on his face when he realizes that he looped again after his Relationship Upgrade with everyone in the mansion.
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: While the main plot itself is simple, the author is consistent in presenting mysteries in the periphery of the story that don't get answered until much later, or are answered by further questions.
• Keet: Subaru, who can be compared to puppy when he acts all excited towards Emilia.
• They Killed Kenny Again: Played for horror and drama with Subaru dying and reversing time via his "Return By Death" ability several times in each arc, experiencing new forms of pain and trauma in each loop.
• Killer Rabbit: The "shaman" which turns out to be a puppy that becomes a hellhound as large as a house.
  • One of Subaru's deaths involves being devoured by literal killer rabbits. Inside and out.
• Kill on Sight: Most of the population of the world loathes and hates the Witch Cult and would not hesitate to kill any of their members preemptively. Ironically, this has largely aided the Cult in maintaining a degree of secrecy and ambiguity around itself, as very few members could be successfully captured. Even then, most members would rather commit to a Suicide Attack than risk being captured, so it might not make much of a difference. This mentality towards them is bad news for Subaru, as his Return by Death ability gives him the witch's scent that a select few characters can catch, which makes them suspect that he's a member of the cult. And they usually respond to the slightest suspicious behavior as adequate grounds to murder him.
• Knight of Cerebus: The Witch's Cult, officially entering as an antagonistic force in Arc 3, drives the main conflict of the show and introducing new threats such as the Ax-Crazy Betelgeuse. Their very presence, as harbingers of Satella's influence, pushes the Cerebus Syndrome further with each appearance.
• Knighting: At the end of Arc 4, a ceremony is held at Roswaal's mansion where Emilia officially recognizes Subaru as her knight.
• Language Barrier: A partial example. When Subaru arrives in the fantasy world, though the local language sounds like his native Japanese, he cannot read anything, which leads to him making mistakes like going into a girl's bathroom and a demihuman-only bar. Ram and the others start teaching him how to read.
• Lap Pillow:
  • Subverted when Subaru first runs into Emilia. He wakes up thinking she's doing this for him, but instead it's a larger sized Puck, while she's merely sitting nearby.
  • Played straight later, however, when Emilia offers her lap to Subaru after she realizes that he's about to break down from everything he's been through so far.
  • Rem also does this for Subaru after his fight with Emilia.
• Large Ham: Both Subaru and Roswaal speak in this fashion regularly. Betelgeuse from arc 3 manages to outham them both.
• Last Stand: When Ram is killed by Witch Cultists in one loop, Subaru finds her body along with dozens of Cultist corpses surrounding her.
• Late to the Tragedy: * A very common occurrence for Subaru. Many times Subaru will enter a situation or area already devastated in one way or another and dies shortly afterward to try to prevent it.
• Least Is First: In the anime, during the battle with the White Whale, after the entire army has given up, Subaru still charges off head-on, prompting Crusch to give this speech, Shaming the Mob back into fighting:
  Crusch: "Stand up! Lift up your faces! [...] Look at that boy. He's so weak and fragile, a breath could blow him away, and he's unarmed! He is a powerless boy, whose defeat I have seen with my own eyes! He's weaker than anyone else here! Yet he's shouting louder than anyone that we can still do this. So how can we sit here with downcast gazes? If our weakest man hasn't given up, how is kneeling in defeat acceptable for us? Did you all come this far, to wallow in shame?!
• Leave No Witnesses: Subaru's first encounters with Elsa end this way. In his first interaction, Old Man Rom is already dead, and presumably Felt as well. He is then attacked from the shadows by a mysterious assailant, and Emilia is killed shortly afterwards as well. In his second interaction, he almost gets away with it, until he mentions returning the item he was attempting to barter for back to the owner, prompting her to kill them again. His third interaction almost ends the same way, until Reinhard shows up to save them.
• Little Bit Beastly: Beast humans are citizens with a mix of human and demihuman blood in their veins, and typically appear mostly humanoid with the exception of animal ears, tails, etc.
• Literally Shattered Lives: This happens to Subaru no less than three times, each time after being frozen by Puck's true form. The third is the truest to the trope, as he gradually breaks into several pieces, and combined with the circumstances, it causes his biggest Heroic BSoD/Freak Out of the entire series.
• Living Emotional Crutch:
  • Subaru and Rem are this to each other. After he saves her from a mabeast attack and helps her overcome her guilt and self-hatred over the loss of her sister's horn, Rem falls in love with Subaru and becomes completely devoted to him. Being by his side and protecting him becomes her new reason for living and as long as she is able to do this she's happy. While she's normally kind, sweet and quiet, she will instantly become ruthless, murderous and violent towards anyone who tries to hurt Subaru. In turn, Subaru becomes very attached to Rem due to her unconditional love and support that she shows him and comes to view Rem as perhaps the most important person in his life. This causes him to also develop feelings for her as well despite being in love with Emilia. Subaru will also go into a rage if Rem is hurt or killed in any way or if anyone talks about her in a negative way.
  • Ram and Rem are also this to each other as well. Rem looks up to and greatly worships her older sister and is murderously protective of her whereas Ram is very protective of Rem who is the only living family member she has left. In one of the failed loops of Arc 2, Ram was very enraged and upset when Rem died from a curse and attempts to avenge her by killing Subaru because she suspected him of being involved with Rem's death.
  • Emilia is this to Pack as Pack says that Emilia is his only reason for living. Should she ever die, he becomes a ferocious beast that he is bent on destroying the world, stating that the world is meaningless without Emilia.
• Loophole Abuse: Reinhard mentions that he could do a lot of things after saving Subaru and the others from Elsa, but decides to look the other way, because he wasn't on duty that day. Unfortunately, once he sees the item that Felt stole from Emilia, and notices that the gem inside it is glowing, he forcefully apprehends her, stating that while the theft of the item is of no little significance, it pales before the crime that he'd just discovered to have happened and that he'd be committing by leaving things be. It turns out that he's taking Felt in because she's another potential candidate to the throne.
• Love Confession: Arc 3 has several. Rem confesses to Subaru several times, Wilhelm to his late wife, Subaru to Rem and later Emilia.
• Love Triangle: The main love story involves Subaru, Rem and Emilia. While Subaru only has eyes for Emilia, he slowly falls for Rem as well as she is his main emotional support when he is suffering from his Heroic BSoD.
• Magic Librarian: Beatrice, a mysterious being of unknown power that was contracted to look after the Roswaal Manor's enormous library. It's later revealed that she's an artificial spirit made by the Witch of Greed, Echidna.
• Malevolent Masked Men: Most lower ranked members of the Witch's Cult wear uniform dark robes topped with a pointed, triangular hood, with reddish cutouts for the eyes and an eerie symbol of a large, crimson eye on their forehead. As for the malevolent part, well, being composed of lunatics, sociopaths and all the worst kinds of social outcasts ought to make that part a no-brainer.
• Mana Drain: Mana Drain spells exist in Re:Zero, and since mana is essentially a person's life energy, draining one's mana can seriously tire or even kill them.
• Manchild: Or rather Womanchild in Emilia's case. She is older than Subaru chronologically and physically, but she is much younger emotionally. She is so inexperienced and innocent that she even believes that kissing can make you pregnant.
• The Many Deaths of You: Subaru goes through several deaths and goes back to certain "checkpoints" in the storyline. The fact that he remembers them all tends to wreck his mental state more than once.
• Marry Them All: Played for Laughs in the April Fools' Day celebration in the original web novel. Subaru achieves a harem end with all of the women in his life, with some children on the way. For the most part it's wacky and fun, except when it gets to Rem's portion, which is more mellow and sweet.
• Mental Time Travel: Subaru's Return by Death invokes this.
• Merchant City: The country Anastasia comes from, Kararagi, is this.
• Mi'raj: One of the Three Great Demon Beasts created by Daphne is the Great Rabbit. The Great Rabbit is a massive Hive Mind mi'raj colony that is carnivorous and insatiable. Daphne had created it to solve hunger because the Great Rabbit can instantly regrow its numbers, thus being a perpetual source of food, but Daphne also gave it her own endless hunger. One-on-one, the separate mi'raj have the benefit of being deceptively cute and in the possession of sharp teeth, but it's the sheer amount of bodies of the Demon Beast that is the true danger. At one point, it was estimated that there were 80.000 separate bodies. The Great Rabbit is effectively indestructible because its death would require every single body to be killed, so Beatrice uses the Al Shamak to lock it in another dimension.
• Moby Schtick: Wilhelm's grudge with the White Whale. The name of the White Whale in the Japanese source text, Hakugei, is also the translated title of Moby-Dick.
• Monster Whale: The White Whale is a demonic land whale that's been The Dreaded for 400 years. If a giant flying whale that hunts people isn't terrifying enough, it also possesses a mystical fog that's capable of Ret Goneing anyone it touches and erasing all trace of them from history.
• Mortal Wound Reveal: After Subaru blocks Elsa's final attack in episode three, all seems well. However, Reinhard examines the club he used to block her attack, and notices that it was cut rather cleanly. Subaru's shirt then falls, revealing a cut, and then he falls onto the ground after a High-Pressure Blood spurt. Fortunately Emilia manages to heal him in time.
• NEET: Subaru Natsuki is shown to be one, as he's introduced as unemployed and frequently references all of the light novels he read and the games he played before being transported to another world. He eventually, however, becomes what is considered to be the ultimate deconstruction of how such a person would actually work in real life, culminating into one hell of a tearjerking "The Reason I Suck" Speech in Episode 18. All the suffering he goes through up till then has been, to his self-loathing and realization, to be the result of his rotten character, a person who has done absolutely nothing productive his whole life, in spite of having all the time in the world, foolishly thinking that all the knowledge he gained from doing nothing but gaming and bingeing on anime, manga and light novels, that it could get him a better life in another world simply by being teleported there, only to find this to be not at all what happens. He states multiple times at that point that he hates himself for it. Case in point:
  Subaru: Before I got into the situation that led me to all of you, do you have any idea what I did? I did nothing. I've never done a single thing. I had all that time, all that freedom... I could have done anything, but I never did a thing! And this is the result! What I am now is the result! All of my powerlessness, all of my incompetence, is the product of my rotten character. That's right. I have no character. Even when I thought I could live here, nothing changed. At heart, I'm just a small, cowardly, filthy piece of trash, who's always worried about how others see me. And nothing... Nothing about me has changed! ...I absolutely hate myself...
• Never Trust a Trailer: The marketing and PVs for Re:Zero were all light-hearted and slice of life looking along the lines of Outbreak Company, while in actuality the series is as dark and gritty as Berserk with a penchant for ending almost every episode in an unpredictable twist.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In the second loop during Arc 1, Subaru stops Emilia in the streets. Unfortunately she has yet to run into him in this timeline, and gets rather angry at him because he called her "Satella", which was the alias she previously went under during loop one as a Secret Test of Character on Subaru, who passed by virtue of not knowing the significance of that name or her half-elf status. This then provides enough of a distraction that Felt is then able to steal Emilia's insignia.
• Ninja: Olbart Dunkelkenn is the leader of Shinobi Village and has numerous Shinobi techniques that he can use against his opponents.
• Ninja Maid: Subaru guesses correctly that Ram and Rem, in addition to being maids, are also powerful fighters.
• "No Peeking!" Request: At the end of episode 26, Subaru asks Emilia to turn around when he starts crying about Rem's condition.
• No Periods, Period: Rem leaves the kingdom with Subaru in Sloth IF in order to marry him and live with him. One day she is injured in an attack and the doctor finds that the injuries are minor, but also that she is three months pregnant. Rem herself had no idea about it. So one can assume that she does not have a period because she should have noticed her pregnancy by not having one. In fact, Rem is not even human, but rather an oni. It is speculation that onis' bodies function differently than humans' in this regard.
• Non-Action Guy: Subaru is one of the weakest protagonists in the plot. Word of God says he would lose in a duel with almost every other protagonist. Subaru can't even resort to magic to fight effectively. In the end, it's just not completely useless because he's so versatile.
• The Nose Knows: Rem can smell the witch's scent on Subaru, factoring into her distrust of him.
• Off with His Head!: Happens when Subaru returns to the massacred and frozen-over village as a giant monster emerges from the mansion and tells him to "Sleep, along with my daughter." before Subaru's head suddenly falls off of his neck. Subaru gets better (kind of) and we later learn that the monster is Puck, who will end the world and kill anyone who isn't Emilia if Emilia ever dies.
• Ojou Ringlets: Beatrice has high curled pigtails behind her ears. Bonus points for them actually spinning when Subaru pulls them.
• One Degree of Separation: Crossed over frequently with Early-Bird Cameo, Chekhov's Gunman and Foreshadowing. As shown in the world map, the continent Subaru found himself in is a landmass apparently floating in a massive void, wide enough for only 4 countries to form upon it. Accordingly, given that the main characters of the story are people of importance or renown the land over, there has been several past meetings between then prior to Subaru showing up that continue to have a bearing on Subaru's own journey. These are shown in side-stories or the EX novels.
  • "The Love Song of the Sword Devil" - The Younger Wilhelm Van Astra crossed swords with the Demi-Human Strategist Valga Cromwell in a secret passageway underneath the Royal Palace, Which is how Valga, now known as "Old Man Rom" was able to sneak into the palace in an attempt toe rescue Felt in Arc 3. He also opposed the magical stratagems of the Artificial Human "Sphinx", a failed creation of the Witch of Greed Echidna, her appearance identical to the 26 clones of Ryuzu Meyer that Subaru would later encounter inside the Sanctuary. Sphinx was apparently killed by the past incarnation of Roswall Mathers, only to show up as a resurrected Corpse Soldier during the events of Arc 8 and attack Subaru and his allies.
  • "The Love Ballad of the Sword Devil" - The Younger Wilhelm fought a duel with the legendary Vollachian warrior Eight-arms Kurgan in the streets of Pictat, and Kurgan would be resurrected to oppose Wilhelm and the rest of the Royal Selection Candidates during the events of Arc 5. The duel was instigated by the machinations of Stride Vollachia, a disgraced member of the Vollachian Royal family line and the prior Archbishop of Pride. In the unofficially translated 3rd volume, Stride's plans would see him killed by the same black dragon he summoned to attack Lugunica, leaving the position of Pride open amongst the Witch Cult, informing Petelgeuse's belief that Subaru was the next archbishop of Pride that allowed him an advantage against the Sloth Archbishop during Arc 3.
  • The events of Arc 4 eventually have Emilia forced to confront her Dark and Troubled Past, revealing that the freezing of Elior Forest was due to an attack instigated by the Witch Pandora directing the Archbishop of Greed Regulus Corneas to aid her in achieving some unknown objective involving Emilia. Regulus' actions forced the then-sane Petelgeuse to absorb the Witch Factor of Sloth despite his incompatibility with it, steadily driving him crazier the more he used the power to hold them off. Regulus himself would play a role in Rem's name getting eaten by Lye Batenkaitos, and his encounter against Subaru in Arc 5 would later result in Subaru using the absorbed Sloth factor from Petelgeuse to aid in Regulus' death. Pandora using illusions to trick Petelgeuse into fatally injuring his love interest Fortuna, Emilia's Parental Substitute, completed his descent into the gibbering loon he is by the present and pushed Emilia past her Rage Breaking Point, overclocking her ice abilities in a futile attempt to kill Pandora until the whole forest was frozen. It's furthermore revealed that Pandora was the actual killer of Theresa van Astra during the White Whale's failed subjugation, and is hinted to have been the one that resurrected her as a corpse soldier in Arc 5.
  • ""Record of the Days Before the Royal Selection: Diplomacy by Bloodshed" - This features appearances from Vincent Vollachia and several of the 9 Divine generals, all of who would go on to play a role in Arcs 7 and 8, after Subaru is unceremoniously teleported into the Vollachian country and the middle of a Civil War, forced to ally with Vincent to survive. The novel also showcases Julius' duel and eventual victory against Balleroy Temeglyph, one of the Divine Generals who apparently betrayed Vincent and tried to launch a coup on him, in actuality, a elaborate Batman Gambit orchestrated by Vincent to enable to signing of a ceasefire agreement between Vollachia and Lugunica during the royal selection. This event would be discussed in Arc 6, and in Arc 7, Subaru would wind up allying with Flop and Medium O'Connell, Balleroy's adoptive siblings. Furthermore, Balleroy's given motivation for his actions was to avenge the death of his elder brother figure Miles, A Vollachian spy killed by Reinhard whilst on a mission in Lugunica, the event of which was shown in "Felix Argle's Curse".
  • "Crimson Shadow" - This would show Priscilla's past as Prisha Volachia, explaining how she was ousted from the Royal Selection without dying, alongside how she parted ways with her loyal servant Arakiya in the event that cost the latter her left eye. Arakiya would later turn up in Arc 7 and serve as a frequent opponent for Subaru in several locations. Furthermore, the novel also features Prisha triumphing over her elder sister Lamia in the Royal Selection, and Lamia would be resurrected as a sentient Corpse Solider at the climax of Arc 7.
  • "Vermilion Swordwolf"- This novel showcases Al's near-meeting with Priscilla on the Gladiator Island, as well as High Countess Serena Dracroy winding up owing Priscilla a debt for protecting her during an attempted insurrection on the island. Subaru would wind up trapped on the same Gladiator Island in arc 7, and Serena would turn out to be a valuable ally for Vincent during the civil war during the same arc. The novel also reveals that both Miles and Balleroy were originally low-level soldiers under Serena's command. The novel also introduced Ubrik, apparently just a male prostitute for the female gladiator's enjoyment and the instigator of the uprising, but is later in arc 7 revealed to actually be a Stargazer, one who follows the commandments given to them by the stars, and his prophecies have greatly shaped the course of Vincent's own actions as Emperor. Ubrik would later meet Subaru during arc 7 and continue to have a hand in advising what course of events they need to take, with it being implied he instigated the failed rebellion as a necessary step to achieving his grand commandment.
• Onee-sama: Type 3: Rem always addresses her older twin sister Ram as "nee-sama".
• One Twin Must Die: The story of the birth of Ram and Rem refers to the belief from Japanese folklore, as their oni's people must symbolize medieval Japan and Japanese demons in particular. And so, in the people of these girls it was customary to kill the born twins, as it was considered a bad omen, and because very often the twins shared horns for two, because of what they had weaker abilities than their other tribesmen. However, Ram is a very powerful mage, so powerful that she is considered incredibly talented, so the girls manage to survive. And ironically, all their people are killed after 10 years.
• Oni: Oni are normally born with two horns that serve as the source of their powers. Rem and Ram are an exception due to being twins, who are born with a single horn each. In the present day, Ram is much weaker than Rem due to losing her horn.
• Ordinary High-School Student: Subaru is an ordinary student Trapped in Another World. One of the main Deconstructions of the series is actually to show how an ordinary person with no special abilities will struggle in a fantasy setting rather than thrive, and how they will cope with this realization.
• Our Gods Are Different: Deconstructed with the Witches of Sin. They are never referred to as "gods" in the setting, but they nonetheless hold great power that they might as well be seen as gods. They are the reason why the Mabeasts exist, the reason why non-humans have emotions, and the reason why the world is the way it is. While most of the original seven are dead, they all continue to persist as souls long after their flesh has rotted away.
• Person of Mass Destruction: The Witches of Sin are easily akin to forces of nature in the effects that they have on the world. Satella is even mentioned as having destroyed half the world before the start of the series.
  • Regulus Corneas singlehandedly wiped out several towns before the events of the series.
• Please Put Some Clothes On: In episode 5, Ram tells this to Subaru while offering him a towel after she sees him naked, although she is very brutal about her choice of words.
  Ram: Cover up that sorry thing.
• P.O.V. Boy, Poster Girl: The protagonist and point-of-view character is Subaru, who is swept into Emilia's story, which the plot revolves around.
• Prolonged Prologue: The first 2 arcs as well as parts of the 3rd are the prologue of Subaru's life in Lugunica and his quest to make Emilia the King. After Rem's speech to Subaru at the tail end of his extended Despair Event Horizon, she convinces him that they can start afresh, and he can can become the hero she sees him as, a man worthy of becoming Emilia's knight. Subaru, despite his self-loathing, decides to move forward and start using everything he's learned from his failed loops to make a happy ending for everyone, marking the start of his true heroic tale.
  Even then, Subaru could not like himself. He still hated himself. But a girl had told Subaru she liked him. If there was a girl who could like him, just as he was...
  — Emilia was watching. Rem was watching. He could not yield.
  "—"
  The tale of Natsuki Subaru would begin anew.
  His life in another world would start over
  — From Zero
• Put on a Bus: Rem in the fourth arc after being attacked by an Archbishop of Gluttony, who has the ability to eat abstract concepts. He eats memories associated with her, causing her to fall into a coma.
• Psycho Knife Nut: Elsa Granheirt is an Ax-Crazy assassin who fights with kukri blades.
• Reality Is Unrealistic: Due to the fact that many anime exaggeratedly show ordinary people as impenetrable idealists and born heroic personalities, especially ordinary schoolchildren, Subaru may seem very repulsive and stupid. Once he gains an Entitled to Have You personality towards the girls he meets, then it gets even worse- in the end, Subaru is acting just as a real teenager would in the perilous situation he finds himself in, and the incredible stress of what happens to him causes him to lash out. He eventually develops out of this behavior, becoming a genuine hero.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: The White Whale's yellow eyes turn red when it gets mad. Then bad things happen.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: See the note on Single-Minded Twins below. The maid sisters may act and speak similarly, but their core personalities and abilities contrast one another's. The Oni part is played literally straight too.
• Religion of Evil: The Witch Cult.
• Requisite Royal Regalia: The emblem that has the Lugunican Crest. It represents someone who is eligible for the throne.
• Resurrection/Death Loop: The main character, Subaru, is cursed with going back in time whenever he dies, keeping his memories. And, being a completely mundane human with no special talents in fighting or magic, he dies quite often. While this does take its toll on him and wears his sanity down, he does put it to good use in order to overcome the problems, trying again and again and trying till he does succeed in his intentions, badly mentally scarred as it leaves him.
• Resurrective Immortality: Subaru has this ability, but instead of simply coming back time resets to a certain important point in his past. Although two big drawbacks to using this ability is that he can't go further than the last checkpoint, and he still feels the pain of every death making it an ability he hates to rely on.
• Ret-Gone: Anyone hit by the White Whale's fog blasts is erased from reality, and forgotten by anyone who knew them... except Subaru. The effects are a bit inconsistent—Rem gets erased in one loop, and all evidence of her existence vanishes, down to the decorations in her room at the castle; but when some of Crusch's soldiers get wiped out, they still remember that each squad originally had 15 members, allowing them to keep track of how many they lost.
  • It actually isn't inconsistent. There are supposed to be a fixed number of 15 units each. They can't be any less for no matter what reason as the Crusch would never field less then that initially. So say if their are suddenly 15/15/15/14 after the original 15/15/15/15 someone would eventually realize that something is wrong because their strict orders not for anything less those numbers and would see the inconsistency. This displays a weakness of the White Whale's power, it can erase a person, but it cannot erase common sense. You don't need to remember the individuals soldiers lost, just the amount that is supposed to be there.
  • The Archbishop of Gluttony, Ley Batenkaitos, also has similar powers. By consuming a person's name and memories, no one, again except Subaru, is able to remember the person. While Crusch only suffers from Laser-Guided Amnesia, Rem falls into a coma and no one except Subaru can remember her.
• RPG Mechanics 'Verse: Another noticeable aversion. The only game-like mechanic in the setting is Subaru's reset power.
• Run or Die: In the third arc when Subaru's carriage is being chased by the infamous White Whale.

S — Z

• Satanic Archetype: Satella, the Witch of Envy who takes the form of a silver-haired half-elf woman, and considered by everyone in the setting to be everything evil and taboo, to the point that even saying her name out loud will cause heads to turn. In myth, she supposedly absorbed every other Witch of Sin and became an unkillable evil. She even has an entire satanic Religion of Evil dedicated to her unconditionally. She's also the one that grants Subaru the power of Return By Death.
• Scary Teeth: Frederica and Garfiel have such teeth. Subaru once noted that Frederica would probably be a really pretty woman if she didn't have teeth like that. Both have such teeth because they are hybrids of humans and beastmen. Despite the creepy teeth, both are good guys, even if Garfiel isn't always the nicest.
• Secret Legacy: Implied with Felt, due to the fact that the insignia she stole, which is a touchstone that identifies individuals chosen by the dragon to be potential ruler glows in her hand and the general characteristic she shares with the late royal family. It is due to this that Reinhard grabs Felt and takes her into custody, as she may likely be a lost or unknown daughter of the king.
• Seinen
• Seven Deadly Sins: The Sin Archbishops of the Witch's Cult, as well as the Witches of Sin. The Witches were the original bearers of the so-called "Authorities", unique magical powers inherited through absorbing the "witch factors" after the previous holder's death. After the Witch of Envy, Satella, went insane and supposedly killed and devoured the other Witches, the factors wound up inherited by the Archbishops of the nascent Witch's Cult, an organization supposedly dedicated to the worship of the Witch of Envy. Note that, though the Authorities will always display a power vaguely themed after their aligned sin, the strength and exact nature of the ability depend heavily upon the user. Since Satella is still technically alive, there never was an Archbishop of Envy. All the Authority bearers are named after celestial objects like asteroids, important stars or constellations in Earth's night sky, which strongly hints at an explicit connection between them and the protagonist Natsuki Subaru, whose name is the Japanese word for the Pleiades cluster .
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: Frederica. She had no hesitation in taking off her clothes in front of Subarua. On the other hand, it was so that she was on the verge of a violent fight, and wanted to transform into her animal form.
• She Is the King: Every candidate for Lugunica's royal succession is a woman, but one of them is still going to crowned "king." A past "Master Swordsman" was also a woman, though this may be a fault of the translation.
  • The Japanese title translated as "Master Swordsman" is 剣聖 ^Romaji"kensei" where the first kanji means "sword" and the second one i.a. 'priest', 'sage' or 'master'. The most natural translation would be "swordmaster", and Japanese has no feminine counterpart (cf. English master/mistress). Thus, while the Japanese version does indeed carry a masculine sense for historical reasons, only the English translation uses an actually gendered term.
• Shout-Out:
  • When he wakes up in bed after the Ulgarm attack Subaru mutters "Yet another unfamiliar ceiling."
  • In the anime, the ringtone used to Signal the appearance of the white whale from Subaru's cellphone is the op theme from the 1970's anime of A Dog of Flanders (1975). Fittingly, The name of Subaru's ground dragon from the same episode is the same as the dog's name from the book, Patrasche.
  • In the Memory Snow OVA, the Snow Festival is introduced with a theme that suspiciously sounds a lot like the James Bond intro.
• Shown Their Work: The author has taken particular interest in astronomy and has given many characters names related to celestial bodies and the myths they are named after, namely characters that are Archbishops of Sin, Witches, or haves something to with them. In addition, many of Subaru's later challenges require detail information of space and the constellations.
• Significant Birth Date: Subaru's birthday is on April Fools' Day, fitting for all of his bad luck.
• Similar Item Confusion: Averted in Episode 3 of the Break Time shorts, where it is mentioned that one of Reinhard's many abilities include not confusing sugar with salt when cooking. Emilia mentions this ability would come in handy for her.
• Single-Minded Twins: Averted, the twin maids Ram and Rem look and speak very similar. However, Ram, the older pink haired sister, has a caustic personality and is not a very good maid. Rem, the younger blue haired twin, is better with the house chores and is more demure, although she has an impulsive streak, as demonstrated by her decision to brutally murder Subaru and hide it from Ram.
• Slain in Their Sleep: Happens in episode four. At the end of the episode, after having trouble falling asleep the night before, Subaru wakes up, and realizes the two maids who had been training him for the last week don't know him at all, and that the cuts on his hand from learning manual labor are gone. He then realizes to his horror that he was murdered sometime during that last night, but has no idea why anyone would kill him. He explores two possibilities: either one of the people living in the manor secretly wants him dead despite acting friendly to him, or an outsider found a way to kill him (and possibly others) while he's secure inside the manor.
• The Sociopath: Todd Feng.
• Soul Eating: Arakiya has the power to eat spirits.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Lampshaded in the anime specials, where Emilia, despite being the lead female, mentions how she feels Rem is often given more focus than herself.
• Stellar Name: All bishops of the Witch Cult and Witches are named after celestial bodies. Plot point because Subaru himself has a name that references stars, hinting at a connection with the Bishops.
  • Later on in the story, there's the Pelaides Watchtower from Arc 6 and Subaru's Pelaides Batallion from Arc 7.
• Stepford Smiler: Natsuki Subaru starts to become one of these as the series goes on. Possibly even started out as one from the beginning. As the series goes on it becomes clear that his happy-go-lucky attitude is covering up severe self-doubt and depression from trying to save his friends only to see them die over and over again and regret with how he spent his old life on Earth.
• The Stinger: The Re-Cut of the first season ends with one, which is a Sequel Hook for the next season.
• Stock Light-Novel Hero: When he first arrives in his new world, Subaru assumes he's gained powerful magic or some other talent, but initially has none. The only unique ability he gained is to start over from a "save point" after he dies, which is only a blessing considering the horrible ways he constantly meets his end. Gaining a harem (with a couple of reciprocated loves but also others with varying degrees of interest) means he has more people to protect or save. And one of those girls, Satella, the Witch of Envy, leaves a trail of corpses whenever she makes an appearance. To top it all off, all of the ability acquisitions he gains throughout the series are extremely nerfed compared to the original users or have conditions that Subaru cannot match, making them completely useless.
• Stockholm Syndrome: What Ram's love for Roswaal amounts to. He destroyed her village, and Ram initially hated Roswaal for it, but after he showed her some kindness (probably at least originally motivated by selfish reasons), over time, she fell in love with him, and became extremely loyal towards him.
• Strong Girl, Smart Guy: From Arc 7, the sibling duo Medium and Flop. Flop is a merchant and Medium is his bodyguard.
• Succession Crisis: The current state of Lugunica. The king and all of his relatives have died and as a result, elections are being held to crown the new king.
• Suicide by Cop: What Subaru does after Betelgeuse takes over his body.
• Summon Everyman Hero: Subaru is a fairly unremarkable high school dropout walking home from the convenience store when he suddenly gets pulled into an archaic fantasy world, and has to undergo a lot of Character Development before he's anything more than a Loser Protagonist. However, in an unusual variation, he was summoned by a villain for reasons unknown.
• Superpower Lottery: Reinhard has the ability to be (permanently) blessed with new powers whenever he thinks of one that could come in handy.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Overall, this tends to happen to characters in situations or timelines where Subaru isn't able to interfere in their fate thanks to Return By Death, regardless of their origins, powers or individual strengths. They Die. Often suddenly, violently and messily depending on the threat facing them. No matter how powerful someone is, it means nothing if they're taken off-guard or faced with an insurmountable threat out of nowhere that they can't possibly overcome. Emilia has enough Mana and innate talent with ice magic to freeze the entire Elior forest in a permanent glacial frost whilst in the midst of an emotional breakdown, but without Subaru around to warn her of danger, she's gutted and killed by Elsa without being able to defend herself in any way as early as Arc 1. Likewise, Garfiel is a powerful Lightning Bruiser with a Healing Factor and combat talents good enough to take on and eventually kill Elsa in a pitched fight, but when he's faced up against an incomprehensible threat like the shadowy form of Satella, the Witch of Envy herself, he's blown to pieces without being able to resist, the sheer power gap meaning nothing he did would make a difference. Plot Armour does not exist in this world regardless of one's importance or relevance to the plot — in fact, it could be said that Subaru's ability allows him to enforce plot armour onto his allies whilst steadily figuring out a way to strip said armour off their believed-unbeatable enemies.
    • Just about the one character in the world who does have said armour is Reinhard, as even in alternative timelines where Subaru turns insane and evil, he is never harmed or able to be defeated, and is likewise often the one to put an end to world-spanning threats in timelines where Subaru fails. However, such a being existing in this world comes with its own set of limitations. Reinhard's sheer power means everybody is wary of him and isolates him from the rest of humanity, which is hinted to deeply affect him underneath his knightly demeanour. Whilst he does show up to stop overwhelming dangers from getting too out of control, he's only one man, and can't be everywhere, no matter how fast he can move, so said dangers have already caused mass casualties by the time he shows up. And whilst Reinhard cannot be bested himself, this doesn't mean he still can't lose, as AU Subaru simply sets up a scheme that destroys the entire country, leaving Reinhard with nothing despite all his immense power. Being so strong as to be perfectly invincible does not allow one to resolve the complicated issues that plague the story, and in fact leave Reinhard too far removed from them to properly have a chance to fix things.
  • In general, the series pulls no punches about how outclassed a person from real life would fare in a fantasy world full of monsters, MagicKnights and Little Bit Beastly DemiHumans. Subaru may be in good shape by real world standards, but in the World of Badass he is outclassed by every named character over the age of 12 in terms of combat ability. His Resurrective Immortality is the only thing that gives him any kind of chance.
    • When trying to figure out how to deal with Elsa, at no point does Subaru consider directly fighting her himself. After all she's clearly a dangerous assassin who could kill Rom and Felt with ease while he is a former shut-in with no combat experience.
  • Subaru's Save Scumming ability "Return by Death" gives him plenty of foreknowledge on his enemies' and allies' plans and another chance to achieve his goals but little else. He has to learn, build on, and practice his skills and abilities to stand a fighting chance.
    • He regularly struggles to convince others to listen to him since he usually has no evidence that what he says is accurate, especially when he's initially a stranger to them.
    • Additionally, as explored in Arc 2, just because Subaru is repeating events, does not mean that his interactions with people and such will be the exact same, no matter how many times he tries to repeat the 'first' time experience with them. As Subaru retains his memories and knowledge from each loop, that means the Subaru that loops is automatically different from the Subaru that experienced the events the first time around, and intentionally trying to act like he's as clueless as the 'first' Subaru was only serves to make people around him suspicious. For example, Subaru does extremely poorly in his various servant duties during his first loop in the Roswell Mansion, and in one of his unsuccessful loops, it's pointed out to him that Rem and Ram can tell he's botching the job or not trying as hard as he could to do it well, which only deepens their distrust of him.
    • A side effect of Return By Death allows Subaru to remember everything that has happened before restarting the loop, including his own death. Being forced to relive a traumatic event over and over again is never good for one's state of mind, and in more than one occasion Subaru suffers from PTSD.
    • Conversely, after rashly accepting a duel challenge from Julius out of wounded pride, he quickly finds himself completely outmatched. Even his attempts at being a Combat Pragmatist fall flat, since as Julius points out, his smokescreen spell is only enough to trip up novice fighters or mindless beasts, not an experienced knight like himself.
  • When joining Ram's search for Rem in the forest Subaru quickly tires, since despite being healed, he lost a fair amount of blood from the Mabeasts mauling him and his encounter with Elsa (which occurred less than a week apart).
  • At one point Subaru falls off a cliff and attempts to reduce the momentum by sticking a sword into it like in movies. It works!.... And then the sword breaks since he just shoved and dragged though solid rock.
  • While Subaru can (somehow) understand what people are saying just fine, the written language of Lugunica is completely different, leaving him functionally illiterate. He does starts getting lessons at Roswaal's mansion, but he is not an Instant Expert and even a month later Rem remarks that he still has trouble with anything more than the basics.
  • Seeing Betelgeuse kill Rem snaps Subaru out of his Heroic BSoD and sends him into an Unstoppable Rage, ranting that he'll kill the Sin Archbishop. This does not lend him any extra strength however, and he eventually tires, wearing out the skin on his wrists while straining against his restraints.
    • His Unstoppable Rage carries over to his next loop and actually proves to be a detriment to his efforts. While it restored his drive, it makes him too angry to strategize properly and hinders his efforts to make allies, since he is clearly unstable and doesn't think to offer any compelling evidence or reason for them to help him.
• Take Away Their Name: The Archbishops of Gluttony has the ability to devour the name and memories of his targets. If their name is eaten, everyone except Subaru forgets who they are. If both are eaten, the victim falls into a coma.
• Take That!: Reputed among Japanese circles that Re:Zero is this to the extremely prevalent "isekai" stories which all use Gary Stu NEET protagonist that come from another world, shallow characters that are little more than caricatures, and heaps of women who fall at their feet in response the main character solving their problem. In response, Re:Zero makes Subaru extremely weak and useless, has side characters that almost actively dismiss him, as well as calling him out for expecting something for saving people.
• Take That, Audience!: The author calls out NEETs for being lazy and believing that they can do anything just because they want to without actually trying.
• There Are No Therapists: Justified, partially considering this is a Standard Fantasy Setting, but mostly because Subaru's curse prevents him from telling anyone about his powers.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Reinhard's attack destroys the building they are in during his fight with Elsa. Though he doesn't kill her, it was still a bit excessive.
• These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: Echidna's Book of Wisdom. The book contains a record of every historical event that has ever happened. However, only witches can read it without going insane from the sheer amount of information it burns into the readers' mind.
• The Thing That Would Not Leave: Roswaal's librarian, Beatrice, has enhanced his library to prevent anyone but him from entering. This serves especially well in her favor as she prefers her own company. Unfortunately for her, Subaru is immune to the enchantment and can enter the library at any time he wants, which he does on a regular basis to visit Beatrice. This of course bothers Beatrice to no end but she can't do anything about it because Beatrice herself has no idea how Subaru can get past her magic.
• This Loser Is You: Deconstructed to the nth degree with Subaru Natsuki, who embodies all the core traits of this. And with his eventual "Groundhog Day" Loop levels of suffering, eventually shows how such a person would actually work in real life, culminating into one hell of a tearjerking Self inflicted "The Reason You Suck" Speech in Episode 18. All the suffering he goes through up till then has been, to his self-loathing and realization, to be the result of his rotten character, a person who has done absolutely nothing productive his whole life, in spite of having all the time in the world, foolishly thinking that all the knowledge he gained from doing nothing but gaming and bingeing on anime, manga and Light Novels, that it could get him a better life in another world simply by being teleported there, only to find this to be not at all what happens. He states multiple times at that point that he hates himself for it. Case in point:
  Subaru: Before I got into the situation that led me to all of you, do you have any idea what I did? I did nothing. I've never done a single thing. I had all that time, all that freedom... I could have done anything, but I never did a thing! And this is the result! What I am now is the result! All of my powerlessness, all of my incompetence, is the product of my rotten character. That's right. I have no character. Even when I thought I could live here, nothing changed. At heart, I'm just a small, cowardly, filthy piece of trash, who's always worried about how others see me. And nothing... Nothing about me has changed! ...I absolutely hate myself...
• Time Loop Fatigue: Frequently happens to Subaru whenever he's in a particularly devastating time loop where he fails to save his friends.
  • In second arc, he finds he keeps mysteriously dying in his sleep before resetting (later discovered to be due to a curse placed on him). In one loop he finally manages to avoid his fate, but Rem contracts the curse instead. With everyone devastated, Subaru ends up committing suicide in order to reset time and have a chance to save Rem, despite not knowing for sure if he would return.
  • In the third arc, after having watched numerous characters get killed by the Witch's Cult and the White Whale, particularly Rem, he hits the Despair Event Horizon hard and pretty much loses the will to live. When he finally does reset, he's so broken that he tearfully hugs Rem tightly as soon as he sees her.
• Title Drop: Subaru drops it during the climax of the 3rd arc.
  "My life in another world starts here, from zero!"
• Tomes of Prophecy and Fate: Both Roswaal and Beatrice have one created by Echidna. Roswaal's describes how he can achieve the revival of his master. Also the reason how he knew Subaru's looping abilities. However it is destroyed by Subaru, forcing Roswaal to think for himself for the first time in centuries. Beatrice's on the other hand, explains when she can leave the library and take another task. Unfortunately for her, the book will never change, and she would have stayed in the library for all eternity, until Subaru convinces her to leave.
• Tongue-Tied: Subaru cannot talk about his reset power to others. If he tries, the power will make him suffer enough pain to stop. If he decides to go full speed ahead, and damn the pain, as noted above in Accidental Murder, his prize for successfully talking about his power is guranteed death for either him or his listener.
• Top Wife: The woman Subaru loves first and foremost is Emilia. Later in the series, he develops romantic feelings for the maid Rem while retaining his love for Emilia. Subaru then admits equally loving both girls and intends to marry both of them if Emilia gives him permission. However, the story continues to position Emilia as the only main female heroine and Subaru's One True Love. Also, Rem spends a chunk of the series in a coma and her romantic involvement with Subaru gets seriously downplayed as a result.
• Translator Microbes: It's not clear how everyone is speaking the same language—presumably it's got to do with whatever magic summoned Subaru in the first place. Also, the microbes are inconsistently effective—"slangier" Japanese words are apparently untranslated and confuse the listener, like the honorific "-tan" or the loanword "OK", while more "conservative" words are used by characters native to the setting or (when used by Subaru) pass without comment, such as -kun or "pierrot" (a common loanword for clown).
  • Japanese suffixes and such spoken by any character other than Subaru are not actually being said. They exist because of the language syntax of Japanese necessitating them, so that the reader can understand the relationship between the characters. So when Wilhelm calls Subaru-dono he's actually saying Sir Subaru, its western equivalent. It's purely meta convenience.
• The Transmogrifier: Olbart Dunkelkenn can effectively rejuvenate the target's body and make them physically younger by manipulating their Od.
• Trapped in Another World: Played for Drama. Every time Subaru dies, he goes back to a certain "checkpoint" in the story. Once he's dealt with the threat to his life, he tries to live peacefully in this new world until a new threat arises and a new checkpoint is established. Unfortunately, every time a threat is dealt with, the checkpoint is immediately established, so if Subaru can't deal with whatever is threatening him without undesired consequences, he's stuck with them.
• Trauma Conga Line: Sometimes it feels as if half of the plot is essentially: How much can the author make Subaru suffer?
• Turns Red: The White Whale, after the attacking group does enough damage.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Rem is polite, nice and calm. But if someone poses a serious threat to Subaru, she immediately beats the shit out of them, even kill unless told not to do so by Subaru. As a superhumanly strong oni, you shouldn't underestimate her.
• Walking Wasteland: The Black Serpent, whose very presence destroys the area he sits in for generations.
• Water Is Blue: Water magic is always presented in the anime as glowing blue. Prominent water magic-users, Rem and Felix, are also closely associated with the color blue, especially Felix, whose title is "Blue" for being the foremost expert of healing magic, to the point he can resurrect himself from death.
• Water Is Womanly:
  • Rem is a calm, polite blue-haired maid who uses water magic to heal others and can condense it into ice. After falling in love with Subaru, Rem shows a much more gentle side, providing him with much-needed emotional support.
  • Gender Flipped with Felix, a water mage who wears blue and uses water to heal but is a man — a man who has feminine mannerisms and likes crossdressing in girly dresses, causing Subaru to mistake him for a woman.
• Weaponized Teleportation: Beatrice's Al Shamak spell which teleports the Oosagi to another dimension and finishes off one of the most dangerous threats in arc 4.
• Wham Episode:
  • Episode 7. Subaru finding out who his killer is, the way he is killed, and the trauma afterwards make it one of the most brutal episodes so far. Not to mention that Subaru finds out the hard way that he can never tell anyone about his power, and his inaction leads to the death of Rem in the same way that he died in the mansion the first time, which causes him to realize that although she brutally murdered him in the last two loops, she's actually a good person, just misguided, and accepting this, he jumps off a cliff to his death in order to try to save her.
  • Episode 14. Subaru gets word that Emilia is in trouble and leaves with Rem to save her, but when Rem leaves him for his own safety, he forced on to Arlem (the village outside of Roswaal's mansion). The end result though, is that he's Late to the Tragedy: everyone in the village has been slaughtered by several oddly polite cultists and Subaru discovers Rem's impaled corpse in the Roswaal Courtyard.
  • Episode 15. The psychological trauma of the last loop breaks Subaru's mind, leaving him nearly catatonic. Rem tries bringing Subaru back to the mansion, but the witch's cult attacks them on their way, and kidnaps Subaru, only for Rem to try and save him. Betelgeuse, the archbishop of sloth, breaks down Subaru's psyche and seemingly kills Rem, then horrifically maims her body while Subaru is forced to watch, screaming bloody murder. Betelgeuse leaves Subaru to die, but soon afterward Rem crawls over to Subaru, breaks his chains, confesses and dies in his arms. To top it all off, Subaru carries Rem's body back to the village, once again finding a massacre, and then watches as an enormous monster erupts from the mansion, turning everything into a snowy apocalypse, and decapitates Subaru with a glance.
  • Arc 6 in the web novel is a big one; Subaru suddenly shouts the first thing he said when coming to this world, and it appears that he's forgotten everything. Tappei describes the chapter it happens in ("The Corridor of Memories") to be the real start of the arc.
• Wham Line:
  • Emilia drops a big one in The Stinger of the first season's Director's Cut, ending the season on an ominous Cliffhanger.
  Subaru: The truth is... Rem said she loves me, the same way I told you that I love you! So...
  Emilia: Subaru...
  Subaru: Yes?
  Emilia: Who... is Rem?
  (Subaru gasps in horror)
  • In the early parts of Arc 4, Subaru inquires how Roswaal managed to evacuate half of the village in time for the attack of the Witch Cult, while Roswaal replies with this:
  Roswaal: Oh, that's because... I orchestrated all of it.
  • Similarly, Roswaal reveals this tidbit when Subaru meets him after the witches' tea-party.
  Roswaal: After all, the order to have assassins attack the mansion came from me personally.
  • The end of Arc 6 reverses the quote, when Rem is awoken:
  Rem: (to Subaru) Who are you?
• What If?: The novel has a couple of scenarios taken differently, with all of them being posted on special occasions, usually on April 1st, Subaru's birthday:
  • On Rem's birthday, web chapters come out for the Rem IF, also known as Sloth IF, alternate timeline where Rem and Subaru fled the country to go to the more Japan-esque Kararagi. They end up having children and leading a happy life, but because of their fleeing a lot of plot threads are still left hanging and all of their companions at the mansion are dead. This IF story received a full side story novel detailing the months before one of their children was born.
  • On Subaru's birthday comes the Ayamatsu/Pride IF timeline, where Subaru goes insane from constantly repeating the first loop and becomes a powerful enemy all for Emilia's sake.
  • Then there's the Butterfly's Dream/Lust IF timeline, where all of the royal candidates, along with Rem and Petra, end up in Subaru's harem.
  • The Oboreru/Wrath IF timeline involves Subaru snapping and becoming an Evil Overlord mob boss called the Purge King and Emilia developing a twisted case of Stockholm Syndrome after being kidnapped by Subaru and Puck.
  • There's a Kasaneru/Greed IF timeline, where Subaru agrees to become a test subject for all of Echidna's weird experiments. Emilia seems to become unhinged in this timeline as well.
  • The "Tsugihagu/Gluttony IF" timeline comes as an offshoot of Arc 6, where Subaru ends up partners with Shaula and still has his memories lost.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Emilia is inexperienced in romantic love. She knows why each other is cared for, but she is innocent because she has been shunned all her life. Subaru is very important to her and she likes that he loves her. But Emilia is not sure whether she loves him too or just likes him.
• White-Haired Pretty Girl: Emilia. Echidna and Satella are noted to be this as well.
• Whodunit: Arc 2 plays a bit like this, as Subaru tries to figure out how someone killed him in the mansion on the fourth night. It turned out to be a mixed bag. There was a dog who cursed people in the village, cursing him on his fourth day with a bite, but if he did not go, Rem would be bitten and die in his place. While that is the main reason, a few loops had Rem kill him, suspecting he was some sort of danger to her sister.
• The Worf Effect: Old Man Rom suffers this. He's big, and presumably very strong, so when he starts swinging his club at Elsa, it looks like he could easily win. Unfortunately she's much faster than he is, and manages to kill him in all but their last encounter, when he's saved by Emilia's healing magic.
• World's Strongest Man: Reinhard who is universally acknowledged as the most powerful of the Imperial Knights, and likely humankind.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: After encountering the ruffians in the alley multiple times before, Subaru instead tries a new tactic when he runs into them again during episode two. He merely cries out for some police, which initially startles the thugs, but then they quickly turn their attention back to him. Then Reinhard shows up, having heard Subaru's cry for help.
• Wrong Assumption: Subaru often makes wrong assumptions due to thinking in anime and video game logic, for example thinking that he's the hero and the world revolves around him. In the first episode, he gets threatened by a gang of thugs and then sees Felt approaching them. He thinks this beauty must be the one who summoned him and that she is coming to save him, only to be shocked when she ignores and goes past them, then the thugs beat the crap out of him.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: In many instances, Subaru seems to be this (e.g. assuming he would get powers when in danger fighting Elsa in the first anime episode). However, he does gradually learn from his mistakes, and tries not to repeat them, such as when attacking the ruffians in the alley.
• Wutai: Subverted. When he first arrives Subaru expects there to be a country to the east with a culture similar to Japan's, probably because that's a common element in the Standard Japanese Fantasy Setting, but apparently there is no such place.
• Yandere: The most powerful and most evil of all witches, Satella, is the one who brought Subaru to the fantasy world and cursed him with the power to reset, all because she's madly in love with him.
• You Shall Not Pass!: Subaru does this to the Ulgarms so Rem and Ram can escape. Granted, his Return by Death ability means he wasn't exactly pulling a Heroic Sacrifice to buy time, but rather he wanted to die so he could reset the time loop and try for a better outcome where everyone survived.

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