Nightmare Fuel / Re:Zero

Wait till you see what the rest of him looks like...

Make no mistake; beyond its lush animations, fantasy setting and lovable cast, Re:Zero is still a Psychological Horror series at heart. All spoilers are unmarked!

General

• The anime's soundtrack is fairly scary at times, with memorable tracks like Tabboo Investigation and Hexentanz building an atmosphere of foreboding and dread with their witch-like chanting and deep, sharp strings. King of them all is Call of the Witch, which is used to punctuate particularly disturbing scenes. The vocals in this track also sound like laughter, which only emphasizes the hopelessness of Subaru's current situation. If this track plays, something has gone horribly wrong with this timeline.
• Subaru's special ability, "Return by Death", is equivalent to a Save Point, allowing him to return to a point before he died. It's triggered by actually dying first and, while he keeps all knowledge upon waking up, he remembers all of the times he died and how painful those deaths are. Death itself is still an ugly thing... and very bloody. Put it this way: it's They Killed Kenny Again Played for Horror. As such, Subaru's many deaths are always either horrific or deeply upsetting:
  • The aversion of Harmless Freezing for a couple of his deaths are nothing short of chilling. Special note goes to his death in episode 15, where, just as a final fuck you to Subaru, his head falls off.
  • His other death at the start of that episode, in which he makes it down to Emilia's Last Stand. His fingers are frozen off, as he stumbles back his leg shatters in front of him, and he eventually freezes entirely as he stares at the icy carnage around him before his frozen head splits open.
  • The way Return by Death is depicted in the anime is very creepy- a disembodied, black, clawed hand that reaches out to Subaru. Even creepier are the times, if he ever attempts to reveal his ability, it gets him to shut up by lovingly caressing his heart. The fact that he is unable to reveal what happened in his previous lives is upsetting since it adds to his trauma.
    • And the one time he actually manages to tell someone about Return by Death, the hand caresses his heart again. And then spins and grabs the heart of the person Subaru told... Emilia.

Arc 1 / Volume 1 / Season 1 Episodes 1- 3

• Elsa Granhiert is the main antagonist of this arc, and she's a nightmare all on her own, serving as a fitting welcome to the world Subaru was transported to. A relentless, sadistic, entirely amoral Psycho for Hire with the delightful nickname of "Bowel Hunter", she delights in slowly and painfully disemboweling her victims and relishing the sight of their bare innards. She's the first real indication that no, Subaru isn't a Stock Light-Novel Hero in a standard isekai Power Fantasy, and that things aren't about to be pleasant.
• Episode 1A/1B: Subaru's first two deaths occur in the two-parter pilot inside the loot house, and both are quite horrific and gruesome, setting the tone for the rest of the show.
  • In the first loop, he arrives after Elsa has already completed her transaction, and the scene where he enters the house wouldn't be out of place in a slasher movie. With just the light of his cell phone, he scans the room, which is appropriately foreboding (complete with a Creepy Doll), and suddenly walks into a sticky substance. The camera pans upwards to reveal Rom's already dead body, with his throat slit open and blood everywhere, before Subaru is suddenly stabbed by Elsa. We are then treated to the scene already shown briefly at the start of the episode, where he desperately cries out for Emilia not to enter, already gurgling on his own blood, before she's taken down in the blink of an eye. Then the lovely "Call of the Witch" theme accompanies his first rebirth.
  • His next death is no better, when, under the assumption that he just dreamed up the first time, he tries to get to Rom and Felt early. He acquires Emilia's insignia after outbidding Elsa using his cellphone, and it briefly seems like the situation will be resolved bloodlessly as she prepares to leave. That is, until he thoughtlessly blurts out that he wants to return the insignia to its owner. Immediately, it's made clear just how much of a mistake that was. In short order: Elsa attacks him with no warning, Rom tries to fight her but is incapacitated with little effort before being stabbed in the throat, Felt then goes for the kill but gets brutally slain in an instant, before Subaru finally wakes up from his shock and tries confronting Elsa on his own. To no avail, of course, as he's hopelessly outmatched; Elsa reveals that she'd already gutted him when walking by him, leaving the poor guy to slowly and agonizingly bleed out on the floor as she delights in his painful death.
    • "Slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly..."
• Episode 2: Subaru runs into Elsa again on the street, out of nowhere. Needless to say, he's a little spooked.

Arc 2 / Volume 2- 3 / Season 1 Episodes 4- 11

• Episode 4: One of the most memorable is ironically the least violent—Subaru is killed in his sleep without warning. The sudden shock of this revelation causes incredible panic in Subaru, who had assumed the worst was over after Elsa, and now he has no clue who killed him, or how, or why.
• Episode 5: Despite everything Subaru has done to determine how he died in his sleep during the previous episode, he gets violently ill and starts vomiting. Then as he begins to search for someone who can help him in the mansion, he gets assaulted by an unknown assailant and brutally murdered. If you're watching the director's cut version, you see one of his eyeballs roll out.

Arc 3 / Volume 4- 9 / Season 1- 2 Episodes 12- 26

• Episode 14: When Subaru walks into Arlem, Late to the Tragedy after being left behind by Rem, he finds the entire village slaughtered by the Witch's Cult with the corpses mutilated in various ways ranging from being burnt alive, stabbed in the back, or having their eyes ripped out.
• Episode 15: Betelgeuse Romanee-Conti. His faces, movements and mannerism, despite being creepy, can be even funny at the beginning, but the way he kills Rem is so brutal and cruel the dude ends up being a walking Nightmare Fuel source.
  • The scene when he licks Subaru's face is not any better.
    • Nor is the way he acts while possessing Subaru's body.
• Episode 16: Subaru and Rem are traveling to Roswaal's lands with a group of merchants. Suddenly, one of them disappears, and when Subaru asks Otto when the merchant disappeared, he responds to him he didn't remember anyone there. After that, a mass of mist extends by the zone where they are traveling, and when Subaru directs his mobile phone to the mist, he suddenly finds a giant, menacing yellow eye. That's the White Whale for you. The face of the creature is pretty terrifying too.
  • From earlier in the episode, after Crusch rejects Subaru's request to help defeat the Witch's Cult, Subaru start ranting about how much he hates the Cult and wants to kill them, all with a look of psychotic rage on his face. Crusch even points out that the glint in his eyes is one of murderous intent. The scene is a genuinely disturbing display of how much all the trauma has affected him.
• Episode 17: Subaru's horrified reaction to everyone forgetting about Rem and not knowing why.
  • Otto shoving Subaru off his cart in a cowardly attempt to save himself from the White Whale. Subaru, in complete fear, ends up running in any direction in desperation, crying out that he doesn't want to die. Through some miracle he survives, though when Subaru tracks down Otto's cart, he sees nothing but blood stains, which implies that the poor bastard ended up running into the Witch Cult...
  • Later in the episode, he sees first hand what happens when he ignores the pain in his heart when attempting to tell someone about his ability to Return by Death: the person listening ends up dying. Poor Emilia...
  • Subaru was about to be subjected to more torture by witnessing Betelgeuse rip apart Emilia's corpse with his powers. Pack ends up preventing this... only Pack is furious over what happened to his "daughter".
• Episode 18: Puck's rage against the Witch Cult and Subaru. His true form and the power he holds gets unleashed the moment Emilia dies, and he goes on his way to cause The End of the World as We Know It, which is what viewers saw in Episode 15. What's more is that he blames Subaru for all of this because he never listened to Emilia and his actions led to her death. In the end, Puck ends up freezing and shattering Subaru, with the latter laughing at himself over how pathetic he is, his self-hatred brought to its breaking point.
• Episode 20: The White Whale shows just how such a thing has become so menacing. It has a Fog of Doom that Retcons you from existence, it's a giant whale that can swallow nearly anything and there's three of them.
  • There's also what happens when Subaru exploits the Whale's reaction to him revealing his powers. This time, there's no ghostly hands at all, oh no. An apparition of what can only be Satella herself manifests right behind him and whispers unheard words into his ear.
• Episode 23: "I am the archbishop of sloth, Betelgeuse Romane-Conti, DESU!!"
• Episode 25: The final battle between Subaru and Betelgeuse... specifically how adamant the latter is in wanting to catch and kill the former. Betelgeuse utilizes the last of his power and all of his determination to turn himself into a crawling, nightmarish abomination, shouting at Subaru to "give" him Satella's love and ranting about how Satella could abandon him despite devoting all of his life to her. Subaru himself kills Betelgeuse by running him over with a cart and Betelgeuse's last word is screaming his nemesis' name.
• Episode 26: The first episode of season 2 already has its nightmarish moments in the form of the archbishops of greed and gluttony.
  • Regulus Corneas, the archbishop of greed, has a warped obsession with his personal rights, believing he is justified in blasting away the entirety of Crusch's party, leaving only flying debris and severed limbs in his wake. Crusch attacks in anger, only for Regulus to block her attack and blow off her arm.
  • Rye Batenkaitos, the archbishop of gluttony, is heavily implied to be a cannibal and literally eats people's identities. If he knows the name of his foe, he can "eat" them, and it would be as if they never existed, a la the White Whale's fog. Unfortunately, this is exactly what happens to Rem.

Arc 4 / Volume 10- 15 / Season 2 Episodes 27- 50

• The alternate timelines, or possibly alternate universes where Subaru died shown by Echidna, are horrific messes as many characters have died from the threats that Subaru prevented.
  • Even worse when you remember that Subaru's deaths do nothing to prevent what comes next.
• The second season's first opening shows Subaru walking past the various locales where he died, including Rom's bar when Elsa repeatedly murdered him, the bottom of the cliffs where he killed himself by jumping, and the blizzard where his frozen decapitated corpse is holding Rem's. Then he finds Emilia's corpse and finds himself surrounded by the dead.
  • It also showcases the enemies that Subaru and company have to eventually deal with in the future, like the Archbishops of Greed and Gluttony and the return of Elsa.
  • While an Awesome moment showcasing Subaru's iron will to persevere, seeing him die again and again (with his body exploding in various areas every time he bites it), only to see another version of him behind the destroyed version run forth is brutal. Subaru doesn't even die in some "loops" but being caked in blood and screaming defiantly at his death can be very disconcerting. The caption as this goes on even states "If it's to save you I don't care how many times I die."
• Episode 30: Subaru returns to the mansion. It's suspiciously empty, and the evening's red light makes things more ominous. As he rushes to check on Rem, he suddenly trips and falls. He looks down, only to find that his entrails have spilled on the floor. He barely lives long enough to see the kukri and face of his assailant...

  Elsa: You promised, didn't you? That you'd take good care of your bowels until we met again?

• Episode 33: Subaru is forced to watch Garfiel transform into his tiger form and mow down Otto and the villagers protecting him. At this point, Subaru is horrified and crying, trying his utmost best to die so he can reset and save everyone. The problem is, no one else knows this, so they instead sacrifice themselves to save him.
  • Probably the most dreaded and gruesome death this show has to offer: Subaru's death by the Oousagi (Great Rabbit). It starts out innocently enough, with Subaru noticing the Oousagi at a distance. It looks like a harmless, cute rabbit with a small unicorn horn on its head. It comes closer and Subaru reaches out to pet it... and his hand is bitten off. Subaru, horrified and in excruciating pain, sees the rabbit is chewing on his thumb, its red eyes now glowing menacingly. Subaru tries to take a few more steps back only to collapse, having lost one of his feet. Two more of the things emerge from the snow. He then looks around and sees a horde of the Oousagi rising from the snow, surrounding the poor bastard. As Subaru can do nothing but whimper in despair, every one of the Oousagi, with their eyes glowing blood red, proceed to swarm him and eat him alive. There is no Gory Discretion Shot; we are forced to watch and listen as Subaru suffers yet another slow and agonizing death.
    • Several gory shots include the Oousagi biting into Subaru's chest and neck, cutting off his remaining hand, one of the Oousagi actually entering his stomach (indicated as a disturbing bulge moving around) and eating his organs, ripping off and chowing down on pieces of mangled ear and tongue, etc. We get a first-person view from Subaru's remaining eye, caked in and crying blood, as another Oousagi finishes him off by eating that too, giving the audience a scare before a jarring Smash to Black. Subaru then Returns by Death, but the pain and trauma are still there, causing Subaru to bash his head into the pavement a couple of times, drawing blood as he screeches at the indignity of it all...
    • Believe it or not, it's a lot worse in the Light Novel/Web Novel, as not only does all of the above happen, its being a novel can actually describe what Subaru is feeling as the rabbits eat him, with some of the monsters actually traveling up his anus, not just his stomach. Subaru also doesn't die until the rabbits crack open his skull and feast on his brain. Waking up from his death doesn't cause Subaru to beat his head into the floor like the anime but he instead vomits violently and suffers a full-blown seizure.
    • The stress from that particular death was so bad that not only does the above happen, he completely ignores Emilia's presence when before, he would at least tend to her after composing himself; Echidna had to pull his soul into her world because he was on the verge on having a permanent mental shutdown from the trauma of it all.
• Episode 34: We finally get to see some of the Witches of Sin face-to-face. Though they look cute, their mannerisms are unnerving, to say the least.
  • Typhon, the Witch of Pride, is a cheery little girl who tests people's morality by ripping their limbs off and breaking them into pieces, considering them "baddies" if they feel pain.
    • Crosses into Tear Jerker with Subaru's results: He passes the "morality" test but fails the "guilt" test, leading Typhon to believe that he is not a bad person, but he believes that he is. Who can blame him?
  • Minerva, the Witch of Wrath, seems the most harmless, with her healing fists and her crying moments. Web Novel readers, however, will note that her "threat" to "heal everyone" would be a legitimate concern if she was alive. Her healing powers sap the mana of the Earth itself, which is needed to keep nature in balance. When mana is lacking, powerful natural disasters result. She was actually the most hated of all the witches due to her killing far more people than she heals.
  • Daphne, the Witch of Gluttony, disturbs Subaru greatly due to her twisted morality and logic. She created the three great Witchbeasts (the White Whale, the Great Rabbit, and the Blacksnake) so that people could eat them and never go hungry. After all, all the other sins "sate" the heart, but if you don't "sate" the stomach, you'll die, right? When Subaru points out that the beasts kill so many people, she retorts that it's selfish to want to eat something while expecting to not be eaten themselves.
    • In the webnovel, Subaru fails to heed Echidna's warnings about eye contact and gets a glimpse of Daphne's right eye. He proceeds to fall into starvation so severe he goes mad, and doesn't even notice that he ate his own fingers.
• In the web novel, and episodes 34-35, we get to see a brief glimpse of what happens when Satella breaks free of her seal. Subaru is chased by a being wrapped in darkness that literally shreds anyone that gets between him and her—including a fully transformed Garfiel—to bits, while repeatedly professing her love for him over and over. It's worse for viewers wearing headphones: some of her "I love you"s are right in your ear. She attempts to absorb Subaru so they can spend eternity together. Subaru only escapes this fate by killing himself, but not before seeing Satella's uncloaked face...which looks just like Emilia's.
• Episode 36:
  • Beatrice's entire situation is this mixed with Tear Jerker. Imagine being created for the sole purpose of protecting an isolated place, being promised that a special "someone" will come to get you eventually. You believe in the fortune-telling gospel that you have, certain that that fateful day will come soon. So you wait. And wait. And wait. Days and months turn into years and decades. The fortune-telling gospel has stopped telling you anything. Yet you still wait. Decades turn into centuries. People come and go, either wanting your power or the vast knowledge of the place you guard. You reject them all because you know none of them are "that person" you are waiting for. You keep waiting. You can feel your hope rotting away with each passing day, with each blank message of your gospel, until you feel so empty inside that you feel your only salvation is through death, a mercy that you can't even give yourself due to who you are. Still, you wait. Not because you want to, but because you must. You must keep the promise because it's the only reason why you exist. Now imagine living with that psychological torture for four hundred years.
    • Now Beatrice's aversion to Subaru dying, or at least dying in her sight, has a whole new meaning. It wasn't just her being her grumpy self. She was envious.
  • Subaru escapes with Beatrice from the mansion, only to be blocked by a girl named Maylie. Her face looks familiar...then Subaru (and the audience) realizes why. She's the same girl who was at the center of the witchbeast incident in season 1. And now she's back, as a full-blown (witch)beastmaster. And she's working with Elsa.
  • Elsa's always been one creepy killer—she's called the Guthunter for a reason—but now she's in full Ambiguously Human territory. Beatrice kills her with her yin magic, shattering her into pieces. Then we get the Wham Shot of Beatrice impaled with a kukri. Elsa, who looks no worse for wear, sans the loss of her anti-magic cloak, giddily slices through the spirit librarian. Subaru can only watch in horror.
    • Afterwards, you'd think Elsa would put Subaru out of his misery, but no. After slapping Subaru with the broadside of her kukri, she notes how she doesn't like the look he's giving her. She resolves this by slicing his left eye out.
  • Subaru's teleported back to Sanctuary. It's seemingly empty again. And it's snowing. Both Subaru and the audience know full well what happened the last time he was in this situation.
  • Subaru goes to the tomb, hoping to get answers from Echidna, and runs into Emilia. Emilia is...not well. She's become a dependent, rambling mess, obsessed with Subaru. Her eyes have changed from soft lilac to empty, dark purple with shadows swirling in them. The constant crazed glint in her eyes doesn't help matters. You'd be forgiven for thinking that she was possessed by Satella, but the truth is worse: she has well and truly snapped. Thanks to a combination of Puck's continued absence, Subaru's sudden departure, and Roswaal's scheming, Emilia was ostracized and alone. Convinced that she needed to pass the Trials to erase her pariah status, she tried and failed over and over again. With no Subaru or Puck to comfort her, the combined weight of her past, the harsh reality of her present, and the loss of her emotional support broke her.
  • Roswaal demonstrates his status as The Unfettered by callously piercing Ram and Garfiel with his arm because "they were in the way of [his and Subaru's] discussion" with Subaru. When Garfiel begins to transform while desperately trying to heal Ram, Roswaal kicks his head right off.
    • Roswaal knows that Subaru can turn back time, but doesn't know that it's through the latter's death, not just unfortunate circumstances. Because of this, Roswaal tries to "persuade" Subaru to return by beating the everloving crap out of him.
    • The dreaded Oousagi, attracted by Roswaal's snow, has returned. But what's more unnerving than the thousands of red eyes outside is Roswaal's cavalier reaction to it. He barely pays attention to the rabbit horde or even shows pain as one of them chomps on his neck. He's so assured of the outcome of Subaru's future loops that he completely disregards the present, letting himself succumb to the Oousagi's onslaught.
  • Then there's the "kiss of death", considered to be up there with Subaru's first Oousagi encounter and his first encounter with Puck's true form for infamous deaths. Subaru, injured and exhausted, returns to the tomb, to the delight of a mentally broken Emilia. She offers him a lap pillow, in a corrupted parallel to the heartwarming scene from the first season. As he rests on Emilia's lap, the Ominous Music Box Tune BGM distorts and the visuals start jumping and skipping like a damaged film reel. Then we see why Subaru is so tired. It's blood loss from failing to completely escape the Oousagi's wrath. We see giant chunks of flesh missing, ripped off by the ravenous rabbits. Any skin that remained is littered with deep bite marks. Emilia is too far gone to notice any of this and leans in for a kiss as the last of Subaru's life ebbs away...cut to title card: "The Taste of Death".
    • The whole scene has a grainy, washed-out filter over it, further amplifying the hopelessness and desolation of it all. Psychological Horror indeed.
    • To add insult to injury, this is Subaru's first kiss. His first kiss is taken by a shattered, insane Emilia, and Subaru has to live with that extra trauma, on top of the guilt that her fate was indirectly his fault.
    • And to top it all off, it’s later revealed that Emilia believes that pregnancy was caused by kissing, only realizing her mistake later on when Subaru corrects her. Knowing that and watching the kiss of death again certainly shows some VERY dark implications of how far insane!Emilia has fallen and would do to keep Subaru with her in some way..
• Episode 37:
  • If you thought Subaru's deaths were bad, the illusions (hopefully) conjured by the following words during the second trial are far worse...
    • "Behold An Unthinkable Present" and see Emilia break in tears over Subaru having killed himself after finding a comatose Rem, Whilhelm and Felix both sad and angry at Subaru taking the coward's way out.
    • "Behold An Unthinkable Present" and see Reinhard and Puck duke it out as the latter tries to destroy the world.
    • "Behold An Unthinkable Present" and see Ram spitefully scorn Subaru for spouting insane crap and throwing himself off the cliff.
  • Echidna nearly forms a contract with Subaru before the other witches intervene and force her to reveal her motives: All Echidna cares about is getting her hands on Return by Death. As she begins to rant about how perfect of a match they are together, Echidna's sweet facade finally cracks, revealing the cold, unfeeling sociopath beneath who only cares about satisfying her own curiosity, regardless of the bodies it leaves behind or lives it ruins.
  • There's also her reveal that the 'someone' mentioned in Beatrice's contract doesn't even exist. Anyone could have been the one to free Beatrice if she chose them to be, but Echidna intentionally left their contract vague and gave her an incomplete Gospel just to see what she would do. The end result? A child who has spent 400 growing bitter and disdainful towards the world, wishing only to die because she doesn't think anyone is The Chosen One in her Gospel. All for the sake of one of Echidna's twisted experiments.
• Episode 38: The Reveal of who exactly has been sending the assassins to Roswaal's mansion all this time: Roswaal himself. Frederica, Petra, Rem, and Beatrice have been suffering and dying in loop after loop purely because of Roswaal's desire to drive Subaru to the point of desperation and force him to go along with Roswaal's plans.
• Episodes 42-44 show us the events that led to the freezing over of Elior Forest:
  • The elves lived in the forest in the first place because they had to protect a seal––a mysterious door that, if opened, would unleash something terrible enough to bring about the end of the world. We're never quite told what that is, though. One day, the Witch Cult comes to the forest to try to open this door, murdering countless elves in the process. Among them is the adoptive mother of a young Emilia––and, in her grief, she lashes out with her tremendous, yet uncontrolled ice powers, freezing over the entire forest along with herself and everyone she'd ever known.
  • Each of these episodes is basically 30 straight minutes of a cross between Nightmare Fuel and Tearjerker, but special mention goes to:
    • Archi's Heroic Sacrifice. He's a young elf tasked with fleeing the forest with baby Emilia, but as they run he's attacked by one of the three great mabeasts, the Black Serpent. It catches him in the leg, which he slices off without hesitation, but we can still see darkness seeping from the wound, quickly swallowing up and corroding away his entire body. In his final moments, he puts on a brave face for Emilia and tells her to keep running without him, his back to her the whole time so that she can't see what's happening to him.
    • The introductions of the two Witch Cult members, Regulus and Pandora. The former is a raving lunatic with a Hair-Trigger Temper under a razor-thin veneer of politeness, who shrugs off getting his neck snapped like it's nothing, and the latter is even worse. Her body is destroyed multiple times, but she always reappears moments later, completely unharmed and completely unfazed. She seems to have some sort of Reality Warper ability––at one point she just...rewrites reality by stating that Regulus never came to the forest but stayed at home the whole time, and he immediately disappears. All of the effects he had on the environment around them––the broken trees, Petelgeuse's severed arm––are undone, except for Petelgeuse's consumption of the Sloth Witch Factor because it amused her.
    • The death of Emilia's mother, Fortuna. She and Petelgeuse launch a joint attack on Pandora, and Petelgeuse appears to have killed her, but then reality shifts somehow, and it's Fortuna lying on the ground with a gaping hole in her chest.
    Pandora: It is not your fault. You simply mistook what you saw.
    • For that matter, The Reveal of who Betelgeuse was before he was the gibbering, evil wretch who tormented Subaru throughout Arc 3: a perfectly kind and sane spirit, the leader of a group who lived in harmony with the elves of the forest, who adored Fortuna and Emilia, and who happened to have been in the forest delivering supplies to the village when the Witch Cult attacked. To fight the Witch Cult and protect Emilia, he consumed the Sloth Witch Factor, even though it was incompatible with his body. This took a great toll on his sanity, which snapped under the strain after Pandora forced him to kill Fortuna using her Reality Warper powers.

Arc 5 / Volume 16- 20 / Season 3 Episodes 51-

• Previously Subaru was given at least a few hours and potentially a few days to affect the outcome of previous loops. This time, 15 minutes, and he has to stop an archbishop from introducing herself by committing mass murder. Shockingly, the best outcome involves Sirius keeping her hostages, who originally were killed in her introduction, and Emilia being kidnapped for a wedding to Regulus Corneas.
• Then comes the reveal that there are multiple archbishops, total 6, not including corpse soldiers which include two legendary warriors roaming Pristella with the intention of holding the city hostage until their demands are met.
• Each Archbishop deserves their own section:
  • Archbishop of Wrath, Sirius "Romanee-Conti." A delusional Love Freak much like her taken namesake Petelguese. She's capable of synching pain and emotions including injuries across short or long making her exceptionally difficult to deal with. To put this in perspective, pitting her against Reinhard only succeeds in getting many people killed when struck down. Even without directly confronting her, her Witch Factor transmits negative emotions across the city and magnifies them, which inevitably leads to multiple incidents caused by sheer panic. Tellingly, she's one of the few that, while defeated, they don't know how/if they should kill her.
  • Archbishop of Greed, Regulus Corneas. While we had previously been introduced to him via his sudden ambush at the end of Arc 3 and he was later reintroduced via Emilia's memories due to his role in past events, we get a full exploration of him in this arc. He's an entitled, wife killing, near invulnerable, brute who marries pure women to serve as both his servants and vessels for his heart. What's even worse is that the latter doesn't even need any form of acceptance by the victims. Anything and anyone could slightly set him off, leading to him using his Witch Factor to splatter the source of his displeasure across the land.
  • Archbishops of Gluttony, Lye Batenkaitos, Roy Alphard, and Louis Arneb. The first two are potent dangers in their own right with their shared Witch Factor making them formidable warriors that will wipe peoples' memories and existance away. Then Louis is introduced out of nowhere with another power the first two don't have as an apparition without a physical form without possessing someone. Similar to the previous arcs, its their powers that leave a lasting impact on the series, aside from Lust.
  • Archbishop of Lust, Capella Emerada Lugunica. An invulnerable, Narcissist, capable of transforming herself and anyone around her into whatever she likes part of which includes injecting black dragon's blood inside "lucky" individuals. Furthermore, it's implied, but not confirmed, she's also capable of raising the dead. Even aside from the Wrath Witch Factor, her consistent rants utterly demoralize everyone who listens to her for too long. Nothing anyone does to her has a lasting impact and she leaves the deepest scars on the city of Pristella itself.

Arc 6 / Volume 21-

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