TL;DR
By episode 79, it still feels like we are before the part before the Reid fight. That is barely an exaggeration: the official synopsis has Subaru’s group looking for Reid’s own Book of the Dead for a clue to overcoming him. Before the boss fight, they opened a side quest to find the boss strategy guide.
Subaru meanwhile loses his memories, dies, crashes emotionally, rebuilds himself, and almost immediately returns as the guy trying to support Julius. Gluttony is absolutely an enemy, yet talks enough to bury the hostility under philosophy. Lye is small with conspicuously sharp teeth. Louis turns “What will you do? What do you want to do?” into grammatical psychological warfare. To Gluttony, Subaru is a limited buffet: another world + modern Japan + branching death loops + retained memories.
Verdict: Return by Death is best consumed as streaming video. Do not order the first-person tasting menu. It hurts.
1. Skipping episodes and still being “before Reid” is a valid reading
In episode 79, “Stand Up,” Subaru’s group prioritizes clearing the tower’s trial and searches for Reid’s Book of the Dead as a clue to overcoming him. The route is basically beat Reid → need a method → find a book → read the book → get thrown somewhere else.
A normal game would put a save point outside the boss door. Re:ZERO builds a meeting room, archive, mental-health checkpoint, and metaphysical memory space outside that door. This is before the before-Reid part.
2. Subaru’s mind does not reset; it reboots
Return by Death resets the external state, but Subaru carries the fear and pain of dying. The viewer sees “death, reload, next attempt.” Subaru lives death → carried terror → breakdown → self-hatred → support → rebuild resolve → retry.
The loading screen may last three seconds, but then comes the Emotional Windows Update, and power cannot be turned off during installation. Return by Death is not free infinite retry. It is retry with psychological damage saved.
3. He lost his memories five minutes ago and is already the mentally strong guy again
Subaru collapses over the idea that he is not really Natsuki Subaru, yet in episode 78 he chooses to fight as Subaru again. By episode 79 he is already speaking with Julius, who has not recovered his form.
It resembles a deleted save file with the player’s skill still intact. He cannot recall the whole history, yet he drifts back toward the same core behavior: suffer, panic, then refuse to abandon everyone. A patient walks out of his room and immediately starts peer counseling next door.
4. Gluttony is the enemy; it just talks enough to make you forget
Lye Batenkaitos, Roy Alphard, and Louis Arneb are on the Gluttony side of the Sin Archbishops; the damage involving names and memories is directly tied to Subaru’s objectives.
Louis, however, talks with Subaru at length in the Memory Corridor. Enemy, but conducting an interview. Enemy, but delivering philosophy. Enemy, but reviewing Subaru’s entire life. She did not join the party. She is a disaster with excellent conversational uptime.
5. Do Sin Archbishops get jagged teeth as a job benefit? No
Lye’s design makes “Gluttony comes with shark teeth” feel plausible, but there is no shared dental transformation. The official profile describes him as looking like a harmless child; the other Sin Archbishops do not all receive matching teeth.
Employment package: Authority included / social stability usually destroyed / teeth vary by employee. And Gluttony can be physically small because the diet is not calories. It is names, memories, and lives. 0 kcal; alarming number of lives.
6. Gluttony’s “six-stage Japanese conjugation” is basically an attack animation
Japanese can keep changing a verbal core through desire, passive, causative, past, result, regret, or resignation. One “do” can become What will you do? → What do you want to do? → What did you do? → What do you want someone to do? → What do you want done to you? → What have you gone and done? → Is there nothing you can do?
Give Gluttony “good” and the chewing continues: “Good? It’s good, right? Surely? Why not? Of course.” They do not only ruminate on lives. They ruminate on grammar. Put dekopin, a forehead flick, through the same machine and eventually the question becomes “What was the dekopin doing?” Japanese is flexible enough for the forehead flick to develop consciousness.
7. Louis wants to be on the side that can choose a life. Fair. But books and movies exist
Compressed brutally, Louis does not want to be trapped in one assigned life; she wants access to better lives and the power to choose. The first half is understandable. If birthplace, family, talent, and luck were selectable, plenty of people would click a better build.
The problem is method. Normal people read books, watch movies, play games. Louis eats somebody else’s life data. Fiction is the safe technology for sampling another life without deleting the original owner. In a peaceful timeline she could have been a critic watching 1,200 movies a year: “Seen it! Next! Give me a rarer life!” Same Gluttony, better industry.
8. Subaru is the “isekai + Return by Death” unlimited buffet
A normal life generally runs once. Subaru contains a modern-Japan life, another world’s relationships, multiple branches of the same periods, memories of his own deaths, and data from failed routes.
Regular person: lunch set. Hero: luxury course. Subaru: isekai festival + loop-exclusive specials + unlimited refills. No wonder Gluttony notices.
The trap is that death is not video for Subaru. It is death. Menu photo: ★★★★★. Actual tasting: no pain-off toggle, no fear skip, no cancel button for the death scene.
9. If Gluttony can know about Return by Death, why doesn’t Satella instantly kill everyone?
Through episode 79, the safest reading is that the taboo is not a simple rule of “someone knows = that person instantly dies.” Subaru’s own attempts at direct disclosure trigger strong interference, while other routes can bring certain beings close to the information.
So for now, think of it as Satella’s Terms of Service are not one line saying “knowledge = instant ban”; they are a 47-page agreement with exceptions. How Gluttony reaches information through memory and what exactly triggers the taboo are separate questions. Explaining every clause here would turn an episode-79 article into future spoilers.
10. Rem, Shamiko, and the verdict: Return by Death is best watched online
Rem remains central. Episode 78 has Subaru explicitly vow to recover Rem and his own memories. Yet she can still feel like “wow, long time no see” because the tower has filled viewer RAM with trials, Reid, Shaula, Books of the Dead, amnesia, death loops, Meili, Julius, Gluttony, and the Memory Corridor. Rem was not deleted; she was moved to SSD as a critical file.
Louis Arneb is voiced by Konomi Kohara, and Yuko Yoshida — Shamiko from The Demon Girl Next Door — is also Konomi Kohara. Once noticed, Louis can sound like Shamiko who spent every skill point on the catastrophically wrong evil tree.
Return by Death sounds broken on paper: fail, reset, retry. The activation requirement ruins the deal: actually die once.
Continue requires death on every failed run. No pain-off setting is available.
Fun to watch. Fascinating as memory. Terrible to taste. Return by Death hurts. And after all that psychological travel, we are somehow still before the part before the Reid fight.
Official references
- Re:ZERO official TV anime STORY: https://re-zero-anime.jp/tv/story/?st=3
- Re:ZERO official TV anime CHARACTER: https://re-zero-anime.jp/tv/character/
- Re:ZERO official TV anime STAFF & CAST: https://re-zero-anime.jp/tv/staffcast/
- The Demon Girl Next Door official STAFF & CAST: https://www.tbs.co.jp/anime/machikado/1st/staffcast/
