The news that Re:Zero had taken both Best Anime and Best Kantoku at Tokyo's major animation festival spread fast. Within hours, the biggest outlets in the industry were already reporting on it, and, truthfully, no one in the business seemed particularly surprised.
Even before the official announcement, most people had already treated the result as inevitable. By that point, the momentum behind the series was simply too overwhelming. No matter how much Seiun TV had tried to move things behind the scenes, it would have been difficult even for the committee to twist an outcome that obvious. In reputation, popularity, ratings, commercial value - Re:Zero had already surpassed The Dragon King Next Door by a wide margin. If they had still insisted on forcing another winner, the award itself would have lost whatever credibility it had left.
When Sora and Sumire returned to the company carrying the trophies, they placed them in the most visible spot in the office. Inside the large glass display case were already the awards Natsume Yuujinchou had won two years earlier, along with the long line of honors Re:Zero had collected the previous year. For clients, partners, and even the staff themselves, it was no longer just decoration. It was tangible proof of the road Yume Animation had carved out for itself.
Then, not long after that, January 1 arrived, along with the release of Re:Zero's third BD volume.
After the triumph at the festival, anime fans across Japan finally cast aside the last traces of hesitation they still held toward the series. Awards worked exactly the way they always had - they were the clearest stamp of approval a work could receive from the most specialized people in the industry. And once Re:Zero had earned that recognition, whatever caution remained among viewers disappeared with it.
The owners of specialty stores noticed the shift almost immediately. Compared to the first and second volumes, the third BD was moving off shelves at a visibly faster pace.
At the same time, Sora's name rose to an entirely new level inside the industry. Until recently, whenever people spoke about the most promising young Kantoku of the new generation, the name that came up almost automatically was Touga Kuze.
Now, that had changed.
The name people talked about most was Sora.
And as his reputation continued to climb, the arrival of the winter season turned Re:Zero 2 into the most anticipated anime of the cour. Before it had even aired, major media outlets were already treating it as the season's likely ruler. No other production was surrounded by that level of attention.
But compared to the first season, the structure of the second was very different.
The first had been built from three large arcs flowing into one another - the opening portion, the mansion arc, and the royal selection arc. The second, however, focused entirely on a single storyline: the Sanctuary Arc. A long, massive arc planned to run continuously for half a year.
On Friday, January 5, at eight in the evening, the first episode of Re:Zero 2 aired without issue.
That episode picked up directly from the end of the previous season and, through a much clearer perspective, finally revealed why Rem had been forgotten by everyone. It was also where one of the most important antagonists of the later story appeared for the first time: the Archbishop of Greed. Alongside him came the Archbishop of Gluttony.
It was under their attack that Rem's existence was erased. She fell into a vegetative state, and the entire world forgot her. Only Subaru still remembered. Even Crusch, who had been with Rem, lost her memories after being overwhelmed in the same battle.
The fans had been waiting nearly three weeks for an answer to that mystery. Most had guessed correctly that Rem's disappearance had something to do with Gluttony, but many believed it was connected to the Witch of Gluttony shown in the promotional material. No one had expected the answer to arrive in the form of the Archbishop of Gluttony.
And the emotional blow did not stop there.
In that same episode, Subaru tried to use his own death to return by death and save Rem.
But it was useless.
The moment he chose to run to Emilia's side, he was already too far away from Rem. Even after resetting and rushing toward her immediately, he still could not make it in time.
And so, Re:Zero 2 opened by striking its audience right in the heart.
The reaction online came like a flood.
"So that's it? Rem's really just going to lie there like a vegetable?"
"Did Kantoku Sora get kicked in the head or something? Why would he do this?"
"What did Rem ever do to him? Why does this man keep torturing her over and over again?"
"When he doesn't know how to move the plot forward, he just makes Rem suffer. I get it now. Kantoku Sora is doing this on purpose. He enjoys making us watch this kind of miserable development."
"Was it intentional... or is he just naturally cruel?"
"I'm actually stunned. Before the first episode of season two aired, I still believed Subaru would reset and save Rem. Then that old monster came in and crushed my hope without mercy."
"So is the second season going to be about finding a way to defeat Gluttony and Greed so Rem can be brought back?"
"But from the first episode, it doesn't even look like that's where it's going. Now Emilia's heading to some place called Sanctuary to take some kind of trial... it feels way more complicated than I expected."
"If that damn old bastard Sora really kills Rem off, everyone should turn on him and boycott his future work."
For all the bold threats being thrown around online, Re:Zero 2's ratings inherited the first season's popularity almost perfectly.
Its premiere episode posted a 5.59% rating.
When that number came out, both the anime industry and the television business fell silent.
In Japan, the formats people in the industry tend to favor are usually seasonal productions with clear arcs and structure. It was not that long-running titles did not exist, but very few could hold this level of attention for so long. Even The Dragon King Next Door, the big hit from the previous cour, had already begun showing signs of fatigue by the end of autumn, with its ratings starting to slip.
But Re:Zero 2...
It was still accelerating.
Over the following weeks, episodes two, three, and four aired one after another.
This was where key figures of the Sanctuary Arc began to appear. Frederica, the sharp-toothed blonde maid with an unexpectedly cute presence, made her entrance. Beatrice, the lovable little spirit who had mostly remained inside a room in Roswaal's mansion until now, also started receiving far more screen time.
Searching for answers, Emilia decided to head to Sanctuary in order to confront Roswaal and clear up the many questions that had begun piling up around her. Subaru went with her, as did Otto - the green-haired young merchant who drove a ground dragon and had become an important ally since the first season. There, they met Garfiel, Frederica's younger brother, a mixed-blood beastman with immense strength.
And that was where things became truly complicated.
Because of the barrier left behind by Echidna, the Witch of Greed, Sanctuary had turned into a place people could enter but not leave. However, the barrier did not affect everyone equally. It worked against those who possessed great power or mixed blood - people like Roswaal and Emilia. For someone like Subaru, who was painfully ordinary by comparison, it did nothing at all.
To break the barrier, Emilia, as a half-elf, had to pass the trials of Sanctuary. Only then could those trapped inside be freed.
After all, only someone recognized by Echidna could challenge those trials.
But as the protagonist, Subaru was never going to be left completely useless. Within the Sanctuary Arc, besides Emilia herself, he would also become one of the few people able to receive a response from the lingering will of Echidna.
And the weight of that fact was enormous.
Thousands of ordinary civilians who had fled to Sanctuary to escape the Witch Cult's assault from the previous season, and who were now being kept under Garfiel's control, were trapped there. Roswaal, Rem, and the Sanctuary's own native residents were trapped as well.
In the end, everything rested on Emilia.
Though Echidna was dead, her will still remained inside that place. And that will could not only influence the trials, but, to a certain extent, even speak directly with Subaru.
Because the second season of Re:Zero was made up entirely of the Sanctuary Arc, its pace naturally became much slower than the first season's. It took nearly a full month of broadcast before the series fully laid out the rules of the arc, its central conflicts, and the wider background surrounding that enclosed world.
And a slower pace like that would inevitably show itself in the ratings as well.
The premiere had started at 5.59%. By the end of episode four, it had dipped to 5.48%.
It was not exactly a collapse. Shows this popular would always receive TV rebroadcasts, and many fans, once they felt the story had not yet entered its most explosive stage, stopped insisting on following it live every single week. They would rather wait a little, buy the BD later, or catch the rerun when they had more free time.
Even so, despite that slight decline, Re:Zero 2 remained, beyond question, the highest-rated anime of the winter cour.
The problem lay more in the tone of the critical conversation surrounding it.
The mood in the specialized press began to cool.
Some outlets started arguing that the Sanctuary Arc felt too drawn out, that the brilliant control Sora once had over narrative pacing was gradually slipping out of alignment. Some even claimed the ratings were only being sustained by Rem fans' obsession - that the real reason she had been left in a vegetative state was to emotionally hook that part of the audience and keep them from abandoning the series until the plot picked up again.
Others went even further, reviving that old industry cliché: the curse of the second season. They said that every long-running work suffered a drop in reputation once its continuation began, and that not even a prodigy like Sora could escape it.
Comparisons to the first season surfaced endlessly. In the first four episodes of season one, Subaru had already died and reset three times, and Elsa - the assassin who had quickly become one of the most popular female characters - had already been dealt with. But in the first four episodes of season two, critics said, Subaru still looked completely lost, as if he barely understood what was happening.
To them, Re:Zero 2 was dragging things out too much. Spending four full episodes just to explain the structure and background of the Sanctuary Arc felt, in their eyes, like unnecessary excess.
That slight decline in ratings, combined with the sharper tone of the press, inevitably affected the mood inside Yume Animation.
And no one felt it more than Sumire.
Recently, the pressure on her had been building day by day.
With January underway, the company was now managing two projects at once. The first was Re:Zero 2. The second was the animated film adaptation of 5 Centimeters Per Second.
At this point, Sora had handed most of the second season's directing responsibilities over to her. Because he needed to lead the team on location scouts for background art reference and real-world scenery for 5 Centimeters Per Second, only the first episode of the new season had remained under his direct supervision.
Episodes two, three, and four had all been handled by Sumire.
And it was precisely during those episodes that the ratings began to slip and the media's opinion started turning critical.
There was no way she could avoid feeling the weight of that.
For the past week, Sumire had barely been able to sleep at all.
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