[The anime Re: Zero - Starting Life in Another World, Season One, is about to conclude.]
[All content for this season will now play through to completion, followed by end-of-season settlement.]
[Based on your performance as a supporting character, you will receive a Popularity Points bonus.]
Gojo had barely finished registering how fast the next airing had come. Now this string of notifications dropped on him and left him blinking.
Season one's ending?
He mulled it over, puzzled.
The timing felt off.
He didn't know the main plot in any detail, sure. But looking at where the story currently stood, calling it a season finale seemed premature. There was plenty left on the table worth airing, especially considering Subaru had only just thrown in his lot with Emilia.
So from the very beginning, was Subaru always supposed to end up in Emilia's camp?
Is that the benchmark? Once he settles with Emilia, season one wraps, and next season shifts the focus to her faction?
Then what happens to me, the supporting character, in season two?
Theories, nothing more. He wasn't about to assume that, after skipping town with Felt, he'd somehow end up circling back to help Emilia. On reflection, that felt implausible.
Ever since the opening task of locating Subaru, the Supporting Star System hadn't assigned him a single additional mission. There was only one standing requirement: gain more popularity.
How he did it, or how far he pushed it, was entirely up to him.
The system didn't leave him long to think.
The virtual screen in front of him lit up with footage, the comments section already dense with scrolling text.
He skimmed it, not paying close attention.
This episode was all about Roswaal.
Nearly every piece of groundwork laid earlier got its payoff here. What Roswaal had done to Emilia, why he'd done it, and the ultimate goal behind all of it. Every thread came together in the Sanctuary.
Along the way, the episode also tied off the setup around Elsa and brought Regulus back on stage long enough to drag him through the dirt one more time.
As a season-ender, it worked. A clean sense of beginning-to-end, and the content itself was more than solid.
Still.
What actually mattered to him was the Popularity Points payout.
With the season wrapping and no word on when the next one would begin, who knew what, if anything, the system had lined up for him in the interim. It left him unsettled.
If there's nothing for me, my income's about to take a serious hit.
The timeline for unlocking Adaptation Power would slip again.
He glanced at his current Popularity Points.
Between the broadcast running and the slow trickle during the off-air stretch, the number had crept up to around three hundred thousand.
Nowhere near enough for Adaptation Power. He couldn't even cover the prerequisite, the Ten Shadows Technique.
The end-of-season bonus is the only real shot.
He hadn't forgotten the system's earlier note about additional Popularity Points tied to his performance. A solid payout would go a long way.
On screen, the comments kept flashing past as the plot moved forward.
Early on, things stayed reasonably civil. Then Roswaal started nudging Emilia and Subaru toward the Trial, leaving both of them hurt, and sending Ram and Rem back to the mansion for the Holy Gold Coin.
That was when the question marks started multiplying.
[What the hell is this clown doing?!]
[He's literally sending the sisters to their deaths!]
[Hold on, what? Aren't they on the same team? Why is he screwing over his own people?]
[What a disgusting guy. Can this creep please stop supporting Emilia?]
The comments piled up, turning on Roswaal fast. And the worse he looked, the more the audience rallied behind Gojo's plan to stick it to him.
Gojo hadn't expected this particular dividend. He'd originally gone after Roswaal because the man rubbed him wrong, and the idea was to probe him and set him up in the process. Turning that into a popularity windfall had been entirely accidental.
All of it crescendoed when Capella, the Sin Archbishop of Lust, made her entrance.
The moment everyone saw the look of absolute bewilderment on Roswaal's face as she appeared in the Sanctuary, the chat erupted in wave after wave of laughter.
[Roswaal: I wake up and the world's different, where is everyone in the village?]
[Who is she, where is this, what's happening?]
[Roswaal's face is priceless. Gotta hand it to my husband, beautifully played!]
At the time, Gojo had watched the whole thing unfold from the sidelines, quiet. Seeing it again, especially with the comments running alongside, he cracked a smile and let out a laugh. Some of the angles the audience found were creative enough to catch even him off guard.
Capella, as Sin Archbishop of Lust, didn't disappoint either.
Her regeneration and shape-shifting went clear off the charts, enough to scramble every assumption the viewers had walked in with.
[Sloth: You're Sin Archbishops, what am I?]
[Besides Sloth and Gluttony, the rest of these Sin Archbishops are absurdly strong.]
[Last time we couldn't hit them hard enough, this time we can't even kill them. Ridiculous.]
[Roswaal might be a jackass, but the guy can fight. Dude's basically a machine gun.]
[Wait, is that Regulus they just let out?]
[My husband is so evil and I love it!]
Regulus, already etched into the audience's memory from his earlier turn, drew a crowd of reactions.
What none of them saw coming was the two Sin Archbishops refusing to form a united front on arrival, then immediately turning on each other.
[Ugly meat woman, stingy virgin, honestly, what a show.]
[Am I the only one who noticed Regulus's first instinct was to bolt?]
[Roswaal: Who's ambushing me!]
[Can't win one on one, forget about one on two.]
Just as the comments were calling, Roswaal was strong, but not strong enough to deal with a cheat like Regulus.
After limbs started coming off, the chat became a running ovation.
Gojo's Popularity Points climbed with every beat of it.
None of this would have happened without him orchestrating it.
As Roswaal wore down, the curtain started to fall.
Gojo's entrance signaled the closing act.
Regulus's reaction was a gift to the audience.
[This guy's completely lost his nerve.]
[Credit where it's due, the Sin Archbishop of Lust really is the kind of young fool too dumb to know what she's walking into.]
[Regulus took off already and this one's still just standing there.]
[She's about to regret that.]
Unlimited Void came down.
From there, no mystery left.
Regulus got sealed back into the other-dimensional space, face twisted with resentment for the second time running.
Capella and the Great Rabbit followed right behind him.
[Unbeatable!]
[Husband is the strongest!]
[After those two, don't forget about Roswaal!]
[Felt lives a charmed life, doesn't lift a finger and still walks away with another win on the record.]
[No seriously, what about the other Royal Candidates? On the metric of actual accomplishments this stretch, none of them can touch Felt, right?]
[Change of plans! Change of plans! Prepare for coronation! Prepare for coronation!]
Scanning those lines, Gojo couldn't help laughing.
The viewers were starting to sound a lot like Betty.
Plenty of people had clocked which way the wind was blowing.
With the fight settled, the moment had come for Roswaal to lay his cards on the table.
As the confession unfolded, his full history and intentions finally out in the open, the comments went briefly silent.
What Roswaal had actually been doing, and why, landed as a genuine shock. Nobody had figured him for a four-hundred-year-old man wearing a new face, and nobody had seen the endgame coming. The whole tangled scheme, all of it, had been about getting Subaru locked in as Emilia's ride-or-die supporter.
[He body-jacked a dozen of his own children, all to resurrect his teacher?]
[Certified lunatic. The "will do anything" kind.]
[Ram and Rem are loyal to him down to the bone, and he sees them as disposable pieces on a board.]
[If he'd sacrifice his own children, no one else stands a chance of mattering to him.]
The confession didn't buy Roswaal any forgiveness. If anything, the viewers turned harder against him, even after he promised he wouldn't pull any more stunts and would genuinely throw his support behind Emilia.
Next to him, even the Witch Cult with their cruelty and habit of setting the world on fire, or the rival Royal Candidates, felt less repellent to the audience.
Viewer consensus had settled. Roswaal was the most despised character the series had produced so far.
After his arc closed, the spotlight turned back to Subaru, and the chat started up again.
His choice to stay at Emilia's side drew a distinct current of irritation and disappointment.
[Is this guy brain-damaged? What happened to what he promised earlier?]
[Betty wasn't wrong, not an ounce of growth.]
[Does he have any idea how much trouble he's put Gojo and Felt through? And now he's sticking around with Emilia?]
[If it were up to me, I'd stop bothering with him entirely.]
[Husband is too kindhearted.]
Gojo shook his head at the screen.
Subaru caused friction from time to time, yeah, but that wasn't something Gojo was going to hold against him.
They weren't the same. Subaru was a regular student, nothing more, with precious little life experience behind him.
Misjudging situations came with the territory.
Picking at him for that kind of thing missed the point.
The screen carried on through Felt's work in the Slums, her reputation climbing higher, then slowly faded to black.
As the image went dark, a prompt blinked up.
[Season One of Re: Zero - Starting Life in Another World has ended.]
[Stay tuned for the next season.]
The abrupt announcement hit the comment stream like a rock, question marks spraying in every direction.
Re: Zero had been updating fast and often, its current total already matching the length of a full season from any other show.
Even so, seeing the line on the screen caught people off guard.
[That's the end of season one?]
[Nooooo, my husband.]
[So sudden, when do we even get the next season?]
[Yeah, no news at all.]
[I was finally hooked and now it's gone.]
The chat spun out, but Gojo had already stopped reading.
Every thread of his attention had locked onto the promised bonus.
At the end of the final episode, his Popularity Points read three hundred and fifty thousand.
Not far off from what he needed for the Ten Shadows Technique.
If the bonus was generous enough, he might be able to unlock it right now.
What kind of surprise are we looking at?
He stared at the panel, waiting.
[Calculating bonus, please wait.]
As if the system had read his mind, the prompt appeared, followed by a percentage counter ticking upward. Against the black background, lines of small text kept surfacing and fading.
Studying them, he realized each line was a log of something he'd done.
Defeating the Bowel Hunter Elsa. Killing the Sin Archbishop of Sloth. Achievements that had triggered major spikes in Popularity Points.
Like a collection screen in a game.
The text cascaded past. The percentage climbed. Eventually it touched a hundred.
The number vanished. A fresh prompt took its place.
[Settlement complete. Based on the supporting character's deeds and actions, a one hundred percent Popularity Points bonus has been awarded.]
A hundred percent?!
His eyes snapped wide.
Counting the fifty thousand he'd already spent earlier, the total Popularity Points he'd accumulated since arriving in this world came to four hundred thousand.
A hundred percent bonus on that meant another four hundred thousand on top.
Added to what he was currently sitting on, he'd land at seven hundred and fifty thousand.
That wouldn't touch anything like Divine Protection of the Phoenix yet, but the Ten Shadows Technique was well within reach.
And once he had Ten Shadows...
Was Adaptation Power really that far off?
At this pace, with a decent push in season two, he might actually scrape together enough for it.
The thought pulled a grin to his face.
Settlement finalized. Four hundred thousand Popularity Points dropped into his account without delay.