Watch on YouTube: Re:Zero 10th anniversary digest PV
Ten years after Natsuki Subaru first discovered that his isekai adventure came with a save point he could only reach by dying horribly, Re:Zero − Starting Life in Another World has a fifth anime season. It was announced at the franchise’s 10th-anniversary Starlight Party at Tachikawa Stage Garden in Tokyo on Saturday 14 November, and a key visual of Subaru and Rem was doing the rounds on X within the hour. That is about the extent of it for now. There is no broadcast window and no confirmed studio, and as we write there is no English-language press release, so treat anything more specific you see this weekend with the suspicion Subaru reserves for anyone who smiles at him in a mansion.
It was not the most generous of reveals. Kadokawa put the news behind a ticketed stream that fans outside Japan complained was hard to buy into, so the English-speaking fanbase spent the evening passing round a low-resolution key visual like a resistance cell sharing a smuggled photograph. Still, after six weeks of blog posts patiently explaining that nothing had been announced, something has been announced.
The fourth season, animated like the third by White Fox under director Masahiro Shinohara, finished on 30 September with an extended 45-minute 85th episode, “Shaula / Hero”, closing out the Pleiades Watchtower story (Arc 6, novels 21 to 25). Season five should therefore pick up Arc 7 from volume 26, the long Vollachian Empire storyline that readers have been rubbing their hands over for years. There is no shortage of material: Tappei Nagatsuki’s light novels reached volume 46 in September and have sold more than 13 million copies.
Last time round, season four was announced the moment season three ended. This time the wait was six weeks, during which producer Sho Tanaka’s June remark that the team would love to carry on into Arc 7 and beyond was repeatedly mistaken for a contract. Expect the gap before broadcast to be rather longer. Most sensible guesses had settled on late 2027 at the earliest, with 2028 more likely, and we’ll update when somebody official commits to a date.
Rem’s presence on the visual will, of course, be read by a certain section of fandom as a solemn promise. She has spent most of the series since early in season two asleep, a character arc normally reserved for Sleeping Beauty and the Arthurian knights under the hill. Here at SFcrowsnest we have learned not to make promises on Subaru’s behalf. In Re:Zero, nothing good happens without three or four failed attempts first, and the anime’s release calendar seems to have been taking notes.
Join the conversation (0)