Peruse Re:ゼロから始める異世界生活15 [Re:Zero Kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu, Vol. 15] (Re:Zero Light Novels, #15) Curated By Tappei Nagatsuki Format Physical Edition

shit End of the Sanctuary Arc, Good story and character conclusions, No shocking deaths or revelations, 大人気WEB小説第弾!

咆哮の轟くロズワール邸でついに激突するエルザとガーフィール頼れる援軍に仇敵を任せスバルはようやくベアトリスと待ち望んだ再会の場面へ到達する
時を同じくして試練に臨むエミリアは自らのありうべからざる今と相対し本来ならばありえなかった幸福な世界で魔女の描く祝福に包まれる
魔人と鬼と精霊が商人と村娘と半獣がそして恐るべき魔獣が入り乱れるループの中でバラバラだった仲間たちが今一丸となって進むべき未来を切り開く
俺の名前はナツキスバルエミリア君だけの騎士だ
大人気Web小説四章完結の第十五幕月下出鱈目なステップを君と Three and half,

This volume finishes the fourth arc of this series, which was the most complicated plotwise, and has catched up with the anime adaptation, It seems they havent translated any further into English,

Although I never planned to, I ended up having a very personal relationship with this series, because last November, after my last contract had run out and I was more or less blissfully unemployed, I came across GPT, the magiclike AI thing, probably handled by some supercomputers, which is so far the most advanced predictive network of artificial intelligence to produce text.
I wanted to test it to see how far it could go, and that sparked an autistic obsession, which apparently nonautistic people dont have, For the following two months I worked at it obsessively, writing along with GPTmaybe

around,words of fanfiction that covered “RE:Zero” up to the middle of its fourth arc.
Its likely more than that I wroteparts that I assume averaged aroundwords each, but many of the parts exceed that number, Unfortunately the obsession switched off like they do, and I couldnt push myself to continue, It ended up being, though, one of the most joyous experiences I had in the last few years, so it was worth that at least,

I suppose that writing such long fanfiction for a fictional series means that you like it a lot, and I suppose that I do.
But I was never entirely on board with quite a few aspects of “Re:Zero”, It started out as a web novel, and at some point, I suppose when they offered the author to polish his stuff into a light novel series, they settled on an illustrator.
The drawings and character designs set the tone that eventually the anime adaptation used as well, but I think that the tone for this series is off.
We were presented with a protagonist who was fed up with his former world, and that took being transported into a fantasy world as his opportunity to finally feel like a powerful protagonist.
The story quickly beat him up to a pulp, showing him that he was actually one of the last powerful characters of that world, except for his only superpower: that of returning to the past whenever he died, which usually involved horrible pain sitelinklink to a shoddily edited compilation of Subaru deaths from the first three arcs.
The anime adaptation took that darkness and put it to generally good use in the first season of the adaptation, but by the second season the tone has gotten more lighthearted, and as the series settles, it becomes more mundane.
Despite Subarus somewhat annoying insistence of making a fool of himself and destroying solemn moments, a defense mechanism, the series kept dragging him down with the intention of breaking him entirely.
I would prefer if the tone of the series would continue to reflect that constant danger, the unending struggle against avoiding the next death, either of himself or of anyone around him, all of whom Subaru intends to save.


Spoilers from now on,

From a narrative standpoint, the understandable choice of making Subaru value his life and rely on his friends to solve problems does act as character development.
In this volume, Emilia, a sheltered child in a too pretty for her own good eighteen years old or something shell, becomes strong enough to pass the psychological torture of the trials, which ends up breaking the barrier that kept them captive in Sanctuary.
Meanwhile, Subaru returned along with Otto and tigerman Garfiel to their lords mansion to stop a couple of contract killers who would have killed everyone in it, along with massacring the nearby villagers.
Subaru couldnt hope to stop the contract killers by himself, so he relies on Garfiels beastly powers as the selfproclaimed strongest man in the world to kill the unstoppable Elsa Granhiert.


In a previous volume, Elsa had been petrified with magic by the mansions librarian, and crumbled to pieces, However, she entirely regenerated what felt like a couple of minutes later, The author justified her unkillableness by saying that shes a vampire or something, that shes possessed by some dark thing which manifests through her body, Something like Petelgeuses curse, I suppose, To the authors credit, though, if I had to come up with ways for her to get killed, I would have never guessed “flattened by a gigantic hippo”, which is how Garfiel eventually does the sexy Elsa in.
In the anime thats that, but the light novel version had a redundant scene in which what remains of Elsa, now a ruined undead unable of thinking beyond trying to kill everything it comes across, ends up burning to ash in a firestorm as the mansion is consumed.


Subaru, Otto and the utterly useless trainee Petra had been fleeing from the monsters that the other contract killer had attracted, Subaru tried to apply his modern knowledge and some Senku Ishigamilike science to burn the biggest monster, but it failed, and eventually Otto spent that oil that he couldnt get rid of a running joke with this man to set both the monster and eventually the entire mansion on fire.


The only point in which Subaru got to act like a protagonist was in finally convincing the reclusive, hundreds of years old librarian Beatrice, who is an artificial spirit or something created by the fascinating Witch of Greed, and who has been waiting for four hundred years in that library for someone to come and free her from her contract, to pick Subaru as her contractor.
She acknowledges that Subaru isnt the person that was promised, but hes the one that she wants to be with, because he isnt after her power, the knowledge that the witch treasured, nor anything else Subaru just likes being with her and doesnt want the kid to rot in solitude.
That sequence of Subaru trying to convince her to escape with him, which happens right before the isolated space of the library burns to a crisp, was the highlight of this volume.
Still, I was more annoyed than usual at Subaru's idiocy this time: the guy did meet Echidna in her deathdream, got her to admit that the person that Beatrice was waiting for didn't exist, and that the whole thing was an experiment for Echidna to satisfy her curiosity by finding out who Beatrice would end up choosing.
So why not say it to the librarian The story doesn't address that, as if it had never happened,

Around that moment, back in Sanctuary Emilia was facing the Great Rabbit, a natural disaster of sorts created by the Witch of Gluttony, The monster, a singleminded horde of murderous rabbits who devour everything alive in their path, waited around until Subaru appeared with Beatrice, and the three magic users ended up gathering the entirety of the Great Rabbit and then banishing it to a bubble realm outside of time and space similar to Beatrices former library, where the rabbits would keep eating each other, respawning and eating each other again for eternity.
Pretty good resolution for that problem as far as Im concerned,

Roswaal, the clownish exhibitionist that the main characters serve, as hes their lord, had revealed himself as the main antagonist of this arc, even beyond Echidna the Witch of Greed.
Roswaal had in his possession a magical tome that told the future, and apparently the thing foretold that everybody Subaru was trying to save, except for Emilia, had to die, and Emilia had to remain weak and helpless so Subaru could singlemindedly guide her to her rightful or not place at the throne of the kingdom.
Roswaal was merely using them as a way to revive his beloved Echidna, the obsessive, hyper intelligent witch with a fetish for making as many people as possible taste her saliva sitelinklink to the moment when Roswaal became infatuated with Echidna for four hundred years.
Cant say I blame you, buddy, In any case, Subaru had made a bet with Roswaal that he would finish this arc without relying on dying horribly, Roswaal accepted, and lost. As a result, he inscribed in himself a magical curse that would reduce him to ashes if he ever were to sacrifice those closest to him, or use them carelessly, to achieve his goals.
However, in a final conversation he reveals that hes going to rely entirely on Subaru and will watch over him, and that if Subaru loses a single person, Roswaal will kill everyone he cares about even though it will trigger his own death so Subaru is forced to return to the past and solve that problem.
Im sure we will go back to the usual loops of horrible deaths in no time,

Subaru ended up becoming Emilias official knight, I was never fond of these two fools relationship, Subaru is too pushy and mostly wants Emilia because shes super cute, and Emilia is too traumatized by her past, and knows too little about life in general, to the extent that she feels more childish than Beatrice.
It's so bad that at one point she believes that shes pregnant because Subaru kissed her during an argument, To her credit, she was very serious about raising that supposed child properly, even though Subaru had kissed her by surprise, Whatever. I prefer the Emilia that used sexbased clinginess as a way to cope with her trauma and the pressures of running for the throne of the kingdom.
Unfortunately that was never the case in the original series, because the halfelf doesnt even know what sex is,

By far my biggest problem with the payoffs for this arc, however, is how the author butchered Ram, The pinkhaired, dismissive, abrasive servant had, as far as I was concerned, dedicated her entire existence to revenge: Roswaal had ordered the attack on her village many years ago, and it had killed, as far as Ram knew, everyone she ever cared about.
Not content with that, Roswaal had taken her in as an indentured servant, In my mind Ram was biding her time until the right moment when she would be able to put down the clownish lord for good, but the payoff for her arc is that despite everything, she had fallen in love with Roswaal.
The author intended it as a mirror for the clownish lord, who had been following a singleminded purpose for four hundred years and would never imagine changing his mind: he had to face Ram, who should have remained hellbent on revenge, forgiving him to the extent that she wanted him as a romantic partner.
I hate it, and for me that was the moment when Ram imploded as a character,

Cant think of anything else to say about the story up to this point, except that I miss when “Re:Zero” was wilder, angrier, darker, and more painful.
.