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TIME SPARES NO ONE...
With the path to the Trial clear again, Emilia readies her mind and body to challenge her past once more. Though she has finally gained access to the forgotten events of her childhood, it soon becomes clear that her struggle has only just begun. Within the dream world built from those memories, Emilia must overcome the regret and pain of those long-gone days for the people of Sanctuary to have any hope of leaving??-even if it means finally remembering what happened to her mother...

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 25, 2017

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About the author

Tappei Nagatsuki

162 books264 followers
Associated Names:
Tappei Nagatsuki
長月 達平 (Japanese)
長月達平 (Traditional Chinese) / 长月达平 (Simplified Chinese)

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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
Profile Image for Lena.
361 reviews300 followers
March 14, 2021
Wonderful as always.
Profile Image for Saarah.
37 reviews3 followers
June 1, 2021
I enjoyed Emilia’s backstory immensely and the arc looks like it’ll be coming to a conclusion next volume.
Profile Image for Jon Ureña.
Author 3 books123 followers
October 26, 2020
Having my “vacations” cut very short on a friday due to this Covid garbage, in addition to having to work on saturday as well, put me into such a shitty mood that I didn’t think I was going to review what I read nor do anything but mope around. Parts of this volume irritated more than they would have otherwise as well, no doubt for the same reason. But watching the first two episodes of the zany adventures of physical and emotional cripple Violet in “Violet Evergarden” last night, adding to its power that likely plenty of the people involved in making it were murdered in the arson attack that killed 36 members of its animation studio, reminded me of how great fiction can be (that series seems to be the equivalent for your emotions of a laxative), so I might as well write about the volume of "Re:Zero" that I finished a couple of days ago.

Everything this volume contains is stuff that as of October of 2020 the anime adaptation hasn’t touched. Read on if you want to spoil it for yourself, unless you have already read this volume that got released in its translated version just a few days ago.

In the previous volume we left our main group of characters in front of the witches’ tomb in the isolated reserve called Sanctuary. This area’s guardian, a half-beast, half-deluded almost teenager who can also turn himself into an unstoppable, gigantic tiger, had fought against the protagonist and his people because he doesn’t want the barrier separating Sanctuary from the outside world to be broken; ten years ago he learned from one of the Witch of Greed’s trials that his mother had abandoned him and his sister for being abominations, and afterwards he couldn't believe that the outside world would ever accept people like him. However, after the protagonist defeats this guardian, the group convinces him to actually go through the trial again to see his past with his older eyes. Inside he learns that his mother actually loved him, and that she had left to bring their father in. Unfortunately the mother ended up dying shortly after for unrelated reasons. Realizing the damage he had caused himself for failing to face his past, he’s grateful to the protagonist and his group, and now wants to help them lift the barrier and rejoin his sister in the outside world.

As a major obstacle for lifting the barrier we had that the heroine, a mostly weak-minded, soft, goody-two-shoes beautiful girl was the only one that should break the magical barrier through facing the psychologically demanding trials. But the protagonist had made her believe in her strength enough (along with other stuff, like dispelling some magically induced amnesia on unbearable parts of her past) that she ventures into the tomb to face the trial. In the dreamlike vision that the Witch of Greed has created we see the heroine back when she was living as a child amongst her people, before everyone she knew ended up frozen for a hundred years. Turns out that the Witch of Greed herself, Echidna, accompanies the heroine during the trial. Echidna is unbearably bitter after having lost her opportunity to leave her tomb by entangling herself with the protagonist, someone she had grown to appreciate enough to want to tie her entire existence to him; he had rejected her and even called her a monster. Throughout this entire sequence the witch berates the heroine for her capriciousness, irrationality, and for being the daughter of the very person who murdered the witch.

It’s a well known fact of this world that I dislike flashbacks, and around sixty percent of this volume is spent on two elaborate flashbacks, no matter how they are dressed. In that segment of this volume I was thinking of rating it around three and a half, but I loved the latter part and was very intrigued by it in general.

In the flashback related to the heroine we see that she cared for and was protected by the sister of her actual mother (it’s suggested a few times that the heroine’s actual mother is the infamous Witch of Jealousy, although I don’t know how that would work given that she must have died around three hundred years before). Given that the heroine has never met her actual mother, she considers the woman her real mother. In any case, they keep the heroine cooped up inside a huge tree. Soon becomes clear that someone, some group maybe, is after the heroine. The main group we know from previous volumes that wants to use and kill the heroine in the process is the Witch’s Cult, but, in a twist, turns out that the main person who is helping Emilia and her mother during this flashback is none other than Archbishop Petelgeuse, the terrifying madman we met back in volume five. The guy comes in occasionally to bring supplies and make sure they are alright. However, this far in the past he was a honorable, somewhat shy guy who wanted nothing more than to keep the heroine and her mother safe; I think at some point it’s revealed that he used to be married to the mother. Although he was an Archbishop of the Witch’s Cult, it seems that back then that didn’t carry negative connotations; not sure if this breaks some of the backstory up to this volume.

In any case, the heroine, thanks to her affinity with minor spirits, kept escaping from her tree prison and making trouble for everybody. At one point she is guided by the spirits to a magical door, and we learn that this is some seal that the group is also protecting and that presumably would cause something horrible were it to open. The heroine was an irrational brat back then and she actually attempts to open it in different ways, but doesn’t manage to. In one of these adventures of sorts she meets the Archbishop for the first time; upon seeing her, he falls to his knees in tears. I’m not sure what’s the entire backstory here, but the heroine takes pity on this crybaby and ends up considering him a friend from then on.

Meanwhile, the group of main characters who are waiting outside of the tomb for the heroine to finish her trial produce their own flashback: one of the clones the Witch of Greed created stores memories of her original self. We learn that the girl used to be an elf villager in an isolated community that the Witch of Greed herself, Echidna, had organized in order to carry out her experiments. Echidna, ever the scientist, was working on some device that would grant her immortality, and for some reason she needed certain blood types which are common to elves, half-beast people and the likes. Those kinds were viciously persecuted in the regular world, so although saving them wasn’t Echidna’s goal (she doesn’t care much for people in general), they are grateful that they were granted a safe place to live in and prosper.

We also see that the magical librarian Beatrice, who in the present is still in the lord’s mansion, used to live in that town as well. She refers to herself as Echidna’s daughter, although Echidna herself insists that’s not the case; given that Beatrice is a spirit, I suppose that Echidna brought Beatrice into the world from some ethereal plane, therefore causing Beatrice’s life here, although the girl didn’t come out from the witch’s presumably gorgeous vagina. We learn that Beatrice was a tsundere even back then, and despite her standoffish self she opened herself to this elf girl and they became great friends.

None other than Roswaal Mathers was there, four hundred years before the present, as a young man; it’s not clear whether this Roswaal Mathers is the same as the one we know (a devilish mastermind and the protagonist’s lord), or if every descendant from then on used the same name. In any case, Roswaal was around eighteen years old back then, had a student-teacher relationship with Echidna, and he was obviously in love with the pale, obsessive, generally unempathetic witch. This group was also in hiding to a certain extent, because some other witches or warlocks or whatever could be after them, so Echidna was researching how to erect a magical barrier around that community (which would eventually become Sanctuary) to prevent outsiders from interrupting her experiments; keeping people safe was a happy coincidence. In any case, as they were strolling through the woods, a male witch/warlock considered Melancholy (this is a fantasy world in which platonic concepts get imbued into usually a person at a time at birth, granting them powers) assaults them. I don’t recall exactly what happens, but Roswaal gets seriously wounded, near death, and as Echidna herself steps in to intervene, the elf girl runs to the facility that would store the heart of the magical barrier. She had been told that her blood, mana type or whatever would be compatible with the crystal that would maintain the barrier, and although she had been told that it would involve trapping her in the crystal forever, she wants to help the people who took her in. The future librarian Beatrice pleads with her only friend not to abandon her, but the girl does. We don’t see a resolution for that story; along the way Echidna herself was killed, but the librarian and Roswaal lived.

Back to the heroine, their group gets attacked by another Archbishop, that one belonging to Greed (but having nothing to do with the by then long dead Echidna). Turns out that Archbishop Petelgeuse and this Greed fellow used to consider each other colleagues, but some schism in the Witch’s Cult has sparked an internal war. That Greed guy, who has a particularly infuriating way of speaking (he constantly lectures others about his rights, and considers that they are getting infringed virtually all the time), was one of the guys who attacked the protagonist’s main supporter the demon maid Rem back in volume nine; in that attack Rem’s existence was erased from everybody’s memories, and she fell to a magical coma she hasn’t woken up from. We meet then the main artificer of this rebellion: a witch with the clichéd name of Pandora, and with the appropriate goal of opening the seal that the group was guarding. In the middle of a tense argument, the Archbishop of Greed himself, who is supposed to be on Pandora’s side, attacks her; he has the strange ability of being able to create millions of mini black holes through throwing dirt or something, to devastating effects. Pandora seems to die, but reappears unharmed moments later. Her insanely overpowered power is that of rewriting reality itself, seemingly even after getting killed.

Petelgeuse, uncharacteristically heroic before he became a madman, tells his former wife to grab the heroine and run. He knows that the only chance he has of beating their enemies is embracing a witch factor that he keeps in a case. It seems that these witch factors are Venom-like entities (maybe some sort of spirits) that will entangle themselves with a person and grant them powers, but if their “personalities” don’t match, they turn the host into a deranged creature. To fight, he allows this witch factor to enter him. Although it does give him the power to throw dozens of punches with invisible arms, it also makes him bleed from his eyes, which doesn’t seem like a good sign. Barely holding on to his sanity as he attacks the intruders, turns out that accepting the witch factor was a waste, because he can’t harm the couple at all.

Back in the village, the heroine’s mother decides to leave the heroine with one of his people in order to run back and attempt to save her former husband. The heroine is not happy about it, and that begins her huge issues with abandonment. However, as this other elf dude was carrying her out of the forest to safety, one of the huge calamity beasts created by the Witch of Gluttony (this beast called Black Serpent) ambushes the elf dude and rots him to a husk in seconds. The heroine runs away while crying. She’s guided by friendly spirits to the seal itself, but shortly after Pandora appears and reveals that the spirits were under her command, that she had guided the heroine there because she’s somehow the key to open the door; some magical stuff. The heroine eventually refuses because she had promised her mother not to open it, and promises are very important, etc. Her injured mother eventually appears and attacks Pandora, killing her over and over without any permanent effect. When the Archbishop of Sloth himself, Petelgeuse, appears, the half-crazed man attacks whom he believes to be Pandora, but it was a mirage caused by the witch; in reality Petelgeuse had just torn his former wife apart. His mind breaks after this development, unable to deal with having murdered the woman he loved. The heroine, after seeing her mother die, unleashes her dormant powers. Pandora realizes that she made a major mistake enraging the heroine to this extent, and that the mission had failed. She aborts, and as she leaves along with a broken Petelgeuse we understand that it was the power the grieving heroine had unleashed which had turned her and all her people into pillars of ice for a hundred years.

The flashback ends, and Echidna asks the heroine for her conclusion, how she will move forward from now on. The heroine says something to the effect that she understands that she had been loved but that there are major forces at work to destroy their lives, and that although she might not be able to unfreeze the people she froze back then, she will work with the people she appreciates in the present to bring forth a bright future, or something. Echidna is generally displeased because she cannot help but hate the heroine, who took away her man. In any case, the heroine steps out of the tomb to realize that only senior servant Ram had waited for her.

The rest of this volume is stuff I found very compelling, interesting conversations and maneuvers that felt always a few moves beyond what I would have predicted. Ram, touched by the newfound resolve shown by the heroine, a person that the senior servant Ram hadn’t respected up to that point, bows and begs her to help her break her lord’s obsession with the Witch of Greed, an obsession that had guided his decisions during these last four hundred years, and ruined his life and those of many others.

[continues on the comments]
Profile Image for HardLight.
218 reviews5 followers
April 9, 2022
Okay let's start this shall we?

This volume pissed me the fuck off
The build up here is so damn unnecessary and wasteful that I'm disappointed in Tappei here for doing this

We get the important parts the Emilia backstory and then we get the build up to the fight at the mansion

But between that we have pointless jumping back and forth in the story to add drama and to stretch length
For instance we have a flashback to hours before the fight at the mansion
THREE FUCKING TIMES with Subaru and two times with Emilia

It isn't needed and it wastes time

Actually annoyed and knew it'd be like this half way through and made it less interesting to read

Not good outing this time
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Jonah ´༎ຶོ༎ຶོ.
26 reviews
November 17, 2024
FORTUNAAAAAAA!!!! GUESE!!!!!! 😭😭😭 Fortuna literally best mother ever in so freaking angry how she went out but it was beautiful. I feel bad for Guese he just wanted to be of help, still wondering what exactly his role in the church was and how he’s involved but now it’s pretty clear he’s gone mad cus of the black stuff. I loved Emilia’s backstory super interesting. Pandora is a freaking cutie but I also hate her. Young Emilia deserved better 😞😞😞😞. I’m glad Subaru is finally making progress and I can’t wait for the next volume to see Beatrice get saved! Also Garf finally met his sister again it’s pretty good!
36 reviews1 follower
August 15, 2020
After watching and reading the novel and the tv series adaption. I got to say, Re: zero has got to be my best read novel of all time. Without a doubt, this novel has stolen the special spot I've placed Evangelion on. In this novel and the rest of them introduces a cast of characters that blew my mind away, although it wasn't something I've never seen before, but the way the story makes them interact with each other just blows my mind. This is my biased review on the current state of Re:zero 2020.
Profile Image for Eric Wegner.
76 reviews8 followers
October 24, 2020
I want more!

The world building was great and not having Subaru due was refreshing.
Profile Image for Monday.
11 reviews
November 13, 2020
This made me cry more than previous volumes. I loved every part of it.
Every characters in this volume fleshed out so well. My dear Emilia is the best.
Profile Image for Ricardo Matos.
471 reviews4 followers
February 18, 2021
Took me forever to finish this one. I just couldn’t get into the flashback part... plot was predictable and boring. Final chapters were interesting and setup the conclusion of the arc in volume 15
Profile Image for Rayiull Gutierrez.
53 reviews18 followers
March 5, 2024
La cúspide de la literatura ficticia, Emilia tqm gracias por echarle ganas a la vida; Petelgeuse y Fortuna perdón por tan poco
31 reviews
August 10, 2025
what a great plot twist and AMAZING backstory that gives so much depth to emilia as a character and how tragic she really is

also pandora's debut was hype
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
1 review
February 28, 2021
Muchas revelaciones

Este tomo presenta revelaciones tanto de los protagonistas como las nuevas introducciones. Interesante tomo, espero que no decaiga este ánimo.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews

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