One year after the battle in the Sanctuary, a message arrives from Anastasia-an invitation for Emilia and her supporters to visit the city of Priestella. There, they will meet many familiar faces and see many amazing sights. As they take in the sights and rekindle old friendships, malevolent forces lurk behind the scenes. What new tragedy does fate have in store for them?
I have read the WN so I know that this volume is important buildup for the action packed arc ahead. This volume sets things up perfectly for the upcoming battles
I do not mean sad as in tear-jerking like previous volumes. The series has sadly reached it's low point. Arc 4 was action-packed, filled with amazing plot twists and story-telling that could be enjoyed fluidly like Echinda's tea. In contrast, beginning of arc 5 feels like being hungry and having to drink eerily sweet water from a mud pool instead. And you do not get to taste mud until the very end.
It will not be a major spoiler to say there has been a 1 year gap between events of volume 15 and 16 - the tension from recent events has subsided. Nagatsuki-sensei often mentioned in his afterwords that he would prefer to focus on daily, happy life for a change. That is precisely what we got in volume 16 but, oh boi, done in the most cringy and unoriginal way possible. The volume is literally a summer vacation/beach episode you would find in most anime series but done over 200 pages in a book format.
Ever wondered how it would be to spend some time with our cast in a ryokan? I did not. Main female cast in yukata? Soooort of. Ever thought about having Subaru, Emilia and Beatrice go to an isekai concert? Never crossed my mind. Ever considered there maybe different species of dragons with distinct behaviors and why there have been people from Japan arriving in the Re:Zero isekai world apart from Subaru? Well, I definitely gave it more thought than the guy himself.
Removing last 15 pages literally nothing of note happens and even when it seems the slice of life will get some sort of a deeper development we are interrupted by an absolutely out-of-the-blue appearance of a character that by pure accident got the info of the main cast's whereabouts and decided to jump in at PRECISELY the moment. . . . . . . . . . . . I have no words for this sort of plot convenience that serves LITERALLY NO PURPOSE other than introduction.
Apart from making me sad, this volume of Re:Zero was also a learning experience. I have learned what I dislike about this otherwise near perfect series - the uneven mixture of originality and reprint of mindless cliches. Volume 16 blend is unfortunately the latter.
I rated the book 2/5 based on pure and blind faith in phenomenal world-building of Re:Zero. Future work of Nagatsuki-sensei will make up for it, I am more than certain.
Admittedly, as a fan of ReZero I'd heard about Priestella the city of Water but i'd honestly not expected something as grand of a scale as was described in the book, if I were to go into detail I'd be here all day but think interlinking highways of water that are working like clockwork all set around circular city that is built up around said waterways. The ideas described in this volume are astounding to me.
And it's the beginning of a grand set up as all the candidates for the Royal Selection are here coincidentally at the same time and all of them are working together - sort of - and there are big character spanning dynamics that are started here, people who are going to be clashing due to their type of life compared to the other being what they are, it's all just grand and fantastic. We get the development we've all been clamouring for, more of the Archbishops being revealed and more of them being utterly terrifying Sirius, Archbishop of Wrath not going to give more than that but damn...her power is SCARY.
There's one thing I want to talk about, as the translation of a relationship I have serious doubts turns to "Moppet Mage", but I'm guessing that like words like Chuuninbyo and Iyashikei, whatever the pairing of Subaru and Beako is doesn't have a direct English term so I'm stuck listening to this version. On their relationship I absolutely LOVE it, the joy and love the pair show each other, with them both being so damn clingy to each other and being the same playful banter is the cutest thing I have ever seen and it is why I put her as number 2 of best girls in this series (though I'll freely admit these volumes adds to that list with their adorableness) and there's not much else to say, on to Vol 17
The book himself didn't really interest me much, there weren't big moments or anything *particularly* new, there was definitely some interesting world building and a set up for the next arc, it introduced to us the main characters, at least some of the antagonists and set the stage.
I can't say I particularly enjoyed it, but a good arc need a good setting, and it did do excellent job in introducing the setting, you could say the reason I didn't like it wasn't that it wasn't good, but that I just saw the set up without getting to the payoff yet.
If there is one major complaint I can have about the story, is Subaru's and Emilia's relationship, I don't know if it was different in the prior light novels, but I did come here from the end of the second season of the anime, and I was really excited to see how their relationship changed after that season, the answer seemed to me that it didn't, it didn't feel like season 2 particularly affected their relationship despite a one year timeskip.
So like, Subaru met her for a relatively short time in the start, since there he had touching confession in season one that while she didn't accept, she also didn't reject, we see their growing relationship in season 2 with her growing trust in him, culminating in a shared kiss (which is functionally having sex as she was concerned at the time), and now a year later and... Nothing, that really annoyed me, since I dislike character arcs and developments regressing, but after he made so much progress in such short amount of time, it is disatisfying seeing it all seemingly disappear and going back to early season 2 levels.
Este volumen de la obra se podría considerar principalmente desarrollo del ambiente de la misma porque se centra en el entorno político de esta.
Este enfoque parte desde la invitación de Anastacia a la ciudad, la aparición del padre de Reinhard y las implicaciones políticas de su alineación conforme al reino además de la relación entre Reinhard y Wilhelm.
Gran parte del libro se ve envuelta en la exposición de Pristella, la ciudad, y se nos revela que la existencia de la misma parte de una persona que contó con el mismo destino que el protagonista porque se nos cuenta la ciudad cuenta con elementos japoneses.
El 95% de este libro se enfoca en lo anterior y en cómo las facciones buscan conseguir sus objetivos, con el del protagonista siendo conseguir una gema para darle resguardo a Puck, y el último 5% sirve para introducir a Sirius, la nueva villana de la serie, que brinda una aparición bastante impresionante después de la exposición a la que nos enfrentamos anteriormente.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
This is basically a setup novel for the new arc, but even so, it was kind of meh. The concept of bringing all the royal selection candidates in one place was interesting, and the climax that sets up the new villain was great, but that’s only a minuscule portion of the novel. The rest is boring slice of life. I’m not opposed to slice of life, and taking a break after the insanity of arc 4 was needed, but the events that happened here were not interesting to read. It didn’t help that Liliana was annoying a fuck too. I’m sure the rest of the arc will be great, but this volume felt like 10% importance, 90% filler.
If you thought the pacing in the anime was bad, HO BOY do I not recommend reading this. The last few pages were very exciting, and I suspect the next volume will be good. But geez... it took a very, very long time to get there.
Awesome start of a new arc and it’s awesome how Subaru has evolved and how people have com to respect him. Some of the secondary characters get a lot of development. This is just the series that keeps on giving :)
Definitely one of the slower starts to an arc that took me a bit longer than usual to get into but the second half of this was great. Sirius seems like such a sick character in a lot of ways and I'm really interested how the rift between Reinhard and Wilhelm will be explored as the arc plays out.
A very slow start to the next arc, and I can't tell if it is the translator or source writer proper who is obsessed with telling rather than showing, but I hope that this isn't something that will bother me for books to come.
A calm start to the (currently) most action-filled arc of Re:Zero, finally a brief chance to breathe after the non-stop suffering of Subaru and the gang.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
This volume wasn’t just a slice of life, it was the whole cake ! But dude, slice of death was definitely in there, and it’s taste was nothing to scoff at.
Reread: 4,5 Sterne Nach dem ersten Mal lesen: 4 Sterne
Der Beginn des fünften Arcs hat die schwere Aufgabe, einen riesigen Haufen an alten Figuren wieder einzuführen und im besten Fall gleich weiterzuentwickeln. Und dieses Ziel wird meisterhaft geschafft. Die Masse an Charaktermomenten, neuen Dynamiken und Entwicklungen ist der Hammer. Man merkt wirklich das sich die Welt während des Zeitsprunges weiterentwickelt hat.
(+) - Wir fangen an, Priscillas Komplexität zu sehen - Alles mit der Astrea Familie - Großer Fokus auf Slice of Lift und Humor - Das Ende ist eine der abstoßendsten und weirdesten Szenen überhaupt
(-) - Wenn man es zum ersten Mal ließt, ist es ein sehr langsamer Beginn für den Arc