Title: Re:Zero, Chapter 3: Truth of Zero Vol. 5
Author: Tappei Nagatsuki (Story), Daichi Matsuse (Art)
Publisher: Yen Press
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 144
Genre: Shounen, Battle, Fantasy
Publication Date: November 13, 2018
The Story
The moment we’ve all been waiting for has arrived! Subaru finally has his mental breakdown! The culmination of everything up until this point finally causes Subaru to snap! But what happened in volume five that served as the final straw to break the camel’s back?
After escaping the White Whale and making it into town, Subaru is completely banged up. Blood loss, dislocated shoulder, the whole nine yards. Subaru collapses and when he wakes up he finds himself in the comfort of Ram who tells him that Emilia healed his wounds. Subaru wants to know what happened to Rem but Ram has no idea who he’s talking about. Subaru thinks that Ram is playing a game but she really has no memory of Rem. Eventually, Subaru goes to see Emilia and she, too, has no idea who Rem is. Subaru doesn’t care anymore and reveals his curse about Returning by Death to Emilia. Subaru, somehow, doesn’t feel the witch’s grasp on his heart after telling Emilia. Instead, Emilia coughs up blood and dies right there in front of him!
Beatrice discovers what happened and pins Subaru to be the murderer. Subaru begs Beatrice to kill him but she sends him and Emilia’s body away, telling him to go die on his own somewhere where she can’t see him. It is here that Subaru encounters Betelgeuse who engages Subaru in battle until Puck arrives and annihilates him!! Too bad Puck also kills Subaru unknowingly doing him a favor.
After Subaru returns by death, he’s back with Rem. He grabs her by the arm and starts running away with her until she demands to know what he’s doing. Then the moment that made me want to punch a hole through a brick wall happens. It happened when I watched it in the anime and I was begging and pleading for that to be an anime-only adaptation but alas, it was not because that moment happened here in the manga as well.
Subaru wants Rem to run away with her. He can’t deal with any of this and he feels that running away is the best option. Rem declines and then spends the better part of an entire chapter explaining to Subaru that he is everything to her. How she likes the way his eyes look, the way he walks, how he looks when he sleeps, all of the good things he has done, how Subaru is her hero and the only person she would ever love. How he was the man who unfroze her heart that felt like it was frozen by time itself. She spilled her entire heart and confessed her unwavering, undivided love to Subaru. His reply?
“I like Emilia”
Subaru… you really are a [expletive] idiot.
Oh, and the volume ends right after with Subaru asking the girl he just dumped to help her to which she reluctantly agrees instead of taking the correct route and breaking his neck so he could redo his answer and all that.
Characters
The big obvious here is that this volume focused on Rem and Subaru… as if that wasn’t evident enough by the volume’s cover.
Subaru finally understood the limits of his ability to change things. After failure after failure, he thought back and realized that all along, nobody wanted his help. Nobody asked for his help and, what’s even worse, is that nobody has ever said that they wanted him around. It’s because of this Subaru decides that running away was the best option. To give up on saving everyone and taking Rem with him as far away from it all as he can get.
Somehow I have the feeling that if Subaru were to do that, something would happen on his journey to where he would die and he would have been put right back where he was. Oh God, how I wish an option like that would have been explored. Can you imagine Subaru’s mindset after realizing that he couldn’t do anything to save Emilia AND he couldn’t do anything to run away from it all? To be denied the option of giving up would have truly broken him down to the lowest level but it never happened and I feel they missed a huge opportunity to explore that.
Rem took center stage here though with the confession of the century… possibly even the millennium. People take notes… if you truly love someone and want to tell them, this is the penultimate way to do it. Lay it all on the line! Rem’s feelings for Subaru as cemented her as best girl of not only this series but any other series in the history of manga that has a female character in it, regardless if it’s a romance story or not. You’ll never find another confession as pure as Rem’s nor will you find a girl who will go to the lengths she would just for the person she loves. That’s why when Subaru rejected her, you could just feel her heart ripping in half before him and yet, she still smiled. Tears were pouring from her eyes overseeing her future shattered in front of her and yet, she still smiled.
We truly don’t deserve Rem.
Puck also had some interesting dialogue when he was lecturing Betelgeuse. Apparently, we got a little piece of Emilia’s backstory and Puck’s reason for existing but it was merely just a tease more than an explanation. Still, it’s pretty interesting to know that there is more than one witch out there and it explains a little bit about Emilia’s looks, too. Can’t wait to see this expanded upon in the future!
Final Thoughts
Personal gripes aside, this was a pivotal moment in the series. My only complaint about it is that Subaru’s attitude seemed to flip a little too quickly. Rem just giving into Subaru’s request (or heck, Subaru even making a request after all that) seemed just so forced and unnatural. This was a shorter than normal volume so I felt that they could have explored this even more. Maybe have Subaru continue to doubt himself and get even more convincing from Rem before changing his mind about pressing forward to save Emilia. It really felt like: “I’m done. I can’t do this. -> I love you Subaru -> I love Emilia but I see your point. Help me -> Okay! -> Everything’s all better now” It just seemed so disjointed and rushed when there are much better ways to handle it.
Be that as it may, it seems like Subaru is renewed but there’s no indication of what he’s going to do in order to resolve this situation (although anime watchers already know what’s next and what I can tell you… it’s going to be amazing because, in the next few volumes, the anime ends which means this story will continue and we’ll get all-new material! YAY!… unless you’re a light novel reader. Then you have us all beat!)
The unknown is what I’m looking forward to the most but I also can’t wait to see the upcoming arc in black and white!
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This item was provided for review by Yen Press
