Re Zero Volume 6 After reading discussion

First of all, congratulation for finishing the sixth volume of Re Zero :tada:

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In short, I want to have everyone’s opinion on Re Zero book 6 and on the book club in general.

Here are some rules
-This is a friendly discussion, not a debate about who is wrong or right so respect is compulsory.
-Some of these questions ask for Constructive comments not insults. Again respect is compulsory
-Your opinion is important so please speak up.
-Have fun.
-Do not spoil future books. If you speak about future expectation please use the spoiler tag.
-Since the book is about the first volume…
WARNING THIS WILL CONTAIN SPOILER ABOUT VOLUME 6

How did you like the book(1 = very bad, 10 = perfect)

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I would like if you can describe in more details your experience so here are some guideline. These are only guidelines you don’t need to use them but I can help you develop your opinion.

-Was the story plot good, interesting, made sense, captivating etc…
-The characters are well made, interesting, who is your favorite etc…
-The difficulty was good, too hard, too easy, grammar, vocab etc…

What difficulty was the book for you(1 = too easy, 10 = too hard)

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Next section is about the bookclub

How would you rate the Bookclub in therm of usefulness, fun, organisation(1 = worst book club, 10 = best book club)

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GuideLines
The bookclub is well made,easy to find/know, etc…
The bookclub is interesting, fun, etc
The bookclub is useful for learning, etc…

The last one is mostly to help me.

What did you think of me as the manager of bookclub(1 = worst, 10 = best) This poll is obviousy anonymous.

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As the manager of the book club I want to know if there is anything I can do to make the book club more interesting for you guys. (Please be kind to me :sob:) I’m asking for a way for me to get better, for example, more details, more organization, change some things in my way of doing things etc… I can accept critics so I won’t be mad if you say I’m bad :sob:
How do you like reading aloud?

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How do you rate the usefulness of reading aloud

  • Very uselful
  • Useful
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So yeah, I will be waiting to read about what you have to say :smile:

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Well I’m sorry but I feel like I’m all out of things to say. :smiley:

I loved this volume, it’s probably my favorite so far. I’m really looking forward to the rest of this arc now. ^^

I just loved Rem, and Subaru, they both got that much more human in this volume, especially towards the end. Depression isn’t a fun topic, but I think re zero has been treating it well so far.

Yup that’s it. :slight_smile:

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I found the book really good. There was always something happening that kept the tension up. One thing I realise is that the realtionship Suaru x Emilias and Subaru Rem are really similar. Subaru see Emilia as some kind of saint and Rem see Subaru as a grand person. They both(Emilia and Subaru) don’t believe they are that great and wonder how great they must be in the other eyes. Again showing how great Nagatsuki Teppei is. When I started reading light novel recently, I found out how great he was.

I also liked when Subaru and Rem were talking. There was a lot of rope to untangle but Subaru realised that he hated himself. He remember why he decided to join Emilia in the first place(Even if Rem is definitly better) That scene was so nice. I even put some sad anime music as background and it was perfect. I normally hate these kinds of scenes but that one was so well made I couldn’t stop reading. The best one in the serie until now(which will obviously change because the author is getting better and better) I can’t give a 10 because for me 10 would be perfection and I don’t believe that it’s something that should be easily given but then again I can not find default to the book. I definitively not regret starting this bookclub

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Well, looks like I haven’t commented in the past couple weeks, so I thought I’d post my thoughts into the after book discussion.

The first parts of the volume went as well as expected, Subaru failing over and over again, plan after plan. Things got really interesting towards the end of the book though. By the time he died after losing Rem yet again and indirectly killing Emilia himself, he finally lost it and realising nothing he does will work. Thankfully Rem was there to pick up Subaru and support him like he supported her in the past. She reminded him of who he really is. Subaru was finally able to reflect on his life and what went wrong. Definitely a turning point for him. I liked the part with Rem saying to Subaru “ゼロから始めよう” :smiley: After this, I don’t remember the exact Japanese, but it said something along the lines of “This is the start of Subaru’s story”. @mrahhal said that up to now, this was the prologue, if I remember right?

At the end, after regaining his resolve and a new perspective, Subaru started to carry out his plan to rescue Emilia (not just for his own vanity this time). When he went to Krush’s, and started negotiating, and actually succeeding, I was like, who would’ve thought Subaru had some other powers, negotiation powers even? There’s hope for him yet :smiley:

I’m looking forward to the next book. I’m curious to see how Subaru will persuade Krush that his information on the white whale is correct (that is if Krush finds this information valuable in the first place. I mean, everyone hates the white whale, so…)? And, of course, I want to see what Subaru can achieve from now on, with his new found resolve and perspective. I gotta say, this character building is top-notch, not to mention the world building. This author is truly amazing.

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That’s right. And it’s so fitting. It’s the cherry on top that at that exact moment comes the title drop of the whole series.

Building upon what all of you said, the ゼロから chapter is just something else. It’s not like I haven’t seen this particular idea imagined before in literature or fiction, but for me this one is truly a landslide ahead of everything else, in particular with how it builds up to this moment.

As a comment on what @Jaiced said regarding the final chapter, the negotiation. What I really loved about this is how the author still managed to build for it even in the midst of the despair between volume 5 and up to ゼロから. We still got little pieces of information from time to time that レム was doing something behind the scenes, and by the end it gets revealed that she’s actually been leading negotiations by orders from Roswaal. So it’s not like Subaru had to start from scratch, most of the pieces were already laid out, but he contributed the 白鯨 piece, which could be the last missing one. This just shows how well thought out the story is, hats off to 長月先生. I also was personally satisfied with this because the anime made it appear as if the solution came up from nowhere, so I have always thought something was missing here. Glad the novel cleared this up 100%.

From here on out, this is a white -but admittedly not so white- canvas for Subaru. This is the real start, and even though ゼロから gave him what he really needs to start moving forward, it’s not like the solutions to the problems will magically appear out of thin air (and it’s not like there won’t be even more problems). But this is what’s nice about this, I’m looking forward to see how the story will tackle the myriad of other complications and how Subaru will grow as a result.

What do you know, I thought I had nothing else to say here.

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Yes, but at the same time, I’m super weary of this one. How will he prove that he can get that information? And it’s not like he can get it reliably, it’s just that one time, and it’s going to happen really soon, so that info doesn’t even carry that much value.
At the same time, I guess it’s a way to get them to come along (“come see for yourself if you don’t believe me!”) which would then get some extra people around the place where the cult is going to be… but at the same time, none of that is going to be particularly sustainable in the long.

Regarding Subaru growing as a character, that part was nice indeed, but I still wish he had gone ahead and left for a few years. Then time skip and we get an older, more mature Subaru, who gets thrown back in the story against his own will.
Of course, that’s not exactly possible because Emilia is going to die if he does that, and she has plot immortality (modulo resets).
I’m still hoping we’ll have a time skip at some point. I don’t really want to have to witness Subaru being useless for that much longer.

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Mood. :joy:

But useless with a side of self reflection and actual character growth doesn’t sound quite so bad.

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But then, even if he decided to get better (rather than having giving up from the start), it should take years for his efforts to materialize into anything. And in the mean time, he will remain a level 1 peon.

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Patience my friend. Everything comes with time. If they would just time skip then Subaru became magically broken it would be destroying one key component I like about the character. He can’t fight, not the brigthest, nor the coolest but he does what he can to secure a futur that he want. I like his character growth. I believe it a a key component of the story. I feel the time skip is the easy way out.

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I don’t think so. Even if you time-skip, he isn’t going to be overpowered. He still has barely any magic to speak of, and training everyday would get him to soldier level 2 rather than peon level 1.
That’s not enough to deal with the main antagonists of the story, but at least it will open up his repertoire of skills a little. So, more fun to be had.

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I realize this is not what you’re saying, but - it’s not that easy to ‘get over’, or get better at dealing with depression. Deciding to take action, and then actually taking action is a very valid first step. As is having someone like Rem at your side who won’t give up on you… Time skips can be useful, and necessary at times, but I think at this point in the story it would haven taken away from it for me. I think if Subaru had gone away right then, while he may have grown eventually, he’d be just as likely (if not more so) to just… not. He’s already shown during his first NEET life and these first volumes that self improvement for its/his own sake isn’t enough to push him into action. It’s always been for someone or something else. (Not that I’m saying this is a healthy mindset, just that he’d have to get over this first (or experience a suitably traumatic event, and look what traumatic events already didn’t cut it) for believable growth in isolation, and then grow on top of that - I think a couple years wouldn’t cut it.

I’m fine with waiting for growth (now that it looks like he’ll stop spinning his wheels at least), and I think it’s interesting to have a main character with a believable growth ratio (if a beyond average, mediocre start), in a world of fantasy and amidst a super strong cast.

I’m pretty fond of coming of age stories. Though Subaru is of age already, physically.

So, I don’t mind watching the process happen, so to speak. It does mean the focus can’t be on the traditional overpowering of enemies, or even outsmarting of them really, haha. At least not by our main character. I like this aspect of the series, since it means lots of character interaction ideally.

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There are two independent things I’d like to comment on.
Re: depression

I agree 100% with that. And, in real life, there would be a lot of challenges from there onward. It’s 1.1 steps forward 1 step back all the way. Well, I don’t want to sit through that. Thank you book, but I have my own problems. (So, time skip away!)

Second thing:

Well, I don’t know about that. I feel going away is going to be plenty challenging anyway. Just not world-class challenging. Also Rem would be with him anyway, and I really think it could have the way she said. They could have had a happy life (if it weren’t for the impeding doom coming a few days later). And then, with a few years of extra experience, they could have just got back in the fray somehow. (This plot development brought to you by Robin Hobb).

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:joy:

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I actually like that it’s not like this. He’s forced to deal with it right now, he does’t have the luxury of spare time to grow and mature, and this forces radical changes -even if not tangible at first- in a short time. He needs to change right there and then. This doesn’t really work in real life, you do need time to reflect and mature and this can be boring depending on how it’s handled, but he has it in the form of return by death, so as long as the story remains clever, even the cliched self-reflection can be well done.

I do agree that a time skip here feels like the easy way out honestly.

I’m now allowed to say that there’s an IF story exactly about this, you’ll encounter it in one of the volumes in the main series as an imaginative what-if chapter :grimacing:

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how did you even come across that post :eyes:

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That sounds like it’s not happening then and I am sad face :frowning:

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(I try my hardest to speak from the point of view of someone who’s reading alongside the club. Maybe it’ll happen after this volume, don’t lose hope :stuck_out_tongue:)

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I really like your explanation. The character can’t just relax and think it throught. He need to act fast and accurate but he does not have the skill for it. Every time he lose he must pass throught another trauma.(pain or death, loss of friend, harsh reality) It’s really hard to write about these kind of psychological change in character between of how complicated the human psych his. Also because here will always be someone that will say : “No I wouldn’t have done that” or “That is not realist”.(Seen these on comments of the anime) So it’s easier to just time skip no more problem now the hero is op no need to explain. I really like that he is really going throught with it and we can understand what make Subaru Subaru and we can kinda live in him. We can especially live in him when we realise at the same time as Subaru what is happening whitout him realising it.(The spoon scene or the denial of the death for example which were super nice made) So yeah no time skip for me now. We also have the king/Queen election so I don’t think he can affort a huge time skip anyway.

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I knew I shouldn’t have revealed myself! I read (skim) every post in the reading category ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ helps me keep regular status while sticking to things I’m fairly interested in

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I mean, we’re right in the middle of something. I don’t expect a time skip before the end of this arc. And now that you mention it, I think there was a small time skip after the previous arc, so that sounds reasonable indeed.

I don’t understand what you mean by that :thinking:

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