This second entry starts slow but ramps up hard for a solid finish
Creative Staff
Story: Tappei Nagatsuki
Illustrations: Shinichirou Otsuka
Translation: ZephyrRz
What They Say
Breaking free of his death loop in the royal city, Subaru awakes in an opulent mansion, being tended to by the twin maids Ram and Rem. After sustaining terrible injuries, he has been taken to the home of the Margrave Roswaal, Emilia’s guardian. The two maids, along with the young librarian Beatrice, are the sole guardians of the mansion’s forbidden library, but their quiet, peaceful days come to a violent end when another cycle of death begins! Subaru is the only one who remembers the time he’s spent with the people he cares about, but will he be able to save them?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
This time around, Subaru kicks off in more pleasant circumstances, waking up in a bed in a mansion. That said, he does run into some trouble with a confusing corridor that ends with him entering an archive. Within that room is a little girl, who has a brash conversation before messing with the mana in his body, knocking him out. When he wakes up again, though, he’s greeted by two twin maids, Ram and Rem. And thus he’s properly introduced to his surroundings, which it turns out is the manor of Margrave Roswaal, a rather eccentric noble. Through him, we learn a little more about the world, including the fact that Emilia is actually a candidate for queen of the nation operating under his support. Oh, and we also learn that the girl from before is named Beatrice, and is in charge of the forbidden library that warps around the mansion. To wrap things up, we finally get Subaru asking to have his favor of saving Emilia repaid by letting him work in the manor, thus at least putting him in a stable position. And then the book just kind of flows from there for a while, with Subaru getting closer to each member of the cast bit by bit over the course of a few days. This all works okay enough, and is definitely important for getting to know the new core cast members and feel at least somewhat attached, but it just takes a bit too long for anything especially interesting to get rolling. Which is to say, it’s about 90 pages of Subaru learning basic household chores before his first loop hits, and it happens somewhat gently. So this most certainly isn’t an exciting or gripping way to pull in readers at all, which is a shame.
The second loop does at least begin on a somewhat interesting hook, in that Subaru actually has no memory of dying. So it makes things at least a little enigmatic, as he’s left trying to figure out what happened, and if he possibly looped without death, making it harder to prevent. We of course eventually learn that he died in his sleep, which isn’t too hard to guess, but it’s still an interesting little way to play with the idea of how his power works before it’s too set in stone. Sadly, though… this loop doesn’t really add much for most of its duration either. We do get the seeds of Subaru learning to read, and a few more moments between the characters that differ slightly, but it’s mostly just Subaru trying (and failing) to replicate his first time around. Still, at least at the end we do get a hint that something more brutal is going on. Even so, we’ve got more slow moments of character interaction filling up the run time until past page 130, so it’s no understatement to say that this volume really takes some time to get rolling.
With the third loop, though, things thankfully start to pick up big time. That of course includes actual action getting pulled into the mix, but we also get some real proper payoff from the character development, as it’s here that we get a real decent look at Ram and Rem. In particular, there are some nice little bits of using fairy tales to flesh out the world and also draw parallels with the members of the cast subtly, which is a really nice touch. Plus near the end of the book we also get a neat moment that answers the question of “why doesn’t he just open up to someone?” while also adding some serious intrigue in the process. And to top it all off, things pull to a rather interesting and different sort of close this time around, showing some real promise for next time.
In Summary
While the first volume may have felt like a thrill ride from beginning to end, this feels more like a steady chain lift at the start of a rollercoaster, with the first big drop hitting in the back third, while most of the momentum is saved for the next entry. Which is to say, the book spends its first 130 pages (and a good number after) on a rather slow slice of life sort of introduction to the new life in which Subaru finds himself. I can see the necessity to pull us into caring about the characters, but it honestly drags on for way longer than it should. While the first book wasn’t throttling the action beginning to end, this time it honestly feels like hardly anything of note happens until more than halfway through. And yeah, when it heats up it DOES work really well, both in its slower and more action packed moments. Even something like Subaru learning basic reading is used to cleverly add depth to both the characters and the world, which is the sort of thing that could’ve worked well to add some spice to the first half. Plus we end on a really interesting moment brings some serious emotional punch while setting up a great lead in for next time around. All in all, I’d say the good is enough to drag up and counteract the bad, making this a solid volume overall, but it doesn’t quite live up to what we got in the initial entry in the series. And thus my recommendation is still to give it a shot if you liked what volume one had to offer. Just be warned that you’ll be in for a bit of a slog before you get to the good stuff.
Content Grade: B+
Art Grade: N/A
Packaging Grade: A-
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: November 15th, 2016
MSRP: $14.00
