Creative Staff
Story: Tappei Nagatsuki
Illustrations: Shinichirou Otsuka
Translation: ZephyrRz
What They Say
Let’s get this story moving. Alongside the people most important to him, a boy goes out to meet the same sunrise once more. Strengthening his resolve, Subaru returns to his first day in the mansion. Repeating his loop in the Roswaal household armed with his memories, Subaru attempts to only make the optimal decisions to avoid another tragedy, but his fear and obsession with evading death and failure are slowly warping him. While Subaru slowly falls apart trying to save everyone…who will save Subaru?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
As we join Subaru after the events of last time, he’s rather understandably not in the best mental state. Which is to say, he tries his best to fake being alright so nobody will suspect that he’s such a wreck, but all the while, he’s absolutely cracking and coming apart on the inside. With an act of compassion, though, Emilia helps to snap him out of it, giving him renewed motivation to do what he must. This all works well enough, though if I were to nitpick I’d say I’d prefer a bit more focus on the bonding between the two of them rather than the whole focus on how it’s embarrassing and all that both before and after. That said, though, that’s a pretty minor complaint, and the core scene here works well.
My big issue with the book, though, comes next, and that’s the quest to discover the identity of the shaman. And good lord does that ever drag, because it should’ve been abundantly clear midway through the last volume that of course it was the dog if you paid any attention. Yet even so, this time around Subaru’s left confused till the halfway point, and it just feels absurdly dragged out. I can accept that to some degree foreshadowing can be a good thing, and not everyone may catch on exactly as quickly as everyone else, but this is taken to such a ridiculous extreme that it’s a real problem that honestly holds back the book.
From that point on, things flow pretty straightforwardly, as Subaru and company end up in a big mix-up with what turns out to be a big old pack of demon beasts. There are a few little twists and turns, Subaru uses a nice little callback to something he’d done earlier in the book to finish things off, and we get a bit more backstory for the twins. It all does the job and works well enough, though I’d argue the actions of Subaru in particular are a little questionable, even if it does work out in the end. Which is to say… he largely ends up kind of useless, and you’re left questioning what he expected to do, despite the book of course making his presence eventually matter and help resolve things for the better. On the other hand, I will note that it’s actually kind of a neat “twist” to have Subaru turn out to be so surprisingly durable this time around, as I was certainly expecting at least one more death on the heap. So that was nice, seeing the book play a bit against expectations.
And then finally, we the book puts a bow on the story arc, tying up the loose ends while also throwing out a few tidbits to hint at where things are heading next. Which coincidentally also includes the revelation that Roswaal and Ram’s nighttime encounters were less indecent than previously implied. Which kind of bugs me that the book hinted at that in the first place as it’s fairly of creepy, but at least it had the decency to “clear that up.”
In Summary
This volume does a solid enough job following up the last book, but doesn’t really exceed strongly in any way. Which is to say, while there are some nice emotional scenes and action bits, it rarely goes beyond the call of what you’d expect. On top of that, there are also some minor frustrations, most noticeably a painfully obvious “reveal” from all the way back in last volume that gets dragged out way too long. I’d still ultimately say the good wins out and this is a solid enough entry that should hold fans over. But it’s probably the weakest of the three books so far, and I do hope that as things pick up in the plot, we also get a bit more tight writing and pacing to go alongside that.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: N/A
Packaging Grade: A-
Text/Translation Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: March 21st, 2017
MSRP: $14.00