Sleeping on this series has to be some kind of crime! As shameful as it is to admit, we somehow missed the amazing isekai that is Re:Zero Kara Hajimeru Isekai Seikatsu (Re:Zero -Starting Life in Another World-).
Call us jaded, perhaps, considering so many isekai stories are all vaguely similar, but we expected Re:Zero to be another “summoned hero gets the girl” story—and we couldn’t have been more wrong.
Re:Zero is, to put it succinctly, a spiral of tragedy and death kept afloat by the hope of a brighter future. Our main character, Subaru, dies in a robbery gone wrong and is reincarnated into another world…devoid of any fantasy powers. Thinking his otaku dream is a trainwreck, Subaru is in for an even bigger shock when events lead to his untimely demise in this new world—and he reawakens hours before this new death.
Stuck in a variety of “time loops” that always end with his own gruesome murder, Subaru tries to make sense of this messed-up world and build new friendships. The series hits a high note in showing the trauma and anxiety inflicted upon Subaru with every loop, and the pain of others forgetting the time they’ve spent with him in previous loops.
Re:Zero is bleak, dark, and gritty; and where so many isekai have failed to impress us before, we’re left starstruck by the author’s bold, tragic writing. We might have been sleeping on this series, but we’re quickly ordering more volumes as fast as we can read them!
