This week I continued Re:ゼロ vol. 1, reading from page 45 to 164. I’ve already seen the anime (twice) so I already know everything that’s going to happen, but the author’s writing style is enjoyable and I’m quite enjoying this reread.

Having now died once and been revived by his 死に戻り ability, スバル’s debt to the girl who calls herself サテラ should theoretically be wiped out, but he still intends to retrieve her stolen badge and return it to her. He pursues フェルト (the girl who stole it), gets to know ロム爺 (the fence facilitating the exchange), but is ultimately killed again by エルザ, the woman who contracted the theft in the first place, and left with nothing to show for his trouble.

Obviously, once the world resets, nobody will remember スバル or anything he’s done, but through talking to フェルト and ロム爺, he’s come to understand them and even care about them.

There was one particular passage which stuck out to me (translation mine):

His body refused to move.
If only he could, he would rush to Felt's side and tend to her wounds.
Maybe it was already too late.
If only he could, he would reach out and close the lids on her wide-open eyes.

Even paralyzed with fear, in the depths of despair, Subaru’s good character still comes through.

For manga, I read Gantz vol. 20 through 25. The Gantz team has been transported to Osaka this time and end up having to fight alongside the Osaka team, who are all a bunch of awful bastards. There was a lot of overly thick kansai dialect in this arc and was honestly pretty irritating.

Finally, I watched five episodes of Naruto. Rock Lee’s drunken boxing moment was pretty fun but nothing else really stuck out.