Re:Zero - Starting Life in Another World

A free web serial the anime has been chasing for ten years

The source is a free web novel, posted chapter by chapter on Shōsetsuka ni Narō since 20 April 2012 and still running: 782 chapters by May 2026, nine story arcs finished and a tenth under way. Tappei Nagatsuki publishes it there under the pen name Nezumi-iro Neko, Grey Cat. MF Bunko J began printing it in January 2014, and White Fox began adapting the printed edition in April 2016, opening on an episode stretched to fifty-two minutes.

The adaptation has changed hands along the way: Masaharu Watanabe directed the first two seasons, and Masahiro Shinohara took over from the third. Between the two, in early 2020, the studio recut the twenty-five episodes of season one into thirteen of about fifty minutes, with altered scenes and some added footage.

The Story

Subaru Natsuki, an unemployed young man with no training of any kind, is summoned into the kingdom of Lugunica. He is killed within hours while helping Emilia, a half-elf standing for the throne, and wakes several hours earlier. Nobody else keeps the memory of that death, and he keeps all of it, pain included.

The fourth season adapts the sixth arc, volumes twenty-one to twenty-five of the MF Bunko J edition, which reached forty-five volumes in June 2026. Its first eleven episodes ran from 8 April to 17 June 2026, and the remaining eight started on 12 August. Three finished arcs of the web serial are still waiting their turn.

The Ideal Audience

The German releases carry an FSK 16, and the BBFC's content advice lists severed heads and limbs, bloody images and references to sexual violence. The loop is a torture device rather than a convenience, and the series is at its most interesting when it counts what one reset costs Subaru. We would point it at viewers who want a long fantasy series that hurts, and away from anyone looking for a light one.