Honestly, can't at all agree with the "Rei is a sociopath" idea.
Novel chapter 6, in my opinion at least, completely puts that theory in the water. I mean she decided to help out Yuu because she could understand how hard all of it was for her. It didn't do anything in regards to Claire's well being and in fact served to put both herself and Claire in some danger, yet she still decided to help out Yuu. Hell, she even went against what Claire herself wanted to do. Even beyond that the way she treats Lily in 8 clearly shows that she cares about her also.
Like, at least in the first WN she definitely has empathy and a clear desire to help others beyond just trying to protect Claire for her own selfish reasons.
But she also still sees this world as the world of a game and thus goes about her actions in a calculated manner as if playing said game. She knows where the story is heading and thus tries to act accordingly in order to reduce the amount of damage that happens as much as possible
I don't think this part is a spoiler since it only reiterates the beginning and the current chapter.
Rei knows the plot and events in the story and she can easily control the outcome in her favor anytime. Even with the current event where Lambert is behind the incident, Rei could have stopped him from the start, but if she completely stopped the natural flow of the plot, she will not be able to predict what happens next. She has to ensure the events occur chronologically and act accordingly with the minimum damage and above all protect Claire from the ending.
Even though I get how that can make for a more interesting character, and it's not like I was expecting or wanted her to actively try and stop the revolution, I just can't bring myself to like her. I don't know why, since I've definitely seen characters in other works that seem to be fixated on only a single person, with little care what happens to the rest *cough cough* Sorawo *cough*, who I've really liked. Maybe it's how this author seems to have gone out of their way to tell us practically nothing at all about this person, other than the fact that she likes Claire and wants to protect her. Like, who is Rei? At least in the manga, we know next to nothing about her and tbh this secrecy seems to only feed my dislike, rather than intrigue me. Also, the way she acts like two completely different people makes her usual behavior seem insincere to me. I'm not saying that it was, I'm just saying that, to me, her happy-go-lucky attitude —when she clearly knew what was coming and had probably been planning what to do all this time— feels fake. I can't believe I came to like the ohoho-ing ojousama more than her....
The biggest thing with Rei is that she's got abysmally low self esteem and she's not really an introvert at all; you don't see characters like that often but that pretty much explains why she's so hyper and self deprecating. Aside from the Cassandra problem she's really not in her head very much. She went from frumpy Japanese OL to frumpy self insert protagonist and doesn't think she has a chance with Claire anyway, she's just kind of enjoying things as they are and hoping to help Claire or keep her happy on some level.
For Rei, she thinks that the world is programmed to only give her a romantic route with the princes and the Claire is treated as a villainess for the entire plot, so she thinks her romantic route for Claire is non-existent. She is only focused on flirting with Claire and trying to protect her without considering that Claire can have the potential to have feeling for her. Like the incident with the slime attack during the class training, Rei was supported by Claire even though the original game options were only the three princes.
last edited at Jan 28, 2022 2:13PM
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