YMMV / The Death Mage Who Doesn't Want a Fourth Time

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • The god Alda. Is his desire to eradicate mana from the demon king's world the best given the dangers monsters and dungeons present, or is he just a genocidal maniac trying to fight against the change that would allow people to actually coexist with said monsters and dungeons because of bigotry? Further, there are fans split on how capable he is given the 100,000 years of Medieval Stasis he's inadvertently caused, to the point fans can't agree over whether he's actually worse or better than Rodcorte, who though clearly sociopathic is at least capable as an administrator of transmigration.
  • Heinz of the Five Colored Blades. The fanbase can't decide if his atonement is genuine and Van is being an ungrateful prick, despite putting forward valid reasons for his suspicions, or if Heinz is just making himself feel better by running to the Orbaume kingdom, doing nothing of note and doing nothing to help actual people in need despite all his preaching. Their first proper meeting around chapter 200 indicates that it's both: He does intend to atone and help out, but his massive flaws get in the way of accomplishing anything.
• Angst? What Angst?: Vandalieu has all the hallmarks to be a complete wreck after being reborn for a third time and watching his new mother, the only Good Parent that he ever had, be burned at the stake, but he's surprisingly resilient and most of his interactions that don't involve combat or preparations against an enemy are pretty level headed. He's not exactly upbeat, in fact, considering the first skill that is maxed out is Mental Corruption he is borderline insane, but he's not a pool of angst either.
• Anticlimax Boss: Fidirg. When he realizes that he accidentally provoked Vandalieu, he put his heads on the ground and begs for forgiveness.
• Base-Breaking Character: Heinz is probably the most contentious character in the story with the reader's position on him being highly dependent on how much they empathize with the protagonist. On the one hand, as described, he seems to genuinely mean well and could be described as misguided at worst. On the other hand, he traumatized Vandalieu and seems intent on denying any personal responsibility for his actions, making him look like a massive hypocrite. Many fans wish for some kind of peaceful solution that is almost impossible to happen because of Curatos' rescue and getting a title of enmity from Vida herself, but others wish for him to suffer a horrible death for his crimes.
• Creepy Awesome: This story gets a hold of this trope and cranks it up to eleven.
• Draco in Leather Pants: Heinz manages to simultaneously be this and Ron the Death Eater. His characterization is so divisive that while it's not unusual for hatred of him to lead people into assigning flaws to him that he doesn't have, it's also common for his defenders to overlook the flaws he does posses, trying to make him more sympathetic than he is. For example, some people comment that he's spent his existence surrounded only by Alda worshipers without access to alternate points of view and didn't have years to reflect upon his actions. Despite the fact that he and his party broke into Orbaume, in which worshiping Vida is okay, Vandalieu points out that to get past the checkpoint unseen, Heinz had to go through the Scylla and Empusa territory in the Sauron Duchy, seeing with his own eyes how they were mistreated, and lastly, they ignore that Heinz is a swordsman, and actively goes into villages of Vida's races, in person, yet turns a blind eye to their straits to delude himself that they're inherently "evil" so he can slaughter them all, man, woman, child, to sell body-parts for cash.
• Fan Nickname: Due to their less than stellar track records, Rodcorte and Alda are called "Rodiot" and "Aldiot" by fans.
• Game-Breaker: Death Attributte Magic in Origin. Wars began because of it.
  • Vandalieu himself is also one, because aside from having Death Attribute Magic, he also has a mana pool in the hundred millions as soon as he was born. It is saying something that the Bravers, who have unique Game-Breaker skills themselves, who knew about Van find him more broken than themselves.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: B.O.B. from Monsters vs. Aliens said during his introduction that you don't need a brain, then he forgot how to breathe. Well, Vandalieu during chapter 236 showed he's capable of thinking without using his brain, using only his soul and Spirit Self. Turns out brains really are overrated, although he still needs to remind his body to breathe.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • The death attribute researchers in Origin jumped through them one after another, over almost two decades, in the way they abused and tormented not only "Experimental subject D-01" but a bunch of children who would become the 8th guidance. When their victims retaliated, the researchers were so morally bankrupt, they couldn't comprehend where they were wrong.
  • Heinz and party jumped through one on their introduction, especially in the manga, where they corner Darcia in the town square, and fire upon her for no reason whatsoever, and all of them throw a party when she's tortured and burned at the stake, only then does Heinz have some minor misgivings. Over the next 10 years, Heinz thinks he's climbing back out, but is only desperately fleeing from his own guilt, engaged in countless acts of mass-murder, the only on-screen heroic thing he's done is the killing of Ternecia, and that was kill-stealing from Van. He does rescue Selen, but only after presumably letting her parents die, since the narration states he had foreknowledge of the mercenaries attacking her home. By the time Heinz is made to realize his self-serving biases, he's at the core of the moral singularity, facing certain doom.
• Paranoia Fuel: Knochen's description is noted by many fans to be absolutely terrifying. Due to initially being based on the skeletons of small to mid-sized animals, it has mastered and transcended the "silent steps" skill, meaning it can sneak up on you completely unheard and unnoticed. Then after being the venue of an idol concert, the description reads that Knochen, if it so desired, is big and strong enough to single-handedly squash the capital of the Mirg-shield nation like a bug, and annihilate the entire country, with even an S-Class band of adventurers being unlikely to win a straight-up fight, due to starving to death before doing enough damage. Yeah, the idea of something the size of a mountain suddenly showing up undetected right atop your head and outlasting you in combat is a scary prospect indeed.
• Player Punch: A non-videogame example. Every time it looks like Heinz might have learned his lesson and has got some redeeming feature, word comes around to blow that conception away.
  • He attacks a woman, based purely on a hand-delivered letter and a wanted poster, or in the case of the manga, no reason at all, sells her to be tortured and burned alive, while the town he's in throws a party, all for cash. Making no effort to rescue her infant son, he flees in the middle of the night, disgusted with himself for letting himself be played as a fool, and breaks into another country.
  • He's been operating in Orbaume for a few years by the time we see him again in Nakiri, a dhampir in tow, trying to help others register at the adventuer's guild. Maybe he's changed, right? Well, no. Turns out while he was breaking into Orbaume, he completely ignored the plight of several Vida's races in dire straights, and while in Orbaume, numbed his pain by continuing to hunt Vida's races, entire villages at a time, to gain fame, money, and political clout.
  • He's on-screen shown hunting Ternecia, a genuine bad-actor, so maybe he's just misguided, and those villages were wiped out because he was fooled into thinking they were a legitimate threat, and he didn't have the leeway to investigate? Not so much. Juliana and Berger, guild master of Morski, reveal that Heinz wiped out a village of Lamia, not because it was a guild request, and he was getting paid for it, but simply because they were Vida worshipers, in Orbaume, where Vida's church is legal, and he did it for free. The response of the fanbase? What the hell, Heinz?
• Ron the Death Eater:
  • Heinz is a very flawed person, but numerous fans carry a rabid hatred for him due to the story being so wrapped up in Van's POV. It's not unusual for him to be assigned flaws that he simply does not possess because surely he must have done some terrible thing or another.
  • Bellwood got a lot of hatred before his actual appearance in the story proper given how screwed up the world he ended up creating is, with accusations that he was The Sociopath, an insane Eco-Terrorist, a Manipulative Bastard, the true Big Bad, and so on. The actual Bellwood however turns out to just be another in a long line of deeply flawed antagonists, who had himself come around to a My God, What Have I Done? and It's All My Fault mindset after realizing just how many people he had hurt through uninformed decisions and misunderstandings.
  • Jarodips, the Evil God of Sinful Chains, was also expected to be a major villain and more or less The Heavy of the Demon King Army Remnants, given they had personally taken out Bellwood. The actual Jarodips however turns out to be an Anti-Hero much like Van: a fundamentally empathetic god who was only trying to protect their believers, which was made up pretty much exclusively of people who had been trampled on by those in positions of power. Further, all they actually did to Bellwood was show the heroic god the true enormity of the suffering he had inflicted on others, causing a permanent Heroic BSoD.