This Week in Anime
Did That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Peak Too Early?
by Nicholas Dupree & Andy Pfeiffer,
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime captured fans' hearts in its first half, but did its first season go out with more of a whimper than a bang? This week, Nick and Andy dissect the disappointment of this series' concluding arc.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network. Spoiler Warning for discussion of the series ahead. Not Safe For Work warning for language.
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Nick
Hey Andy? Do you. Know. What TIME it is?
Hey Andy? Do you. Know. What TIME it is?
Andy
Sigh...is it Slime time?
Sigh...is it Slime time?
IT'S SLIME TIME BABY
It's been a good long while since we checked in on That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, and both a lot and not very much has happened since then!
So much nothing has happened that I can hardly believe it! It's almost like it's a waste to make up cool story hooks and then instantly resolve them.
Yeah, Slime Time has never exactly been about big stakes, but it sure likes to pretend it is sometimes. But we'll get to that later. For now I wanna talk about the arc that we didn't quite get to see the end of last time: the Literal War Pigs.
Excuse me, I believe you meant Vore Pigs.
I don't make the rules in Slime-verse, so I'm sorry but the law of the land states that vore is the key to power.
It's not even Vore! They eat corpses, which is just regular old cannibalism, thank you very much. It's not like Rimuru's magic stomach of holding. ANYWAY, the point is there was a whole horde of hungry hogs huffing up havoc across the forest, and Rimuru ends up getting the quest marker for it from some tree lady, so he and his harem of de-monster-fied Oni were ready to kick ass and take names—excuse me, give out names.
Also this guy's here...
Fuck that guy. You know you suck when even Gobta shows you up.
So we've finally got a real conflict! The orcs are threatening the safety of all the monsters in the forest, and it's a big enough threat that these myriad races are forced to work together. Sure, Rimuru helps facilitate much of that, but even without him this is a solid story hook! But therein lines the main problem: Rimuru's got this.
Yeah, Rimuru's been overpowered from the start, which is fine when your conflict is mainly becoming a district manager for D&D monsters, but once you start trying to introduce life-and-death stakes, he sucks any tension right down his slimy gullet.
When a six-year-old rambles on about how cool and strong their Pokémon is, it's kinda cute and endearing. When a 30-year-old brags about how their gamesharked Mewtwo demolished the first gym, you just want him to shut up. I'm so sick of Rimuru's carefree face completely undercutting everything.
It's not great, and while the end of Geld's story tries to dig some pathos out of the whole thing, it also manages to make Slime Time less unique than it was. Like, I'm here for a dude trying to be a good boss to his growing horde of monster employees, but not so much The Apotheosis Of Rimuru.
Slime Time is somehow so aware of its own genre that it loops back around to being unaware. At the end of this, after easily eating Geld, Rimuru just throws his name onto the next orc, when that name was clearly a Demon Lord being an absolute dick and naming his pawn after being neutered.
At least he stays a pig man I guess, because only lady monsters have to turn fuckable.
Now that's a change I can get behind. All Hail Lord Rimuru, the Monster Girl Stopper.
I clearly disagree on the subject of Monster Girls, but are you sure you want to throw your vote behind the dude that somehow quantum paradoxes himself into getting a smooch from a 10-year-old?
I mean, if we're getting into the problematic stuff, then I guess we gotta talk about She of The Bare Asscheeks.
Ah yes, I was wondering if anything was going to be stronger than Rimiru to make this interesting, and the answer is an FBI watchlist.
There's clearly a need for her character type in the story! Power-wise, not in design. It says a lot that Beerus is a wonderful fit for Goku after multiple series of power creep, while Rimiru is barely through one cour and his destroyer god gets treated like a dumb sack of potatoes whose main purpose is to provide a smaller ass for everyone who doesn't enjoy tiddy shelf.
Milim's entire joke is to be a walking anti-climax. She's leagues more powerful than anyone else in the whole show, so Rimuru basically has to become her dad to keep her from tearing everything to hell. And in theory that's a funny idea, but it comes coupled with promises of larger political maneuvering and tension that never really panned out this season.
I'm more concerned with the daily lives and politics of the monsters, but that's not to say I don't appreciate some of the cooler dumb ideas that pop up in this show. I fucking loved seeing the gang work together to take down SKY SHARKS!
The problem is that not even five minutes later, you realize it's all a setup to show how much stronger Rimiru is than them, and even when Milim is used to overshadow him, it's still under Rimuru's discretion. Maybe don't introduce the concept of summoning Bismarck to rain terror from the skies and then resolve it a single episode later. It was shocking to see how nonchalant that whole affair played out after the effort that was put into the orc campaign, but in retrospect it makes sense given how pathetically the orc story ended.
Yeah, Rimuru being OP is fine when the stakes are "recruit talented contractors to fix up this armpit of a village", but when you have a cool anime fight with characters making speeches about risking their lives, your protag should at least look mildly interested.
Look, all I'm saying is this show would be 1000x better if Gobta was the main character.
Granted, this arc wasn't all bad. I do appreciate that Rimuru tries to put Milim in some actual clothes, and I wasn't kidding about him just becoming her dad.
Goofy character comedy like that goes a long way to buoy Slime Time's dearth of meaningful conflict, but it's still not used as well as it probably could be.
On the plus side, this arc does also give us some cool-looking monster feasts.
At the cost of some very dated humor.
I'm going with worse because Slime Time was far from first to the party on this one.
Light novels, where old memes go to die.
And also where children go to die!
That's right, let's talk about how Rimuru travels to Minas Tirith to teach at Hogwarts.
Yeah, this was where I think Slime Time officially dropped the ball hard. The Orc War and Milim stuff had its issues, but there was at least a sense of forward progression being made and some decent humor from the ensemble cast.
But then Rimuru teleports out of his Isekai light novel into a Magic School light novel like it's 2014 again.
All for the purpose of saving these kids bragging about his strength and bullying children into appreciating him, of course.
Now that part I can get behind. Noogie those twerps.
This arc did make me appreciate Great Sage more.
I had my reservations about the Shizu storyline in the first half, and this arc solidified them for me. Rimiru takes cleaning up her regrets as nonchalantly as he does voring monsters, despite the fact that these are pretty traumatized kids.
And that's not even getting into the full circle time paradox that is Chloe.
Yeah, that's where the show really fell hard on its ass. This is ostensibly a story about Rimuru bonding with and trying to save these doomed kids from the
fate that befell Shizu. But for that to work, the kids would have to be more interesting, with some kind of unique personalities or interiority. Instead, they're just static comic relief from start to finish.
fate that befell Shizu. But for that to work, the kids would have to be more interesting, with some kind of unique personalities or interiority. Instead, they're just static comic relief from start to finish.
Can we consider it a crime to reference a better anime in your own show? Don't remind me of a better way to spend my time!
It just wasn't an interesting storyline to follow. The ultimate solution to the kids' problem is found entirely without their involvement, requires no real action from them, and basically drops into Rimuru's lap after he fast-talks Mullet Tinkerbell.
The most egregious thing about all this is that after being transparently blatant with its many rapid-fire story beats, Slime Time tries to be subtle about a pretty obvious twist.
Yeah, I can't say I'm wild about weird prophesied hints that Rimuru is gonna make out with one of his students.
Our new fairy friend takes the time to explain that this is a mysterious SPIRIT FROM THE FUTURE who happens to look a lot like Shizu's teacher—who gave her that mask—the same mask that Rimuru then gives to young Chloe, while saying "she might grow up to be a hero!"
And then this happens. Yeah, maybe time isn't the only consideration here, slime-ball.
Yeah, that line may be less creepy than your average isekai protag slobbering over 12-year-olds, but it's still fuckin' creepy no matter how many paradoxes you throw in. And that's basically the end of the show! We've gotten a random side story about Shizu since then, and there's some sort of recap planned for the final episode, but the actual storyline's done until season two next year, and after that, I can't say I'm particularly enthused about watching more.
I've got another prediction for your future, Slime Time.
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