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EP. REVIEW: That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Season 3


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Eilavel



Joined: 16 Apr 2024
Posts: 134
PostPosted: Sun Sep 08, 2024 7:12 pm Reply with quote
I know- I'm not claiming him as a pacifist or that he won't escalate. I was responding the the original suggestion that he will do so merely on the basis of "losing". Whereas when and why he escalates may not be correct but it is a bit more complicated than that.
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MFrontier



Joined: 13 Apr 2014
Posts: 13672
PostPosted: Mon Sep 09, 2024 12:31 pm Reply with quote
Souka as a tournament announcer is surprisingly effective. It's like she's effectively channeling her brothers' bombastity and dazzling personality in a way that works for her...while also being absolutely cute. It's nice to see her doing something that's not being a ninja or crushing on Soei.

Imagine coming up with an "Elite Four" designation purely to placate your members too OP to participate in the tournament by making them think they're even bigger deals.

Bovix and Equix take their rivalry to the tournament and things get violent...but Equix learned that when you mess with the bull, you get the horns. And a great advertisement for the dungeon, in which they are bosses!

It's oddly kind of refreshing seeing one of Rimuru's posse actually lose a fight for once, though admittedly Geld was up against a former Demon Lord.

I love how Milim made Carrion, I mean, "Lion Mask," participate in the tournament because she knew she couldn't get away with it. And he's defeated with wrestler logic.

Raphael seems to be holding back from spoiling to Rimuru what Gobta has up his sleeve that can even the odds with Masayuki...and Gobta seems like the type to have a come from behind victory, but I feel like they've talked up Masayuki vs Rimuru so much that I'd be shocked if Masayuki loses.
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Jabootu



Joined: 17 Jan 2024
Posts: 239
PostPosted: Mon Sep 09, 2024 12:39 pm Reply with quote
It's nice writing that Rimuru is so overpowered but still held back by certain personality traits. At one time it was trying too hard to believe the world could be made amenable with good will alone. He's gotten past that, but his tendency to make assumptions and stick with them until they blow up in his face continues on. Good grief, he was clowned by Milim, of all beings, even as several others were trying to tell him she was faking being mesmerized by Clayman. (Also, he needs to stop being so mean to her. Milim is a sweetie pie.)

He usually gets away with it to some degree, but I doubt that state of affairs will continue forever. It says something that the Great Sage decides not to even bother trying to correct his assumptions anymore, figuring he won't listen until he gets his face rubbed in it. Even now, when he should have learned not to ignore the Sage, he still does so. Gobta is the primary student of Hakurou, for Pete's sake. If Gobta was the complete ass Rimeru still views him as it's hard to see that being the case. Hakurou is not one to suffer fools gladly.

On another topic, surely Rimuru has been suspicious of Yuuki since at least his first fight with Hinata. During this she revealed that she had been informed that Rimuru was at least representing himself as someone who came from Japan. How many people knew of this at that point to so inform her? Yuuki would have been one of a very small list.
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Jabootu



Joined: 17 Jan 2024
Posts: 239
PostPosted: Mon Sep 09, 2024 1:33 pm Reply with quote
Eilavel wrote:
Yeah...Rimirus slaughter was definitely wrong, but he over-retaliated out of feelings of loss and protectiveness. Its at least not the same as doing it out of mere pride at any loss, which he's clearly much less bothered about.


Hmm. First of all, I'm not sure it was wrong. And he didn't "over-retaliate" out of any personal reasons. In point of fact, it wasn't act of retaliation at all. (Except maybe against the King.) Rimuru killed all those people because it literally allowed him to bring his own murdered citizens back to life. It's certainly debatable whether that was morally justified or not, but again, his reasons for doing so were in no way simply an emotional reaction. He also checked with The Great Sage after the first 10,000 deaths, and only proceeded to kill the rest of the army when he learned that he needed to reap many more lives to become a demon lord. So even then he was planning to stop once his objective was met.


Last edited by Jabootu on Mon Sep 09, 2024 2:08 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Greed1914



Joined: 28 Oct 2007
Posts: 4618
PostPosted: Mon Sep 09, 2024 1:49 pm Reply with quote
Jabootu wrote:


On another topic, surely Rimuru has been suspicious of Yuuki since at least his first fight with Hinata. During this she revealed that she had been informed that Rimuru was at least representing himself as someone who came from Japan. How many people knew of this at that point to so inform her? Yuuki would have been one of a very small list.


He definitely views Yuuki with suspicion. In one of the many board meetings, they were debating if there was some mastermind or if several individual interests just happened to align. Yuuki's name was the one that came up as likely if there were some individual pulling the strings. I think they know Yuuki is up to something, but it isn't clear what or how far it spreads.
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Jabootu



Joined: 17 Jan 2024
Posts: 239
PostPosted: Mon Sep 09, 2024 2:04 pm Reply with quote
Per Greed1914

Quote:
I think they know Yuuki is up to something, but it isn't clear what or how far it spreads.


I think that's correct. Rimuru has a pretty good intelligence network, so we'll have to see if Yuuki can pull off some master move before they figure out what he's up to. I honestly can't remember, though, how aware they all are of the Moderate Harlequin Alliance. This is where-realistically-all the various countries and factions might endanger themselves by holding all their respective cards close to their vests. The ability to play off the various countries and churches and whatnot against each other is probably Yuuki and the MHA's greatest strength.

Aside from just literal strength. The MHA is no joke, power-wise
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jr240483



Joined: 24 Dec 2005
Posts: 4447
Location: New York City,New York,USA
PostPosted: Mon Sep 09, 2024 6:05 pm Reply with quote
Greed1914 wrote:
Jabootu wrote:


On another topic, surely Rimuru has been suspicious of Yuuki since at least his first fight with Hinata. During this she revealed that she had been informed that Rimuru was at least representing himself as someone who came from Japan. How many people knew of this at that point to so inform her? Yuuki would have been one of a very small list.


He definitely views Yuuki with suspicion. In one of the many board meetings, they were debating if there was some mastermind or if several individual interests just happened to align. Yuuki's name was the one that came up as likely if there were some individual pulling the strings. I think they know Yuuki is up to something, but it isn't clear what or how far it spreads.


but thanks to the seven days, he's been written off as a suspect or someone who should not be trusted!

also the reviewer momologue makes sense last week in his review!

unlike his followers, sychophants, and companions, yuuki and hinata are probably the only true friends he has in this world for rimiru can only be his true japanese self when he is with those two and will call him to task when he's making a mistake!


so its kinda understandable that he will be willing to give yuuki the BOTD!

after all, this anime is based off of the light novels, NOT the web novels!
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Eilavel



Joined: 16 Apr 2024
Posts: 134
PostPosted: Mon Sep 09, 2024 6:57 pm Reply with quote
Jabootu wrote:
Hmm. First of all, I'm not sure it was wrong. And he didn't "over-retaliate" out of any personal reasons.


I mean, he did it entirely for the personal reason of wanting his friends back. Killing an entire army with no quarter and accepting no surrender would be wrong under Earth ethics, regardless of the motive. Its less clear under central continent ethics, which are less codified and more horrible, but thats not the metric Rimiru or we normally use.

Its quite hard to make an abstract case for it, both because its clear he's killing thousands who would surrender to resurrect a much smaller number and because he's not just killing them, he's destroying their souls (which while not as bad as it sounds in universe, its still not great).

Rimiru himself says he's doing the morally wrong thing out of personal loyalties. This isn't really meant to be a contested issue; its just that Tempest and the whole world is so feudal nobody there cares.
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Jabootu



Joined: 17 Jan 2024
Posts: 239
PostPosted: Tue Sep 10, 2024 4:57 am Reply with quote
Eilavel said

Quote:
I mean, he did it entirely for the personal reason of wanting his friends back. Killing an entire army with no quarter and accepting no surrender would be wrong under Earth ethics, regardless of the motive
.

Yes, but that's not a personal emotive reason like rage or a lust for revenge, which is what commenters here were saying. He killed them to achieve a goal. Moreover, a leader's primary obligation is to his own people, especially in a case like this.

The "Earth" rules of warfare you elude to were rather recently developed--the Geneva Conventions were only ratified in 1949, less than a century ago--and formulated out of international self-interest more than morality, which is completely valid. Rimuru adhering utterly by himself to such rules in a world that didn't recognize them and sacrificing his own people to do so, well, I'm not sure you can make a moral case for that.

You note that killing an entire army with no quarter would be wrong under Earth ethics, which is too broad of a statement. It wrong under the tenets that have been developed in very recent times under mostly Western industrialized countries. Even Germany and Japan definitely did not subscribe to these ideas, and certainly not uniformly, as recently as World War II. These tenets were forced upon them by their conquerors.

The Falmuth Army was not made up of conscripts, but of professional soldiers who explicitly and knowingly were going to Rimuru (the city) to slaughter every single resident. They intended to massacre everyone, children included (protecting one such is how Shion died), commit rapine upon every female remotely old enough to do so on and then steal everything they could get their hands on. It was meant to be a mission of annihilation, so they had little standing to demand mercy themselves.

To get back to Earth, our ideas of warfare developed, quite obviously, in a world without magic. If FDR, for instance, could have resurrected those killed at Pearl Harbor by utilizing a unique spell that would have killed a 100,000 members of the Japanese navy, many would have argued not that it was immoral to do so but conversely that there was a moral imperative for him to do so. My point isn't that Rimuru's actions might not be considered wrong or even evil, but rather that the idea that they were beyond all doubt wrong or evil (as some have stated here) is false. Things are seldom as black and white as all that, and certainly not in this case. This exact situation is much more nuanced than that.
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Eilavel



Joined: 16 Apr 2024
Posts: 134
PostPosted: Tue Sep 10, 2024 10:09 am Reply with quote
Jabootu wrote:

Yes, but that's not a personal emotive reason like rage or a lust for revenge, which is what commenters here were saying.


Disagreeing with that is how I first came into the conversation. I think we have sort of talked around in a circle splitting hairs on this element.

No quarter was far from universal state of affairs in much earlier warfare either, though. In ancient periods quarter was in fact, very normal [because slaves]. Generally speaking, massacring the entire enemy army was not the usual outcome. And being a career soldier doesn't mean you have any more say in where you get deployed than a conscript, its not like the material itself paints the army as universally culpable.

I'm not sure "like 1940s Germany and Japan" is an, er, the strongest defence of Rimiru you could provide? I won't go into detail about the problems with that comparison because the forum does not need that. Like, Rimiru thinks he's doing the wrong thing. I think he did the wrong thing. I don't think the source material is trying to make this super morally gray. I'll leave it here because I'm not really interested in debating "maybe killing thousands of people might be fine actually if we are morally relative to horrible historical regimes". Like, its not even a criticism. Its fine for him to do a wrong thing in the narrative.
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Jabootu



Joined: 17 Jan 2024
Posts: 239
PostPosted: Tue Sep 10, 2024 12:25 pm Reply with quote
Eilavel responded

Quote:
I'm not sure "like 1940s Germany and Japan" is an, er, the strongest defence of Rimiru you could provide?


Perhaps I wrote sloppily, but my remarks were, clearly I thought, in no way intended to use comparisons to Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan as a "defense of Rimuru." I was merely disagreeing with the notion that modern (largely) Western notions of battlefield ethics are not so broadly held as to suggest they are "Earth" standards, as was suggested.

I can get wordy, and in case my hypothesis regarding FDR was too vague, let me sum it up this way: Analyzing and judging Rimuru's actions primarily based on our own (modern, industrialized nations) world's ethics on warfare is an inherently flawed idea because no Earthly political leader in history has ever been provided the choice that Rimuru was given. Rimuru's world has magic, ours doesn't. Our ethics developed because of the reality we live in; another world based on different rules might well develop different ethics. You can still critique them, but surely it's invalid to do so by saying, "That's not how we do things our in completely different reality."
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Antipathy



Joined: 13 Sep 2018
Posts: 23
PostPosted: Mon Sep 16, 2024 12:31 pm Reply with quote
"If Masayuki wins, he gets to fight Rimuru. And with his unique skill and hero title, he might just be Rimuru's kryptonite. Of course, Masayuki has no desire whatsoever to fight a Demon Lord."

This line in any review shows how an adaptation for a LN to an anime can just flat out fail. The LN makes it very clear that Masayuki's skill "Chosen One" does not work on Rimuru. In fact the LN shows that when they first meet "Chosen One" does not work. Maybe it is because of my prior knowledge of reading this part of the anime several years ago, or maybe this reviewer was not watching close enough to know that "Chosen One" did not work on Rimuru. They even introduce Elmesia the elf Empress, who also has a stronger heroic aura that Gazel, and Rimuru almost gets brainwashed just being near her, in contrast to Masayuki who only has a somewhat uncommon Unique skill.

The reviewer is conflating a side character pulling crap out of his ass, as in their words "he might just be Rimuru's kryptonite", given what the anime has said about Ultimate Skills in relation to other skills and that having 1 protects you from others, not to say that Rimuru has 4 of them, shows why it should be mandatory for any 1 reviewing any show, anime or live action, having too re-watch the prior seasons of said show.

This site does not do that so a lot of their reviews are just flat out wrong for multi-season/years shows.
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GhostD



Joined: 07 May 2016
Posts: 1038
PostPosted: Mon Sep 16, 2024 12:53 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
I'd be curious to see how Masayuki's charm affects other high-level monsters like Veldora, Milim, or even Benimaru.


The way you wrote this it looks like you're comparing Benimaru with Milim and Veldora. He's not in the same league as them. Not even close
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Jabootu



Joined: 17 Jan 2024
Posts: 239
PostPosted: Mon Sep 16, 2024 1:52 pm Reply with quote
Per the Reviewer:

Quote:
What exactly is “training” in Milim's eyes? Is it her just killing someone over and over and hoping they get stronger through the experience?


That seems to be how it works in The Ossan Newbie Adventurer, Trained to Death by the Most Powerful Party, Became Invincible, and also (more or less) in The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic. Must be like when a new fad diet makes the scene.
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GhostD



Joined: 07 May 2016
Posts: 1038
PostPosted: Mon Sep 16, 2024 1:55 pm Reply with quote
Jabootu wrote:
Per the Reviewer:

Quote:
What exactly is “training” in Milim's eyes? Is it her just killing someone over and over and hoping they get stronger through the experience?


That seems to be how it works in The Ossan Newbie Adventurer, Trained to Death by the Most Powerful Party, Became Invincible, and also (more or less) in The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic. Must be like when a new fad diet makes the scene.


It's similar to a Dragon Ball concept where Saiyans who are on the brink of death but survive gain a significant power boost after recovering although in this case it's actually dying.
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