That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime

Episode 21

Rimuru's students are so unimpressed by their new teacher that he needs Ranga's help just to take attendance, but he has a plan to win the kids over. Through a series of one-on-one sparring matches, Rimuru manages to gain their respect, and he quickly settles into his role as their instructor and guardian. The next task on his to-do list is to find a way to extend their limited lifespans, and the most promising option involves binding them to high-level spirits in a manner similar to the way Shizu was paired with Ifrit. Through a series of coincidences involving a stray Sky Dragon, a well-connected merchant, and a knowledgeable waitress, Rimuru learns of a place where he might be able to find the right kind of spirits. Now he and his students just have to travel there and find a way to get the job done.

In terms of pure entertainment, this episode makes good use of Rimuru and his group of magical misfits. The roll call scene features some strong comedy, pairing lively chemistry between the characters with the hilarious image of Ranga taking up half of the room as he lurks menacingly behind the kids. The one-on-one fights also offer some entertaining dialogue, and they allow the series to pack a lot of character development into a short amount of time. Each student gets enough time alone in the spotlight to establish his or her personality, and Rimuru gets a chance to appraise their magical abilities at the same time. My only gripe with this “getting to know you” sequence is that the series misses out on an opportunity to fill in the kids' backstories by having Rimuru win their trust so quickly. Because everyone falls neatly into line after the sparring matches, Rimuru doesn't have to go through the process of understanding them as individuals and connecting with them on a personal level. That presumably happens during the one-month time skip, but because the audience doesn't see it, our emotional investment in the class is still pretty limited. While there's still plenty of time to turn “the kids” into “Kenya, Ryota, Gale, Alice, and Chloe,” it may be harder to fit that development into a quest storyline than it would've been in a classroom setting.

After the time skip, things start to get a little messy. Rimuru's fight with the stray Dragon is impressive from a visual standpoint, but it's also the first step in an overly complex effort at advancing the plot. Mjolmire the merchant suddenly goes from being a colorful background character to an important trading partner for Rimuru's nation, but in the context of this storyline he's just a middleman; he's only here so Rimuru can overhear one of his attendants mention a key piece of information. This means that in order to answer the seemingly simple question of where to find the spirits Rimuru's looking for, we need to sit through a low-stakes fight scene, a meeting in Yuuki's office, and a series of trade negotiations, not to mention Rimuru's unproductive conversation with Treyni earlier in the episode. The whole sequence is an abridged example of one of this show's biggest problems: it's so fixated on introducing new characters and building its fictional world that it makes trivial plot points far more complicated than they need to be. A thirty-second montage of Rimuru looking at old maps and textbooks would have been sufficient to move the story along, but instead this episode burns precious screen time on monsters and merchants we'll probably never see again. That's acceptable in a light novel where adding a few extra pages is no big deal, not so much in a TV series with a finite number of episodes.

Regardless of how we get there, this latest development opens some intriguing thematic doors for the series. As noble as Rimuru's intentions may be, his plan of binding spirits to his students puts him in morally ambiguous territory. Sure, pairing up with Ifrit might have extended Shizu's life, but it wasn't exactly the most pleasant experience in the world, and it ended in one heck of an explosive meltdown. Unless he can find a way of forging a more symbiotic pact between spirit and human, Rimuru will have to ask himself if giving these kids a few extra years is worth putting them through all of that. I'm hoping the series doesn't just gloss over all of this, as it could produce some interesting and heartfelt exchanges between Rimuru and his students, and there's room for each character to reach a different conclusion.

Of course, that's all just a lot of ifs and maybes to be sorted out in future episodes. In the meantime, we have an episode that's fairly typical for That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: solid comedy and likable characters placed into a storyline that's equal parts good ideas and messy execution. If we'd spent more time in the classroom and less time wining and dining merchants with funky hairstyles, this could've been a real winner. Instead, it's merely serviceable, the kind of episode that frustrates and entertains at the same time. Let's hope that the show can narrow its focus a little next week.

Rating: B

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.