Animini: That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime – Episode 20 – Yuuki Kagurazaka

Steamless Salutations, my dear island guests! That is right.. we are out of coals and for the moment are without steam.. This is all a very convoluted way to say that this show itself, for me personally, is quickly running out of steam as well. As this show has since the defeat of the Orc-lord for me personally quickly devolved from a series I really love and have fun with.. to just a series I dislike that I don’t like it enough! While the potential is still there.. and the set up is still great.. I feel the writing talent is really lacking.

The Summary

After turning the Megalodons that accompanied Charbdis into sushi and other amazing foods the town of Rimuru has a great party to celebrate their victory over Charybdis. Or I guess over the Megalodons because Mlim just one shot the monster that is supposed to rival a demon lord.. of course the government officials don’t partake in drinking and show off their boobs in a hot-tub again instead. Rimuru asks Milim why she became a demon lord and tells she can’t remember.. while three episodes before she proclaimed it was to perpetually fight strong people. Maybe it is her being more genuine here.. maybe it is inconsistent writing.. but the scene doesn’t go anywhere. Milim suddenly remembers she has to work.. changes into clothes as the group claps for her and she zooms off. Everyone wishes for her to return soon, though Rimuru is kind of okay she is gone for now or so it seems. That night Rimuru has a nightmare of sorts.. a vision that shows Shizu wants him to train the children she was training. Feeling compelled to do so Rimuru leaves the town of Rimuru behind for a bit and goes to the realms capital to find the school that Shizu worked on. 

Now I am pretty sure that this doesn’t make much sense timewise. Rimuru apparently has been in the other world for two years now and I think Shizu trained these kids way before Rimuru came here. But I might have misinterpreted a line or two.. it felt weird to me that these kids were still 10 year old.  From what I gathered kids are summoned to this world around the age of 10.. to become powerful warriors but because their body can not hold the power it explodes at one point.. no longer than five years after they arrived. So how are these kids all 10 year olds..still if Shizu thought them 2 years ago?! I am not sure.  Regardless Rimuru first visits the headmaster of the school.. who is the kid that taught Shizu the line about Slime.. he is an other-worlder as well.. The two get acquainted, Rimuru makes him some Manga from Memory and the two weeb out for a moment. He then offers Rimuru the job to teach these children to do right by Shizu. The moment Rimuru walks in the classroom he is almost killed by an ultimate attack wondering why these dying kids have so much energy.

The Positives

Milim not being a permanent addition to the group and her going to do her own thing was a welcome change, even though she got adopted into the village it is nice to see that there is at least some form of consistency in the fact that Mlim still is a demon lord and has her tasks to do.  In a way it is also nice to see Rimuru leave the village.. even though the building of the city is what at this point had me most invested in this show, the change of scenery to a more urban setting works nice and the machinations of the huge city are compelling, fun and creative. The show is pretty good at world creation.. not world building.. but world creation,  as in coming up with new interesting elements to create a fantastical world filled with diverse places.. they don’t connect all that well.. but as far as imagination goes this show really does well. I also like the idea that the concept of Isekai is rather common in this world and there are two ways to do this. It in a way spoofs how many Isekai shows there are and shows how likely it is that you end up in such a world. I personally would have loved to see this concept be taken a bit further as all Other-worlders now come from earth and I would have liked to see them draw people from other worlds as well.. especially since earthlings explode at a certain age.. but I still admire the creativity poured in it all.  I also like seeing Rimuru excited about something simple as Glass.. though this is later a bit negated. It makes him feel a bit normal again.

I also very much liked the level of geekism on display. Rimuru and Yuuki , the headmaster person thingy  really geek out and they discuss real life geeky things. No Snoka Koala and Peepsie .. Yuuki flat out asks Rimuru how many Final Fantasy Games there are now.. to which he replies.. 19.. which makes me wonder.. does he live in the future or does he kind X2 and 13, 2 and 3.. if so he has to count Crisis core as well to reach 19 but why would you call crisis core?!  Or does he count Final Fantasy IV the After years?!  Who knows! At one point there even is a Salt Bae Meme I think. The show does know who it’s audience is and pleases them, the people that matter in this world think like us and act like us and that adds a lot of relatability to this episode and gives it some much needed charm.

The Negatives

The writing though… isn’t good! It isn’t good at all. The Milim thing seems like one of the easiest contradictions but like I said.. I don’t get how these kids fit in the timeline of Shizu. With the stories Eren told before it doesn’t seem likely these kids are 10 still? Or is it that they are brought here when they are five and explode around the age of 10?! It could be.. because that is certainly implied at the end.. but Shizu is a summon as well, and she did not die.  The logic is that if you are transported to the new world you are given a new body that gathers power.. and eventually it becomes to much and says “pop”  sort of speak.. but then why would someone as powerful as a Demon Lord summon Shizu and stuff an Efreet down her body.. would that not make matters worse? If the Demon Lord knows putting a demon in them helps.. why would the countries not know this?! It’s not like they care for the humans they summon, they are intended as weapons so how would that cross a line?! I don’t see it make any sense.

This bad writing also applies to Rimuru in this episode. Does he have a photographic memory now that he can produce all these Manga’s he has ever read? If he has had that perfect memory due to great Sage.. why does he not ask Great Sage why he does not ask school books he read, or maybe to put a documentary he saw on making things to paper.  He could ask Great Sage how people in manga would take down a monster like the one he is facing to get a strategy.. it just feels like something he could have used. If he is this impressed by glass.. why doesn’t he make it inside himself.. all he needs is sand. Rimuru gets past a checkpoint showing his ID while masked, which also doesn’t make too much sense. He has a reference from Veldt sure.. but wasn’t it established those types of mask were worn by Majin? Would you really let someone walk through like that? Must have been one hell of a reference. Finally I find it kind of weird that teaching kids, will be the arc you will end season 1 on.  Should season one not just be about making the village.. as much as I hated the Charybdis arc… I think it would have been much better if the final four episodes were spend on fleshing that out more. Also what happened to that whole just a helpful slime rumor plotline?! It seems completely overwritten by the fake ID thing.

The Score

While I do see an improvement from the last few episodes I think this show is written super poorly, this arc should have happened before Charbdis at the very least,  Probably even before the Orc-Lord arc.. Now so much things so not make sense to me. Even if we say normally these kids die at around of the age of 10, the Shizu arc happend early in RImuru’s time here.. so I will assume.. maybe an half year in or so.  That means 1,5 years have passed which is at least a third of the time these kids have spend in this world.. How can they still remember Shizu so fondly, even at best she has been dead for a good year. These are small kids..their first reaction would not be.. this person kind of looks like Shizu. Had they been raised properly I could kind of understand but they are shown to be kind of childish it all just fits together really poorly.

In the end we got is like an artwork of a hobby painter trying to mimic a Picasso. It’s not a masterpiece.. but it is something interesting to look at.. it just does not make a beaverdam lick of sense if you look closer.  I will admit I have fun with slime.. sortoff.. during my watch but as soon as the episode passed I feel like.. wait.. but this.. and this.. and this.  So perhaps I am watching this show wrongly.. perhaps it is a show to bing a couple of episodes and when you are tired you just go to bed. However I have fallen out of love with this show hard… I feel like the Mangaka really tries to mimic how Oda builds his worlds in One Piece, with stuff happening everywhere in the world .. showing there is more to the world than just our heroes. For what it is worth he shows in this episode he can create interesting locations and interesting elements.. however.. when you pivot them all around the main character.. it doesn’t feel like a living world anymore. Oda’s villlains will act DESPITE  of Luffy’s existence and that is why that amazng world building works..once more this episode introduces a new interesting element.. but by letting it revolve around Rimuru it doesn’t stand on it’s own.. and it feels like a way to pad out your Manga,, and that is why this episode is sub-par for me.

3 replies »

  1. There is much about Rimaru that is really sweet and warm and lovable, but I don’t expect it to go down as a world classic story that has that great hero’s tale. To some extent it is a pretty standard Isekai story after the big twist of being a Slime instead of the mighty warrior in the new world. That said, that is a pretty big and I think brave twist, and the endearing aspects make up (to me) the weaknesses. Rimaru also makes the best of the situation he has been handed, and I appreciate that aspect. I remember it fondly and I would watch it again, but it isn’t a life changer.

    Liked by 1 person

    • I loved the first half and I love some choices it made , I love he is a slime too but that is partially why I dislike this second half so much, I feel it contradicts this world I got so charmed with a lot

      Like buying a cake from a store window, it looks delicious then inside the bakery it smells delicious, you are helped by a pretty girl and even given a nice coffee.. then you find out that cake from the window was a prop.

      I love the characters..except Milim who I now feel mixed about, and in the end I will probably review the show as charmimg and worth a watch but for some reason the weak writing really bothers me here, I dont always mind retcons or additions but here many seem detrimental to ideas a liked and I cant escape that feeling

      Liked by 1 person

      • Yeah, I was not fond of Milim either, to the point that in my memory she was eliminated and I had to look her up and then went Oh yeah, HER. LOL.


Leave a Reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s