That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Series Review: I’m Not A Bad Slime

Series Positives

When starting That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime (Slime), I had virtually no idea what I was getting myself into. I knew this series had been generating a decent amount of buzz, so my interest was there. But beyond that, I was pretty much in the dark.

The only thing of note I was aware of was that Slime was an Isekai.

An Isekai story is when a human from contemporary Earth is pulled into a fantasy setting. These fantasy settings can – but not necessarily always – structure themselves as worlds similar in makeup to what you might find in a video game or tabletop RPG. Two of my favorite entries in this genre include Youjo Senki and No Game No Life.

Knowing how other Isekai anime work, I had inclinations about what could have happened in Slime, both good and bad. What those inclinations were, though, turned out to be irrelevant. For you see, amongst everything I could have thought of, the thing I didn’t expect was how much I would end up enjoying this series.

Slime was a lot of f-ing fun.

Despite its twenty-plus episode count, this series was insanely hard to put down. Basically, from beginning to end, this story was immensely entertaining. I say “basically because the “beginning” part of that statement will become important later in the review.

We cannot undervalue all the small personality quirks and clever details that went into making this show what it was. However, to allow you to go into this series as spoiler-free as possible, we can boil Slime‘s overwhelming success down to two critical points.

First, Slime‘s pacing was impeccable.

This series never got too big too fast, nor did it spend time doing nothing. Something was always happening, and everything was leading to a crucial point. There was never a wasted episode, a pointless scenario, or a useless piece of information.

Keeping a story engaging while still preventing it from becoming overwhelming is not an easy task. Nevertheless, Slime pulled it off like it was second nature. As a result, this series had great action, exciting plot developments, and fun characters (and there were a lot of characters).

Second – and this was, without a doubt, the best aspect of Slime – Rimuru was a phenomenal protagonist.

Rimuru’s strength was in cool logic. No matter what was going on, Rimuru was able to carefully and quickly observe the situation at hand. What was even better, Rimuru wasn’t one of those characters who would be foolishly taken off guard by thinking something in a world of magic and beasts was impossible.

Along with that, seeing the people around Rimuru grow alongside our hero was a treat in its own right. Whether it was the supporting cast or the city everyone built together, at the center of it all was Rimuru.

There is a massive difference between a character a story claims is charismatic, beloved, and respected and a character who is all of those things. Rimuru was the latter. Throughout this story, people gravitated to Rimuru on their own accord because they saw something special. To everyone we met in Slime, Rimuru was the kind of person who represented possibilities none of them could have imagined.

Also, having Rimuru be a complete badass didn’t hurt either.

I cannot express how excited – and relieved – I am at knowing a second season to Slime appears to be scheduled for a 2020 release. And if this show continues to build up its already gripping story and if Rimuru grows to become an even more awesome character, this is going to be a franchise worth following, assuming it isn’t one already.

Series Negatives

Two warnings come to mind when thinking about the negative aspects of Slime. Please keep in mind: I say “warnings” because calling them problems doesn’t feel quite right. I’ll let you be the judge.

First, if you are among the more squeamish types, then be prepared for a few scenes which are comparatively brutal when up against the rest of this series. Slime might not have been a violent show by nature, but some moments got real bloody real fast. However, this isn’t the true heart of my concern.

The more graphic instances of this show stood out because they were so blatantly unusual. Slime was, for the most part, light-hearted. While not entirely kid-friendly, the majority of this series wasn’t outrageous. Except it sure got to those points.

The very first episode, which showed how Satoru Mikami became Rimuru Tempest, was kind of intense. It was a hell of a way to start this series, that was for sure. But then, quickly following that was a slapstick introduction of an all-powerful dragon who acted like a shy schoolgirl. The disconnect was a bit startling; I’m not going to lie.

I am by no means anti-violence in anime – or any medium for that matter. Sometimes the edgier the story, the better. But to have a very cannibalistic scene (piece that together out of context) appear without even the slightest heads up, that’s inconsistent, not clever.

The second warning I want to give also has to do with Slime‘s first episode. As in, the first episode of this series leaned heavily towards the this-is-super-dumb side of things.

Since it is one of the defining characteristics of the Isekai genre, these sorts of stories need to find ways to get their main characters to their fantasy worlds. Accordingly, I am not even going to mince words here.

I have only ever seen one show do this part in a way that didn’t feel utterly random or completely forced, and that was No Game No Life.

Slime wasn’t atrocious in this one area, but it was the weakest part of the entire show. Once you get past it and are actually in the story, though, the rough part is over.

Getting to the starting line was shaky. Luckily, once the race was underway, Slime never again veered off course.