Anime Spotlight #45: That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime (2025 Update)

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. the Animeister

Since this is the month of Easter and Easter is, aside from its pagan origins as a spring fertility festival, a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, I thought I'd follow up last week's bunny-themed return to the Anime Spotlight with an update to my coverage of an anime where a salaryman gets resurrected into a medieval fantasy world as an overpowered, ovoid shapeshifter.

Back in Anime Spotlight #6: That Time I Reviewed Comedy and Slimes With Chuck Norris (FROM January 25, 2021), I hadn't nailed down my format yet, I was late to the party in discovering Chuck Norris memes, and I reviewed two isekai anime about slimes; one being the socially gross yet dishwater boring By the Grace Of the Gods (which somehow got a second season I will never watch), and the other being That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime, which is a hilarious, intelligent, dramatic, action-packed mega-franchise from the mind of webnovelist and light-novelist Fuse, with illustrations by Mitz Vah (I assure you these people are not made up). Following its webnovel origins, Slime has progressed through the typical Japanese print model, blowing up from a light-novel series into a manga with seven spinoffs (each with a different illustrator), a three-season-and-growing anime, a one-season spinoff anime, a feature film with another on the way, and several Original Video Animation and Original Net Animation episodes. Here is my original review of the first season (with a new poster image because the alignment was being weird):

Okay, it's finally That Time. OVAs have been trickling out over the past year and a half, and a second season has been announced as releasing this year for That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime. This isekai, which is better by human decency and volumes than By the Grace Of the Gods, also follows a boring, perverted desk jockey and his fantasy world reincarnation adventures. Our protagonist (no sarcastic qoutes this time) gets stabbed to death and, by virtue of generic ramblings in his final moments, ends up isekai’d into a slime body with ridiculous resistance and strength attributes, the ability to eat, shapeshift into, and mass-produce anything he wants, and a village of cohabitating monsters (a few of whom - though not all, or even most - are cute, busty monster girls because of course) at his command. The isekai formula is an old one, but the hero’s avatar (now calling himself Rimuru Tempest, and voiced by Brittany Karbowski in the dub) and the mechanism by which he comes to inhabit it are both novel and hilarious. The supporting cast is rich with personality across all genders and species (whereas other isekai either completely omit male supporting characters or shove them into the background for harem wish-fulfilment purposes), and the exchanges between characters, whether comedic, dramatic, or in action sequences, are meaningful and unwavering in their emotional accuracy.

The only problem with the series thus far is what I call its “I Wonder What the Cheese Will Want” pacing. Rather than getting to the point and staying on course, our lead spends most of the series lost in a seemingly endless collectathon of tit-for-tat side-quests before getting dragged back to high stakes territory in its second half to militarize his giant party of loyal storm wolves, juvenile goofballs, skillful stoics, charismatic muscle-bruhs, and mostly disposable monster-babes against the nigh-unstoppable forces of your typical isekai demon lord threat.

The OVAs that follow the series' first season are, at first, your typical, standalone fanservice episodes (go to beach, visit hotspring, cue harem fight...), but the last few comprise a continuation of the first season's final arc (basically the same kind of "get the bratty kids to trust authority" tale as I previously mentioned in my reviews of Arte and Ascendance Of a Bookworm), and follows Rimuru and his class of isekai'd children as they compete in an intramural practical exam and run afoul of their world's more powerful sinister elements. It's not a perfect series, but it's a superior example of how to do this kind of series right, and I can't wait for the second season to get a dub.

Then, among many other things, I briefly talked about the second season and covered the movie in Anime-BAWklog #7: Spotlighting Round (Part II) FROM May 29, 2023, as follows:

I didn't give the last season of the series its end-of-run coverage, but it was basically the RWBY: Volume 3 season of Slime: powered henchmen with an overpowered magical backer show up to disrupt the fun, and everyone dies in horrible, hope-shattering ways that change the world's perception of what it means to keep the peace. But then Rimuru (the titular slime) decides to take the fight to the enemy, sacrifices them all to attain Demon Lord status, gives the ancient dragon he ate at the beginning of the series a humanoid body and a stack of manga that somehow teaches him magical Street Fighter moves (one of the highlights of the season finale), and plays mind games with the Demon Lord council, ultimately outwitting and defeating the Demon Lord responsible for genociding his people. Also, being a Demon Lord himself makes Rimuru even more overpowered than he already was, and he brings his entire city back to life because he can do that now.

Enter the Crimson Bond movie, which I guess is canon until more seasons come out. It takes place some time after the last season, with Rimuru as a Demon Lord, Veldora in his humanoid body, and everyone alive and doing the slice-of-life fetch questy stuff that they do when they're not troping out for comedy. But it starts out looking like a flashback for one of the kishin, or a completely different movie, or something, as a red-haired swordsman with horns is attacked and left for dead, until he is rescued and named by a princess (if you don't remember or haven't watched it yet, names are magic evolution things in this series), which heals and strengthens him. The princess's kingdom is suffering from water pollution and she has a magic crown that she uses to purify the water at the cost of her own health, so she sends her red-haired kishin bodyguard in the direction of Tempest (Rimuru's city) for help and resources, where he encounters an old enemy of his building a commerce road for the city, and attacks, bringing him to blows with a similar-looking kishin who turns out to be his brother, who is a resident of Tempest. We get the deadpan comedy of Rimuru casually letting slip that he's a Demon Lord and friends with Veldora and a bunch of nature spirits and other Demon Lords (including Veldora's daughter, I think?), and he agrees to help the kingdom. Pretty soon, there are demons and curses and scheming and a convoluted "revive the ancient evil" subplot that said ancient evil isn't happy with because it makes her "fun" less interesting, so the movie ends with a happy status quo and three new characters added to the Slime mythos. Crimson Bond is okay. If you like the Slime series, watch the movie because it continues the story, the comedy and spectacle are as good as always, and the visuals are a step up from the show's quality. The villain was a little obvious, though, the fight animation wasn't anything special outside of the first brotherly clash, and the deus ex machina, status quo happy ending was disappointing. Still, I look forward to more Slime (just not Slime Diaries; that was more slice-of-life than I was prepared to handle).

After a recap episode with a huge mystery/revelation cliffhanger regarding one of Rimuru's new Demon Lord acquaintances, some possible necromancy, and the source of Rimuru's human form (a reincarnated heroine named Shizu), we got a third season that, like the second, feels at once like two arcs but also a single, continuous narrative.

While planning a festival to endear humanity to his monster nation, welcome an isekai'd hero with a reality-warping skill that's literally reflexive, luck-based plot armor because of course the Slime universe has a character like that, turning the fantasy world into modern Japan but also a dungeon-crawling MMO, and organizing an open-registration fighting tournament by way of the usual fetch quest/board meeting structure, Rimuru is contacted by Hinata (an honorable-to-a-fault heroine from Japan who was manipulated into seeking revenge on Rimuru as part of the Season 2 massacre because she blamed him for killing her teacher, Shizu). Roughly the first half of Season 3 serves as a commentary on religious fanaticism, as the Western Holy Church (who hate monsters, but don't know that their matron "goddess" is a vampire Demon Lord) manipulate the correspondence to get Rimuru (a slime, Demon Lord, and ruler of a powerful alliance of monsters) and Hinata (their prize warrior, whom they believe to be a monster sympathizer with sufficient strength to challenge the church's power and authority) to fight each other to the death. Rimuru and Shizu have amazing chemistry and rich history, and their misguided but ultimately friendly rivalry is the best part of the season...aside from the Western "goddess" showing up and existentially folding her traitorous priests to keep Hinata from exploding. It's a total deus ex machina moment, but I still loved it because where else can I see twisted authority figures get their comeuppance? Not in real-world 2025, that's for sure.

The festival half of the season has its multi-genre charms as well, featuring plenty of story-driven (and story-driving) fights that are epic in scale, comedic payoff, dramatic repercussions, or all three, some late-stage dungeon exploration shenanigans, and low-key, high-stakes commercial/social warfare that brings Rimuru ever closer to unmasking the true evil mastermind behind everything, all the while, new and old villainous forces alike begin making their moves.

If there weren't too many characters to name in Season 1, there certainly are now, but as a fan of the series from its first episode (who is also slowly watching and reviewing One Piece), I don't mind the cast bloat because the story is so engaging and the characters are so rich and fun to follow. Don't jump into the series cold because it may devour you whole, but definitely give it a taste to see if it's the right shape for you.

Sorry if that sounded dirty; I was trying to be clever with the slime puns and it didn't quite work. But still, please remember to Become A Ticketholder for real because Raphael knows you haven't yet, comment your Great, Sage advice at the bottom of this post to keep the magicules flowing, help out my ad revenue as you read so I don't die of karoshi, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Animeister,

Out.