Konichi-well-this-hasn’t-certainly-been-my-best-week-for-anime everyone! I haven’t been impressed with Slime for a fair few episodes now ..well two to be exact.. it just feels longer because of the move.. but still this current chain of events of Slime feels a bit Meh to me. Where last episode could at least keep me entertained.. This episode was the equivalent of shaking a can of cheap peanuts to check if there are more. “This can’t be all right?” I shook the can with all my might and no additional peanuts dropped out.. it still was a fairly okay snack.. but more and more Slime is devolving into just that for me.. a snack! Bear in mind though I watched this after that shower, and after Digimon and Samurai Flamenco had such “bummer” episodes.
The Summary
Phobio, that beast guy ..is really angry at Milim for insulting him and punching him. Everyone in his beast troup thinks it would be best to discuss a peace with the Slime creature because they have craftsmanship that completely blows theirs out of the water.. but Phobio can’t seem to let his thirst for vengeance go. He wants to attack the village.. in his own name so he doesn’t involve his Lord.. but also that.. by doing that he can tell his lord that at least something .. happened?!? He wants to make his lord proud..but because Milim is there and she annoys him.. peace was never an option. Two members of the Moderate Harlequin Alliance show up.. being Tear and Footman who tell Phobio he can be strong enough to be a demon Lord by freeing the creature Charybdis and claiming his power.. hungry for vengeance the beastman things on this and eventually agrees. Sending home his troops because they should not be involved. He then follows the two masked Majinn to a Mysterious cave.
Clearly the two are setting him up to be some kind of sacrifice to release this powerful being.. which I think.. ends up working.. as we see the creature take flight just a little while later. Tear also killed some young dragons which they fed to Charybdiss so it can spawn 12 Flying Megalodon.. so now we got one organic sky fortress that is rumored to be the son of Veldora with 12 flying sharks heading for the village of Rimuru. The Dryad try to stop him but seem to be growing weaker by the minute.. so Treyni’s sister tries to contact the village. She is covered by a murderous aura.. which apparently comes from Charybdiss being close.. so there are a few trust issues at first. Milim offers to take down the Calamity class creature..but Rimuru’s followers ask her to stay out and let Rimuru resolve this instead. To prove his worth to the humans so they can establish trade roads in good trust. Rimuru doesn’t seem on board with this idea but eventually asks Milim to stay out of this, making everyone else fight at a mountain that is at a crossroads to Dwargon Rimuru and whatever direction the monster is flying in from. Battleplans are being made and that is where this episode ends.
The Positives
I am not happy with this episode! There is so much wrong with it.. and I mean SO much! It is however not without it’s merrits. Eren and her group finally get some nice interaction with Rimuru which I had been craving for last week. The hot-tub scene this week is actually pretty funny with the humans liking this village so much they basically are taking a vacation in town and the girls taking a bath so much that even Shuna is beginning to give up etiquette. The comedy this week is quite solid! The jokes with Milim are also fairly succesful. Her drive to prove herself to her besty and not being able to hurts her which feels in character.. but now she is adapted enough not to cause a tantrum. So we just see her switch in her battle outfit.. and then being upset. I do like that! It makes sense Milim would wear her battle outfit underneath her clothes just so she can clobber enemies! I had a good chuckle.
The manipulation that Tear and Footman do towards Phobio is also quite nice, the dialogue is nicely written and you can sense them testing the waters to find the correct buttons to press. Digging deeper and deeper getting underneath his skin, eventually you know there is no more escape for him.. they successfully manipulated him into doing their bidding. His troup caring for their leader and trying to talk him out of it also made this scene a lot more interesting… they do make them a bit too “goody-good” for my taste.. because with this mentality the conflict of the week before would never really have happened.. but all in all they do a good job of fleshing out this group and making you feel that the bigger evil took a win here today. Ill intent has prevailed. I do think Phobio could have Ill intent enough.. but making the Harlequin Alliance more depraved gives us something to worry about in the future and I do like that. Rimuru establishing his beef with the Demon Lord Leon was also one of the episode highlights.. Unfortunately that is also where those end.
The Negatives
Jeez-Louise there was a lot of stupidity in this episode. While some scenes were very strongly written .. the big picture is completely messed up and kind of angered me. Let me start with the very idea of Rimuru fighting Charybdis without Milim. That feels insanely stupid..instead he is going to risk his own citizens and that of his only ally… just to proof their worth for a trade deal?! .. How about protecting the lives of everyone in this village?! Didn’t you adopt Milim into the village for exactly these kinds of situations?! What’s the point of her being there if you are not going to use her?! I do get that for the tension arc in the show you need to pull these kinds of Shenanigans …but that could have been done so much better. Say for example that Charybdiss can absorb the energy of Demon Lords.. so Milim CAN’T be there.. or make clear that it is after her and it will become super powerful if it succeeds. Rimuru so far always wants to fight using every strategic advantage he has.. so no using your nuke ..at least as a backup seems.. odd and just done in favour of the show’s tension.
Other than that.. the episode was also quite boring. We did not see what happened to Phobio, seeing him being consumed by darkness and transformation would have been super cool, we do not see the fight of the dryads against Charybdis. .not getting a sneak peak of its abilities, instead we just get exposition and bathhouse scenes. Why does Charybdis have to have flying sharks, it seems kind of random.. and I do like random but this doesn’t feel whacky enough.. the design of Charybdis is very otherworldly so I would have loved to see matching adds… just big sharks.. is kinda boring. We do not see what happens to Phobio’s group, we do not see Tear feed Charybdis those dragons, all the important stuff happens trough exposition and we get “the girls having a holding the breath contest” or “Rimuru talking about trade routes”. I like both scenes but when you find out what was happening at the same time.. I can not help but feeling quite screwed over.. you showed the wrong thing. I get the other thing is harder to animate but this really felt like a cop-out.
The Score
I had a few chuckles with this episode of Slime.. it still has its charm and I still want to see the rest of the show.. I do feel like next episode it will pick up again..but this block of three episodes has been fairly weak! They all have something to offer.. stand alone and it has enough charisma to sell itself.. but that doesn’t change the fact that it made some big fudge-ups in terms of how the story is connected.. character roles and overall narrative flow of things. It feels a bit directionless… as if the writer was throwing stuff against the wall and see what sticks. Thus Milim feels a bit like an overpowered Jarjar and Rimuru’s actions don’t make that much sense.. and that is a shame, because there is so much you can do here.
I do feel that the writer tried to take a page from Oda’s book and create a long lasting epic, in the same vein as One Piece.. with introducing new hurdles to overcome. I do feel that letting Rimuru go after the Demon Lords instead of all this new stuff would be more satisfying. Now we get one Demon Lord awakening an Eldritch abomination basically to fight Rimuru, while another doesn’t even seem to know he is a slime sending a footsoldier to deal with him. Which could make sense..if not everyone has heard of Rimuru.. but both the dwarves and the humans also heard of a slime defeating the Orc Lord.. and since the demon Lords still are in an Alliance and can’t interfere with each other,,, this seems a very improbable chain of events. Oda makes the world move separate from the main characters as well but he writes them as to how they interact with the world.. here everything moves seperate but it’s written how they interact with Rimuru and we get a less cohesive world as a result.. and in this episode that caused a major conflict for me that made this one of my least favourite in the series so far.
Pinkie's Paradise 