Tag: Episode 18

Animini: That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime -Episode 18- Evil Creeps Closer

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.

Animini: Samurai Flamenco – Episode 18 – Flamenco in Space

Samurai Flamenco has always been a show that had hits and misses for me .. though it had more hits.  Now this episode does something I haven’t really experienced yet, it made me feel conflicted. On the one hand this is a stellar episode that concludes the story of Samurai Flamenco beautifully!  It could have been the perfect final episode… except… this isn’t the final episode… and it isn’t perfect either……. Had this been the final episode I would not have minded the imperfections and loved it to bits and would it not have been for those weird imperfections I would not have minded that there was more to this story still. 

The Summary

We pick up where we left off in the last episode with Samurai Flamenco and his allies standing outside  the government building staring at the flying saucer of Alien Flamenco.  The group discusses their action plan when the Alien shows up and shows them a vision. Our favourite Gadget guy recognises this as a vision.. which makes the Alien impressed. He invites Masayoshi over to his spaceship to  discuss the fate of the world. For this he summons a door that will lead the crimson hero into the spaceship! This is it the final fight!   The group discusses whether or not this is a trap , for some reason even including the Prime Minister in this debate. Eventually it is Goto who says that the fear of death never stopped Masayoshi before and it should not stop him now.. he is the only person who can save earth right now as he is the true hero!  This prompts Masayoshi to indeed go inside the alien spaceship and  soon he finds himself sitting at one of those typical Japanese Waterfronts.. you know green hills, a canal and a bridge in the distance.. the one you lay in to think about life with a sprig of green in your mouth!

Alien Flamenco reveals he wants to assimilate humanity inside himself.. he is actually 5 billion people that have evolved past the point of needing a physical body as such and his goal is to bring peace to everyone by evolving them beyond a need for violence, only then will there truly be peace. Masayoshi is given a stone .. the same he ripped from King Torture and it is told that it can make him evolve.  All he needs to do is focus on evolving and him and humanity will be at peace and be assimilated by Alien.  Of course our hero refuses this which prompts the spacemenman  to try and kill him. Masayoshi finds the evolution stone he tossed earlier and doesn’t use it to evolve but to grow giant. The two  Sentai then have a space battle.. on the moon. Which seems to have Masayoshi critically injured. However he realises why the offer of Alien Flamenco did not sit well with him.. Humanity needs to grow and learn.. not to evolve.. with this he gains a new special attack and Uppercuts Alien Flamenco away.. seeming dying himself on the moon. He then wakes up in Sunshine Sentai’s house who reveals he is not Sunshine.. but the will of the Galaxy! Offering some deeper insights and offering Masayoshi a choice. New enemies for the next billion years.. or going back to normal life. The hero chooses the later saying his job was not to fight evil but make the world a better place.. and he can still do that. He gets sent back to earth and tells Goto he went to the moon!

The Positives

This would have been one of the best show endings i have seen in a while.. so obviously it means it also is a great arc ending/ episode ending. There is no doubt about that right?!  I am not sure really, the epsiode does some VERY amazing things that is for sure.  The way everything ends up full circle.. King Torture, From Beyond,  and Alien .. they all are linked in a manner I did not really find intrusive or forced even. It felt earned.  The journey of Masayoshi up to this point is explained and it has left me very impressed. The way things spiral out of control from simple to galaxy breaking reminded me of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, my favourite anime of all time so that never is bad.  There is so much good writing in it, even now still reminding me of Tarintino’s way of writing dialogue.. and since this episode is so dialogue heavy  that really makes it shine! Even the joke that Flamenco is eventually nothing special.. it is just a word that has a 0,00000002% chance of granting a wish…but mostly it’s something like the town Eromanga in Australia. Something that has a different meaning in another language and thus becoming something it is not.. that was pretty funny.

The sound design of this episode was stellar. The sound that plays when the group is talking under the saucer felt completely unworldly and sold  the whole space theme and strange  threat of the situation so incredibly well. Masayoshi’s voice acting this week also made an impression. He has to convey a very difficult emotion .. he has to disagree with someone..with a passion.. but not being sure why he disagrees. He just knows in his gut that what is being said is wrong. It comes out excellent, I don’t speak Japanese but I could still hear both the fire in his heart and the doubt in his mind. Truly excellent work. The use of colour underneath the UFO also really impressed me , giving everyone a bit of an unreal glow with a light that doesn’t fully seem to match with what we see making it even less feel of this  world.  The final attack, the little cues it for the most part was amazing. 

The Negatives

I hate that this is not the last episode though, I already had assumed it would go beyond this as I did not think they could drag out Alien Flamenco for more than a few episodes.. but this had me very conflicted. I felt so strongly about it that I even considered dropping the show at this point and not watching the final four episodes.. because no way in heck the show is gonna top this. So this leaves me a bit bitter and having lost confidence in the future.  It is a weird gripe to have that this episode is basically just too good to be in the middle but it is the truth.  Imagine adding the first 55 seconds of Queen’s Best friend at the end of Bohemian Rhapsody and making that the new Rhapsody.. it would not nearly be in as many hitlists then!

I said there were a few gripes I had with the episode as well and it all has to do with Alien Flamenco.  Taking Masayoshi to a japanese canal felt really out of place for me.. using a trope that is relevant only in Japan.. while he already has the entire rest of the world. I don’t buy it.  The setting isn’t even used that well.  Yet what is more annoying is Alien Flamenco’s constant use of Engrish..  “Sit Down”  .. “Listen to me” . Why?!  He did not do that before.. I mean sure he was using the American hero  as a disguise but even then he did not really do that. It just felt so annoying. Take Jojo’s adventure for example who also make Jospeh use a lot of English things.. first of all he is genuinely english unlike Alien.. secondly those moments are played for comedy and not during heartfelt talks where dialogue is super important.  I never cringe but this one made me do it.. to a point at the first 7 minutes that I thought.. well they compltely ruined this episode with that shit…. but then the show picks up and becomes one of the best episodes yet….. 

The Score

So honestly I am not sure what to do with this score. It both had some of the weakest and some of the strongest moments in the show.. and normally I deem an episode is good or not based on how much I want to see the next episode! I very much want to NOT see the next episode… but not because the episode was bad. This is complicated! The show genuinely made me feel.. and I do kind of want to see if Goto’s girlfriend will ever reveal her face.. but I am kind of done with Masayoshi’s story. I would have given this episode the benefit of the doubt if the Alien Flamenco dialogue wasn’t so cringe worthy. I actually hated that.. and I normally kinda enjoy Engrish in anime.

In the end I will base my grade by comparing this episode by comparing it to a very delicious and clear broth.  It is a very flavourful episode and it’s very clear as well, we see everything that is inside and how it relates to each other. This is a star quality soup! However it has been garnished with stale croutons. Something added to just to give it a little playful element floating in between backfires and makes it just annoying to fish those weak bits out.  It’s a bit of a hassle  but I might be able to forgive that still.. however the Soup is so good that you know in advance that chicken cordon bleu that is coming next will disappoint you.  It might not taste bad.. but it has less room to be amazing based on what it is.. thus the soup might not really fit the menu.. despite it being so tasty! If I had judge the menu.. the soup would be the odd duck out and I would mark it down for it.. and  that is why .. this episode is just fine…despite being amazing.