Sweet island guests, today’s Animi cocktail will be served in a slightly cracked coconut. It will have a few bitter tones but overall will provide a sweet experience. My Arceus , how annoying are the female Demon Lords in this show! If I ever get reincarnated into THAT world please let me be a rope so I can strangle them! That being said Slime offered a fairly okay episode again this week! While not great it is certainly nowhere near as shiit(ake-soy-sauce ) as the last arc.
The Summary
Despite Shizu suffering quite a bit due to being inhabited by a superior spirit , Rimuru still things this is the best way to let these kids live longer so he travels with them to the maze that holds the Spirit Queen, to find spirits he can put inside his class, she can help him summon. When the group enters the maze they are prepared for a maze-like place filled with traps. It turns out to be a straight hallway that is heavily enchanted, maybe they will end up wandering forever. Suddenly a voice begins echoing and laughing in their head, saying they are going to die here and trying to invoke fear. It works pretty well on Chloe, but the rest of the kids doesn’t seem all that scared, much to the chagrin of the voice. Rimuru tells what they are here to do and the voice chuckles thinking that sounds fun. Suddenly the ruins light up and a kind of portal appears.. well more like a Bifrost.. but either way Rimuru and his kids are invited to a new location! There the voice will give them a test! A fight against a pink mecha thing! YAY Pink represent!
Rimuru decides to talk the spirit out of it saying if the voice doesn’t make the Golem back down he will be forced to destroy it.. the spirit doesn’t believe he can do it and makes the Golem trying to kill Rimuru , who promptly ensnares and torches my beautiful new pink friend! It was great to have you here while it lasted, Golem-Chan! Rimuru then threatens to burn down the entity in their heads as well. A pixie shows up! She tells everyone she is Demon Lord Ramiris and she is like Milim..on caffeine pills. By all means just like with Milm she should be a character I really love but she mostly got on my nerves. Rimuru thinks she is too weak to be a demon lord but after she reveals Milim visited her fellow Demon Lord to tell about her new bestie Rimuru opens up to the idea. She is a lot wiser and has more support like abilities that might make her amazing after all. A lot of talking happens and she is bribed with a lot of cookies. Since it is revealed Ramiris is also the Queen of spirits.. and like 20 other things.. (kind of like Denny was in Game of Thrones) she tells Rimuru she is a neutral being and she will help him summon spirits to save the kids. Which functions kind of weirdly but we are left with the children preparing for the ritual.
The Positives
The fact that the pink Golem was one of my highlights kind of shows quite well where I am in terms of liking this episode. I liked it fine.. but the element that got me most excited was that the creator coloured in something pink! I guess it works with Ramiris personality well. But still I was most excited about a visual choice and a one minute encounter. That being said on the design front this episode was truly excellent. I do very much like Ramiris design, she is cute but dark enough looking to indeed sell that she is a “fallen” queen. Her personality is similar enough for me to believe she is friends with Milim and that Milim would come brag to her as I can easily imagine them being friendly but also have a fair bit of rivalry. The magic maze , while not a maze was designed pretty nicely and I liked the idea of Rimuru exploring a dungeon for once. Of course the colourful pixies floating around helped as well. Design wise great episode.
I also like , in theory , how flawed these Demon Lords are, it makes it feel an achievable status for pretty much everyone, making me believe that Rimuru at one point will get it.. probably because one of them will stupid enough to attack and end up being absorbed. It leaves the path of progress open for Rimuru as I really feel that to progress beyond his current limitations he will probably need to absorb a Demon Lord. Like I said in earlier reviews I am kind of unhappy that they tossed in so many creatures more powerful than Rimuru if there are no consequences to this. I am happy if you do it and there are consequences but if nothing bad happens anyway you might as well just keep him powerful, now it just feels like the plot is treading water.. but people like Ramiris show me.. there is hope for Rimuru to evolve. One will mess up and further the plot.. eventually. I am also quite curious to see what kind of spirit these children will get so at least I am excited for this , semi final ish episode coming up. (As far as I know the other two episodes are set in a time before Rimuru)
The Negatives
This isn’t a very strong episode for me however. The plot stalls several times. My biggest gripe is that they do the whole Charybdis thing again.. the Golem is said to be super powerful and that it might kill Rimuru if he fails to dodge.. he dodges twice.. then pretty much One Shots the thing again. I am fine with him One shotting the thing.. but if we first get an explanation on how dangerous this thing is and how most of Rimuru’s magic won’t be effective , you start to expect a real fight but no.. he just kills it in one hit. I still do not mind the kill but I just feel the warnings before have become wasted. There is no need to think about how to defeat a monster if you already know! It is just bad writing to draw out an episode or a manga page. I don’t like it. It happens several times as well, Rimuru explains how hard this place will be to navigate… they get invited to progress immediately, Ramiris explains it is hard to summon a spirit, if they fail they will just create a new spirit they can use. So much safety nets that contradict earlier dialogue, making a lot of the text empty.
I have not made it a secret that I do not particularly enjoy Milim, while I do feel her personality was a bit much, she at least had the oomph to back it up.. she was just used very wrong. Ramiris is even more annoying. There is this “Boy Who Cried Wolf” element to her that once again makes all her dialogue feel a bit “filler” I am not even sure she is actually a Demon Lord. She shows up in the intro as her own separate presence. I just find her quite unpleasant to be around with or something! Not sure the character just doesn’t really work for me! I like her level of peppiness.. but the whole punch throwing thing has been done since Scrappy Doo.. in fact he is a perfect analogy for her and there are a lot of people who do not like Scrappy Doo! Ramiris kind of annoyed me more! Like the Scrappy Doo , from the Third Scooby Doo movie in which he becomes the villain! Just no!
The Score
Overall I am left with a mediocre episode that is in between Fine-Apple and Okiwi to me.
I did enjoy the Pink Golem a lot, and it is a beautiful episode to watch. It is nice to see some more classical fantasy elements such as dungeons exploring pop up more , at least on the main cast. We have mostly seen action on a large scale. For a series that references Dragon Quest so much, it felt more like Slime, Total War or Slime Fantasy Tactics than as Slime Quest to me. While I do like the village growth it is quite good to see an adventure like this happen as well and it nails the location and the looks pretty much on the head. Definitely this is one of the prettier episodes to watch! Battles overall do look pretty in this show even though they are quite short and this one is no exception! Great choreography as well!
However, everything that happens feels rather hollow and I do not blame the action, I blame the poor set up.. it feels extremely contradictory for me. “This Enemy is really strong” ..Oneshot. “This maze is super dangerous”….. “Please follow the shiny lights to get to the next area where your test will begin”. It’s like looking forward to a bag of crisps, what is in there is pretty good.. but once you open it and realise that half of the bag is filled with air you also kinda feel scammed. The annoying Fairy doesn’t do this episode any favours either. While I do like her design and I would not mind her having this personality as much if she was the only one to have it, her being basically a copy of Milim but smart instead of strong.. makes her feel more throwaway and annoying. In fact it is because of the fact that she brings so little new to the table I will say this episode is not good enough to be fine-apple!
Pinkie's Paradise 