That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime is a 24 episode anime based upon the manga series. As part of the isekai genre, Mikami Satoru, who had been living a very normal, very uneventful life, is suddenly killed. He wakes up and finds himself having reincarnated into a slime in a different world. As a slime, he is one of the weakest monsters but as expected of a protagonist, he has several abilities that causes him to become overpowered. He can eat and absorb anything, thereby obtaining their powers as his own. He can transform to mimic the things he had eaten, as well as store materials away in a magical space.
While he was stuck in a cave for a long while, he eventually ventures out into the world. He also gains the name Rimuru Tempest, while also reaping a great amount of power from his exploration of the caves, devouring all the monsters he saw. The obligatory female love interest is introduced early on. Along with introducing her is how others are sent to this world as well. Rimuru is unique in that he is reincarnated whereas others are literally summoned into this world. Those summoned here are forced to obey the summoner and be used as weapons. It takes the female love interest in an unexpected direction.
Slime feels a tad bit too generic overall as it gets into the cycle of characters underestimating Rimuru. Yet Rimuru is severely overpowered to the point that he easily destroys any opponent. He continues to win over several villages and groups of characters to either become his friend, or fully submit to him. Halfway into the season, you can start to see where the anime is going to go. Rimuru will continue to grow the number of his allies, expand the size of his village which will soon become a city and probably its own nation…
Rimuru is benevolent and is overly so, so much that it is hard to watch at times. Forgiveness is always given out. They just destroyed your village and killed everyone? No worries! Your sins are absolved and while you’re at it, come join us in our alliance under Rimuru! Therefore, this kills a lot of the suspense and action, since you know Rimuru will always come out ahead and build up his nation even more. The ease at which Rimuru wins over characters is laughable and lacks any sort of challenge whatsoever.
Rimuru is too overpowered so any conflict is not fun to watch when there is never a threat to him. The problem is that even “massive threats are resolved within one episode. There’s little building of future arcs so you never feel that Rimuru is working towards his goal. There is zero growth in the characters beyond their initial overpowered boost from Rimuru and are way too devoted to him to the point of being sickening. It doesn’t help that Rimuru is more reactive than proactive. He waits until something happens rather than going out and venturing into the unknown, so he ends up always reacting to something that has caught his attention. Halfway through the season, it gets a bit more interesting as a serious threat appears. Sadly, it follows the same predictable process of characters underestimating Rimuru because he is a slime, and you’re constantly waiting for Rimuru to show them who’s boss.
The anime does not focus on battles so do not expect long drawn out flashy skills. On the flipside, this means that Rimuru will win in the most predictable ways possible. While he has a wide array of attacks and options, his best moves are ultimately the ones that he learnt early on, and of course the one where he can devour anything and absorb their powers. The world of Slime has some weird RPG elements that aren’t well explained. Rimuru has a helper within him that analyses and provides him with information like a tutorial helper, only much more useful. He even has an auto-battle mode!
There are some choice scenes where it is quite funny, even if it constantly reuses the same tired clichéd tropes that Rimuru himself is aware of. Like the rest of the season, the ending was predictable. It is basically the exact same cycle of events that had repeated itself multiple times, with the final episode being a side story.
Overall, That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime has potential as a kingdom building anime. It could have dived into the intricacies of this world’s polities and how works worked. Instead, everything just goes smoothly for Rimuru, who just be nice and makes friends with everyone. No one gets proper punishment and enemies rarely die, yet Rimuru gains undying loyalty, everything goes his way and it feels so naively ideal that is quite unbelievable.
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