That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime
Apr. 11th, 2019 06:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schneefinkYesterday I decided that being sick is the perfect time to watch a few episodes of a ridiculous anime I'd heard about, and then I kept watching until way too late and finished today and I love it a lot.
When I heard that it's about a guy reincarnated as a slime I thought it was a punishment, but it turns out he's a slime because a slime body has some super cool skills. Rimuru is special because he's a genuinely nice guy who wants to make friends and everyone to live in peace and prosperity together, which sounds almost impossible to accomplish but fortunately he also quickly becomes a pretty OP fighter. The most important questions early on are about how to build alliances between different races, especially monsters, and also infrastructure, because you need resources and craftsmen to build a town. I like Rimuru a lot, I like his friends and allies (especially the pretty deadly ones /shallow), and I like that it's essentially wish-fulfillment. I'm glad there'll be a second season next year, I look forward to it.
One caveat: it does get pretty male-gaze-y, especially later on, and I've seen more than enough of Rimuru pressed under Shion's big breasts or Milim in her barely-there bikini, but by the time it got annoying I was already invested. (It helps a little that the one person Rimuru fawns over the most is a guy, but still.)
I like that when Satoru/Rimuru goes from being a 37-year-old average Japanese man to a slime, he gets used to it so quickly (a few months iirc) that when he finally gains the ability to mimic a human body he looks like a young teenager with no visible sexual characteristics, and he prefers that to an adult body he could make. The lack of obvious sex organs is a surprise, especially since he does still seem to be somewhat of a pervert (though I think less in later episodes? It would make sense, but it might just be wishful thinking), and also that a grown man prefers to look like a teenager, especially since he already has a problem with being underestimated sometimes. Though that doesn't seem to bother him too much, otherwise he wouldn't use his slime form so often, and that does seem to be what he's most comfortable in.
(Btw, I think only Veldora, Shizu, and later Fuze and Eren and her party, and then Shizu's former student Yuuki know that Rimuru used to be human and was then reincarnated, right? At least from what we've seen, though if he trusts Eren and her party with that knowledge then there's no good reason not to tell several others.)
My other favorite characters, perhaps predictably, are Benimaru and Souei. Pretty, deadly, competent, fiercely loyal, and a lot of backstory angst to play around with. (The one time I was disappointed by their chosen course of action was when they attacked Milim when Rimuru was talking to her, they should know by now that Rimuru prefers talking to people over fighting them, and that's even smarter when the other is as strong as Milim, but to be fair it was reasonable grounds to panic.)
Only six surviving ogres from their village, who have now all evolved into kijin. But there must be ogres elsewhere, right? (If two kijin have a kid, is it an ogre until it's named? Probably kijin have enough magicules (that's still hilarious btw) to name kids themselves.)
And also Ranga! We don't see him spend much time with his other packmates anymore after the pack bonds with the goblins, but I'll just imagine that happening off-screen. He does seem to spend a lot of time with people and get along with them, like Gobta and Shion.
Speaking of Shion - I didn't need more big-breasted women with big cleavage fawning over a male main character, and she even holds him close all the time, or fighting over him like Shion did with Shuna, so I mostly try to ignore it. Same with Milim's bikini outfit – it's even worse than normal bikini outfits, and that's saying something, and that Milim acts so much like a child if anything makes it worse.
I also like Veldora (it's been two years, I wonder how long it'll take to destroy the prison seal? Maybe next season?), and Rigurd and Rigur and Gobta the hobgoblins, and Kaijin the dwarven master smith, and Vesta the dwarven ex-Minister and Gabiru the traitor son of the Lizardmen chief coming around, and Hakurou training the goblin riders, and Geld the orc leader, and Shizu the champion,… I don't like Shizu&Rimuru's students yet but that could easily happen. (Also I'm very intrigued about the connection between Chloe and Veldora… and whatever spirit that is that inhabits Chloe now.)
The episode with Shizu and the demons indicates that next season has more demons, including Rimuru summoning a powerful demon, so that promises to be fun. Rimuru is such a powerful fighter by now, with very powerful allies, that they'll have to transition to more problems that can't be solved with brute strength, like political problems or issues like saving the kids, or maybe fighting while preventing collateral damage, and I look forward to it. (The poor dryads must be pretty busy considering how often the forest gets damaged in battle!)
When I heard that it's about a guy reincarnated as a slime I thought it was a punishment, but it turns out he's a slime because a slime body has some super cool skills. Rimuru is special because he's a genuinely nice guy who wants to make friends and everyone to live in peace and prosperity together, which sounds almost impossible to accomplish but fortunately he also quickly becomes a pretty OP fighter. The most important questions early on are about how to build alliances between different races, especially monsters, and also infrastructure, because you need resources and craftsmen to build a town. I like Rimuru a lot, I like his friends and allies (especially the pretty deadly ones /shallow), and I like that it's essentially wish-fulfillment. I'm glad there'll be a second season next year, I look forward to it.
One caveat: it does get pretty male-gaze-y, especially later on, and I've seen more than enough of Rimuru pressed under Shion's big breasts or Milim in her barely-there bikini, but by the time it got annoying I was already invested. (It helps a little that the one person Rimuru fawns over the most is a guy, but still.)
I like that when Satoru/Rimuru goes from being a 37-year-old average Japanese man to a slime, he gets used to it so quickly (a few months iirc) that when he finally gains the ability to mimic a human body he looks like a young teenager with no visible sexual characteristics, and he prefers that to an adult body he could make. The lack of obvious sex organs is a surprise, especially since he does still seem to be somewhat of a pervert (though I think less in later episodes? It would make sense, but it might just be wishful thinking), and also that a grown man prefers to look like a teenager, especially since he already has a problem with being underestimated sometimes. Though that doesn't seem to bother him too much, otherwise he wouldn't use his slime form so often, and that does seem to be what he's most comfortable in.
(Btw, I think only Veldora, Shizu, and later Fuze and Eren and her party, and then Shizu's former student Yuuki know that Rimuru used to be human and was then reincarnated, right? At least from what we've seen, though if he trusts Eren and her party with that knowledge then there's no good reason not to tell several others.)
My other favorite characters, perhaps predictably, are Benimaru and Souei. Pretty, deadly, competent, fiercely loyal, and a lot of backstory angst to play around with. (The one time I was disappointed by their chosen course of action was when they attacked Milim when Rimuru was talking to her, they should know by now that Rimuru prefers talking to people over fighting them, and that's even smarter when the other is as strong as Milim, but to be fair it was reasonable grounds to panic.)
Only six surviving ogres from their village, who have now all evolved into kijin. But there must be ogres elsewhere, right? (If two kijin have a kid, is it an ogre until it's named? Probably kijin have enough magicules (that's still hilarious btw) to name kids themselves.)
And also Ranga! We don't see him spend much time with his other packmates anymore after the pack bonds with the goblins, but I'll just imagine that happening off-screen. He does seem to spend a lot of time with people and get along with them, like Gobta and Shion.
Speaking of Shion - I didn't need more big-breasted women with big cleavage fawning over a male main character, and she even holds him close all the time, or fighting over him like Shion did with Shuna, so I mostly try to ignore it. Same with Milim's bikini outfit – it's even worse than normal bikini outfits, and that's saying something, and that Milim acts so much like a child if anything makes it worse.
I also like Veldora (it's been two years, I wonder how long it'll take to destroy the prison seal? Maybe next season?), and Rigurd and Rigur and Gobta the hobgoblins, and Kaijin the dwarven master smith, and Vesta the dwarven ex-Minister and Gabiru the traitor son of the Lizardmen chief coming around, and Hakurou training the goblin riders, and Geld the orc leader, and Shizu the champion,… I don't like Shizu&Rimuru's students yet but that could easily happen. (Also I'm very intrigued about the connection between Chloe and Veldora… and whatever spirit that is that inhabits Chloe now.)
The episode with Shizu and the demons indicates that next season has more demons, including Rimuru summoning a powerful demon, so that promises to be fun. Rimuru is such a powerful fighter by now, with very powerful allies, that they'll have to transition to more problems that can't be solved with brute strength, like political problems or issues like saving the kids, or maybe fighting while preventing collateral damage, and I look forward to it. (The poor dryads must be pretty busy considering how often the forest gets damaged in battle!)
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Date: 2019-04-11 04:38 pm (UTC)Ah, yes, anime fanservice. :/ I am basically resigned to accepting it as the price of admission because it's so incredibly difficult to find anime that doesn't have it somewhere.
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Date: 2019-04-11 05:04 pm (UTC)Most recent anime I watched (e.g. Natsume Yuujinchou, Gundam Wing, Akatsuki no Yona) had comparatively little of this kind of fanservice, so this was an unwelcome surprise/reminder :|
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Date: 2019-04-11 07:09 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2019-04-11 08:16 pm (UTC)I hadn't heard the term isekai before - I was aware that portal fantasy and similar tropes are popular in manga/anime, but not precisely how popular. Waking up in a slime or spider body sounds more creative and interesting than most of them.
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Date: 2019-04-11 08:32 pm (UTC)Idk why, but isekai have been popular recently. It is essentially a portal fantasy - and you could certainly argue Digimon or other Anime also fall into this. I think Sword Art Online probably helped the genre along because it was so popular - but don't watch it, it's a horrendous story.
If we talk European Fantasy or DnD inspired manga and anime, my absolute favourite right now is Delicious in Dungeon or Dungeon Meshi. The party of adventurers loses one of their own to a dragon and they decide to go on a time intensive trip back into the dungeon to rescue her. They are short on money, however, and decide to eat what they find in the dungeon instead of packing rations. It's a really intruiging mix of cooking manga and monster ecology, in a sense. Idk if it has an anime yet, however. If it does, I can only recommend it!
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Date: 2019-04-11 08:45 pm (UTC)In general I don't mind "average person enters fantasy world and becomes very powerful there," but that alone doesn't make for an interesting story yet, there has to be more than that. With Reincarnated as a Slime even apart from his weird body I like how it focuses on gaining friends and allies and building a village of "monsters" and eventually a nation. (In fact there's almost no attention paid to Rimuru's previous life, which is almost a bit odd, he certainly seems to get over his death very quickly.)
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Date: 2019-04-12 07:31 am (UTC)I agree with most of that. It can be interesting, but at this point portal fantasies are pretty common, so there has to be more going on for it to work for me. I will check out the Slime thing, the work of building coalitions sounds amazing!
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Date: 2019-04-12 10:56 am (UTC)I hope you enjoy it! :D
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Date: 2019-04-12 12:02 pm (UTC)I really like new takes on D&D stuff, I bought a (german-language) anthology of dungeon short stories last year. The focus there was on who even maintains that all and had also some parodies on bureaucracy and calls to unionize in it. xD
I promise to report back, haha!
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Date: 2019-04-12 12:19 pm (UTC)Ooh, maybe I'll have to check out that manga after all. I haven't been reading much manga recently (among other things because my laptop is slow so loading each new page takes time and I have to wait all the time etc.) but I could make an exception.
New takes on old story tropes are fun. I recently read Spiderlight, and Orconomics and its sequel Son of a Liche, both novels with a slightly unusual take on the classic fantasy/D&D quests/worlds, and I enjoyed them a lot. Orconomics especially also has a lot about the economical and administrative background etc. (There's a monster loot stock market exchange...)
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Date: 2019-04-12 12:47 pm (UTC)Orconomics sounds super intereting. I am here for pro-Orc stories. I will have to check that out.
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Date: 2019-04-12 02:24 pm (UTC)no subject
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