That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Episode 24 (Extra) Review
This is probably the most fun I’ve had with That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime since the first cour and it is an episode that takes place prior to Shizue meeting Rimuru. She travels to a kingdom to help deal with a summoned demon but things aren’t what they seem at first.
I’m going to be honest, I would love to say that there’s some great characterisation and story telling going on in this episode, and comparatively there actually is, but twenty minutes isn’t exactly a long amount of time and as a stand-alone story there is only so much they can do. While both Kuro/Black and Shizue come across as very interesting characters, without actual follow up this episode doesn’t quite get them there. Fortunately we’ve already seen how Shizue’s story ends so this works nicely to fill in her character and as for the demon, well it is nicely teased that Rimuru is going to meet him sooner or later so we can expect that we’ll meet him again.
What really works though is that this story is tightly structured with very little left to waste. The first act has a human desperately summoning a demon. We’re never given the absolute specifics as to why, but given what the demon does and what we learn about the kingdom, we can probably take a fair guess as to who they were and why they wanted to summon a demon. Even without that particular bit of information, it is a reasonably dramatic opening for a story and right from the start the demon is pretty cool and interesting looking. Here’s someone you want to get to know.
Shizue entering the story and being met by another adventurer is a little clunkier, but it does solve the problem of having to narrate all the exposition when Shizue has someone else to bounce a lot of conversation off of during the early part of the episode and to fill in the details of why they are all there. But once the action starts, we see Shizue at her finest making decisions and taking action.
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The final act links things back in with the main story and while they do rely on some narration here to explicitly link to potential future events for Rimuru, it feels warranted and this story has been interesting enough that it is a nice tease of something to come.
Of course, the question I’m left with is why weren’t more episodes in the main series as interesting or well paced as this one? Why weren’t the characters given just that little more time and attention, some emotional nuances, anything to just make me want to pay that little bit more attention to them? I really enjoyed this story and I’d happily watch a whole season of this kind of story even without the main plot line. While I wasn’t overly impressed to find out this season was ending with ‘extras’ I will admit that this one definitely went above and beyond my expectations of extra material and really was just fun to watch.
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- Episode 1 – Strictly Set Up
- Episode 2 – So I Ate A Dragon and A Snake And A Bat Thing…
- Episode 3 – Submissive Wolves and Buff Goblins
- Episode 4 – Dwarven Blacksmiths and Giggling Elves
- Episode 5 – Past Wrongs and Future Destinies
- Episode 6 – The Importance of Pacing To Build Tension
- Episode 7 – Miraculous Survival of the Slime
- Episode 8 – 3 Ways Slime Is Exploring Endings and Beginnings
- Episode 9 – Watch The Slime Playing with Powers and Defeating Ogres
- Episode 10 – Slime, Ogres and Lizardmen; The Coming Conflict Looks Colourful
- Episode 11 – The Worst Way To Learn the Skill of Diplomacy
- Episode 12 – How Even The Best Laid Plans Can Be Derailed by Idiots
- Episode 13 – War: Crushing March of the Overpowered Monsters
- Episode 14 – The Fitting End of the Orc Lord Courtesy of the Slime
- Episode 15 – The Accidental Creation of a Slime Nation
- Episode 16 – Can You Catch More Demon Lords with Honey?
- Episode 17 – That Time The Powerful Slime Decided To Dabble in Diplomacy
- Episode 18 – The Slime, The Demon Lord and The Flying Sharks?
- Episode 19 – That Time We Defeated a Catastrophe Without Really Trying
- Episode 20 – Well It’s Been Fun, But Now We’ll Count Down Until The End
- Episode 21 – Who Would Have Thought That All You Need Is A Dog And Unlimited Power?
- Episode 22 – That Time We Found a Fairy Who is a Demon Lord?
- Episode 23 – That Time The Show Ended And The Audience Wondered Why?
- Episode 24 (Extra) – And Then Shizue Stole the Anime Right Out From Under Rimuru
- Episode 24.5 (Padding) – Now Worth The Slime
- Images from: That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. Dir. Y Kikuchi. 8Bit. 2018.
Something just hit me.
Back in the fifth episode, we got a look at Rimuru’s “destined one.” The vision was of Shizue and her students. The first one the vision zoomed in on was the little girl with black hair, Chloe. Chloe, in the twenty-third episode, told Rimuru she loved him. Then the spirit that came to possess her was a future spirit, strongly resembling, perhaps, her future self in a spectral wedding gown, which kissed Rimuru, and he saw a vision of what could be a version of Chloe between now and when her future spirit self comes back to possess her, when she is clearly a mighty hero.
Everyone assumed Shizue was Rimuru’s destined one because the vision left off on her, and because… well, she was a grown woman right then, not a little child. Something tells me that was a trick.
You paid way more attention to that sequence of visions than I did.
Actually, that doesn’t sound like a bad theory. I still like Shizue becoming a part of Rimuru and that being a coming together but your Chloe theory works well enough.
Heh, I went back and rewatched it because I was wondering about that entire sequence with Chloe. 😉
Dedication.
…and I just had another one.
Human spectral spirit, born in the future, comes through time to join with Chloe. The only other time we’ve seen time-related magic is when Black mentions some kind of time magic around Shizue’s mask. Which she got from the Hero. Who also imprisoned Veldora. Who reacted to that spectral spirit passing through Rimuru, and influenced Rimuru to give that mask to Chloe. Who has a time-traveling spirit inside her. Which is absolutely connected to the Hero, because we see her for just an instant, and she’s absolutely identical, in every way, to the Hero that sealed Veldora and saved Shizue. And she kissed Rimuru, whom Chloe loves.
So… ah… is Chloe going to become some kind of time-jumping Hero or something, and one which influences the events that make her own origin possible?
That’s getting way too deep for me in a Slime discussion. It isn’t an anime I’ve given that much thought to. Still, it would seem like a very interesting idea to pursue.
To elaborate, the reason things felt rushed is because of the anime’s Committee which was mostly composed of people from Kodansha who publish the manga based on the Light Novel and they wanted the anime to end where it did since it’s EXACTLY where the manga currently is and just before a MAJOR arc of the series. I think the idea is that people who want to know what happens next will rush to buy the magazine and it’s volumes. I really do recommend the manga Light Novel as they do amazing jobs of building the world and giving characters more depth especially with the numerous spin-off manga.
This anime is getting a second season in October, so it’ll be interesting to see it take on a more serious tone and hopefully more tightly paced episodes like this one.
I wonder because if the main story stays focused on the slice of life elements and the city building, it seems more likely we’ll get more of the same (which isn’t actually bad but just not that memorable). Still, I really did enjoy this extra episode.
In the second season they will develop an arc of war with a tone totally different from the one that was seen in the series, besides this episode was written by the same author.