I get that Tensura 2 has a large cast and is actually more a comedic slice of life than an action epic, but at some point you have to wonder if there really has ceased being any point in following along.
As the three bestketeers face off against their opponents this week, supported by various other characters, we more or less get three forgettable encounters.
Firstly we have the white tiger girl and Gabiru facing off against Milim’s dragon priests. Only the priests don’t really care about the outcome of the fight given they are fairly certain that Milim doesn’t want to fight Rimuru and all the extras are more or less dropped before we even come into the situation. Then the main bald priest guy is more just wanting to play rather than taking the fight in anyway seriously.
While it is great that not ever opponent is just straight up evil or killed, this felt like such an empty encounter. When the potential big-bad rose toward the end of the episode and the priests all got up and just healed all of Rimuru’s crew that were hurt and they all banded together it just felt like everything in this situation had been mostly meaningless.
Was this encounter in Tensura 2 at least entertainingly meaningless?
I guess that depends.
It was nice to see that Gabiru has continued to grow as a character from where we first met him back in season one. I don’t really have an opinion on the white tiger girl so really didn’t get a lot out of her scenes. The dragon priests of Milim might become interesting depending on where the story goes with them, but right now they are just another extra moving part in a story packed full of characters and factions.
Tensura 2 also continued the fight with the snake girl and the ice sword guy. Though, after being completely outclassed, ice sword guy more or less tried to surrender before Clayman, true to his nature, turned on his own subordinate. As I said last week, we really don’t need any more reasons to hate Clayman but Tensura 2 feels the need to make him seem despicable at every single turn.
Likewise, the encounter with the masked pair in the forest was kind of a one-sided fight before they more or less decided they were done and disappeared.
So to summarise, the Beastketeers pretty much lost all three encounters in Tensura 2 as one opponent didn’t fight, the second one turned into a giant monster that another character took care of (and lets discuss that in a moment) and the final fight saw the opponents beat them down and then calmly leave.
About the only actual moment of cool we get this week is that Benimaru, cocky as he was about the outcome of this fight, more or less demonstrates that he needs to be the protagonist in his own anime right now and not playing second fiddle to a slime given he’s pretty much an unstoppable force of nature in his own right.
And I’d be more critical of that except it was very cool.
However, from a narrative point of view we’re still left with another situation where the guy with the ice-sword was built up as a threat and then disposed of so easily. This is much like the three characters who were all reincarnated that attacked Rimuru’s city. They were introduced as potentially the next real threat and then ended up being summarily disposed of within a handful of episodes. It almost makes you wonder why they bothered to introduce them at all.
Was Benimaru’s moment of cool in Tensura 2 Episode 44 enough to make this episode exciting?
Possibly yes, but overall I’m still very luke-warm about this second season of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime .
Images from: That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Season 2 Part 2. Dir. Y Kikuchi. 8bit. 2021.
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Karandi James
As memory serves, those three reincarnated brutes were all disposed on in a single episode: one got comeuppance from the master swordsman he disrespected, one was betrayed and murdered by her comrade before she even knew there was any real trouble going on, and the traitor in question was betrayed and murdered before he had any inkling of such so a mage could take over his body and abilities. And then the mage was easily disposed of by Diablo, after he was helpless against Rimuru’s massacre-class assault.
Yeah, the show is not keen on letting bad things happen to the good guys (for given definitions of such). It’ll be very melodramatic about it, but nothing goes wrong for them for very long. The massacre in Rimuru’s city got very close, but all the tragedy was simply undone overnight. And, of course, that holy knight who wants to “avenge” her friend *was* formidable, but now that Rimuru’s a demon lord, I doubt she’s that much of a threat anymore. So… if the show goes on long enough, we’ll get to collisions among the most primordial powers in the world, and somehow I’m still not worried about the protagonists.
It tries to do too much, and too little. Make the characters stronger and triumphant, but far too easily and without any real cost. I’m hard-pressed to think of another show that so thoroughly pretends to have such high stakes while actually having such low stakes.
Totally agree with your final paragraph there. Way too much build up of threats for so little payoff. If it wants to be a comedy, that’s fine but it really should just lean into the comedy and stop trying to set up epic fantasy throwdowns.
Unless, of course, it actually *delivers* said showdowns, but somehow I doubt it will.