Review for That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime - Season Two Part Two

Introduction

They say that you need both sides for there to be balance, that you need the dark to recognise the light, that good cannot exist without bad, that such things are defined by their opposites. That does raise the question as to what lies in between, the mediocre and the average. What role does the mediocre serve in our definitions of good and bad, especially when it comes to entertainment? The answer of course comes down to scarcity. The best entertainment is just as rare as the worst, and what lies in between is our daily bread; the shows that we usually watch, the music that radio plays on a loop, and the games that we play that eat up our days. And even in the realm of the average, there is high quality mediocrity and poor mediocrity. This stream of self-indulgent consciousness serves as the introduction to one of the best example of average anime... That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime, as I take a look at the Season 2 Part 2 Blu-ray.


Satoru Mikami is a 37 year old salaryman, whose life is going great, except for the lack of any kind of relationship. It irks a bit when his co-worker calls him to introduce his new girlfriend, but that doesn’t stop him when a knife-wielding mugger attacks. Satoru intervenes, and gets stabbed. He manages to get his dying wish across, but as his consciousness fades, he hears a strange voice.


Then he wakes up... in a cave... as a slime. The only companion he has is that voice, the voice of the Great Sage still echoing in his mind. But his body is strange, his senses are curtailed, and it seems that all he can do is absorb that which he envelops. But the voice helps him understand his new life, as he explores the cave. It’s when he encounters a dragon trapped in the cave that his horizons begin to expand. No other slime has consciousness, and he’s also not the only out-worlder to come to this world, although reincarnation is unheard of. The dragon, Veldora Tempest becomes his first friend, and he gives the slime a name, Rimuru. Rimuru promises to free the dragon from his magical imprisonment, and that’s the start of an amazing adventure.


12 episodes of That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime Season 2 are presented across two Blu-rays from Funimation in this Part 2 release.

Disc 1
37. The Visitors
38. A Meeting of Humans and Monsters
39. Ramiris’s Warning
40. The Congress Dances
41. The Eve of Battle
42. The Demon Lords
43. The Signal to Begin the Banquet
44. On This Land Where It All Happened

Disc 2
45. Adalmann, the Index Finger
46. Demon Lords’ Banquet ~Walpurgis~
47. Returning From the Brink
48. Octagram

Picture

The show gets a 1.78:1 widescreen 1080p transfer, and it’s a good one. The image is clear and sharp, colours are strong and consistent, detail levels are accurately represented, and the only issue is some minor banding during the few darker scenes. That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is a light-hearted comedy adventure show, so the colours are bright and vivid, the artwork is simple but effective, and the character designs tend to the cute and amiable. The animation is smooth, while effects are used well to establish the expected fantasy tropes.

Sound

You have the option of Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround English with a signs only track, and Dolby TrueHD 2.0 Stereo Japanese with translated subtitles, all locked during playback. The audio is fine, the dialogue is clear, the music suits the story well, coupled with a pair of catchy theme songs, and the action comes across well, even in the Japanese stereo version that I watched. The subtitles are accurately timed and free of typos.

Extras

You get two discs in a BD Amaray style case, with one on each inner face. Unlike the last time, the sleeve is not reversible. Instead the inside has more artwork and an episode and extras listing. Crunchyroll’s discs boot to static menus.

The extras are on disc 2 and comprise the following, beginning with a recap episode.


Tales: Veldora’s Journal 2 [Episode 36.5] (24:07)
Promo Videos (5:17)
Commercials (0:34)
Textless Episode 45 – Part B (11:54)
Textless Episode 46 – Part A (9:23)
Textless Episode 47 – Ending (4:51)
Textless Episode 48 (23:37)
Textless OP
Textless ED


The textless episode segments are from towards the end of the season, when big magic spells are flying, and there is a whole lot of Japanese text and magical symbols on screen to supply necessary information (plus text translation in the subtitles). It’s funny as in at least one instance, Crunchyroll have messed up, and put the textless version in the episode, and kept the text filled version in the extras.

Conclusion

Of late, I have been re-watching the comedy sketch series, The Fast Show. I mention this as there is one character introduced in the second season played by Mark Williams, the middle class Patrick Nice, usually found in his kitchen, relating some bizarre happenstance from his life, topped off with the most banal catchphrase. I see that happening in That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, the main character Rimuru relating his accomplishments, “So the human army of Falmuth attacked my kingdom after their spies waged a disinformation war, wiping out most of my soldiers and killing all my friends. I got mad and wiped out 10,000 of the enemy with an epic magic spell so powerful that it triggered an instant evolution within me, and I attained the status of a Demon Lord, which enabled me to bring my fallen friends all back to life, at which point they promptly levelled up, and I managed to free the Evil Dragon Veldora from the pocket dimension within myself, 100 years ahead of time... Which was nice.”


I’ve finally figured it out. That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is ‘iyashikei’ for the shonen demographic. Iyashikei is that ‘healing’ genre of anime, typified by shows like K-On, Non Non Biyori, and Hidamari Sketch, usually centred on a group of cute girls doing inconsequential cute extracurricular things, most often in a school environment. There’s rarely any drama, certainly no stress, just the vicarious pleasure that comes from quirky friends with varying personalities enjoying life to the fullest in each other’s company. Slime is about a normal guy who dies and is reborn in an RPG game inspired universe, where he has to not only survive, but thrive against epic odds, confronting warriors, monsters, demons and more. That doesn’t sound very relaxing or healing on the face of it.


The thing about Rimuru is that he is ridiculously over-powered. The initial humour came from reincarnating him as the lowest of the low in the RPG realm, the kind of slime that most players spends hours grinding against to slowly level up when they have nothing else to do in a game. That contrasted with his innate abilities and powers, which just kept increasing as the story unfolded. In the first season, there was sufficient challenge and drama to make the show interesting. It was entertaining to see Rimuru face these new characters and foes, and figure out a way to deal with them, inevitably levelling up and gaining new abilities in the process, to the point that he becomes a leader, establishes a kingdom, and becomes a force to be reckoned with. A lot of the humour comes from the jaw-dropping reaction of the people he encounters when he pulls out some ultimate move so powerful that no one can stand against it.


You could say That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime expended all its karma in the previous set of episodes, Season 2 Part 1. When your main character effectively attains the level of a god, bringing all of his dead friends back to life, there is no drama, no challenge left in the story. Where do you go from there, when you know absolutely for certain that the good guys will never, ever lose in this story? There is nothing left for this premise to prove. In this collection, having attained the level of a Demon Lord, Rimuru has to face off against the other Demon Lords, or rather one in particular, Clayman. It turns out that Clayman was machinating like crazy, and was responsible for the war against Tempest in the previous collection, and all the other bad things that have been going on. Rimuru and his friends have to deal with him and his minions (including Rimuru’s friend and fellow Demon Lord Milim, who is being mind-controlled by Clayman), and without much effort, Rimuru makes Clayman brown his trousers in awe, by revealing the full extent of his powers. And at the end of the collection, we learn that someone else even more powerful has been pulling Clayman’s strings, setting up a new foe for subsequent seasons of the show.


Structurally, this is the weakest instalment of Slime yet, spending the first four episodes of the collection in committee. It really is just characters sitting down and having a chat. Rimuru hosts a conference of the great and good, his allies and potential allies, and really they just talk for four episodes. Sure, there are the brown trouser moments, as newcomers are overwhelmed by Rimuru’s accomplishments, but nothing really happens in these episodes, other than laying pipe for the second half of this collection, when the conflict against Clayman and his forces comes to a head.


That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is a very well-made show, with likeable characters, and I’ll even admit to having fun with these episodes. But a fantasy action series without drama, where there is no peril for the characters, no challenge, doesn’t make for an entertaining show when all is said and done. The whole point of Slime is to make the audience feel good about themselves, and it does give that vicarious satisfaction of seeing someone breeze through life with ease. But it’s not good storytelling. It’s the kind of playground imaginary one-upmanship that infants indulge in. There are far too many of these over-powered characters in anime these days, Overlord is another example, where the aim is to make the audience feel good about their choice of entertainment rather than try to evoke an emotional response to genuine drama. It’s already been subverted in shows like Mob Psycho and One Punch Man, and much as I liked That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime to begin with, this particular niche genre needs to go away now.

That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime Season 2 Part 2 can be bought from Anime Online, United Publications, Anime Limited, and mainstream retailers, in DVD, BD, and as long as it's in stock, Limited Edition forms.