English Dub Review: That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime “Attack of the Ogres”

And the cow jumped over the moon.

Overview (Spoilers!)

The goblin village continues to expand and prosper. In the privacy of their tent, Rimuru begins to explore their new human body. Using Ifrit’s skill “Body Double,” they examine their body from the outside—and discover that they’re completely androgynous, right down to the, erm, most private areas. They create doubles of themselves that look more masculine or more feminine, to try both out. Then Rimuru realizes, to their immense delight, that they can eat in their human form, and they ask Rigord to prepare a lavish feast. Rigor promises to hunt lots of magical beasts for dinner, but Rimuru is troubled that so many have been leaving the forest.

Rimuru heads to the cave where they met Veldora, in order to experiment with one of Shizu’s skills: “Degenerate,” an ability that lets them merge two skills into a new, evolved one. Suddenly, Rimuru receives an urgent message from Ranga. They rush to the forest, where a band of ogres are attacking the goblin hunting party and using magic to put them to sleep. The ogres believe that Rimuru is a majin, a magic-user who enslaved the goblins and wolves. Rimuru uses a variety of skills to best the ogres without killing any of them.

The elderly ogre names each of Rimuru’s skills and the monster each came from. While the red-haired ogre spouts accusations that Rimuru doesn’t understand, the old guy cuts off their arm!  Rimuru just regenerates it, and when the red-haired guy uses fire against him, it obviously has no effect. Rimuru produces a massive black flame, exploding a boulder to scare the ogres. The red-haired ogre still wants to fight, but the pink-haired princess begs him to stop. Apparently, someone with Shizu’s mask hired orcs to destroy the ogre village, but the princess believes this had nothing to do with Rimuru. Rimuru shows the ogres their slime form, and the red-haired ogre begs their forgiveness. So Rimuru invites the ogres back to their village for the feast!

Our Take

Consistently, my favorite episodes of this show are the ones where Rimuru has some free time to just dick around with their powers—and “Attack of the Ogres” is no exception. Sure, there’s a battle, but the first half of this story is all about self-exploration.

It’s super interesting that Rimuru doesn’t seem to have an internal sense of gender. Instead of bemoaning that their human form isn’t more masculine or more feminine specifically, they’re more fussed about the fact that they don’t have any genitals. They’re uncomfortable with the idea of possessing a highly feminine body, but it’s not because they were male in their past life—Rimuru just doesn’t want to feel like they’re peeping on a nude Shizu. In the end, they don’t seem to decide that they’d rather be male or female—they just accept their androgynous body as it is. There are so few characters in media who identify outside the gender binary, and I’m pleased that this show explores gender in such a charming, original, and overall respectful way. Plus, when Rimuru discovers that they don’t have a penis, they cry out, “Hey diddle diddle, there is no fiddle!” which is maybe the funniest line in this show to date.

One confusing thing about the English dub, though, is that characters unequivocally refer to Rimuru with he/him pronouns and male-oriented language. It’s hard to know how accurately this reflects the Japanese dialogue without speaking Japanese myself—Japanese third-person pronouns aren’t always gendered, so it’s very possible that Rimuru is referred to in a neutral way in the original script. I have a hard time understanding why the ogres would look at the supposedly androgynous Rimuru and instantly peg them as male, as they do in the English translation. Heck, people always gender the slime as male, which is absolutely wild.

I digress. The front half of this episode features Rimuru at their charismatic best—getting super excited about eating, wearing a cute furry coat, shooting off one-liners (Ranga promises to defend the goblins to the death, and Rimuru remarks on his valor before adding, “The tail wagging kind of ruins it though.”) They also reflect on Shizu’s death in a surprisingly quiet and somber way. Their experimentation in the cave is much a memorial to Shizu as it is a training session, and the animation reflects that—the lighting is soft and cool, and Rimuru’s black fire swirls around them in a moment of beautiful and touching reflection.

Of course, every episode has its flaws. Rimuru opens by remarking that the goblins have rebuilt their village completely and are thriving, which further lowers the already infinitesimally small stakes of the Rimuru vs. Ifrit battle. From a narrative point of view, why bother destroying the town if it’s just going to get rebuilt immediately?

It’s also pretty lazy to write a major conflict that stems from a small misunderstanding. The whole battle with the ogres is a simple case of mistaken identity, and it’s pretty frustrating, because this battle, too, is super low-stakes—once the ogres find out they were wrong, they instantly become Rimuru’s friend. Although I’m glad to finally meet most of the characters from the intro and ending song, and it’s exciting that the elderly ogre might actually be a match for Rimuru.

This battle is more interesting than the one against Ifrit because we get to see several different opponents in action, giving Rimuru the opportunity to use several different skills. Their attempts to scare the ogres into surrender with a blustery speech is reminiscent of Matt Smith on Doctor Who. Even so, I’m not sure who exactly Rimuru got their “extra skill” from, and they never end up with a chance to use “Degenerate.” Plus, it’s really freaking annoying to hear Rimuru call out “Holy hooters!” when they’re fighting an ogre with large breasts. This person is trying to kill you! Are her boobs really your priority right now?!

I like what seems to be a reoccurring theme in this show, though, about how anyone is a potential friend and ally if you can just work through your issues and misunderstandings. Sure, Rimuru sometimes gets there through violence and murder, but all’s well that ends well, eh?