English Dub Review: That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime “Inherited Will”

This isn’t even my final form!

Overview (Spoilers!)

Shizu wakes up in bed. While the goblins solemnly rebuild their village, she tells Rimuru the story of her life. After a traumatic childhood, she stayed with Leon until a hero came to fight her, did some therapizing, and took Shizu in. Shizu’s mask was a gift from her, a magical artifact that helped to suppress Ifrit. Shizu and her mentor travelled the word together—until one day the hero vanished and left Shizu behind. After decades of fighting for good, Shizu became terrified of releasing Ifrit, so she retired and became a schoolteacher. Now she’s on a quest to find Leon, and all she wants is for him to acknowledge that she’s a human girl. Rimuru and Shizu share their real names; they begin to call each other Satoru and Shizue.

Shizue begs Rimuru to eat her so that she can “rest in the one place she’ll feel safe” and asks them to find her old students to help them return to their worlds. Now an old woman, Shizue dies. Rimuru devours her, and in the afterlife, a child Shizue runs into her mother’s arms. Rigord and the party of humans show up to visit Shizu—and find a nude human weeping. Rimuru?!

After using predator on Shizu, Rimuru is able to mimic her human form, appearing like a younger version of her with blue hair. After some mourning, the three humans head home to report back to the Guildmaster, but first they ask Rimuru to assume their human form so that the travelers can say goodbye to “Shizu.” Rimuru offers them all new clothes and weapons, and the humans are delighted to meet Kaijin, who’s basically a crafting celebrity.

Rimuru and Ranga hold a small funeral for Shizue. Rimuru vows to honor her last wishes and find Leon.

An orc stumbles through the desert and collapses. A figure in a mask—calling himself Gelmud— approaches and offers to take him in. Gelmud names the orc “Geld” and gives him some meat, claiming that Geld will one day cause a disaster in the forest of Jura.

Our Take

In a show that’s made up of silly comedy and dramatic battles, it’s rare to have a quiet episode dedicated to mourning a peaceful death. “Inherited Will” handles this serious topic with surprising heart and sensitivity. The death scene hits all the right beats—I both felt the weight of Shizue’s passing and acknowledged that it was okay, because she lived a long life and this was her time to go. The sun shining through the tent is serene and gentle, making for appropriate and appealing visuals.

When it comes to the actual dialogue in this scene, though… I wish we didn’t have to sit through so much exposition. Surely there’s a more interesting way for us to learn about the details of Shizue’s life, especially when Rimuru summarizes her story again at the funeral a few minutes later. I’m also really confused by the introduction of “the Hero” who sealed Veldora in the cave, or so Rimuru assumes. In past episodes, that Hero was depicted as a skinny woman with long black hair and a mask, so I naturally assumed Shizue was the Hero. This other character, who served as Shizue’s mentor but looks exactly like her… it’s pretty confusing.

Also, uh… Shizue wanting Rimuru to eat her is a nice sentiment (what a weird sentence), but isn’t Ifrit there inside Rimuru as well? And Veldora? Are they just going to be battling when… a dead body drops between them?! What are the rules of how Rimuru’s stomach works?

But the heart behind this episode is genuine. Shizue says she can’t love this world, but she can’t bring herself to hate it either—and she feels the same way about Leon. It’s a simple idea, but it represents how many people feel about those who’ve deeply wronged them. It’s hard to hate someone you have such a deep emotional connection with, someone you lived with and for. But it’s impossible to love them when they’ve hurt you so much, either.

It’s also fascinating to me that this show introduced Shizue as Rimuru’s love interest and then killed her off for good partway through the series. If she comes back to life I’m going to be pissed, but rather than turn this into another one of the boring sex-fueled lust stories so common in isekai, we get a poignant emotional moment instead.

And the long-awaited reveal of Rimuru’s human form doesn’t disappoint. I love how androgynous they are, and how much this character eschews gender—they were a cisgender human man, then a slime with no biological sex at all, and now they’re in the body of a woman, with long hair and a feminine face. In a world that’s so divided into strict gender categories, I find stories that play with gender roles this way really compelling. Plus, Rimuru’s new outfit is adorable.

At the end of this episode, though, Rimuru delivers a speech along the lines of “and that’s the story of that time I got reincarnated as a slime, the end!” It’s pretty confusing to me, because this isn’t the end of the anime—the final scene between Gelmud and Geld makes that obvious. So why wrap everything up with a pretty bow as if there’s nothing more to come? But Gelmud does look like a compelling character, and I have to admit that Vic Mignogna can do a pretty good “creepy mysterious character” voice.

I never thought I would enjoy this show’s clumsy attempts at seriousness, but while “Inherited Will” isn’t perfect, it’s so refreshing to see an isekai storyline centered around a woman instead of just her boobs.