English Dub Review: That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime “The Orc Lord”

A rose by any other name would probably evolve.

Overview (Spoilers!)

The whole village watches as Rimuru tastes their first bite of food, relishing in their newfound ability to eat. The feast is a joyous occasion, and everyone eats and drinks to their heart’s content.

Kaijin is mystified that orcs attacked the ogres, considering ogres are usually far more powerful than orcs. The red-haired ogre explains that a masked majin led the orcs, only leaving six ogres alive. The head ogre wants revenge, and Rimuru offers the six ogres a place in the village. The ogre agrees, but only if the contract ends after he takes out the orc army.

Rimuru calls the ogres into their tent and offers to give all of the names. Rimuru starts to name the head ogre, but as soon as they open their mouth, they pass out. When they wake up, they’re in their slime form, resting under the purple-haired ogre’s boobs. Apparently, they named the ogres and immediately went into sleep mode—the head ogre is now a kijin by name of Benimaru. The princess is called Shuna, the boob lady is Shion, the blue-haired guy is Souei, the buff guy is Kurobe, and the old man is Hakuro.

In the forest of Jura, there’s a lake called Siss, controlled by a race of lizardmen. The lizards spy the orc army in their territory and prepare for battle, but they’re shocked by the fact that there are 200,00 orc soldiers. The head lizardman thinks the legendary Orc Lord must be controlling them. He calls in his son Gabiru—who was named by Gelmud—for reinforcement.

Back at the village, Hakuro trains the goblins at combat. Benimaru explains the Orc Lord situation to Rimuru. He also theorizes that the orc attack could have been related to Gelmud, who came to the ogre village a few months back; Benimaru refused Gelmud’s offer to name the ogres, and Gelmud may have born a grudge. Rimuru recalls that Gelmud named Rigor’s brother as well. Souei tells Rimuru that lizardmen have been sighted, which is pretty unusual for this area of the forest.

At the request of his father, Gabiru rides to the goblin village to ask for their help against the orcs. His companions build up his confidence and cheer him on.

Our Take 

Week after week, Rimuru continues to be super cute. When they chow down at the feast, they look like the happiest creature in the world as they squeal, “It’s so great to be alive!” Come on, what’s not to love there?

Unfortunately, Rimuru doesn’t get a lot of time to be cute and charming during this episode’s runtime. Instead, most of the story is taken up by plotlines we’ve seen before, repeated almost beat for beat. Rimuru thinks naming the ogres will be no big deal, but they black out for days because of it… which is exactly what happened when Rimuru naively rushed in to name all the goblins. This time, the scene’s timing is pretty confusing. We see Rimuru start to name Benimaru and then pass out before even finishing their sentence, and yet when they wake up, we learn that they named all six ogres before they passed out? What is the truth?

I’m not sure I understand the ogres’ evolution, either. Unlike the goblins, who powered up physically when they evolved, the ogres become smaller and more humanoid. Rimuru says that Shion looks less wild and more intelligent now—but how can he tell she’s more intelligent just from her appearance? The show seems to be implying that people who are conventionally attractive (Rimuru freaks out about the fact that all of them are really hot now) are smarter and more refined, which is… remarkably untrue, and not a great message. (Although it’s funny to watch Rimuru’s reaction when they realize that Kurobe just looks like a normal middle-aged guy.)

Then there’s the stuff with the lizards. I’m going to come right out and say it—it’s boring. We don’t get to know much about these lizardmen characters. The animation used during their conversations is stiff and unexpressive—their mouths open and close, but their facial expressions don’t shift at all. Plus, we see the lizardmen discuss the impending orc threat, and then Rimuru and Benimaru have the exact same conversation one scene later. What was the point of going through all that with the lizards in the first place?

The most interesting development here is definitely what’s going on with Gelmud. I didn’t remember the fact that Gelmud named Rigor—a fact that we indeed learned several episodes ago—and I’m impressed by this piece of continuity and foreshadowing. I can’t help but be intrigued—why does he go around naming monsters, seemingly at random? What is his ultimate goal? And how does he have enough magic to be able to do that?

Hopefully, though, Gelmud will take off his mask sometime—I need someone on this show to emote than the lizards.