English Dub Review: That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime “Conquering the Labyrinth”

But where’s David Bowie?

Overview (Spoilers Below!)

After a brief recap, Rimuru and the kids walk through a labyrinth on the way to the Dwelling of Spirits. The path seems to lead straight ahead in one direction, but Rimuru knows there are tricks in play to distort their perception. The group all hears a manic laughing, delivered directly into their heads by telepathy. Rimuru asks the voice in their heads for help, and it lights the path in front of them.

The glowing hallway leads into a room containing a magisteel golem. The voice announs that Rimuru must defeat the creature in front of them. Ranga shields the kids while the golem tries to smash Rimuru’s head in. Rimuru uses an arcane string technique like Souei’s to tie up the golem, destroying it with one hit. The spirit is so intimidated that she shows herself—she’s a tiny, talkative, highly excitable fairy.

The fairy introduces herself as Ramiris of the Labyrinth, former Queen of the Spirits and one of the Ten Great Demon Lords. Rimuru doesn’t believe her at first, but she claims to know of their existence from Milim. Rimuru shows Ramiris and the kids their slime form, and Ramiris pouts that they’re not paying attention to her.

While the kids sleep, Rimuru explains their situation. Ramiris munches on cookies bigger than she is, going on about how the hero Leon came through this cave with the desire to summon specific spirit. After succeeding, he fell from grace and became a demon lord. She also claims that she found the remains of Vesta’s magisoldier project and fixed his mistakes to make the golem work. Rimuru promises to build Ramiris a new golem if she helps them.

Ramiris leads Rimuru, Ranga, and the kids to the Dwelling of Spirits, a magical cavern similar to Veldora’s cave. Rimuru knows that it will be difficult to summon spirits and fuse them with the kids, but they’re dedicated to carry out Shizu’s last wish. Ramiris points out that, if the spirits refuse to cooperate, Rimuru could always create a new spirit themself.

Our Take

When Rimuru first meets Ramiris, they mumble to themself, “Damn, she’s obnoxious.” I wish I didn’t feel the same way—Ramiris is super cute, especially how she sparkles when she’s excited, and she’s always munching on those huge cookies. But despite the fact that I’m sure it’s intentional, Jad Saxton’s rendition of her character is pretty irritating. Plus, Ramiris is nearly identical in personality to Milim—loud, impulsive, needy, self-centered, immensely powerful. I’m glad we get more plot-significant female characters, and I do like Milim—I’m just not sure we need two of her. (Plus, dear god, in a cast of Rimuru, Ranga, Rigor, Rigord, and Ryota we do not need another character with an R name.)

This episode leaves me wishing that a lot of concepts were better explained. Rimuru and Ramiris talk about people “falling from grace” as if this is an established thing in the Slime universe that I should remember, but I have no idea what they’re talking about. Does it just mean doing bad deeds, in a general sense? How literal is the word “demon” in the title demon lord? And Ramiris makes it seem like she died and was reincarnated when she became a demon lord—I’m hoping we get clarification on this, because it feels pretty significant. In general, I wish we had better sense of the definition of spirits and demon lords.

A few little moments confused me, too. I don’t get why Rimuru says there are subtle traps in play to confuse their sense of direction, considering we don’t see or learn about any specific traps at all. I’m not totally sure what the difference is between thought transference and telepathy. I don’t know why Rimuru is so shocked that Ramiris would have the golem attack them. “What the actual hell? It’s trying to kill me! How is this a test?” they ask, but it wouldn’t be much of a test if the golem didn’t fight back, would it? Rimuru seemed pretty sure they might not make it out of this cave a minute ago. And I don’t know what it would mean for Rimuru to create a new spirit from scratch. Do they really have the power to craft a whole new living being? If so, Rimuru is more OP than I ever imagined.

And OP they are. With their new string attack—that we never saw them learn or use before, of course—they’ve rendered Souei kind of useless, when the whole point of the JTF seemed to be that everyone could help each other out with their own unique skills. On an unrelated note, the golem feels pretty out-of-place—it very strongly resembles a mecha, and it’s jarring to see that kind of sci-fi element in a medieval fantasy world.

That being said, there are some great visuals in this episode. We’re treated to an overhead 360-degree shot of Rimuru flipping over the golem, and another where the tiny children take shelter in Ranga’s legs to watch gorgeous purple flames. The comedy is on-point too. I chuckled when Rimuru dryly declares, “Oh, look, it’s an ominous path.” Kenya says of Rimuru’s battle, “It’ll be fine. He’s super swole, remember?” Ramiris has to fly around for a minute in pain because, after communicating for so long using only telepathy, she bit her tongue on her first attempt at real speech.

At one point, Ramiris also tells Rimuru, “Your overconfidence might be your downfall.” I’m really hoping that comes back into play at a later point—that we get some kind of character arc for Rimuru where they become a little less OP—but as a general rule, isekai seem allergic to giving their protagonists realistic flaws. Rimuru is usually charming enough to pull off an episode anyway, but I was hoping for a little more creativity from this one.