English Dub Review: That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime “Extra: Hey! Butts!”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Having difficulty sleeping in his slime body, Rimiru asks a doctor to come up with medicine to get some shuteye. While it does get him to sleep, it also gives him an odd dream: He introduces sumo wrestling to the world in order to give his monster people something to do to avoid burnout. Things are fun at first, up until the final match between Shuna and Shion, who fight with their butts. Due to their sheer strength, the ring is destroyed and the match is a draw, though butt sumo does catch on quickly. Except not really because it was all a dream! And so the sleeping medicine was locked away forever.

OUR TAKE

And so another Time Slime OVA arrives on our door step AND…I am just as uninformed about this show as I was when I reviewed the last one. Mostly because I didn’t think I would be covering another one of these and never felt compelled to watch the show in the meantime. And just like when I covered that the previous OVA, I know full well that this is not supposed to be reflective of this show’s best, but instead simply being a fun and fan-servicey side story that those who are fans of the show prior to this will likely enjoy on the grounds that it has more of the characters they enjoyed in order to hold them over until the next season starts. As such, I at least know that I can’t judge this episode as much more than what it’s trying to be, but it also clearly isn’t substantive on as its own product either. Which is basically what I said about the last one.

To avoid repeating myself completely, I’ll compare the two for their strengths and weaknesses. With the first one, “The Tragedy of M”, the plot was based in acquiring something in order to solve a problem, in that case being getting material to create a Rimiru-like cushion as a substitute so he wouldn’t be literally stretched thin all the time by his adoring underlings. With that objective came forward momentum as just about every action served moving forward with this goal in mind, even if it was ultimately just mindless fluff at the end of the day. This new OVA doesn’t really have that, as the plot is kicked off through using Rimiru’s drug-induced dream as a framing advice and then introduces sumo as a means of easing people’s minds, so there’s no real goal to close in on other than making sure every person has fun. So I guess the winner between the two would probably be “Tragedy of M”, even if only by a sly margin. But I still have to point out that I wouldn’t recommend either if one is hoping to get into this series, as the best stuff to showcase itself would be in the main show and not these little extra episodes. And in the meantime, I guess I should get on watching this show just in case a third OVA pops out of nowhere to promote the next season, which is due to premiere sometime this year.