English Dub Review: The Slime Diaries: “Snow Blankets the City of Monsters

Overview: Rimuru (Brittney Karbowski) and the rest of Tempest prepare for the heavy blankets of snow that is covering their nation. 

Our Take: It is a snow day in Tempest and with it brings all the fun things you can do in the icy blanketed weather. Some lighthearted winter affairs like snow diving is fun especially in seeing how much Rimuru and Shion are actually kindred spirits of sorts in their playfulness, despite him, generally, being more mature. 

The snowmen making is sweet in everyone’s different ideas of them like Malim’s gigantic Rimuru tribute or Souka’s “training dummy” lizardmen, at least according to Souei. There are some brief snowball fights that make it a cute way to engage with various members of the cast like Gobta, Malim and Shion. However, it also does not shy away the less than enthusiastic parts of snow in intensive work in shoveling it throughout the day through Youm’s complaints. 

There are some other tidbits of Japanese culture that were interesting to learn about in roasting mochi like marshmallows in snow huts and an intriguing twist on the American norm during cold weather. It is also just adorable to see Rimuru live out more of the dreams he did not get to experience as a human in making a luxurious igloo, enjoying the mochi and amenities of it. 

Similar to how the series has handled subject matter like totality of food and family, it does the very same this time around with snow with Geld’s past trauma in losing a dear comrade in previously traversing a deadly cold winter. How that instills a sense of responsibility in not letting that happen to anyone in Tempest is deep and heartfelt. Treyni’s lessons of how critical winter is to other seasons and nature overall is engaging, especially in proving common misconceptions wrong. 

Some interesting nuggets of knowledge learned about Tempest are also fun to learn about like their hot springs with magical skin properties that are even being incorporated in their lotions. The beauty and quiet that snow brings Tempest allows for a nice calming ending made better with Rimuru’s continued snow antics as a funny ending stinger.