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

It’s not me, it’s you.

Overview (Spoilers Below!) 

Rimuru has gathered their finest soldiers, as well as 100 of Gazel’s pegasus knights, to fight Charybdis. Benimaru shoots a megalodon out of the sky, but his attack isn’t effective because of Charybdis’s skill “Magic Jamming.” Geld and his orcs struggle to subdue a megalodon until Gabiru comes to their aid. Gobuta and the goblins serve as a diversion. Milim shows up to watch and begs Rimuru to participate, but they refuse.

Souei uses a megalodon like his puppet, forcing it to attack its kin. Shion, riding on the back of Ranga, soars through the sky, and they each decimate a megalodon. Hakuro slays a megalodon for the goblins, pronouncing that they need tougher training. Once all the sharks are down, Shion and Ranga turn towards Charybdis.

Everyone attacks the monster at once, but no one seems able to do much damage. Charybdis starts shooting off its scales, knocking Shion, Souei, and Ranga from its back. The three of them charge towards the beast, but Rimuru is already there, using the skill Gluttony to suck up all the rogue scales. Charybdis begins to regenerate, and Rimuru tells their friends to fall back and let them handle this.

Rimuru and Charybdis exchange blows; Rimuru is shocked by the creature’s power. Charybdis possesses “Ultra Speed Regeneration,” which allows it to replace its scales within three minutes. Everyone combines their strength to attack, but it seems to have no effect.

After hours of unsuccessful fighting, Rimuru hears the creature mumble, “Damn you, Milim.” Suddenly, Rimuru realizes Charybdis wasn’t after them or Veldora at all—they made Milim sit on the sidelines for nothing. Rimuru lets Milim know, and she instantly recognizes Phobio. Rimuru asks her to kill Charybdis but spare the Beastketeer.

The beast fires its scales at her, but Milim stops them in midair. She destroys Charybdis, and Phobio’s body flies out of the wreckage. The head pegasus knight Dorf doesn’t believe that Milim killed Charybdis, declaring that Rimuru must be hiding a secret magical weapon. Phobio awakens, explaining about the Moderate Harlequin Alliance. Rimuru forgives Phobio—but then Carrion himself shows up to smash Phobio’s head in. Carrion enters into a non-aggression pact with the JTF.

Our Take

Okay, I’ll admit it—this battle is pretty epic. Each character gets their own moment to shine, Rimuru helps out instead of just watching their subordinates do all the work for them, and the ending is a pleasant surprise: a comedic anticlimax that left me chuckling.

The real star of the show here, though? The battle’s animation. So many anime try and fail to integrate CGI into otherwise 2D scenes, but in “Charybdis,” the technique is actually utilized well. The 3D megalodons feel more substantial, more technologically advanced, more real than the monsters they’re fighting. When a megalodon flies at the screen, it’s almost like a 3D effect in a movie theater—I feel like a real giant shark is opening its gaping maw to devour me. And when Rimuru flies above Charybdis, we’re treated to sweeping cinematography that emphasizes the epic nature of this conflict. (The effect is also enhanced by Elements Garden’s delightfully dramatic battle music). And the great imagery doesn’t take a break once the battle is over, either—when Rimuru performs magic on Phobio, purple swirls fill the screen in some truly cool visuals.

Gabiru—previously one of my least favorite characters in this series—gets a moment of promising character development here. When Geld and the orcs are in over their heads, Gabiru is able to easily defeat the megalodon they’re facing. Although Gabiru was once arrogant to an extreme, often taking credit for successes that weren’t really down to his own skill—and he could easily take credit for felling the creature this time—Gabiru tells Geld he was only able to do it because of Geld’s help. That’s growth!

On the other hand, it’s a little disappointing that Gobuta—who has proved himself to be a more than competent fighter in previous episodes—is so wildly incompetent here. It’s like the writers just forgot he knows what he’s doing. Hakuro scolds his lack of progress, and instead of being funny, it just feels out-of-character for poor Gobuta. I’m tired of him being every characters’ scapegoat.

But damn, Souei just keeps getting cooler. His puppet attack? Fucking epic. And Shion and Ranga might be an unlikely pair, but it’s deeply to satisfying to see Shion acknowledged as one of the JTF’s strongest fighters and not just a kijin with a large chest. Her bonding with Ranga because they both care about Rimuru more than anything is pretty cute.

Milim, too, gets to show off some pretty cool attacks here, even though I’m still not totally sure why Rimuru wouldn’t let her help out until they realized Charybdis was after her personally. It still feels like a huge cop-out to avoid making the battle too easy. At the same time, though, Rimuru’s climactic revelation—that actually, this isn’t Rimuru’s problem at all, and it’s chill to sit back and let Milim deal with it—is deeply funny, as is watching Milim destroy the thing in two seconds flat. “I actually possess a lot of restraint, you know,” Milim informs Rimuru, in maybe the most ironic sentence of the whole show. (But seriously—is Phobio okay? It looked like Carrion straight-up killed him.)

As for this episode’s obligatory new character Dorf, I’m not sure the series really needed another “serious fighter dude” character, but his voice acting is great. Unfortunately, I can’t for the life of me figure out who plays him. The internet has failed me, but whoever he is, that guy is good at acting! Go you, mysterious stranger!

With “Charybdis,” That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime finally proves that it can pull off a cool battle and keep up the jokes at the same time. Here’s hoping that Rimuru’s next challenges are just as epic!