English Dub Review: That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime “In the Kingdom of the Dwarves”

Legolas! What do your elf breasts see?

Overview (Spoilers!)

Rimaru and friends head towards Dwargon. As they make camp for the night, Rigor explains that his brother was named by a passing Demon Lord. Ranga tells Rimaru that he bears no resentment, even though Rimaru killed his father. Gobta shares some facts about Dwargon. Rimaru fantasizes about their elf kink.

After three days of travel, Rimaru and Gobta are waiting in line to enter the city when two humans pick a fight with them. To scare off the men, Rimaru mimics Ranga. The humans attempt an attack, but their projectiles all bounce off Rimaru, and Rimaru responds with a roar. The men flee, and there’s a ton of collateral damage. The guards arrest Rimaru and Gobta.

As the guard Kaido takes down Rimaru’s account, another guard informs him that an armorsaurus attack has left many men badly injured in the mines. Rimaru fills a barrel with healing potion for them. Although Rimaru could easily escape, they spend the night in their jail cell, passing the time by making shapes out of the slime. Finally, the dwarves from the mine arrive, thanking Rimaru for the potions, and Kaido lets them out of the cell. The next day, Kaido leads the slime through Dwargon to the workplace of his brother Kaijin, a great blacksmith. The dudes from the mine show up—Dord, Garm, and Myrd—and Kaijin expresses his gratitude. He admits that he can’t help Rimaru, because Minister Vesta ordered twenty longswords to be delivered by the end of the week, a near impossible task. Plus, Kaijin is nearly out of magic ore.

Fortunately, Rimaru has a big stash of magisteel inside them! They trade exchange it for some artisans willing to travel to the goblin village. Rimaru eats the one sword Kaijin has already made and makes nineteen copies. Kaijin is so grateful that he throws Rimaru a party—with a group of elvish women exactly like the ones in Rimaru’s fantasy. The elves think Rimaru is adorable and all want to hug them. Soon Rimaru is… involved in a group hug where they’re smashed directly against four pairs of elf boobs. Sigh. The group all get drinks, and Rimaru chills under an elf’s titties. An ominous dude shows up outside.

Our Take

The other day, my dad asked how my reviews of “that slime show” were going. Cheerfully, I told him that people shouldn’t discount this series because of its weird premise, because it’s really clever and a lot of fun. “And,” I said gleefully, relishing that I was able to truly give him this response, “the best part is that there isn’t any weird titty stuff!”

My friends, it has arrived. The weird titty stuff. It is here.

I wish this episode were good enough that I could look past the titty stuff, but alas, the rest of the plot is sorely mediocre. Gone are Rimaru’s inventive solutions to problems and witty one-liners. Instead, all obstacles in this episode are solved by techniques we’ve already seem Rimaru use. Instead of making friends with more weird creatures, Rimaru spends half the episode chilling in jail and the other half making heart eyes at boobs. Hopefully, next episode will be fun again, and we’ll all be able to pretend this one was all a bad dream.

Don’t get me wrong, this episode isn’t a complete disaster. The scenery during Rimaru’s journey is really lovely. It’s funny to watch a slime try to ride a galloping wolf, and it’s amusing that Gobta is still such a wimp even after evolving. The funniest part of the episode is definitely Rimaru’s fight with the humans when a bunch of them whip out intense DND-esque skills only to fail completely with perfect comedic timing. Rimaru’s inner monologue is great too—even as they puff themselves up and try to appear a great and powerful monster, they’re thinking things like “This is so annoying. Just run away already!” and “Holy hell, I thought I was gonna die!” It’s also pretty funny that 92 people fainted due to their attack and 68 were left “confused”—and that when the guards ask if Rimaru is responsible for all this carnage, their face resembles the >3< emoticon as they say impishly, “Heehee.” 

But god, I don’t get the elf fetish thing at all. Why, when elves are mentioned, is Rimaru’s first thought some sexy humanoid ladies with elf ears? My first thought would be a blonde, effeminate male figure, like Legolas from The Lord of the Rings or Taako from The Adventure Zone—or I might even think of Will Ferrell from Elf (which is the last thing I would ever consider fetish fuel). And why, pray tell, did Rimaru get it right? I thought the joke was going to be that Rimaru builds elves up to be these hypersexual busty ladies when they’re actually something much more practical and less appealing, but there’s no joke here. There’s just unpleasant fanservice that no one asked for.

And to be honest, nothing else in the episode has much of an interesting design. The dwarves don’t all have beards, making a lot of them look just like short, squat humans. The city is pretty generic. I appreciate that Kaijin’s body-type is fitting of a real blacksmith—muscular with a comfortable belly as well—but that’s about all the nice things I can say.

Also, uh… what happened Gobta? Because after Rimaru gets out of jail, he just… never appears again. Did Gobta get left in the jail cell? Is he still asleep? Did Rimaru just forget about him? Is the show ever going to address this?!?! In the end, I’m really not sure why, narratively, the writers had Rimaru bring Gobta at all. Just make them enter the city alone if you can’t think of anything interesting to do with his companion.

All in all, I’m getting tired of plotlines where everything effortlessly goes Rimaru’s way. Their OP-ness was charming at first, but if no formidable challenges ever get put in their way, this show is going to go stale fast. I want something to be challenging for Rimaru. I want someone to question them. But so far this has just been deus ex machina: the anime, and it’s even more obvious this time around. Plus, where are all those human characters from the opening? Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but they look much more interesting than these bland, flat dwarves, and elves. At least Minister Vesta has a funny accent.

But while this episode is good for a few laughs, I can’t in good conscious endorse any piece of media with a line like, “I think I’ve died and gone straight to honker heaven.” I just can’t.