That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime

Episode 7

If That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime was a little too low-key for your liking last week, this episode should more than make up for it. We learn a little more about what happened to Shizu after she was summoned, including the details of her fusion with the fire spirit Ifrit. Back in the present day, Shizu loses control of her powers just as she's about to leave the village, unleashing Ifrit and spelling certain doom for the locals. Rimuru stays to fight alongside Ranga and the adventurers, though the battle inevitably culminates in a one-on-one showdown between slime and fire spirit. Things look grim for a moment, but Rimuru's long list of skills allows him to come out on top. Ifrit is successfully consumed by the Predator skill, but Shizu's fate remains uncertain.

The pacing in Shizu's flashback is a little choppy, thanks in large part to the abrupt transitions from one scene to the next. We jump straight from her possession by Ifrit to a quick fight with an angry bird-man, which is followed immediately by a time skip and an equally short tale of well-meaning friendship gone bad. The issue here may be a structural difference between this adaptation and its source material; the original light novel presented these scenes one at a time in between chapters of Rimuru's story instead of putting them together as a single flashback. While this condensed version definitely feels like a compromise, it's arguably a better fit for the episodic format of an anime series. Shizu's past also packs enough of a dramatic punch that it's still reasonably compelling, and we do at least get enough information to make sense of what's going on in the present. While there's still clearly a big gap between this flashback and the point where Shizu entered the story last week, there should be time to fill in the remaining details in the next episode.

That brings us to the big fight scene, which is Rimuru's first proper challenge since the battle with the Direwolves. There are some genuine thrills to be found here, both in terms of storytelling and visual presentation. While you'd have to suspend an awful lot of disbelief to think Rimuru himself is in any real danger, he's surrounded by enough minor characters that there's a credible possibility of somebody getting killed off by Ifrit's flames. The human adventurers in particular look like they're in way over their heads, and last week's character development pays off here by giving us a reason to care about what happens to them. That dramatic tension is backed up by good direction and animation, and this scene does some particularly cool stuff with Ranga's big entrance and subsequent dash around the burning village. I don't know how one makes the image of Rimuru riding a unicorn-wolf look anything other than ridiculous, but kudos to That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime for pulling it off.

At the height of all this action, the series takes a pretty significant risk by making a sudden shift into comedic territory. Thankfully, that risk pays off. Rimuru's long-winded monologue works well as a means of transitioning from serious action mode to slimy humor mode; the longer he rambles on, the more obvious it becomes that he's in no danger whatsoever. This is capped off by a fun bit of banter between Rimuru and Great Sage, and the script does a nice job of letting the deadpan computer voice get a little snarky without completely breaking character. From that point forward, Rimuru's victory is an amusingly foregone conclusion, and we also get a little cameo from Veldora, who is apparently totally fine inside the Predator storage zone. It's an appropriately fun way to wrap up the episode, and it feels very much in line with the overall tone of the series.

Aside from the uneven pacing of the flashback scenes, this is a strong showing from That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. The initial presentation of the battle is taken seriously enough to get the audience emotionally invested, and that sense of excitement transitions surprisingly well into a moment of comedy. As we've seen in previous story arcs, this series is consistently able to find a satisfying balance between its silly premise and its narrative ambitions. This is an effective mid-season dramatic peak, and it leaves the door open for some compelling interactions between Rimuru and Shizu, not to mention Veldora and Ifrit.

Rating: B+

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.