So, this has been on my list for a long time now. I saw it when we first subscribed to Funimation, but I found other things to watch first. I have a really bad tendency to do that. However, after finishing off my show on Netflix, I needed something to watch. With a name like “That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime”, I didn’t set the bar very high. Figured it’d be good for a few stupid laughs. And I was right, but at the same time it stepped up to the plate.
The opening scene, episode one, is a little confusing. Bombs falling on Japan in WWII, killing a little girl. Cut to black. Enter modern day Tokyo, to a man standing on a sidewalk. It was slightly jarring. The bombing seems to have no connection to anything in the story, and doesn’t until episode six. While I’m not complaining, I mean the payoff was worth it, I just feel it could have maybe been pushed back to when it becomes part of the story.
Which actually brings me to tone. Like I said, I set a low bar. And there were moments that met my expectations. After watching the man on the sidewalk get stabbed, there is a joke about his dying wish being that his friend throws his harddrive in the tub. It’s a cheap laugh. Once when it’s said initially, and again after the reincarnation and you see him actually doing it while crying. I don’t know, it makes me laugh. But that is the level of story I was expecting throughout. Cheap one off laughs.
Then things take a turn in a weird way. It goes from this lighthearted story of a slime in a cave, to a war between goblins and wolves. Which ends in the decapitation of the head wolf. I understand, and respect, the world building in this story. Following the protagonist as they discover this world and their place in it. It’s just the world is much darker place than the show first shows. We go from a dragon being pouty in a cave, to a woman literally being ripped from her life to be possessed by a spirit and made into a weapon. However, it’s not that its a shift in tone, more of it’s like the story is juggling tone. Little bit of serious, back to stupid laughs, enter the feels, and finally more nonsense!
The thing is, I actually enjoyed it. I thought I’d get bored of a protagonist that is nearly indestructible and is crazy overpowered. But I felt the story was compelling enough to carry its own weight and drag me along with it.