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©川上泰樹・伏瀬・講談社／転スラ製作委員会 ©柴・伏瀬・講談社／転スラ日記製作委員会
Just when you thought two episodes of people doing nothing but sitting around talking was more than enough, we get a third.
Last week’s episode ended on a cliffhanger of sorts with Rimuru being notified that Hinata was heading towards him—and with a group of powerful knights following a bit behind her. Moreover, it’s now become clear that Diablos’ plan has gone horribly awry with both his involvement in Falmuth revealed to the world along with Rimuru’s own against the Falmuth army. Someone is very much trying to stir the pot and start a chaotic war involving Falmuth, the church, and Tempest.
Luckily for our monster heroes, they have one major advantage: they are constantly being underestimated. Since his ascension to True Demon Lord, not only Rimuru but also his closest allies have grown massively in strength. While the situation is more complex and dangerous than before these seemingly endless string of meetings, things seem to be well in hand.
It’s also thanks to this situation that we get a bit of character rehabilitation for Rimuru. While he went far beyond the moral event horizon when he murdered the entire 20,000-strong Falmuth army—including those who wanted to surrender—this episode does a lot to show that he wasn’t exactly in his right mind when he did so. Although Rimuru has never shown any remorse for his actions that day, it says something that he does not want to witness such an event again. More than just avoiding civilian deaths, Rimuru hopes to avoid all deaths in the upcoming war—ordering his men to fight using non-lethal measures.
This seems like something the pre-Demon Lord Rimuru would have done, but it’s important to note that he has not forgotten what happened when Tempest was attacked (even though his rage may have cooled). He may want no one to die, however, he makes it clear that if it is a matter of survival, his troops can kill as they, please. Rimuru has made a clear line in his heart between “us” and “them”—and he is more than willing to kill all of “them” to save even one of his own.
Outside of the character work done on Rimuru (and a couple of quick gags surrounding Raphael and Shion), this episode is kind of a mess. On one side of things, we get a confusing info dump about the history and structure of the church. The problem is that it’s so full of proper nouns and so disconnected from what we know about Luminous Valentine and Hinata that it might as well be gibberish at times. Frankly, I’ve watched the scene several times now and I’m not really sure what everything mentioned is or how it all fits together.
On the other side, we get an equally confusing scene of the puppet masters behind the looming war: the Rosso family and Cerberus, the secret society that rules the underworld in the East. Their goals seem obvious enough—the Rosso’s want the new king of Falmuth to be their puppet after the war and Cerberus wants to spread their economic influence into the war-torn country. The issue here is that we have no idea who these people are or why they’re doing what they’re doing. We just get some antagonistic bickering, vague allusions to their goals, and some more proper nouns that are largely meaningless without context.
Or to put it another way, there is a big difference between intrigue and confusion—and sadly this episode is far more the latter than the former.
Rating:
Random Thoughts:
• I guess it makes sense with all the people from our world being transported to or reborn into this one that someone would make a gun. Though, in a world with tons of magic like this one, I wonder how useful guns are.
• Have we ever even heard of, much less seen, the Rosso family before?
• As Rimuru was trying to figure out who should go up against which threat, I kept wondering, “Where exactly is Milim in all of this?” Surely if Rimuru is planning a big party she’s going to pop up sooner or later.
• I really like Goba’s character design. She looks very cool with the two-tone hair and under-eye markings.
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Season 3 is currently streaming on
Crunchyroll.