That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is one of the relatively few isekai anime series that I enjoy watching and keeping up with. I wrote a rough review of the first season back in2019. However, I’m only just now getting around to writing a review for the season. This review follows my usual format of examining five categories (audio, visual, story, characters, and enjoyment) and giving each a score from 1 to 10. The overall score at the end is derived by taking the average of the five numbers from the categories.
Article Contents
Note: For brevity, I will be referring to this anime title by its nickname, TenSura
Warning: Spoilers may be present in this review
Introduction: Rimuru’s Gender
Before I begin, let me just make my opinion clear concerning Rimuru’s gender and sex. In my previous posts, for some reason, I thought Rimuru was non-binary. However, that doesn’t appear to be the case on closer inspection. Rimuru was a man in his past life, and continues using masculine pronouns for himself, although others often refer to him by gender-neutral pronouns (In Japanese) that he doesn’t seem to mind.
Assuming that his gender didn’t change after reincarnated, Rimuru is still male. As far as biological sex, there is no indication that slimes in this world even have such delineations. In other words, Rimuru probably has no biological sex. But in terms of gender identity, he’s male. With that out of the way, let’s get started on the review.
Visuals
Score: 7/10
The art and animation in TenSura is colorful and fun. The character designs are always great, from humans to orcs and various other creatures. Rimuru himself has an extremely adorable and memorable character design. I loved the design for Hinata the swordswoman in this season, as well as Diablo the demon.
The backgrounds and scenery are quaint and often look like watercolor art. It may be simple, but I like this style a lot. The actual animation movement isn’t especially great, or doesn’t look particularly fluid to me. Then again, I’m not a good judge of animation. All the visuals surrounding Rimuru’s Demon Lord transformation and new form were amazing. I love the way this anime looks!
Story
Score: 7/10
To put it simply, TenSura isn’t a thrilling anime. It doesn’t have the best pacing or suspense-building, although there are some high-stakes battles sometimes. This anime is about the communication between creatures and the slow, steady growth of Rimuru’s monster country. Whatever season it is, it probably won’t be the most thrilling anime.
That being said, considering this as the usual nature of TenSura, season 2 part 1 is pretty intense. There is fighting action as early as the first episode. In the middle of the season, Rimuru’s country is attacked by humans, who slaughter many of his people mercilessly. Rimuru responds by becoming a Demon Lord, annihilating the human army, and resurrecting his dead friends.
The relatively exciting and somewhat dark story in this season boosted my opinion of the story category. As you can see, the plot moves at a good speed in season 2 and contains some good suspense and action. Besides that, the story category was also good in terms of general plot, believability, originality, and content type balance.
Audio
Score: 7/10
The audio category was good as well. Although it took some time to grow on me, I now really enjoy the opening song, “Storyteller” by TRUE. The ending song, “Storyseeker” by Stereo Dive Foundation, is also nice. Both songs are upbeat and cheerful and make for great casual listening. The instrumental music in TenSura is usually orchestral and sounds good, but not exactly epic or super memorable.
As for the voice-acting, it’s a similar story. It’s good but not great. Sometimes it feels like the humorous parts in particular are forced or overdone with regards to the acting. However, Miho Okasaki did a stupendous job playing the star of the anime, Rimuru. I also want to mention that I’m a big fan of the seiyuu Takahiro Sakurai, who appeared in this season as Diablo the demon servant. Overall, the music, sounds, and voice-acting were more than adequate for this show.
Characters
Score: 8/10
In my opinion, the character category is where TenSura shines most, at least in this season. Despite some of them being goofy or one-dimensional, the characters are all loveable. There are deeper or more interesting characters for each “silly” character, too. And even the goofier characters have serious moments.
In a sense, there are actually too many supporting and minor characters in this anime. I can’t keep them all straight. However, the lovable core characters and the amazing main character Rimuru make up for this flaw in my book. I can never get enough of Rimuru. He’s so interesting, cute, wise, determined, and fun. He is a great strategist too.
In addition to Rimuru’s awesomeness and the entertaining main core of the cast, there were some cool new characters for this season. I liked Hinata, Diablo, and Myulan. In particular, Myulan’s little character arc was excellent. Looking at things broadly, I would say the character category deserves an 8.
Personal Enjoyment
Score: 8/10
There was nothing very problematic in TenSura that comes to mind. Ironically, this means I don’t have much to say in this section. I enjoyed the music, art, characters, and story. In particular, a few things I enjoyed were the fight between Rimuru and Hinata, the redemption of Myulan, and the way Rimuru slaughtered the human army to activate himself as a Demon Lord. Of course, I’m also glad that Shion and everyone else who died got resurrected. I think Rimuru looks amazing as a Demon Lord.
Another thing I found enjoyable and interesting was the evolution of Rimuru’s mental companion, the voice in his head, “Wise One” AKA “Great Sage.” It evolved just like his other skills when he became a Demon Lord. Now it is called Raphael, Lord of Wisdom, and it’s more useful than ever for looking up information and answering questions. I’ve always thought Wise One was a really interesting way that Rimuru acquires information without anyone else knowing. It was cool to see it evolve like that. It is almost like a computer system or A.I. program.
It’s clear that there was a lot to enjoy in this season of TenSura!
Overall Score
Score: 7.4 / 10.0
The overall score is the average of the five numbers for the categories above. A score in the 7s qualifies as “Good.” To my surprise, TenSura season 2 currently has a very high score on MyAnimeList.net. It’s sitting happily at 8.37. Although I think this is an overestimation of the show’s merits, I am also glad to see it getting so much love from fans. I’d rather have the score a little too high for a series I like than a little too low.
Anyway, this concludes my review of TenSura season 2 part 1! I’ll have the review for season 2 part 2 available in the next few weeks. Thanks for reading!
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Note: A slightly different version of this post appeared on Oct 7th, 2022 on my Wix Blog, Mono’s Anime Rants. I am in the process of transferring those posts over here to WordPress. Once this updated version is published, I will delete the original to avoid confusion.
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