「会戦前夜」 (Kaisen Zen’ya)
“The Eve of Battle”

You thought this episode was going to be the one where we got some real action finally? Well think again, instead, we get preparations before the battle. The Animal Kingdom is going to be under attack by Clayman because it’s his final step towards unleashing Walpurgis. Rimuru takes action and starts conjuring up a plan for how he will help the innocent people stuck in the middle of this war.

But thanks to Rimuru and Raphael, a new teleportation spell was confounded in the middle of dinner. This little explanation that Raphael gave, sent chills down my spine. This is the content we’re here for! Turns out that the teleportation spell takes objects through a pocket alternate dimension and then brings them to their respective pop-up locations. In this case, it was between The Animal Kingdom and The Tempest Nation. However, those without a proper protection barrier will disintegrate by the air-pocket dimension. So Raphael mixes two already existing skills that make for such a fast travel option available to Rimuru. In the final seconds of this episode, he transports almost 20,000 troops in a very flashy, but quick spell that sends everyone to The Animal Kingdom, so they can fight this war and arrive in the nick of time.

This is the kind of content that makes an episode of Tensei great. They very cleverly set up the magic spell at the beginning of the experience, and then made us wait towards the end to see it in action. I was really hoping they would at least show it at the end, which they did, so it made me very happy. Other than that, there wasn’t really anything worth noting, Veldora got the very important job of protecting Tempest. And Rimuru teleported everyone out of the Animal Kingdom and allowed them to stay as refugees within the Tempest Nation. Something I very much appreciated as it showed how much heart Rimuru actually has, thereafter he came up with that solution all by himself.

Nonetheless, next episode we should be getting less planning and more action, however, that is not to say I did not enjoy this episode, it certainly felt like the night before the storm. Big plans are being conjured up, and Rimuru is putting all of his pieces in place. Also, a nice little neat addition was that every single unit under Rimur’s command had a specific name. A nice little touch that will allow Rimuru to direct authority over each specific unit.

Certainly, now that we have a couple of episodes under our belt, this second part of the second season is looking a lot more political than previously. That might be a good thing to some, but it’s a big change for those looking for their regular Tensei drop. Personally, I don’t mind politics in my anime, but the original appeal of this series was never politics, and instead of following Rimuru as he grew and level up in this world. And in that process became adored by the people around him. But now we’re going ever deeper into what exactly makes this world tick, and how are the other demon lords adjusting to having Rimuru in their presence. As Rimuru is a demon lord himself, it’s not without worry, as demon lords are gonna do what demon lords are gonna do. And that makes sure everyone is having a terrible time. But Rimuru is different, he’d rather help people in need, accept refugees into his nation, and do the right thing. Rather than become a tyrant leader that leads with fear.

He bases his relationships on trust, and this episode was prominent on that, the people of The Animal Kingdom had no other choice than to trust him, mainly because Phobio was with him. But other than that, they had to place their blind trust in him, and that’s not something everyone is willing to do just out of the blue. Abandon their home and teleport to another nation just because a guy with blue hair showed and told you so. That’s a hard sell. But Rimuru managed because only he could.

Furthermore, we got a little bit of a scene with Yamza, the total opposite of Rimuru, on a complete power trip he severs one of the limbs of Hermes, this scene seemed a little out of place, but served as a sort of what’s happening with the bad guy’s on the night before the storm. Thankfully Hermes arm was healed right away. However, Yamza got on my nerves. I’m looking forward to seeing the fight between him and the Rimuru army.

This show is becoming here’s what the bad guys are doing, and here’s what the good guys are doing, huh?

Nevertheless, as always thanks for taking the time to look over this post, and as always look forward to next week!

End Card

10 Comments

  1. Raphael’s new spell is—HEHEHE looks like Raphael has been watching Star Trek, this teleportation Spell is similar to beaming method in Star Trek.

    For people who found all that political jargon boring in the last two episodes, we are now in the midst of war and Rimuru has multiple brigades to lean on. All thinks to the relationship building we saw previously. I won’t say Clayman is out matched just yet but, Rimuru is just better prepared right now.

    RenaSayers
  2. Rimuru definitely knows when to delegate authority. Benimaru is the sort of person to do things without direct supervisor. I am pretty sure the battle in the Animal Kingdom will go Rimuru’s way. I am more concerned how the face off with Clayman at this Walpurgis event will go…

    Ewok40k
  3. I don’t think that it’s wise to say that anything is ‘fast approaching’ in this show.

    Remember this line: “Thus the very long meeting between humans and monsters ended….” That was spoken in episode 39.

    It was also spoken in episode 40. And yet, the meeting continues. It’s so bad that Rimuru had to apologise to the viewers early this episode — but that didn’t stop him from continuing it for the whole episode. Slime have no shame.

    Five episodes is more than 100 minutes (even discounting for the OP/ED) and you can make an entire feature film fit into that time span. It’s gone from bad pacing to no pacing.

    The show was fun when it began because it integrated fact-finding into the story. Rimuru oozed around and explored his new world. He interacted with the locals, gained new abilities and did stuff. Now, it’s just endless reporting — seriously, five episodes?! Even the ‘action’ in this episode was just 30 seconds of narration.

    Fun characters like Souka, Gabiru or Gobuta make it onto the screen once or twice, sometimes for several seconds, but they don’t ever get to speak. None of them have even a single line this season (actually, since ep.34). It seems kind of cynical to keep wheeling out images of them but never even give their seiyuu a call. The only breaks in the endless exposition is when Shion mugs for the camera or Veldora interrupting his reading to shout ‘Yeah!’ Even the cretins creating this stuff feel embarrassed (but alas, not enough to change their behaviour).

    Mockman
      1. It makes me wonder what went on during the production meetings for this show. And I also kind of wonder what the original author’s take on it is.

        They should have done a double-length episode 1 and gotten 80% of this out of the way. Then, as needed, they could have Souei and whats’ername actually doing spy stuff for a minute and bringing in new information at relevant moments.

        Politics is fine but this is just an explanation of politics — or really, just a long meeting. Someone needs to go remind them all to ‘show, not tell’.

        Mockman
  4. Rimiru as a character is a fairly naive with a sense of earnestness is he not? He got a harsh lesson last season when his passive peaceful approach almost cost him those he loves. I think he learned the hard way the world he’s in has some really terrible people. Was he wrong to be this way? Not really. If you expect the worst in people you’ll never have a settle life. But the way he set up his little village/town left it open for someone to exploit and attack and that they did. He was just fortunate that his becoming a demon lord was a get out of jail free card with so many of his friends dead.

    Lyfe

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *