That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Episode 13

The Great Clash

In last week’s episode of TenSura, Gabiru led a coup and overthrew his father’s reign in the lizardmen chiefdom. He then went on to attack the orc army, despite his father and sister imploring him to keep the army safely within their tunnels until allies arrive to help them.

However, what Gabiru didn’t know was that the orc lord who leads the opposing army has a unique skill which applies to all of his soldiers as well. This unique skill is known as Starved and it gives the orcs the ability to acquire the strength of all those they eat.

I find it strange that nobody mentioned this unique skill to Gabiru, because while that may not have changed his mind regarding going out to fight, it may have changed his fighting strategy. But, since nobody could be bothered to inform him of this, he and his men learn it the hard way.

Interestingly, when one of the lizardmen gets devoured by a group of orcs on the battlefield, we see that the orcs actually gain physical traits of whatever they eat as well. For example, after eating the lizardman, some orcs develop scales and webbed feet, which make them more adept at fighting in the swamp.

With this new information, we can assume that there are orcs among the horde which show physical characteristics of the ogres (oni) they ate when the oni village was destroyed. For now though, it’s unclear exactly what sort of powers this would grant them, since each oni we know of specializes in something different.

While Gabiru and his men are learning of the terrors of the orc army, Rimuru, the oni, and the goblin riders are on their way to meet with the chieftain. However, en route they learn of Gabiru’s coup from his sister after Souei rescues her from a group of orcs.

Suddenly, the plan is changed. Souei will slip into the lizardmen tunnels and rescue the chieftain and other prisoners while the rest of the group race toward the battlefield to help Gabiru and his men.

Help Arrives

Remember how I’ve complained about this series not really having interesting fights and how when all of the heroes are overpowered it makes everything boring? Well, this episode is a great example of exactly what I was talking about.

Upon arriving at the battlefield, Rimuru doesn’t even join the fight, but instead just observes from the sky and scouts out the location of the orc lord. Why is this a problem? Because it shows just how much of a difference in power there is between our heroes and the rest of the world.

I think it’s fair to say that Rimuru is the most powerful being in this world, and that he’s much more powerful than even all the oni who serve under him. However, even those oni have no problem wiping out most of the 200,000 strong orc army. This means that Rimuru probably could have done the same on his own.

While an extremely overpowered protagonist is nothing new in the isekai genre, we have to remember that good isekai anime actually have a plot beyond just “the protagonist is overpowered.” For example, Ainz from Overlord is the protagonist, but also the villain whose goal is world domination

But, TenSura doesn’t just fail on the isekai side of things. This series is also a shounen, and it doesn’t exactly do the whole shounen thing very well either. You see, in most shounen, while we know the protagonist is going to win in the end because they’re the protagonist, there still have to be fights which are difficult for them, or that they’ll even lose.

This isn’t the case in TenSura. Not only is Rimuru too overpowered to have any difficulty in any battle, but apparently the same goes for every single person serving under him. Benimaru, Hakurou, Shion, and Ranga are able to deal massive blows to the enemy army with ease, and the latter even evolves into a tempest star wolf.

As we’ve also seen, even Gobta is apparently extremely powerful, and he’s pretty much just the comic relief goblin. If there’s never even a thought that the heroes might be in some sort of trouble, then there’s not really a point to the conflict in a shounen.

After the lizardmen are rescued by the oni, tempest wolves, and goblins, Rimuru finally locates the orc lord. His battle with this beast will likely happen in the next episode, although I’m not entirely sure if this series is going to be taking a week break for the holidays or not.

However, what I can be sure of is that the fight against the orc lord won’t really be that big of a deal for Rimuru. Yes, it’s an orc lord, but Rimuru is kind of immune to all damage and can one shot anything, even the fire spirit Ifrit as we’ve seen in the past.

Behind the Scenes

While the main battle rages on in the swamps, there are two different parties working behind the scenes. The first is Souei and the lizardman princess who infiltrate the tunnels to both rescue the lizardmen captured during the coup and kill all the orcs they come across on their way.

Once the chieftain has been saved, he learns that the alliance between his and Rimuru’s peoples has already been forged through the princess acting in place of her father. Really, since Rimuru is a fairly typical white knight protagonist, the fact that this alliance was forged without the chieftain meeting him before hand doesn’t really matter.

I can tell you right now that once the orc lord and his army are defeated, the lizardman chieftain will welcome Rimuru as a hero. If this were a series like Overlord, on the other hand, you can be sure that an alliance of this sort would be both short-lived and heavily in Ainz’s favor.

But, while Souei’s behind the scenes rescue is going as planned, the true leader of the orc army, the majin Gelmud, isn’t having such a good time. He and the jester-looking guy who works for him are observing the battle through a crystal ball and are surprised to find such powerful monsters, like Ranga, were present in the forest without their knowledge.

Is there some reason Gelmud wasn’t aware of Rimuru’s village such as a magical barrier protecting it, or did he simply assume there were no such villages of high-leveled monsters because he hadn’t named any recently. Either way, this clearly isn’t what he was expecting when he set his army loose in the forest.

Further, the dryad which appeared before Rimuru asking for his help in defeating the orc lord also appears before Gelmud and attempts to stop him. Luckily for him, he escapes, but the fact that even this dryad seemed to be more powerful than him shows that he isn’t really all that big of a deal.

In fact, I wonder if the orc lord is actually more powerful than Gelmud is at this point simply due to how much it’s been powered up via its unique skill. My guess is that Gelmud was never all that powerful to begin with, but since he had enough magicules to name random monsters, they assumed he was stronger than he really was.

Conclusion

So, what did you think of this week’s episode of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime? Personally, I didn’t think this episode was all that bad, it just wasn’t good. Do you agree with any of my points about the series, or do you have some counterarguments of your own?

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My review of the next episode is available here.