That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Episode 14

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Episode 14

Introduction

Just before watching today’s episode of TenSura, I watched this week’s SAO: Alicization episode, and I honestly can’t decide which was worse. Yes, both episodes looked nice and gave us some nice background information, but the were both just written so poorly.

With that in mind, and since I’ve cut SAO: Alicization from the weekly schedule, expect me to bring it up occasionally throughout this post.

The One Who Devours All

Before Rimuru’s fight against the Orc Lord can begin, the Majin Gelmud makes an appearance for no real reason whatsoever. Well, there was a reason for it which I’ll explain in just a bit, but as far as the actual story is concerned, Gelmud had no real reason to appear.

I believe at some point during the previous episode (I could be wrong about this), Gelmud says something about needing to head to the battlefield to get involved because he wasn’t expecting someone as strong as Rimuru to appear. This is a good explanation for his appearance, except that what he does next completely invalidates it.

After his attacks have no effect on Rimuru, Gelmud simply tells the Orc Lord, Geld, to attack Rimuru, implying that the Orc Lord will be able to overpower him even though Gelmud himself couldn’t. By this logic, there was never a reason for Gelmud to appear because the Orc Lord is the stronger of the two anyway.

So why did Gelmud appear on the battlefield then? Simply because a mere Orc Lord is obviously no match for the likes of Rimuru, and so something has to be done to make the viewer believe that our hero is in danger. That’s right, Gelmud is just a sacrifice for the plot.

Rather than following Gelmud’s orders to kill Rimuru, the Orc Lord instead kills Gelmud with a single blow and then devours his corpse to gain his power. Honestly, despite the fact that this meant Gelmud was just a throwaway character, I was very surprised by the manner in which he was killed, so at least there’s that.

A Brief Intermission

At this point I’d like to take a moment to mention just one of the ways SAO: Alicization used fake danger to add some suspense to the series, and trust me, this is going to tie back in to this episode of TenSura.

Kirito and Eugeo are told by Cardinal that they need to defeat the Integrity Knights to get to the Administrators chamber, but the only way to defeat an Integrity Knight is to kill them. This would be fine, except that one of the Integrity Knights, Alice Synthesis Thirty, is who the pair are trying to rescue.

This is the fake sense of danger that’s set up. If Alice Synthesis Thirty appears, the pair can’t kill her and so won’t have any way to defeat her.

But, fear not, because upon learning this, Cardinal suddenly has weapons that can defeat Integrity Knights in one shot without killing them. It’s almost as if the author wanted to add some suspense, but then realized that he wrote himself into a corner and had to Deus ex Machina his way out of it.

Demon Lord Geld

So, how exactly does that little anecdote about SAO: Alicization tie into the death of Gelmud at the hands of the Orc Lord in TenSura? Because upon eating the corpse of Gelmud, the Orc Lord Geld evolves into the Orc Disaster, Demon Lord Geld.

At this point, some of you may still be confused about how this evolution from Orc Lord to Demon Lord is merely false danger and suspense, so let me just remind you of something I’ve been saying about this series since almost the beginning: Rimuru can’t lose.

Due to his Predator skill, Rimuru is essentially incapable of losing unless he actively chooses not to use the skill. Once that skill is activated, from everything we’ve seen up to this point in the series, no matter how powerful the opponent may be, Rimuru will win.

So, again, Gelmud’s death at the hands of the Orc Lord only served one purpose, to evolve the Orc Lord into a Demon Lord. However, this evolution is meaningless because we know our protagonist can’t lose, just like we knew Kirito and Eugeo weren’t going to have to kill Alice in SAO: Alicization.

Orc Disaster, Geld the Demon Lord from the anime That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime
Geld the Demon Lord!

But, Rimuru doesn’t simply start off his fight against Geld by activating his Predator skill, although he totally could have done this and won immediately. Instead, the Kijin attack first, but this too is merely a way to build up suspense for the battle.

We know how powerful the Kijin are compared to everything and everyone else other than Rimuru, so the fact that their attacks barely leave a scratch on Geld is supposed to show use just how powerful he’s become now that he’s a Demon Lord. Once their attacks fail, Rimuru steps up to the plate.

However, even though Rimuru is now the one standing before Geld as his adversary, he still doesn’t activate his Predator skill just yet. Instead, he showcases a new ability which turns the A.I. in his head on autopilot. By doing this, Rimuru just has to sit back within his own consciousness and watch as the A.I. controls his body and fights for him.

Honestly, this was probably the stupidest thing that’s happened so far in the entire series. Was there a point to it? No. Did it makes sense based on the rules of the world? No. Did it work? No. So why was it even necessary to add that?

Finally, after all this, Rimuru falls back on the tried and true Predator skill which I knew he was going to use from the very start, because why wouldn’t he? Not only does it defeat literally any opponent, but it also grants him the skills of said opponent.

The Orcs

After the defeat of Demon Lord Geld, the rest of the Orc army were relieved of the Starved skill which had been cast upon them as Geld’s underlings. Due to this, as well as the defeat of their king, the Orcs no longer had any real reason to continue the war and so it appears to have come to an end.

However, while Geld and Rimuru were struggling to devour each other, Rimuru was shown Geld’s past and what made him who he is today. In fact, we learn that most of what we previously knew about the Orcs is probably incorrect, and they’re actually a severely misunderstood race.

It had been said that it takes an Orc Lord to command an army of Orcs because otherwise they don’t have the intelligence to group together in such numbers and be efficient, but is that really true? Before Geld was even an Orc Lord, the orcs had almost everything necessary to be major players in the civilized world.

The orcs had highly advanced language, a social structure with a single ruler at the top, and the ability to empathize with others. This shows that as a race, the orcs are extremely intelligent and essentially on par with the other major races of the world, at least when they aren’t under the influence of the Starved skill.

So if this is the case, then why aren’t the Orcs major players in the civilized world?

The simple answer is that they lacked the necessary physical resources. Unlike the Jura Forest or the Kingdom of Dwargon, the home of the orcs is a vast expanse of nothing. Not only were drought and famine afflicting the orcs, but it looks as though even if this wasn’t the case, they lived very simple lives without much in the way of material wealth.

Without natural resources, not only is it hard to build a sustainable society like the others we’ve seen throughout the series, but it’s difficult to integrate with other societies when yours has nothing to offer. That said, the orcs probably could have offered their services as mercenary soldiers to other civilizations.

In the end, now that the battle against Geld and his army has concluded, I have the feeling that Rimuru is going to invite the Orcs to forge an alliance with him and the Lizardmen of the swamp. After seeing the lengths Geld went to in order to ensure his people survived, it’s hard to see him and the rest of the Orcs as evil.

Conclusion

Hopefully my reasons for saying this episode, and series as a whole, is poorly written make sense to at least some of you reading this. I know if you’ve made it to this point, it’s probably because you like the series and don’t necessarily agree with my complaints, but keep in mind that I still don’t think TenSura is a bad anime.

I do try to incorporate things I like about episodes and series into my reviews of them, and I think it’s important to be able to see the merits of anime you don’t necessarily like, as well as the downfalls of anime you do. For example, although I don’t care for the plot of TenSura, I do like dissecting its world building.

If you enjoyed this review of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime or found any of my comments to be insightful, then let me know by clicking the like button ❤ down below. And, be sure to follow me on Twitter @DoubleSama because I tweet out every time a new post goes live.

Finally, if you’re interested in helping to support DoubleSama.com, then consider becoming a patron. Details about the various tiers of patronage and their respective benefits can be found at Patreon.com/DoubleSama.

My review of the next episode is available here.

6 Replies to “That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Episode 14”

  1. Clarify two points, Gelmud try to give support to the orc Lord because although this is stronger this was not very clever, in fact I remember that somewhere in the manga was not aware of his actions at that point.

    On the predatory skill is not infallible it has a probability of failure (I remember that it had been established in both the novel and manga I do not remember if in the anime it was said), the stronger the enemy, the less effective the skill also the anime forgot to introduce Gelds corrosive gas that leaks out of his body, it allowed him to devour things it touched. It gave Rimiru a hard time and is why he had such trouble trying to eat Geld also the orc Lord can eat rimuru as well, but the real reason why Rimuru won the battle is because he speaks to the orc Lord to make sure he takes on all the burden and sin and then allows Rimuru to eat it.

    One last thing the automatic mode of rimuru activates it because he worries about not hurting his teammates because his powers are dangerous and he does not control them well, he is not very clever nor is a genius in combat only a normal person with skills powerful.

    There are many details that were lost in this fight because they summarized 3 chapters of manga in an episode, but at this point the fights are still not relevant, the important thing here was the fact of showing how the Orc and its people were used by Gelmud for his plans, it will be explained why these actions and why the war is not won.

    1. It sounds like the light novel and manga are both significantly better than the anime adaptation.

      Some things were shown, but not ever explained, such as Geld’s corrosive gas skill, in the anime. But, this wasn’t really a good use of “show, don’t tell.” I assumed that this gas visual was either Geld’s starved skill working through his skin, or possibly one of Rimuru’s skills.

      I also still think the autopilot mode it pretty stupid. It came out of nowhere and doesn’t even make sense based on the rules of the world which were already established up to this point.

      1. The automatic mode is like a possession of the body that the spirit ifrit did to control shizu, when he absorbed it, he also obtained that ability only that they did not clarify it.

        1. That makes a lot more sense, but they really should clarify these things. Otherwise it’s going to get to the point where Rimuru whips out some overpowered ability that we’ve never heard of before to win a battle, and it’s going to feel so cheap.

          I know Naruto isn’t the best example of this, but at least we saw him learning the Rasengan and so there was some sort of precedent before he uses it in battle.

      2. On the contrary it was better as they showed it in the anime. I absolutely do not see the value in shows (including this one) stopping the action constantly to narrate how this-or-that power mechanic works. There’s a time and a place for a little bit of that, but this genre definitely tends to go way overboard with it. A well-choreographed fight that mostly tells its story by directly showing you through the action how and why the fight’s progressing is by far the better experience.

        1. I completely agree that the action shouldn’t be stopped to explain how some power mechanic works, but there should at least be precedent for the things we see in the “big fight.”

          For example, in one of the previous episodes, we could have seen Geld use his corrosive gas ability on one of the lizardmen, or even one of his own men. That way, we wouldn’t be being told exactly what it is, but we’d at least know it existed before the battle in which it plays a major role. As I mentioned in a comment above, it wasn’t clear to me, someone who hasn’t read the print versions of this series, exactly what was happening with the gas coming off Geld’s body.

          “Show, don’t tell” isn’t, and shouldn’t, be the same as “show, but only the light novel readers will understand.”

Leave a Comment