That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Episode 5

Introduction

Before I get to the real introduction, I’d like to remind you that there’s currently a poll on Twitter to decide which anime gets the weekly, episodic review treatment for the Wednesday or Thursday slot for the remainder of the season. To vote, simply click the embedded Tweet below.

Voting ends at 11:30am EST on October 31st, so be sure to make your choice heard before then. With that out of the way, let’s get into the true introduction for today’s post.

When the Fall 2018 season started, there were a few series I expected to be of interest to my readers: Boruto, SAO: Alicization, JoJo’s Part 5, and Goblin Slayer. As you can see, those are all series I’m writing weekly, episodic reviews of.

However, there was one series which I didn’t expect to be of much interest, but I decided to write about it nonetheless. That series is That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime. But, before you jump to any conclusions, no I’m not bringing this up because I’m canceling the reviews for this series.

I’m actually bringing this up because this series has been the most popular of all those I listed by far, and I’m honestly not sure why. I don’t actually think this anime is that good, and I feel that I’ve made that opinion fairly clear over the past couple of episode reviews.

So, what I’m getting at is, let me know what brought you to this post, or what has brought you back to my posts about this series in particular. Do you like the series? Do you like my summaries and reviews of the series? Or do you simply like when I explain what I don’t like about it? Let me know in the comments at the end of this post.

Hero King, Gazel Dwargo

Last week’s episode ended with an ominous scene of someone outside the gentlemen’s club in which Rimuru and the dwarves were celebrating. Unfortunately, the boot which we saw actually belonged to the officer who had been out to get Kaijin, the weaponsmith, and he isn’t really all that scary.

But, before he makes his actual appearance in today’s episode, we see more of what this series could have been. Rimuru is having fun with all the elf women, and life is good. We even see some of Rimuru’s fantasies involving these women.

Then, one of the elves suggests using her psychic abilities to peer into Rimuru’s future via a crystal ball. She decides to show the group the woman Rimuru is destined to be with, and I half expected it to simply show the elf who was performing the magic.

Instead, we see the girl who I had previously assumed would become the heroine of the series. You know, the one featured prominently on all of the cover art for the anime, but whom we haven’t actually met yet, despite the season being almost halfway over.

Because this girl is shown as the one Rimuru is destined to be with, I’m going to assume once again that she’s the heroine of some kind, despite being told that there is no actual heroine in the series. I just can’t accept that someone who seems so important is going to end up as just another random character like Gobta.

After we’re given a glimpse of this girl, the officer I mentioned earlier makes his official appearance and dumps some alcohol on Rimuru because:

1. He’s a slime monster.
2. He’s friends with Kaijin, the weaponsmith.

While Rimuru decides to hold back his anger so that his new friends won’t get in trouble with the government, Kaijin takes matters into his own hands. He gives the officer a good beating, and despite Rimuru’s advice to go for the body, exclusively punches him in the face.

A lot of other series probably would have drawn out the tension between Kaijin and this officer by having Kaijin submit to him and then at the very end do something to go against him, but I like how this series took a different approach. By attacking the minor antagonist right away, we skip over a lot of the predictable developments.

That’s not to say that what comes next isn’t predictable in its own way, it’s just that the less predictable material we have to sit through, the better. So, after assaulting a government official, Kaijin, Rimuru, and their friends are arrested and stand trial.

It’s during the trial that we meet the Hero King of the Dwarves, Gazel Dwargo, for the first time. But, before I get into the trial, let’s dissect and theorize about the dwarven culture a bit based on what we’ve been told and what we can see.

Social Structure of Dwargon

The first thing to consider is that the dwarves have a singular king who runs the country, or city. This king is undoubtedly the leader of their military, but also oversees all judiciary procedures as well, making him an absolute ruler.

It’s also implied that the current king, Gazel Dwargo, became king through his feats of courage, honor, and military skill on the battlefield, hence the title “Hero King.” What we don’t know, however, is if this is the sole reason for his ascension to the throne, or if this role is hereditary.

Perhaps he was always going to be the next in line for the throne, and his “Hero” title is simply a bonus due to a circumstance like the one I mentioned above. Or, perhaps he was selected to be the next ruler due to his status as a hero, in which case the monarchy isn’t a hereditary one.

What we can be fairly sure about though, is that Gazel Dwargo did not ascend to the throne through conquest. We know that the dwarven army has been undefeated for 1,000 years, and so unless Gazel Dwargo has been ruling for 1,000 years, he’s unlikely to have taken the throne by force.

As we’ll learn later in the episode, despite being a strong ruler, he’s also a benevolent one, which further hints that he didn’t come to rule the city of Dwargon by force.

But what about the rest of dwarven society? Aside from having a monarch whose role may or may not be inherited, we learn that there’s also a class system into which we can assume all the dwarves fit. What’s interesting here, however, is that Dwargon isn’t simply a city of dwarves.

As we learned last week, men, dwarves, elves, and more all live side by side as “equals” within the walls of Dwargon. This brings up the question, does the class system apply to those who aren’t dwarves, but who live within the confines of the city?

My immediate assumption is that the class system only applies to the dwarves, and my reasoning for this is based on the elves who we meet at what essentially amounts to an escort service bar. This line of work would generally be viewed as low-class, however, it’s implied that the elves themselves are respected in some way.

Because the elves are engaged in a profession which would probably have been looked down on, but whose establishment is still considered to be “high-class,” we can assume that they live outside the general class system. But, I’ll play Devil’s advocate just to cover my bases.

Perhaps the elves we meet are actually part of the lower class, but their establishment is seen as “high-class” just because they’re considered “exotic.” In the end, this is just as likely as the first scenario I described, and actually may work better with my next point, which is that the class system of the dwarves is racist.

Just to be clear, I don’t mean that the class system of the dwarves is based on the color of one’s skin or their geographic location of origin. Instead, I mean actual races such as human, elf, dwarf, goblin, etc., though depending on how exactly this world works, this could essentially be considered the same thing, but I won’t get into the details of that.

The first piece of evidence for this comes from when Rimuru and Gobta were attacked while waiting in line to enter the city. While the adventurers who attacked them were human (I think), their racism against goblins and other monsters is probably fairly common throughout this world.

Eventually we’ll be meeting oni-looking characters, so we’ll have to wait and see how they’re viewed, but for now it looks as though humans, dwarves, and elves are considered the three “civilized” races. Of these three, humans are likely at the top, with dwarves and elves filling specific roles just beneath them.

As I mentioned previously, the elves are probably viewed as exotic, and similarly, the dwarves are probably viewed more as a working-class race, and would therefore be on the same rung of the ladder as the vast majority of humans in this world.

But how does this worldview affect the class system of the dwarves specifically? When we were first introduced to the dwarves, there was a specific appearance which set them apart as distinctly “dwarvish”. Kaijin, his helpers, his brother, and the other guards all have this “dwarvish” appearance.

We also know that Kaijin and his brother are of the lower class, so it’s likely that those who they work with are from the same class. However, those who we see in positions of power, such as the officer, the king, and the various judges in the trial all look more like humans than dwarves.

Does this mean that those characters are humans? Probably not. It’s unlikely that anyone in the higher class of dwarven society would be a non-dwarf, especially the king, whose name includes “Dwargo.” Instead, this may mean that having a more human-like appearance is grounds for being considered higher class.

As we know in our own world, there have been, and still are, people who believe that some are better than others simply based on what they look like or where they are from. It’s therefore not a huge leap to assume something similar is happening within the society of the dwarves in this series.

If a more human-like appearance is a sign of higher class in the dwarve’s society, then we can say that their class system is inherently racist. However, this in itself brings up a different question which I skipped over earlier and will only mention briefly here, because I feel like this tangent about the dwarves has gone on long enough.

If human-like traits are desired within the population of the dwarves, how are they acquired? Are these traits due to successive generations of dwarves with genes that give them a human-like appearance, or are the various races, such as humans and dwarves, actually able to interbreed?

As a historian, the social structure of the dwarves and their relationships with outside cultures interests me greatly, but I know what you’re really here for is anime, so I’ll leave my analysis of the dwarves at that. If you want more analysis like this in future posts, or if you hate it and want me to leave it out, let me know in the comments.

Back to the Episode

Anyway, as I was saying earlier, Rimuru, Kaijin, and the gang stand trial for the assault of the officer whose name I still forget. This is a rigged trial in which the public defender has been paid off and actively agrees with the plaintiff.

Kaijin is then sentenced to 20 years of hard labor in the mines, and the rest of the gang is sentenced to 10. However, before this verdict is final, the king steps in.

We had previously learned that despite being of low standing, Kaijin worked under the king, and it seems the king was fond of him, and at this point even asks him to return to his former duty. But, since Kaijin has now agreed to go with Rimuru back to his village, he declines the king’s offer.

The king then changes the sentence of the convicted to exile rather than hard labor, effectively commuting the sentence since the group was going to be leaving Dwargon anyway. The king then also relieves the plaintiff of his duties for continuously lying to the king.

Earlier we had been told a story from Kaijin’s past in which he had been blamed, and taken the blame, for the officer’s mistakes. This is why Kaijin no longer served under the king, but apparently the king knew the truth the whole time and was waiting for the officer to admit he had lied.

After the trial ends, and Rimuru and his new friends have left the city (leaving Gobta behind in jail for some unknown reason), we get another scene of the king and what appears to be an elven assassin (a dark elf maybe?). In this scene, the king orders the assassination of someone, and the observation of Rimuru.

He also notes that Rimuru is a dangerous monster which cannot be allowed to roam freely, much like the Storm Dragon Veldora. Is Gazel Dwargo the hero Veldora was referring to when he said he was sealed by a hero?

Next Episode

There isn’t much information to go on, but Rimuru and his new companions are headed back in the direction of the goblin village, so it’s likely we’ll mainly be seeing that. However, we should also be meeting the “heroine” of the series as well.

The fact that she was foreshadowed by the elf with the crystal ball in the beginning of this episode is a good enough reason to assume we’ll be meeting her, but if that’s not enough, the title of the next episode is “Shizu,” which is her name (spoiler, but it’s not my fault MAL has her name listed on the series’ page before her introduction).

Conclusion

So, along with letting me know what you thought of this week’s episode of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, remember to also tell me what made you come to this post, and what you thought about my tangent about the society of the dwarves.

If you enjoyed this post, click the like button down below and be sure to follow me on Twitter @DoubleSama so you don’t miss out on any future content. Speaking of Twitter, there’s also the ongoing poll I mentioned in the introduction, which you can find here.

Finally, there’s a new Discord server which is open to everyone. Although Twitter is the best way to keep up to date with new content, Discord is the best way to interact with me and other members of the community. There’s also a Patreon page for those who want to be even more involved.

My review of the next episode is available here.