That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Episode 6

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Episode 6

Introduction

It’s finally happened. There’s finally a reason to watch this anime, and her name is Shizu. Now all we need are for the pink-haired oni and demon-loli to join the series and the trifecta will be completed.

But, seriously, if you’re enjoying this anime so far, please explain to me why in the comments. I genuinely see nothing unique going on here. The art/animation is standard, the plot is generic, and the characters are all pretty lame. It’s literally just one light novel fantasy trope after another.

Shizu

There’s quite a bit of stuff that happened in this week’s episode regarding the goblin village, but none of it matters, and it was all basically filler, so I’m not going to spend much time discussing it.

First, other goblin villages from nearby have come and joined Rimuru’s village, making the population now 500 strong. Next, Gobta is able to summon a tempest wolf, which makes no sense based on the origins of goblins and tempest wolves, but I guess that’s a thing now.

Finally, the dwarf craftsmen who came back to the village with Rimuru all just so happen to be the best at their respective trades in all of Dwargon. Kaijin is the master weaponsmith, as we knew, but the others are masters of armor making, jewelry crafting, and architecture.

This is just a classic fantasy light novel trope in which everything and everyone surrounding the protagonist is the best. It’s basically the area of effect of the power fantasy trope. Don’t these authors realize that flawed characters and conflict are what make stories interesting?

I’ve been watching a lot of One Piece recently, so I’ll be referencing that today instead of Monogatari. Usopp is the best character in One Piece because he’s not all-powerful or flawless. However, a character like him would never be featured in a modern, light novel, fantasy like this as a main character, if at all.

Luckily for the authors of series like this one, their target audience doesn’t care about good characters or writing because they’re 14-year-old boys. That’s the same target audience as One Piece, but the difference is that it’s honestly easier for anyone to get published these days, and this series debuted 17 years after One Piece.

Let’s be honest, if you write some generic, trope-filled, fantasy light novel, chances are someone will agree to publish it. It probably doesn’t even matter how bad your writing is, because that’s what editors are for anyway. That’s right, kids, you too can be a super popular author with 12 total fans and no picture or info on MAL like the author of this series.

But, hey, being a sellout isn’t so bad. I’d do the same thing in his situation too.

Anyway, enough about how generic this series is, let’s get back to the episode at hand. Now that we’ve briefly covered the recent events in the goblin village, it’s time to talk about the human party we first saw in episode 2 or so when Rimuru was leaving Veldora’s cave.

Apparently they were sent there by the local guild to check on Veldora due to the increase in monster activity nearby. They determined that Veldora is indeed missing, but that there didn’t seem to be anything else strange in the cave (because Rimuru cleaned it out).

They’re then given their next quest, which is to scout out the nearby forest and report back about any unusual monster movements. This is the same forest in which Rimuru’s goblin village is located.

Shizu Izawa from the anime That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime
Shizu Izawa

The trio is then approached by a masked woman who introduces herself as Shizu and requests to accompany them through the nearby forest. For now it’s unclear exactly why she wanted to go along with these three, because she clearly doesn’t need them for protection.

While traveling through the forest, the group is attacked by giant ants, and Shizu is able to defeat them all except for one, which Rimuru takes out with a blast of Black Lightning. Shizu is a swordswoman, but also uses fire magic.

The Woman Behind the Mask

The rest of the episode focuses on Shizu and the other human adventurers after they’re taken back to Rimuru’s village as guests, but that isn’t very interesting, so instead I’m going to just discuss Shizu’s character. What do we know? What can we assume? And, what doesn’t add up?

What we know about Shizu is that she’s originally from Japan and was summoned into this world, unlike Rimuru who was reincarnated into it. Because she’s a summon, she has a curse of some sort on her which doesn’t allow her to go against her master’s wishes, although we don’t know who exactly that is just yet.

We’ve seen who I assume is her master in a flashback, but we don’t yet know his name or what his goals are. What we do know, however, is that he appears to be the one who “gave” Shizu her affinity for fire magic by unleashing some sort of demonic fire spirit onto her.

More than likely, Shizu already had an affinity for fire due to the burns she had when she was summoned, much like how Rimuru has special skills based on his bodily condition at the time of his death. This means that the fire spirit which was unleashed onto her merely gave her the ability to control this affinity.

We also learn that she’s been in this fantasy world for a long time, since the mid 1940s to be exact. This is where the issue with her character comes into play. If she was summoned in 1945, and let’s say this anime takes place in 2014 when it was first published, that would mean she’s over 70 years old.

The only problem is, she looks like she’s probably in her 20s. Now, maybe you’re going to tell me that summons don’t age in this world, but the fact is that she was summoned as a child, around the age of 7, and is clearly older than that now.

If we later learn that some sort of magic was used on her to stop her from aging, then fine, but I have a hard time believing we’ll ever actually get an answer to this mystery. Maybe Rimuru is just into women double his age. He was 38 when he died after all.

There’s also the issue with Shizu being familiar with dialogue from a video game, but that’s less of an issue and more of a can of worms I don’t feel like opening right now. All I’ll say on that is that whoever this other Japanese person she met was must have explained a lot about the modern world to her.

Finally, I’m fairly certain that Shizu is the hero who sealed Veldora away. I’m not going to go back and rewatch the first episode to find out, but I believe the hero we see in Veldora’s flashback was wearing an outfit, cape, and mask just like Shizu’s. I wonder what will happen when they eventually meet again.

Conclusion

So what were your thoughts on this episode of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime? More importantly, what are your thoughts on Shizu? Do you think she’s the hero who sealed Veldora? Do you think she’s actually 77 years old? Let me know in the comments.

You can also use the comments to tell me how my opinions are wrong and that this series is actually the greatest piece of character and plot writing in modern history, but you’ll have to have some pretty good evidence if you want me to believe you.

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My review of the next episode is available here.

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