The anime starts off pretty good actually with our protagonist (who is a not-so-social-virgin at 37) dying, with his dying wish being “If I ever get reborn, I want to be OP af and want to screw as many girls as I like”; to be fair, I would probably also wish something along those lines. After citing his wish, “the great sage” reincarnates him into another world as the most OP slime ever. Stuff happens and he ends up saving a tsundere dragon from eternal imprisonment by eating him and also saves a village of goblins from direwolves. He, then names all the goblins and direwolves and takes it upon himself to create an ideal living environment for the monsters to live in. Just because he worked as a “contractor” in his previous life, he’s able to plan out a whole city mostly by himself. He also becomes an expert in holding a conversation even though he was lonely and awkward in his previous life. I don’t know how that works, but good for him right?
After planning a whole city mostly by himself, begins the directionless adventure of the slime. This is one of the main problems with this show, it does not know what it wants to be. There’s no overarching narrative, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but audiences at least need a sense of direction of movement in order not to be bored. There was something about there being a demon lord or something, idk it’s probably the same guy that’s present in every other isekai. What the show does is, it makes one of the characters say “Demon Lord” in some way or the other and the anime is like “well that’s enough plot progression for one episode. Who wants tiddies?”. Instead of actual plot we get “plot”. Not “plot” plot, but PLOT. Every girl the slime ever comes across is infatuated with him because we need to construct a harem or it will not be an isekai. Thus, the slime turns into chad slime and is swimming in tiddies, literally. The second problem with the show is that the danger does not feel real. Since the slime, who gets the name Rimuru by the way, is as OP as Goku in his Rainbow Super Saiyan Ultra Instinct Super Saiyan Legendary Super Saiyan God Ultra BS Level 5 form, nobody stands a chance against him. Anyone who challenges him, gets their ass handed to them in about 5 milliseconds. The fights usually go like this:
1. Rimuru’s henchmen fighting evil guy.
2. Evil Guy: You are just cannon fodder.
3. Henchmen lose; evil guy laughs; Rimuru arrives.
4. Evil Guy: You’re just a slime, you can’t do anything.
5. Rimuru beats the shit out of evil guy.
6. Evil Guy: *gasp* *starts following Rimuru for no reason*
Seriously, everyone who ever comes in contact with Rimuru becomes as loyal to him as you’re to anime. There’s this direwolf whose father is killed by Rimuru, but he’s like “meh, shit happens. You killed my father and dozens of my friends with whom I’ve spent my life till now, but you gave me a name so I instantly forgot about them”.
The comedy is ehhh??? I know comedy is subjective, but I can distinguish between well written comedy that isn’t funny just to me and just plain bad comedy. There’s this character who doesn’t speak and just says “mmmhh” and whenever he does that Rimuru goes “Speak up, man”. It was funny the first time but became annoying after it was repeated for a million times. There’s this lizardman who’s arguably the most irksome character in the show because his only purpose in life seems to be to make stupid decisions for the sake of tasteless humour. But, the most annoying part is that those actions, those asinine actions that he takes in the show which we took for granted, actually contribute to plot progression. He overthrows his father, the king of the lizardmen, from the throne during an invasion just because 3 of his henchmen told him that he is strong *annoyed nose exhale*.
The characters are painfully mediocre. Except for one female character, all others are there just to show some cleavage and get wet over Rimuru for no goddamn reason. Rimuru himself isn’t that interesting of a character. We never get an explanation to his motivation or what he wants to do, he just does whatever is presented to him. That’s weak writing. If your character holds his/her characterisation only in the context of the story then that’s weak character writing. There’s not even much to write as the characters are the definition of average. If they were on either end of the spectrum you would have something to say about them, but the characters in this show don’t have much of a personality. Only one character gets anything resembling a backstory which was so cursory that I forgot about it as soon as it happened. The characters are introduced as some kind of badasses only to further paint them as only superficially badass. There’s a character who tames the orcs and has a calm demeanour in his first scene but loses his mind when his plan fails. He’s portrayed as smart and shrewd but isn’t even able to figure out that his own slave is going to kill him.
The female cast consists of useless fanservice character #1, useless fanservice character #2, useless fanservice character #3 up to useless fanservice character #10, and Shizue. You can literally replace the female cast with boobs and it wouldn’t make a dent of a difference. Every female in this show, in one way or another, is only present to hold Rimuru between her boobs or to get angry for absolutely no reason in order to provide “comic relief”. I’ve put comic relief if massive quotations because all it does is annoy the viewer or pad for time as every episode needs to be 20 minutes long. The “comic relief” usually (and by usually I mean all the time) consists of girls vying to get wet over Rimuru or having other characters eat food that they’ve prepared; usually (and by usually I mean all the time) the food is very unpalatable and causes the person eating said food to faint. As you can see these are entirely new concepts that have never been executed or seen before in any anime, ever.
There’s a demon loli who runs around in bikinis blowing up whatever she wishes and is supposed to be a “demon lord” who are apparently the most OP people in the world. The demon loli is defeated by Rimuru by stuffing her mouth with honey; a feat which is applauded by his loyal followers quoting it as “A feat which only Rimuru-sama can accomplish” *exasperated sigh*. The demon loli (that’s what I’m gonna call her because she was only present in the show to appeal to pedos and was such a superfluous character that I don’t even remember her name and can’t be bothered to search for it), becomes besties with Rimuru because, well, we need an excuse to shoehorn in a loli with enough helium in her voice to lead to dizziness, nausea, vomiting, loss of consciousness and ultimately death.
You might be thinking that despite shitting on this show why have I still given it a 4/10. Well, that’s because even though everything about this anime is utterly mediocre, I still had an urge to click the next episode and ended up finishing it in a day so it gets some points there. Even though the fights themselves can’t be considered anything other than one sided massacre, they were still fun to watch.
Oh, almost forgot. The music is ok, the OPs and EDs are just fine and with the exception of one piece (which I just can’t seem to be able to find), all the others are forgettable. The animation is pretty solid though, especially during the fights. But, what good is animation when the majority of the show is as bland and tasteless as frozen dry fruits.
Tl;dr
If isekai is your thing, then go for it, but again if you really like isekai then you’ve probably already watched it. If you don’t like isekai and are going to try it because you’ve heard so many good things about it, then I’d recommend you to refrain from watching it. This is another one of those mediocre isekai that has been hyped to high heavens by the anime community. It’s literally like any other isekai.
