English Dub Review: Re:Monster “Re:Ady”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Gobrou rescues some elf hostages from some humans and takes them back to the Elf Kingdom, cementing an alliance with them. Later, more of the goblins level up and take on new forms with greater abilities, including Gobmi who gains the power over ice. With his forces at great strength, Gobrou decides to turn the goblin tribe into a mercenary group with a new name: Parabellum.

OUR TAKE

Yet again, we have an episode that feels a lot like a list of things that just happen than a continuous story whose events are building to greater events and developed characters. Gobrou is still kinda just casually sleepwalking through making this stronger tribe, now mercenary group. The other members, including the humans and now joined elves, are also apparently working hard and training off screen, hence why they get these new stronger and cooler upgrades and forms, but they sort of just happen to them and the work to get there is often off screen, depriving us of feeling a connection to these characters as they reach new heights and surpass their limits like most shows like to have. If this were a show guaranteed to have something like a twenty six or even fifty episodes run, I could see the reasoning in going slow on what seem to be less significant moments in these characters’ journeys, but at the moment there really only seem to be twelve episodes plan, and we just finished the fifth. If the interesting bits are only going to happen after they all get their second forms, why not just start the story there and have the leveling up happen in brief flashbacks?

Well, whatever, I guess that’s all taken care of now, because now there seem to be some real shifts forwards. Gobrou’s group has made their first major alliance with the elves and pivoted to becoming a mercenary group named Parabellum, which means “prepare for war” in Latin. Just in case you may have needed more parallels to That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, the main character makes his group into an edgelord name, so there’s that. So, now that they’re officially a named group, which hopefully means they’ll start having a bit more impact on the world, which will then hopefully have individual impact on each of the characters and force them to grow into being…well, actual characters. I’m sure using the word “hopefully” a lot, which is mainly my way of saying that there has nothing to indicate this show has any interest in being more than just action figures crashing together and throwing those into a bog standard video game with no plot. After five episodes, most people would’ve jumped ship when it became clear that this show is simply not really wanting to make these people into…people. But it’s my job to cover it until it ends, so I guess we’ll just see where this all goes. But I can’t stress enough how I am probably not going to like it.