English Dub Review: That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime “Festival Preparations”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

With the most immediate threat neutralized for the moment, Rimiru starts working with local officials to put together a festival to celebrate Tempest introducing itself to the world.

OUR TAKE

It’s a week earlier than usually expected, but we got a new Opening and Ending this week! Aaaaaaand it’s kind of a downgrade, at least to me, but your mileage may vary on that. I just happened to enjoy the more serious nature of the OP and ED from before, so I’ll miss hearing them every week. This new pair is more light hearted, which makes sense given we’re going into a story arc about putting on a festival, but they’re almost kind of annoying in how sugary they are. The OP in particular does a weird thing where the title card doesn’t appear until a minute in (out of a 90 second intro, mind you) and is just passed aside like they forgot to put it in and this was just the easiest spot. Ah well, maybe I’ll get used to them. I guess I’ll have to if it’s going to be around for the next few months and the rest of the season. At the very least, we don’t seem to have a recap episode to worry about wasting time, so we’ll have to take the victories where we can get them here. We’ve got a whole remaining dozen episodes to get through after all.

Oh yeah, I should probably talk about the episode itself. Well, it’s another episode of characters sitting in business rooms talking to groups of people about what they’re going to do next, but instead of getting mentally prepared for a big fight that will be over in just a couple episodes, we’re getting ready for a big festival. And I know I’ve been a bit of a downer on that idea so far, but a story arc about organizing a big festival can be fun, especially if it puts focus on character development and growth along with the festivities. We’re coming off putting a major conflict between factions to bed, so there’s a chance for characters with a grudge to bond and cast aside old grudges while…bobbing for apples or hitting targets with a water gun or something. It’s been awhile since I went to a big fair. I’d be more optimistic about this if there was that much of a conflict last time but we’ll take what we can get. We’ll see if this actually turns into anything than fun shenanigans as the festival kicks off for really real realsies next time.