English Dub Review: That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime “Labyrinth and Storm Dragon”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Rimiru, Beldora, and others start putting together the big dungeon for the festival to give festival goers a fake quest that will end with them facing Beldora as a dragon.

OUR TAKE

Festival preparations continue, this time more focused on a specific part of the festivities. There was hintings and mentions of this dungeon the past couple episodes and now we get to see the actual work being put into it. If I’m being honest, putting together your own physical dungeon sounds basically like mixing a game of Dungeons and Dragons with an Escape Room, a combination that would normally be way too expensive and lawsuit vulnerable to make work in any satisfactory form. Thankfully, in this world, there ARE NOW INJURY ATTORNEYS so it’s all good to set it up. But I’m sad to say that the way we see things being put together in this episode is actually rather drab and boring compared to how it could be. While learning the process of how something like this could be put together is certainly interesting on its own to an extent, I guess what I was hoping for was a way of showing more character personality through pitching ideas and making creative compromises and showing how the efforts to put this dungeon together was revealing something about those involved, then leading to its premiere to the public showing all the efforts between them paying off. And while we’ve still got plenty of episodes left to go, it doesn’t seem like we’re going to be getting that.

That’s kinda what has irked me for awhile with this show’s writing philosophy, it’s priority towards being cool and flashy over more substantial character work. There is a little bit of character development in this episode, and it’s pretty much just placing Beldora in a place where he can stretch his legs with his aura and transferring ownership of one character to another character. I don’t feel like I’ve learned more about these people or seen them take a step further on their own personal journeys, it’s just them saying…stuff. And I’m getting very worried that this is what this whole second half of the season is going to be like. There’s no tension of any major threat coming, which is fine on its own, but there’s also no tension about anything being at stake if any of what’s being worked on goes south. Like I don’t necessarily need someone’s life to be on the line here, but I would like to see them be so invested in something that it FEELS like their life is on the line, you know? Anyway, ten episodes to go, hope they improve.