Alright, attempt number five of writing this post in under four pages. I wish I was kidding. If you’re up to date on the first three seasons of Tensura and want to dive straight into season 4, but it’s been a while and you’d like a refresher, this one is for you. I’ll go through each season and will remind you of all the important characters we meet along the way. Let’s not waste any time.
37 year old Satoru Mikami is stabbed to death and born again as a slime in a fantasy world. Stuck in a dark cave, he starts absorbing all sorts of plants and ores before coming upon the storm dragon Veldora. The two become friends and Veldora names him Rimuru, both of them taking the surname Tempest. Rimuru absorbs Veldora and his prison, vowing to free him from it. Rimuru has a voice speaking to him with the words of the world, something that several powerful figures in this world have access to. The great sage – this voice – gives him skills and helps him grow very quickly. Leaving the cave behind, he sets out into the Jura Forest where the balance just got upended by the disappearance of the storm dragon.
In the Jura Forest, Rimuru meets with feuding goblins and direwolves, bringing them all under his wing after settling their fight. He then names his new friends, which is a process that drains his magical energy but in return makes the monsters much more powerful. The goblins turn into hobgoblins and become his first people. Many characters continue to appear throughout the story, but the important ones here are Rigurd – who becomes the goblin lord – and his son Rigur, as well as Gobta, Gonzo and the direwolf Ranga. Having established the village, Rimuru heads to the neighboring dwarven kingdom to procure some craftsmen. Kaijin and his brothers join Rimuru in the village and not long afterwards they clash with the ogres that have been chased out of their homes. Rimur names the ogres, turning them into kijin. Benimaru ends up becoming strike commander while Shion and Shuna work closely with Rimuru. The old Hakuro trains the younger goblins and the dreamy Souei becomes a sort of spymaster. Lastly there’s Kurobe who becomes a master craftsman after already being talented before joining up with Rimuru.
Now we need to deal with the orcs that chased the ogres out of their home. In the process of doing so they team up with the lizardmen, whose royal idiot Gabiru ends up making things more complicated. Gabiru was named by a majin named Gelmud, who also named Rigur’s older brother as well as the orc lord Geld. After stopping the orc lord’s rampage, Rimuru takes in the remaining orcs, naming their new leader Geld after the previous leader. With Gabiru and his sister as well as Geld and his people joining the city of Rimuru, it is truly starting to look impressive.
So now we start to be introduced to the demon lords. The first visitor is Milim Nava, the destroyer. She’s your classic 1000 year old that looks like a teenage girl. She loves fighting and is very childlike in her character. She becomes friends with Rimuru after he bribes her with honey. We also meet Phobio of the three beastketeers who work for demon lord Carrion. Phobio gets manipulated by Footman and Tear, members of the moderate harlequin alliance, into reviving an ancient evil, only to get defeated by Milim. We also meet Ramiris later on, who is both a demon lord and the queen of the spirits.
In the meantime, we’ve been introduced to a couple of otherworlders just like Rimuru. Shizue Izawa was a student of the hero who then became the new hero. She is burning up from the inside due to the spirit of Ifrit being inside of her. She was summoned by Leon Cromwell, another demon lord, and wishes for Rimuru to take care of her students when she dies. So Rimuru goes to the capital of Engrassia to meet with Yuuki Kagurazaka, the leader of the Free Guild and a fellow former inhabitant of earth. The two hit it off and share a love for manga and video games. Rimuru then meets with Shizu’s students. Kenta, Ryohta, Gale, Alice & Chloe, all children who have similar problems to Shizu. Without the help of a spirit to keep their power in check, they’ll burn up and die young. This is when we go and visit Ramiris in her labyrinth, and save the children from certain doom. After destroying her guardian, Ramiris makes Rimuru build her a new one in the form of Beretta, who is a demon inhabiting this doll. We finish the first season with the city of Rimuru thriving and the children being happy. Rimuru can return home after a season well spent.
Take a deep breath, we’ve made it through the first season. There are many more minor characters like Youm the mercenary who becomes important later on as well as Fuse the guildmaster from Blumund. I reckon Fuse is a self-insert considering that’s also the author’s name, but instead of a powerful self-insert he’s just constantly stressed by being put in crazy situations. Poor author. We start season 2 off at full speed, so let’s dissect things.
Rimuru is ambushed by Hinata Sakaguchi on his way home from Engrassia. With Rimuru being responsible for the death of Shizu – technically – Hinata is here to extract her revenge. But it does seem like there is more to it. Either way, the two fight and Rimuru manages to get away with his life, but only barely. This all due to some trickery with barriers from both Hinata and elsewhere. Because while Rimuru is dealing with this problem, his city is under attack. The nearby kingdom of Falmuth has sent three problematic otherworlders to provoke the monsters into attacking them. When the monsters initially don’t seem to bite, they just pull a nasty trick and start to fight them anyway. Right as they do so, the Falmuth army invades and Mjurran the majin erects an anti-magic barrier that severely weakens the monsters. They’re trapped on all sides and things go poorly.
When Rimuru returns, we learn that Mjurran has been working for the demon lord Clayman. Clayman is a member of the moderate harlequin alliance that we encountered earlier on in the story. One of four clowns once working under demon lord Kazareem before he perished. Now they work with Yuuki Kagurazaka. Surprise, the friendly guild leader is a bad dude. His goal is world domination. And in the process he’s revived demon lord Kazareem who now has the appearance of a woman and goes by Kagari. Clayman has it out for Rimuru and he’s planned things properly, mind controlling Milim and getting demon lord Frey on his side as well. They take out demon lord Carrion and his people take shelter in Rimuru’s town. During the raid on Rimuru, Shion, Gobzo and several others perished. Rimuru gets incredibly angry but a story by the adventurer Eren gives him hope. Milim once brought her companion dragon back to life, but due to the lack of a soul being near, the dragon didn’t have his personality when it was revived. In this situation however, the souls of the dead might very well still be trapped within the magic barrier. But to have the power to bring his friends back, Rimuru will have to awaken to becoming a true demon lord, and doing so requires him to kill ten thousand soldiers. This is where we get one of my favorite moments in the series so far, as the people of Rimuru fight back against the Falmuth Kingdom. The otherworlders are brutally disposed, Mjurran’s heart is destroyed but quickly replaced, freeing her from Clayman’s control, and Rimuru commits genocide on the army of Falmuth. He now awakens to a true demon lord. He summons demons to assist him, offering up two of them to complete the ritual of reviving his friends. The remaining demon is the primordial black, going by noir. Now named Diablo, this incredibly powerful demon is feverishly loyal to Rimuru and itching to show off just how much he’s willing to help. Rimuru’s friends are revived and now it’s time to get ready for Walpurgis.
The meeting of the demon lords, Walpurgis, is scheduled soon and Rimuru is going to attend. With the demon lord Clayman planning Rimuru’s demise, Milim being under his control and several of the other demon lords still being a total mystery, it’s a dangerous endeavor, but one he must undertake. He can bring two attendants and brings Ranga and Shion, while Beretta and Treyni come along with Ramiris. Leon Cromwell visits Guy Crimson before the meeting starts and we learn that Guy is a bit of a freak. Guy also is friends with another one of the dragons, who is familiar with Veldora. Alongside Guy, Leon, Ramiris, Clayman, Milim and Rimuru, there are a couple of other demon lords present. We met Frey the sky queen for a few scenes and she’s working with Clayman. Carion is absent due to Milim killing him. There’s the sleepy Dino, the giant Dagrull and there’s Luminous Valentine, who pretends to be an attendant instead. With everyone present, Clayman makes his case against Rimuru. Things are said from one to another and the banquet ends with a fight between Clayman’s forces and Rimuru’s forces. Shion takes care of Clayman with ease, Beretta dismantles Clayman’s puppet and Ranga deals with the nine-tailed fox. The fight ends with a decisive victory for Rimuru’s camp and the death of Clayman after it is revealed that Frey was never loyal to him, Milim was never under his control and Rimuru was prepared to deal with every trick that Clayman had prepared. It’s a total defeat for the weakest member of the moderate harlequin alliance.
With this, both Carrion and Frey step down as demon lords, now leaving only eight – Rimuru, Dino, Dagrull, Valentine, Guy Crimson, Leon, Ramiris & Milim – demon lords left. They found a new group called Octagram, after the fact that there are eight of them in total. With that, it’s time to move on to season 3. And there’s still a full page and a bit left to cover it. Surely I’ll get it done in under four pages, right?
Season three can basically be split into two halves pretty easily. The first half sees the continuation of Rimuru’s clash with the holy church of Luminus. Rimuru and Hinata are both manipulated by the Seven Days clergy, a group of zealots within the church of Luminus that hold some pretty extreme ideas and want to get rid of Hinata. At the same time, Diablo and Youm are working hard to turn the kingdom of Falmuth into a new kingdom under Youm’s leadership. With the old nobility not quite ready to give up against Rimuru, they need some trickery to make the transfer of power feel more legitimate. Hidden behind all of the trickery here are several forces that have been manipulating things from behind the scene. The Rozzo crime family has been working with a merchant from the eastern nations – on the other side of the Jura Forest – who has been trying to destabilize things and get countries in his debt. On the other hand, Yuuki has been manipulating things at a bit more of a distance. Part of his actions during the last season got Hinata annoyed when Laplace infiltrated the holy temple and killed Roy Valentine, brother of the emperor. With help from the eastern merchant, the Falmuth forces set up to fight off Diablo and his people. They also plan to wipe out all the onlookers, which is exactly what Diablo wanted, as he now has proof that the Falmuth nobility started the fight. He disposes of their forces with ease and then the Seven Days clergy show their faces. Hinata and Rimuru clash near Tempest. The Seven Days clergy manipulated Hinata’s followers to go to Tempest as well, and this causes an all out brawl that both Hinata and Rimuru would have rather avoided. When Rimuru’s forces defeat Hinata’s forces and the latter admits defeat, they are ambushed by three members of the Seven Days clergy as well. Hinata is mortally wounded and her resistance to magicules doesn’t allow Rimuru to heal her. Now faced with the Seven Days clergy on several fronts, the true enemy is now in front of Rimuru and Diablo and they show no mercy. Towards the end of the fight, Luminus Valentine – the demon lord as well as the god of their religion – shows up to punish the remaining clergy and makes up with Rimuru by offering a non-aggression pact that lasts a century. Falmuth is now in the capable hands of Youm and Mjurran and Tempest is once again safe. Hinata and Rimuru become acquainted and she even leaves two of her people behind in Tempest. The Rozzo family and the eastern merchant are still lurking though. And Yuuki now has the full support of Kagari – formerly demon lord Kazareem – and her harlequin alliance behind him in his goal for world domination. But it’s time to take a bit of a respite from all of this and prepare for the Tempest Founder Festival!
The festival serves two functions at once. The first one is that it makes for a great way for Rimuru to meet the leaders of all factions within the Jura Forest as well as in the surrounding areas all at once, allowing for him to introduce himself to everyone in one go instead of one at a time. The second and arguably much bigger benefit is that they get to show off all the crazy ideas, food and technology they have been working on, instantly opening the door for much more commerce and travel than before. To do this all successfully, Rimuru hires Mjolmire. I didn’t mention him earlier because he does a lot of his more important stuff in this last bit of the anime, but when Rimuru and the children were in Ingrassia, Rimuru defeated a small dragon and in the process saved the somewhat shady merchant Mjolmire, who has been incredibly grateful ever since. The two have worked together on some smaller projects and now it’s finally time to bring the human merchant on board as a full member of the Tempest council. He quickly shows that he’s worth much more than Rimuru even expected and is an excellent salesman. The two plan out every detail of the Founder Festival including the big selling point; the coliseum. This structure serves three functions all at once. The first function is for holding fights for an audience to view and making room for people to train there as well under the guidance of the talented fighters already present here. The second and third function have to do with what is under the coliseum. Rimuru finally agreed to let Ramiris live in Tempest, if she builds him a 100 floor dungeon where they can send adventurers to go explore. Using a combination of Veldora’s excessive magicules, the potions they have from Gabiru and Vesta’s research and the abilities that Ramiris can grant to anyone who enters a contract with her, they can create a video game-esque system that allows adventurers to revive on death and get out of the dungeon safely. This place will also function as a bunker of sorts for the people of Tempest to hide in if another war breaks out.
The festival itself is a massive success with people from all sorts of nations visiting. The king and queen of Blumund visit and reaffirm their commitment to working together. Gazel Dwargo as well as the empress of Thallion arrive and Milim, Freya, Carrion and Luminus Valentine are here to represent the demon lords. Yuuki and Hinata visit with the children and we even see Mariabell Rosso in the mix. I wonder what she’s scheming, considering she is on the front of the art for season 4. Last but not least, we finally get a proper introduction to the hero Masayuuki. It seems like his abilities just allow him to have crazy good luck and have everyone think highly of him. Besides this somewhat manipulative power, he seems like a good and humble dude underneath it all. We end the season with a tournament in which Gobta gets to show off just how much of a powerhouse he truly is.
There, just over four pages, but I’m not going to bother cutting anything out now. Just adding in pictures to this post is going to take a while, and I have other things to write this week. Either way, I think this has made it very clear how excited I am for the upcoming fourth season, especially considering they promised us so much anime it will almost double the existing episode count. I hope you enjoy the show as well and watch along with me every week. I’ll be here the day after the episode airs, recapping everything I found interesting. Thanks for reading.
Opal Kaharis 