Storytime before we start the episode recap since today I’m going to be lazy about it anyway. I live in the Netherlands and my brother lives in Denmark (near the capital). My dad and I took a road trip to go visit him over the weekend. Seeing him again after like half a year was fun, we took some walks through town, had some ice cream and pizza and saw his apartment. But we made the decision early on to go by car. That way we’d be there cheaper, we didn’t have to make it to the airplane by a certain time, and traveling from the hotel to his place would be easy. Sounded good in our heads. Yeah we weren’t super surprised by it, but the 10 hour drive quickly turned into a 13 hour drive. And since we only went for a day or two, we had to take two of those drives within a three day period. We left super early on Friday and came home late on Sunday. Brutal. I’m not made for road trips and it didn’t help that it was a small old car with iffy seats and no AC in it. Standing still in traffic while the temperature reads 30c is not exactly a fun experience. And the hotel was pretty awful too. My dad has sleep apnea and he snores like crazy and hotels without AC should be illegal with how much the planet has heated up in the past few decades. So last night was the first proper sleep I’ve had in several days. I also didn’t write on Saturday or Sunday because my laptop was malfunctioning. I think I know how to fix it but it’s a work laptop so I don’t have the permissions to fix it myself. There goes my year-long streak of writing 1000 words a day, but sometimes you just can’t help it. Anyway, much too long intro out of the way, let’s watch some anime.

And we start off nicely with some lore on the actual hero, the one hidden in Luminus’ basement. Granbell was present for the conversation that the hero and Luminus had 300 years ago about dealing with the hero if she went out of control. He’s been obsessed ever since. With how present the hero, Hinata, Chloe and Shizu are in the opening, something is going to be happening with the quartet of women and my bet is that Chloe will inherit the hero’s mantle in some way. I’m just curious what Luminus’ position in all of this will end up being, considering she’s obsessed with the former hero. 

Rimuru placing a bunch of primordial demons in charge of his justice system seems like a really bad idea but knowing this anime, it will likely work out well enough in the end. While Rimuru is having a good time talking to the kids in his new school, the Moderate Harlequin Alliance is visiting Leon Cromwell, which they have been dealing with for a while now. They have been dealing in children from both this half of the globe and the Eastern half. Apparently the east is preparing for war. Leon is interested in Chloe which confirms what I’ve been worried about for a while already. With a picture of Chloe in a special room it’s all but confirmed that he is obsessed with her, let’s just hope it’s because he thinks she is her long lost sister or something. 

If the wheels of karma keep turning it might be possible.
So we see a little bit more of Yuuki’s scheming here. The Harlequin Alliance was sent by him to try and get some information out of Leon and they got just what they wanted. My guess is that Leon had a sister named Chloe who disappeared and he hopes she’s been reincarnated in some way. If Chloe from the school has something to do with Leon, it explains his obsession with finding children that could be a hero and particularly with Chloe. I’m even going to go a step further and make an educated guess that the original hero was also named Chloe and she was the sister of Demon Lord Leon Cromwell. After she disappeared – into Luminus’ basement – Leon has been searching for her reincarnation ever since. I’m also going to predict that Chloe isn’t actually who he’s looking for as the hero is still encased in ice, but he’ll end up trying to force that role onto her somehow which is why Rimuru and Leon will clash. Can’t wait to be totally wrong again though. And in the meantime, Yuuki is still planning to head east to get some of the heat off of their gang.

While training in Tempest, the kids have become extraordinarily strong, learning from the likes of Hinata and Hakuei. If they’re this strong at their current age, they could become serious fighters in the future and Hinata warns Rimuru that he shouldn’t let them go down the wrong path. They’re doing well at this parenting thing together. It’s also here where she brings up that grandma (Luminus) wants to visit again because she’s bored. It is interesting to me that Yuuki didn’t know about the hidden treasure in Luminus’ basement, but of course he knew about all the other stuff. With Maribel gone, Granbell is putting his faith in Yuuki, which is probably a bad idea, but what else can he do now that he is powerless. 

It looks like we’ll have three parties involved in all of this. Leon Cromwell and his dealings, Yuuki and the clowns and Rimuru and the children. Luminus is stuck between all of it and will probably be used by every party present. Let’s hope she figures out what is going on in time and chooses to side with our little slime. With this all set up, I personally expect to see a fight between Leon and Rimuru which ends up in them reconciling in some way – or with Rimuru defeating Leon – before Yuuki heads to the east to set up for a war between the two halves of the continent. It feels like we’re nearing a larger scale of fighting soon, but I doubt we’ll see any of that in this season. Still, even after this cour ends, we’ll have another three seasons on the horizon worth around 40 episodes, so there is a lot of content still to go. I’m also thinking of finally buying and reading the novels after these announced seasons end. That’s still a while away, but it does give me the time to at least somewhat catch up on the books I still have sitting on my shelves. I’m leaving this recap a little bit barebones, but I hope you understand. Tomorrow’s post is already done and now I can spend some time and energy this week on writing the Hesitant Hero chapter for this week. Thanks for reading!