It’s a busy couple of days for me here. Yesterday the painters came over to finish up fixing the water damage we got in the house a few months ago. I was out at work for part of it and apparently they were done much more quickly than I expected. Either way, they did a fantastic job, everything looks better than it did before the water damage, so in the end it wasn’t even bad fortune to have that damage in the first place. Although the day when it started raining in our hallway was pretty stressful. Anyway, today my dad’s colleague and his son are over to take out the window frames and put the new ones in. I will be without windows until Thursday when new ones are getting put in, and then the day after I’m leaving for Denmark. I’ll see if I can find the time to write next week’s recap while I’m there, but I am going to visit my brother so I might skip a week or write the recap later. I am already working on next week’s Hesitant Hero though, so I’m planning to schedule that one to go up on the day it should go up. Enough yapping, let’s dive into this week’s Tensura, which I’m watching and recapping from the couch, on my laptop screen. It is what it is.

We get a little recap on the world of demons. They are from the demon realm and they can regenerate whatever damage they take since they are spiritual beings. Their dearest wish is to get a physical incarnation in the mortal realm and that is exactly what Rimuru can provide to all of Diablo’s companions. Starting with the original yellow: Jaune. I gotta say, the song for this new opening is growing on me very quickly. 

Of course Jaune attacks Diablo on sight – as a little treat – and the two fight it out. Diablo outclasses her pretty severely though. As he’s been named and been working under Rimuru for a while, he really isn’t in the same weight class as her anymore. This makes me wonder who the person that named Guy Crimson was. We also find out that Jaune, Violet and Blanc have been cucking each other for a very long time, not wanting the others to get a physical body. So this rivalry is the core of Diablo’s plan to convince all three of them, as we see him visiting Violet next. Out of the three, Blanc is the only one that requires some effort to find, which instantly makes her seem more dangerous. It looks like Jaune is the brawn, Blanc is the brains and Violet is the severe lack of morals. Actually, I think all three probably have that last one. And of the three, it looks like Blanc is the one that actually wants to hear Rimuru and Diablo out.

I kind of like this random demon kid who just keeps getting killed by Diablo. At first the joke was getting a little bit stale, but seeing Diablo’s eyes light up when the demon actually adds the “sama” honorific to Rimuru’s name was kind of funny. I’m sure we’ll see this in the next few scenes, but I hope he adopts this kid. 

Oh my god, are they supposed to be hell’s angels or something like that? That would be kind of funny. Diablo gets three of hell’s strongest women as his assistants. I hope they undermine him at every step of the way. I love Diablo as a character, but he could use a little bit of humbling. Once Rimuru names these arch demons they will be on a level playing field with Diablo after all. And once again, the great sage Raphael comes in clutch with figuring out that they are actually arch demons, our slime boy Rimuru would be lost without her. Both the demon and Rimuru show off their aura and since Rimuru’s aura has prettier colors, Jaune joins his team. If only it was this easy to make friends back in high school. With these three and – as was easily predicted – the random greater demon he picked up on the way, Diablo now presents a large army of demons for Rimuru to take control of. The 3 colors, their assistants and around 700 other demons that are probably capable enough against your average stooge. Even the assistants are arch demons, making a total group of 10 of them now in service to Rimuru. Of course the primordial ones – who are on par with Diablo – get a nice orichalcum body to host them. Seems like a pretty good deal for everyone involved. I already got this part “spoiled” but the girls get named after supercars just like Diablo, which feels very funny to me. Rimuru just kind of does whatever he wants with the people around him. He’s named the Carrera, Testarossa and Ultima. 

A little thing I found interesting linguistically here. Rimuru and the other members of Octagram are called Demon Lords in English, but they are more commonly referred to as “maou” in Japanese. The four supercar-named demons have now all evolved beyond arch demon into demon lord, but due to this conflicting with the aforementioned naming of the demon lords from Octagram, they are called “demon peers” in the English lettering translation and subtitles. I will just refer to them as demon peers from here on out as well to avoid the confusion with the other type of demon lords. Either way, Rimuru now has four of the most powerful demons working under him. Shion has her work cut out for her if they all start to compete for her secretary position soon. 

With that, the new army of the “demon numbers” is established. Six demon peers, six arch demons and several other high ranking demons within this army, it should be a hell of a fighting force in any future scraps. It seems like they will also be relatively loyal to Rimuru, although surely if he ever disappoints them he’ll be in trouble, but we knew that already. I am looking forward to seeing them all in action, but I’m even more looking forward to seeing some of the more notable members of this army interact with the people already in Tempest. I’m guessing they’ll be put under Shuna’s thumb soon enough if they misbehave.

We’ve reached the midway point of this season which means we are getting a new opening and ending. I woke up to a friend of mine messaging me that they are both very good, so I’m excited to see what this episode has in store for us. I don’t expect the content of the episode to be worldchanging as we’re probably just going to set up the next arc, but we’ll see.

So we get a little bit of a recap on how dragons work in this world. There are four true dragons, Veldora being one of them and I believe we’ve met another one that was part of Guy’s group back in the north pole or wherever that ice palace of his was. The third one is the Star Dragon who is being mentioned here, who was the most powerful of all of them and as far as I know we have not met the last dragon yet. The Star Dragon was the one that created the elemental dragons, including the original body of Gaia. The fun gets ruined when Frey shows up and takes Milim back. Gaia will stay in Tempest to train in the labyrinth. And now we head into the new opening!

There is a lot going on and I’m not Mother’s Basement so I’m not going to interpret everything that happens. There are too many unfamiliar characters here. I think the woman we see at the start might be the original hero though and not Shizu. Speaking of Shizu, we see her and Hinata pop by as well. We see Leon with a little girl who is probably the reason he’s summoning people from another world. Something in this upcoming arc seems to pit Leon and Rimuru against each other and it looks like Granville, Hinata and Luminus will also be involved. Finally, it looks like there is something special about Chloe, Shizu, Hinata, Rimuru and the original hero. Perhaps they all have something in common in a way that we don’t know yet, but it could also be that all of them have held onto the mask. Do we know if Hinata has done so at any point? Either way, this song by Daoko is great, it’s a very different vibe from the other openings but I like it. There’s also a bunch of characters I don’t know and we see Guy pop up as well. Much on the horizon from the looks of it.

Not only is Rimuru preparing bodies for almost a thousand of Diablo’s underlings, Ramiris is also putting elemental cores in all of them. They are creating an army of powerful demons that might terrorize the land in the near future. As much as the Rozzo’s suck, they have a point that Rimuru’s power is soon going to get out of hand. We next get a visit from Deeno, one of the demon lords we didn’t see all that much of in the previous seasons. He was present at Walpurgis but besides saying a few things he wasn’t very involved with the happenings at the time. It seems that he’s broke and kicked out of Dagrull’s home. He’s lazy as can be and is proud of it. But not proud enough that eating one cream puff won’t totally change his mind. And after Guy loads Deeno off to Rimuru, Rimuru now loads him off to Ramiris. The poor guy is about to be very busy. How far Vesta has come from being a little worm trying to undermine Rimuru back in Dwargo to now bossing a demon lord around. A generational character improvement. 

In a very surprising development, the friendship that blossomed between Veldora and Ifrit during some of the recap episodes we’ve gotten throughout this series is actually turning into something more, as Veldora is requesting that the fire spirit gets turned into his new assistant. How the fuck does Veldora talk to Ifrit while Ifrit is still in Rimuru’s stomach. Is it that thing where people put their face to a pregnant woman’s belly – with consent – to listen to the baby? Either way, just like Rimuru I have mixed feelings about Ifrit returning. I still don’t fully trust Diablo after all these seasons and giving a powerful body to the creature that – not completely by his own wishes – severely hurt Shizu. I’m not sure I can be fully on board……… oh no, she’s hot. This isn’t the first time a powerful character comes back as a woman. And she seems very reasonable as well. Either way, another very powerful ally has joined Tempest. I don’t even really mind that the author plays fast and loose with a lot of the revival stuff. It’s never really breaking any clear rules he sets in place, but it does end up always being very convenient. Ifrit is also renamed to Charys now, so let’s be sure to not deadname her. Or them? They can swap at will? I am curious about Deeno’s powers, since right now he seems pathetic enough that even Vesta is a step above him. With the first batch of bodies being given to the dryads here, we now have to wait for the return of Diablo. 

I love creative openings and endings like this. Little wooden dolls moving through a gameboard of the world of Tensura? How freaking cute is that? With how much we see of Shizu in both the opening and the ending, I wonder if we end up seeing more of her this season. It wouldn’t surprise me, but it could also just be that there will be a story that involves her from when she was still alive. Either way, I’m excited for the upcoming second half of this show and it definitely helps knowing that after this finishes, there should be three more cours coming to us in the near future. I also think the three mysterious women we see in the opening are those three demons that Diablo is collecting. I’m guessing they are the black numbers who will be the title of the next episode. I’m a little bit under the weather – I think the lack of sleep from the heatwave is getting to me – so I’m ending this one here. I’ll be back on Tuesday talking about Witch Hat Atelier. Look forward to that!

It’s my favorite time of the week again, it’s time for the weekend. And with the weekend comes a new episode of Tensura. I’ve been incredibly busy the past week or two, and this doesn’t seem like it’ll be slowing down for another week, maybe two. But on the bright side, if all goes well I’ll hopefully get my teaching degree in the near future and there’s more work on the horizon for me after the summer break. I know you didn’t ask and it’s unrelated to the post you wanted to read, but that’s life, sometimes you have to listen to someone ramble for a little bit. But let’s move on.

So Maribel has a plan. But it feels a lot like a Clayman level plan to me which means it is probably going to fail. At least her plan of sending the baby dragon that Milim lost as a child after her is a lot better than trying some cheap magic amulet on the demon lord. Yuuki seems to be the one doing all the hard work while Johan is getting more and more shocked at just how far Maribel is willing to go with not enough regard for the risks she seems to be taking. Desperate times ask for desperate measures, but if a crazy dragon gets loose that is a big deal too. Kagali is going with Rimuru and his people to these ruins of Amrita, which will probably become relevant in some way as well. My guess is that the content of these ruins is the reason Yuuki is actively working with Maribel at the moment. I doubt he’s being controlled, but if Kagali – the former demon lord – wants something from these ruins, a giant attack by Maribel and her people could be the perfect distraction for them to sneak out with this magic generator that can wipe out a nation. We’ll see if there’s any truth to this in the next few episodes I suppose. 

In the meantime we see Rimuru and his party return to Tempest, bringing both Hinata and Glenda with them. Their new reception hall is done and it’s just the thing that a powerful demon lord would have built, except Rimuru is more humble than most of them. That doesn’t mean his followers are, and they’ve incorporated him into the design many times, making him look like a kaisar of sorts. Glenda will start working under Souei and apparently when Maribel’s control over someone disappears, they can no longer sense them. This makes me doubt my “Yuuki is in control all along” theory a little bit since it makes less sense if she could find out immediately that he isn’t controlled anymore, but perhaps he does have some skill that allows him to escape her clutches. Maybe I’m coping here and Yuuki ends up being a good guy who was just being controlled after all. 

Can I just say that with Hinata no longer being a dumb enemy, her personality is great. She has absolutely no chill and doesn’t let anyone walk over her. She’s also making use of Rimuru’s wealth at every moment she gets. I was about to doubt Glenda’s motives when she announced she would no longer live for money, but she fixed that a second later. She is a big asset for now as she gets to explain to Rimuru and his people all the things we already knew as viewers, but they couldn’t know. We also learn about Blood Shadow, the Rozzo’s version of Souei and his spy network.

Welcoming the newcomer who ransacks your domestic market?

Well when you put it like that Hinata, our harmless and innocent slime doesn’t look as harmless and innocent anymore. We know Rimuru doesn’t have bad intentions, but you cannot become a global powerhouse without encroaching on the powers that are already there, and they won’t like what’s coming for them. As per usual, Gobta comes in and almost immediately regrets his screen time. With the wisdom of Raphael-sensei, Rimuru is fully aware of the plotting that might happen at the ruins of Amrita in Distave. He’ll bring Shion with him and Gobta and Ranga as well. It is interesting to see how different people from our world cope with being in the world of Tensura. Where Maribel and Hinata seem to be strong-willed people who immediately know what to do, people like Glenda and Rimuru seem almost too naive to be a part of such a dangerous world. We saw in earlier seasons how the teenagers that worked with Falmuth were not prepared to throw away the luxury from their old world and were miserable shits because of it. Meanwhile Yoshida is just vibing as a chef. This is probably one of my favorite things about Tensura. It’s something that Log Horizon also had me excited about. Multiple people being sent to the same world but in different places and circumstances. It’s something I want to explore more of in the future of my Hesitant Hero series as well, but I don’t know when would be a good time to start introducing it. Either way, moving back to the plot at hand. Rimuru calling Hinata a Tsundere and Raphael immediately going “you’re wrong” was very funny.

Oh my days, Rimuru bought Shion a gift and she looks incredible in it. We got to see some of the other members of the squad in more casual outfits and now we got the same for Shion. Meanwhile the explorers all wear their ruins exploring clothes because of course they do. Rimuru is such a nerd after all. They even made some guns for himself and Gobta. Kagali is also ready to go, and we are done with setting up the next arc. We’re going to explore some old ruins while a greedy child with the morals of a deadbeat noblewoman is trying to hurt everyone involved. I can’t help but want Kagali and Yuuki to be successful to an extent, even though they’re actively opposed to Rimuru and his squad. It’s not surprising that Kagali is hard to read, even for Milim. And it’s probably no wonder that they introduced the concept of the Blood Shadow right before showing some shady figures alongside. After taking a shortcut to Distave, we meet what look to be drow/dark elves. With everyone in position, I’m excited for this season to start hitting max speed soon.