Last week we finally had our meeting between Rimuru and the council. And as we saw towards the very end, it looks like there’s a reason why things aren’t going to go particularly smoothly. It’s not like we didn’t see this coming, but I’m curious what exactly the council has proposed for Rimuru to get so angry. Let’s not waste any time and let’s dive right into episode 6.

And yeah, as expected, their demands are pretty damn crazy. Access to free trains, weapons and managing the dungeon, a yearly fee and for good measure they put in some racist crap about only humans being able to actually be part of the council, no wonder Rimuru got angry. This isn’t even harsh negotiating, this is basically just telling them to piss off. Unfortunately this is probably all part of the plan. Raphael-sensei confirms what I was thinking and someone has been interfering with the councilors. A light bit of coaxing turned them all against Rimuru and a light bit of magic by Rimuru to undo it all. 

It is interesting to see that in almost every bit of fiction the prince of a given country is a total dick. It’s funny that all of the people hired by the prince are stooges that couldn’t even make it through half of the dungeon, let alone stand a chance against Rimuru. One thing that baffles me from the writing is how we all know Demon Lords and Hinata are some of the most powerful people around yet random stooges still somehow think they can defeat them. But they’re at least not confident enough to come in without a plan. At least it’s not a good plan.

It’s so good to have Hinata on our side. When we think of strong women in fiction there’s often a lot of middle ground where the characters aren’t actually particularly well written. Flawed as she is at times, her actual personality traits are very grounded and she is far from stupid. Watching her defeat some stooges will always be a fun experience. Also, shout out to the dumbest mercenary out there. At least we get to see some great action with Shuna looking absolutely gorgeous in her suit. Now this is the kind of fanservice I signed up for. Absolute domination of a bunch of no name stooges and looking utterly amazing while doing so. 

I don’t comment on the animation of this show very much because it’s usually not the type of show where that matters a lot to me, but in scenes like these where Shuna clashes with Gaiye it would be great if the animation looked like modern day One Piece. After Prince Elric almost gets assassinated by the church member from last season, it looks like he finally figures out just how dumb he’s been. Rimuru tells him to chill out and learn from his mistakes. After all is said and done, Rimuru and the king of Engrassia shake hands and it looks like things are finally headed in the right direction. Gaban – one of the councillors – is chosen to take the fall for the entire mess while Maribel and Johan get off scotfree. A new agreement is set up and Tempest officially joins the council.

What I really like about Rimuru as a character is that despite being a bit of a himbo, he does have his moments. The combination of Raphael’s cunning with Rimuru’s disarming personality makes for a terrifying opponent in politics. With Tempest joining the council we’re one step closer to coexisting, but we’re still very far from our goal. Not to mention that the people behind all of this are still on the loose. It looks like Souei is planning to deal with one of them at least. I do like the twist here of combining the power of a gun with spatial magic to be able to actually hit someone at very long distances. Guns aren’t going to be a way to kill everyone in this world, with how powerful some of the people involved in the core story are, but for the average person they are still an incredibly deadly weapon. Just because Rimuru can stop a bullet in under a 100th of a second doesn’t mean that Steve the baker can do the same thing. Although this week’s cliffhanger isn’t nearly as intense as last week’s cliffhanger, after seeing Shun fight with a metal fan while wearing a suit I am completely satisfied and confident I can make it through another week. Thanks for reading!

After unfortunately having to take a week off last week, we are so back. I wasn’t aware there was a week off at first, so when I sat down to watch the episode I was thoroughly disappointed, but it is what it is. Without further ado let’s head to the capital of Engrassia and meet the council.

But first, it’s time for a shopping episode. Whenever I hear that, I’m brought back to about a decade ago where I was watching Critical Role (a Dungeons & Dragons podcast) and they did a shopping episode, where half the cast spent hours roleplaying a day of shopping for potions a gear while Travis was fully asleep by the end of it because of how boring it is. But if I get to see Shuna in those casual clothes I can sit through any shopping episode. The guys look good too I guess. I love Rimuru’s trick for buying good clothes, just ask the shopkeeper for advice, he’ll know best after all.

Now I’m not one to judge other people’s coffee habits all that sternly. I put a lot of milk in my coffee because drinking it black is far too bitter for sensitive lil’ me. But I draw the line at putting in too much sweetener or sugar. Coffee that’s too sweet is disgusting. I take sweetener with my coffee because I’m trying to monitor my weight, but sometimes I’ll accidentally put two instead of one in there and it is vile. Hinata calling him out is great. She’s here on Rimuru’s request to give him the download on what happened in the previous meeting. These two have such great chemistry as friends / murderous rivals. Then again, anything Hinata does is drenched in murderous intent. 

I like when shows save on animation and instead add in some really cool hand-drawn art to show some scenes. Animation is a very stressful job with long hours, so if you get creative about saving time I think that should be applauded. With three routes for the Eastern Empire to attack, Rimuru is confident that they are unlikely to do so, but we already get some hints that Raphael thinks differently without yet having any data to back it up. As viewers we of course know that with how much an attack by the Eastern Empire has been hinted at, they are likely to play a big role at some point in the future, but the characters in the world don’t have that same kind of information. 

And of course nothing will go as smoothly as it seems, with Maribel Rozzo (I flip flop on how to spell her name) having plans. The fact that she says Rimuru will be the one to stop it from happening is giving me Sabaody Archipelago vibes. Some old-fashioned racism combined with needless violence will definitely do the trick. Rimuru has already shown that although he wishes to coexist with humans, if they mess with him that’s off the table. With Maribel trying to mess with everyone involved, I wonder if Yuuki is going to reveal that he’s not actually under her control. Perhaps I’m wrong on this, but I cannot imagine he’s actually caught under her spell. 

All councilors are created equal. Some are created more equal than others. And we dive right into the racism from frame one. It’s a funny scene, but sometimes having these over the top bad guys can get a bit dull. They’re even laughing like cartoon villains, but I suppose that’s their job. We enter into the meeting room and get to hear the three conditions that the council has for Rimuru to join them:

• Adhere to international law
• Opening up their market
• Supplying military forces

So far this seems like some minor inconveniences but nothing major that they can’t accept. Of course there are some objections that Rimuru – I mean Raphael – has written down on paper. You can’t come across as overly eager. And it helps to have essentially a supercomputer living in your head. With everything looking like it’ll go well, the reviews of Rimuru’s reviews come in and the conclusion is clear. They fucked up. Whatever is written down by the humans has seriously pissed off the latest demon lord and we all know what happened the last time that a human nation pissed off Rimuru. I’m guessing there’s some sort of language included that makes the monsters lower on the totem pole than humans instead of equals. We’ll have to wait until next week to find out though, and I have to say, this is probably the most excited I’ve been about an episode in a while. I thought the avatar team stuff was cute, but it wasn’t exactly a high-stakes scenario. Now with all the pieces coming into place, I’m curious to see what will happen from here on out. Thanks for reading!

In today’s episode we finally learn a little bit more about Maribel and her family. I had my suspicions about her – being so powerful at such a young child – but she is indeed someone who has reincarnated from another world, just like Rimuru, Yuuki, Masayuuki, Shizu, Hinata and all the others we’ve encountered so far. I kind of like that so many people get transported or reincarnated here, it makes the fact that Rimuru is beyond overpowered a little less boring, because there are other forces at work in this world as well. I am going to call this super early, but Leon is also someone from the modern world and whatever it is he is trying to do has something to do with bringing someone else – perhaps a lover – into the world of Tensura. I’m probably very wrong about this, but sometimes it’s fun to throw out crackpot theories. 

Either way, we learn that Maribel was a powerful noblewoman in Europe in her previous life who had it all and died of old age, happy and rich. Due to how she was in her previous life, she’s become the epitome of greed in her new life, quickly using her newfound powers to control people by making use of their inherent greed. She then teams up with her grandfather – who is apparently over a millennium old? – and they want to create a world where all humans are equal but under the rule of the Rozzo family. And it probably shouldn’t be lost on us that it said humans instead of people, and if my Japanese is right they also used the word for “humanity” here, which very clearly excludes a whole group of people that this story happens to be centered around. After this lengthy introduction, the opening theme plays.

We return to the dungeon and the newly formed Avatar Team which is of course the avatars of Ramiris, Milim, Veldora and Rimuru. As we saw at the end of last week’s episode, they are not very good at working with their avatars yet. They need to learn to work as a team, but first they’re going to Kurobe to get some gear. They then go on a training arc on the first few floors of the dungeon and weak avatars or not, it feels a bit unfair to have three demon lords and the storm dragon gang up on a bunch of beginners in the dungeon that they themselves are charging money to enter. With team Green Fury about to enter the 50th floor, Rimuru and friends need to be ready at a moment’s notice. And by fully cheating, they manage to defeat team Green Fury. Are we the bad guys?

So we move back to the Rozzo’s and it’s now Maribel and Yuuki – the sponsors of team Green Fury – talking about how to take out Rimuru. I suddenly feel a lot less bad about how team Green Fury was treated in Tempest, knowing who’s backing them. We talked about the opening already in the first post and how I thought Maribel might be possessing Yuuki, but at this point I’m not certain that’s true. There was a glow to his eyes though and although the wet nurse we saw with Maribel earlier this episode had that glow too, according to her grandfather both of Maribel’s parents were also taken by her power, but they didn’t have the glow in their eyes. Perhaps Yuuki is already under her control and working with her for that reason, but she hasn’t unleashed a more full control over him because there has been no need? I’m probably getting ahead of myself again.

This is one of the big downsides – or upsides depending on how you look at it – of writing large parts of this post while watching the episode for the first time. Of course I will regularly go back and adjust things when I’m wrong or when there’s a change in how certain information is presented, but it also turns into me explaining a power right before the show explains it. Here we learn that Maribel’s power does indeed have two effects. She can basically charm a person into working with her, or force her will upon them. The reason she’s taking her time with Yuuki and hasn’t immediately cast her magic on Rimuru is because if someone strong catches on to the power, they can negate it. And of course she’s fully gotten Yuuki under her control. I somehow doubt it’s that easy, and I think this is just Yuuki playing pretend with a back-up plan so he can fight Rimuru and then claim he had no choice later on. Finally, before we end the episode, the nobleman at the end of season 3 – the one that tried to get Rimuru indebted – gets assassinated by Maribel’s agents before Souei can get to him. Not only that, Souei couldn’t spot the assassin which makes them quite the threat. With that we are now three episodes in and things are already speeding up. A friendly reminder that with 5 cours, we still have over 50 episodes to go before we’re at the end of what’s been promised, so lots of things could still happen. Thanks for reading and I hope to see you all here again next week!

I really appreciate that Masayuki seems to be a decent guy and relatively appreciative of the fact that he did not earn any of his fame directly, because I feel like his character would be unbearable if he had even the slightest hint of arrogance to him. Either way, with the help of his special skill and dumb luck he manages to improve his reputation even more which in turn helps out the success of the dungeon greatly. Now that a second team is on its way to clearing the early floors of the dungeon rapidly and there is a hostel for people to relax at during their trip to the dungeon, it has become much more appealing and this in turn has resulted in more trust in the city as a whole.

The bottom floor of the labyrinth is dedicated to Rimuru’s research facilities where Gabiru, Vesta, Ramiris and Rimuru himself are all working on different projects. The vessel that Rimuru is creating for Diablo’s assistant – surely that’ll not summon another insane demon – looks different from the more fleshy things we saw in these tubes during the intro song, so I’m curious what that is all about. We don’t get to find out yet though, as Rimuru’s hyperfixation is interrupted by the fact that team Green Fury is about to clear floor 30 of the dungeon. Still far away from the deeper levels, this team is employing every trick they can think of by abusing the different mechanics that Rimuru has put in place. Can’t help but respect the hustle. 

There is a pretty big problem with their rapid success, and it’s not the fact that they are using cheap tricks. The problem is that the lower floors – past floor 50 – are currently not very usable.  The reason for this? Well one of the crusaders said “bet you can’t beat them” to Hinata and that went over about as well as you’d expect. At least when she got down all the way to Veldora, she ended up losing to the Storm Dragon. And to add to the trolling, Rimuru is not going to give her any payment. Unfortunately it is up to Mjollmire to bring her the bad news. Best of luck to the poor guy.
Now Rimuru has to go down and fix each boss floor. Adalmann’s faith in Rimuru is restored and he’s given a cool boss room to sit in and look menacing from. 

In the meantime, both Gobta and Ranga have somehow survived Milim’s training. Besides serving as a fun bit of comedy relief it also shows just how much talent the duo has. We now see the fruits of Rimuru’s labor and they’re pretty damn crazy. He’s managed to create a set of magical items that allows you to create an avatar that is to your liking and then use the other half to possess it. Ramiris chooses the form of a golem, similar to the one that was just broken by Hinata, while Veldora chooses a simple skeleton. Finally, Milim chooses to be a pink slime, as she was told she could be whatever she wants to be, she didn’t go for something all powerful. I’m not going to lie, I thought she was going to imagine her lost baby dragon for a second, but I’m glad we didn’t get that sad, that quickly. Unfortunately nothing in life is easy, and the foursome of avatar fighters is totally not used to their new bodies yet, getting defeated by the first group of rookie adventurers that come across their path. Imagine finding out you just defeated three demon lords and the storm dragon all before second breakfast. Might be best not to tell them, to save some face.

It looks like the series continues to casually stroll along without rushing into anything, and next week we’ll see more of these avatar fighting shenanigans. As you’re well aware if you’ve read my thoughts on previous seasons, I am all for this slow pace. Some of my all time favorite scenes in One Piece are when they are just exploring the different rooms on their new ship, or having fun in town without any real stakes. There’s something really soothing about watching the downtime that characters have with each other and it also builds much more of a bond between the viewer and the characters as they feel much more rounded when they suddenly do end up getting into high stakes situations. It makes for more immersive worldbuilding and as much as I love stories with deep meaning and complex moral conundrums, I do like a bit of good escapism too. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you all here again next week!

We are so back.

We open on a quick recap of the founding ceremony of the Jura Tempest federation which we watched in the second half of season 3. With the opening of a coliseum and several other fun events it was a great success, turning the once tiny goblin village into a proper hub of civilization. All of the important characters are shown doing their various jobs throughout this episode and both Masayuuki as well as Mjollmile are shown to be great assets. Can I take this moment to talk about Aoyama Yutaka’s fantastic performance in this role? Mjollmile is the type of character that would be grating and annoying when voiced by a less talented voice actor, but the personality that Yutaka brings to this wonderfully shady merchant really makes him stand out as a memorable character. I’m blown away by the performance every single time. Besides seeing that Rimuru and his friends are working hard on building the first trains in this world, we also get a quick look at the antagonists for this season. The Rozzo family seem to be the main focus for now, but we also see Yuuki, Kagari and the rest of the moderate harlequin alliance. As much as Yuuki is being made out to be a bad guy – and he definitely is an ‘ends justify the means’ type of character – his actions are ultimately headed towards the same goal as Rimuru has. The Rozzos, Rimuru and Yuuki all want dominion over the west. Maybe Rimuru is much less direct in his approach, but his economic dominance has already caused one kingdom to fall and many others to jump in line with him. I can’t help but like Yuuki and his team, but we’ll see how common of a threat he will end up being in this season.  

And since we’re in the first episode of a new season where I doubt too much is going to happen, let’s mainly have a look at the opening today. And any theories I have based on the opening are purely from what I think and probably wrong, considering I haven’t actually read the novels yet. 

We open on a shot of Veldora, who is undoubtedly going to play a major role later on in the series, as he’s mostly been pushed aside for now due to being too powerful for the story to be any interesting with him around. Luckily he’s got his good looks to carry his popularity for a while. We see several of the cast going about their day including Shion, Shuna, Diablo, Milim and Ramiris, who are all close with Rimuru. Rimuru himself is enjoying the fruits of his labor, walking through a thriving city while eating all sorts of dishes from his home world. We transition from Ramiris flying to the camera to what looks to be a bunch of spirits in her labyrinth. Perhaps we’ll gain some new friends or there will be some issue in the labyrinth this season? From there, we get some looks into Rimuru’s research, and seeing him in a room full of bodies like he’s the lead scientist at Germa66 makes me wonder what he has planned. When I first saw this shot I thought this was going to be a peek into what Leon might be doing, as the synopsis for these seasons mentions that he’ll be doing something as well, but it does clearly show Rimuru himself, so who knows. We quickly move past this shot to the dream of every person on the autism spectrum, trains.  With the railway to Eurazania being started, this should make travel and trade much quicker and safer. Speaking of safety, Rimuru has moved the kids to his own town now that he knows Yuuki can’t be trusted with their safety. While the lightspeed hero is busy promoting the dungeon, we get our first shot of Mariabell Rozzo. Although I don’t think any of her powers have been confirmed yet, we heavily lean into a vampire and mind control aesthetic with the light up eyes and the blood everywhere. Speaking of which, I’m not planning to cover the ending since it doesn’t seem like there’s much of value there, but the sand coming from Mariabell Rozzo there does make it look like she’s pissing herself something fierce. Really awkward choice in my opinion.

We move on to a shot of a young girl walking with her baby dragon. I would assume this to be Milim as a child, as we know her backstory is a tragic one that involves the death of her dragon and the botched revival as the ascended to demon lord. It was the same ritual that Rimuru used to revive his friends after the attack by the Falmuth kingdom, although in Rimuru’s case it succeeded because the magical barrier kept everyone’s souls stuck in the city. We see the dragon a few more times in this opening and it makes me wonder if we’ll end up seeing someone manipulate this dragon into having to fight with Milim at some point. That would be quite sad. We then see Yuuki and Rimuru clash and I’m curious if Yuuki’s shining red eyes are just his normal eyes lit up by the moonlight or if there is some sort of control happening here. I don’t think Yuuki would benefit too much from a direct fight with Rimuru since it will just send a hoard of monsters into Engrassia to fight him, but who knows. We also saw Rimuru fight with Hinata in the openings long before she ever really fought him, so this could be a hint for an event in a couple of seasons from now. Your guess is as good as mine. 

Next we get a montage of monsters fighting against the aforementioned dragon as Yuuki and Rimuru duel on its back. Diablo, Benimaru, Shion, Shuna, Ranga and Gobta all get to show off their prowess, before Milim goes in and delivers the final blow. Or she would if she didn’t waver, and she sadly looks on at the dragon she once saw as a friend. If Yuuki is behind this I might have to take back my earlier comments about liking his character, cause that would be cruel beyond necessity. We’re then reminded that Hinata, Kagari and Luminous Valentine are part of the story and if my hunch that Rozzos are vampires is correct then I wonder if she has something to do with them. I should really look at a map of the Tensura world as the anime and Crunchyroll’s subs do a poor job with giving your a proper legend whenever it’s on screen.
With that, the opening comes to an end and we have finished the first episode. Like I said at the start of the episode, very little happened that we couldn’t have derived from the final episodes of season 3, but it was a great way to ease back into the show. I’m excited for the series to properly start in the next couple of episodes and I hope you’ll be here every week alongside me.

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.