Volume 12 cover, showing Philomela in the background
Hello everyone! As you might have noticed, it has been a little while since I last posted a volume review here. I know I promised I’d do one every two weeks, and I’m hoping to once again commit to doing so, but it hasn’t been very successful lately. I can only apologize. Truth is, I did read this 12th volume a little while ago and I was fully planning to do a review shortly after, but it just didn’t end up working out. But better late than never, I suppose. Let’s get to it!
This volume mainly sees more misadventures at the academy and starts off as such. Chise and her new classmates are all still outside recovering from finding out that Zoe has snakes for hair. To be fair, that would come as quite a shock to me as well, but then again I don’t live in a fantastical world filled with magical creatures. At least as far as I know. The only thing out of place are the voices in my head. Now as I’ve said, this volume focuses a lot on the interpersonal relationships between the different families of alchemists at the academy. Philomela’s family works for Veronica’s family and Lucy’s family seems to be down to just Lucy.
What I find more interesting is the relationship growth between Alice and Renfred, Alice and Chise, and Chise and Elias. Alice spends the night at their place and Chise and Elias talk on the roof in the middle of the night. Their relationship is improving steadily after being off to a very rocky start. But enough about that, it’s road trip time! This won’t go wrong, I bet.
The big part of camp seems to go by fairly uneventfully. Elias and Ruth are there to protect Chise if things go wrong. Chise does have a run in with a strange fae but doesn’t really try to interact with it. Then during the final night Lucy disappears, because of course she does. There wouldn’t be a point to this mini arc if nothing happened during it. Luckily, Chise finds Lucy rather quickly, but the poor girl seems to be completely drained of magic. Chise should be the perfect candidate to nurse her back to health, but right as she’s about to head back to camp we are treated to one of the most haunting panels in the entire manga so far. What looks to be a giant one-eyed centaur fae casually walks into frame as chills run down Chise’s spine. This moment kind of surprised me, I figured something more related to Lucy being unable to wake up quickly was going to happen, but instead of that, things escalated a lot faster.
I wasn’t too excited by most of this volume. It felt like it was tying up loose threads and setting up new ones, but it felt like a mish-mash of stories. Hopefully we get a more linear plotline in the next volume. There’s only 2 volumes left on my shelf, hopefully three by the time I finish the other two, but by the time we get to volume 15, I’m going to have to think of a different series to look at. I’m still not sure yet. I’m currently reading The Anthropocene Reviewed by the wonderful John Green, but that’s not really the kind of book I would review. So far I would give it five stars, and he’d appreciate me using a 5-star rating scale to review his book that is all about reviews. But enough about that. If you’re still reading along, what do you think of the direction the manga is taking at this point in time? Let me know in the comments down below and I will hopefully see you here again in two weeks! Thanks for reading.
It’s that time of the season again. We’ve just finished up the summer season anime, and it’s time to take a look back at what we watched and if we would recommend it to other people. I didn’t watch a great amount of new shows this season. At least not new ones that ended. But I have watched a couple, and I would like to talk about some of them for a bit. So without further ado, here’s what I thought of the Isekai shows that aired this past season.
How a Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom
Well, this one seems to have hit the mark at least.
Souma has been summoned from modern day Japan to help a Kingdom that’s on the verge of collapse. Upon appearing he is crowned king and the previous ruler retires. Souma however, being from modern day Japan, isn’t exactly the kind of hero they expected to summon. He’s not a warrior, or a powerful mage or some great hero. He’s just a bloke that’s pretty clever, to put it bluntly. He uses his wit and social skills to convince the people around him, and recruit the right people for the right job. So far it seems to be a success. He has been able to gather allies, team up with multiple parties that were slightly adverse to a new king, and stave off the danger. A lot of my issues with this show retain more to my personal stance on politics. Souma feels very manipulative in the way he deals with people. A lot of his victories feel kind of cheap, almost as if all he does is manipulate the people around him into wanting to work for him. Maybe I’m too harsh on this show, but I struggled enjoying several of the episodes. I’d write this one off as a generic Isekai show with potential in the long run.
Seirei Gensouki: Spirit Chronicles
And that’s how this entire season feels. There wasn’t enough time to properly develop the story.
Seirei Gensouki follows orphan Rio, who gains memories from his life on earth where he, as Haruto, died in a freak accident. He was on a bus that got hit by a train. It’s borderline comical in how over the top it is. Either way, his memories slowly fuse into one person. After accidentally saving the princess he is allowed into the local magic school where he is mostly looked down upon. After getting into trouble he flees town and goes to visit the elves and spirits in the forest. He then moves to Yagumo, which seems to be more Japan-inspired. I mentioned this in the image caption, but Seirei Gensouki feels like it has a fun story to tell, but just doesn’t get it out quite right. It also suffers from Kirito-syndrome, where the main character is somehow the coolest, most powerful person in the room. I’m a big fan of overpowered characters, but they need to have a good flaw. I found Kirito in the later seasons of SAO quite fun. He had to go through trauma to become more of a believable character. Rio/Haruto seems to breeze through life, collecting waifus wherever he sees the opportunity. I might buy the novels at some point to see if my suspicions that they have better pacing are true, but there’s several other novels higher on my wishlist, so it’ll probably take a while. For now, I would recommend this show, but set expectations accordingly.
Oh dear, it’s self-aware
Putting all jokes aside, when I started watching this season’s batch of anime I did not expect Tsukimichi to be along some of the more enjoyable shows. Just like Seirei Gensouki and Realist Hero it runs into some issues with its pacing. At this point in the reviews you might have realized that I am an absolute sucker for good world building and would not mind spending several episodes on one discussion about an upcoming fight (Looking at you, Tensura). Regardless, I’m not one to shy away from good action and some solid banter either, and Tsukimichi delivers on both. Makoto is sent to a new world, but the goddess in charge thinks he’s too ugly and banishes him to live with the demi-humans. It’s a bit harsh, but he does end up with some great companions because of it. He quickly makes servants out of two of the greatest creatures in the area and they start building up an empire in a pocket realm. Unfortunately for Makoto, things don’t go well since although he’s still very much connected to the goddess, she doesn’t like him. Tsukimichi suffers from some of the same issues as the other two shows, as I mentioned, but I feel like it flows a bit better overall. Not to mention, the story hooks seem more interesting than in Realist Hero, and I love both Tomoe and Mio’s designs. All three of these anime show potential, but none quite seem to hit the mark. Regardless, I’d still recommend Tsukimichi, if only for the absolute banger of an opening theme. I can listen to that song all day!
But how did you enjoy these shows? Or are you not a fan of Isekai shows in general? I think the genre is coming into its own overtime, and we’ve left some of the bad ones behind us now. (that or I’m just not watching the bad ones). Either way, leave a comment on what you think down below and as always; thanks for reading!
My keyboard is in need of cleaning. I’ll be honest that I haven’t really done so often. I’ve cleaned the top of the keys regularly of course, but underneath it looks less appealing, so to speak. The main reason why this is of importance is because my “o” key regularly gets stuck and gives twice the input. So if you see some weird double O’s in this text, I apologize in advance. I’ll try to fix most of them if I spot them. At worst it’s a minor inconvenience. Speaking of minor inconveniences, Clayman ended up being even less impactful than I expected. His entire story arc seemed to revolve around no one actually wanting to work with him, and it turns out even Frey and Milim weren’t actually on his side. I’m starting to almost feel bad for the guy, if I’m honest. If only he didn’t see the one final chance he was given as an opportunity to do even more damage. At this point he’s being manipulated by everyone involved. If only he listened to his few allies in the Moderate Harlequin alliance.
Beretta undid one of Clayman’s creations so fast it wasn’t even seen.
I’m going to keep this review short, since I’ll be doing an extensive review of the entire season next week (which should come out on Friday instead of Wednesday or Thursday, so do keep that in mind). The main thing they did this episode was show the different fights. Shion is seen kicking ass against Clayman, so that Rimuru doesn’t even have to make his hands dirty. Veldora entertains Milim, and both him and Raphael are shushed when they try to tell Rimuru that Milim is not actually mind controlled. Rimuru wins Raphael back a bit this episode, but I do think he needs to be careful about constantly pissing off the all knowing voice in his head.
Bring your niece to work day?
Clayman, now no longer having any allies in range, gets manipulated one last time, this time by Raphael. For a moment I thought that maybe Raphael was offering him some sort of deal outside of Rimuru’s knowledge, which would have been a fascinating development to the story, but alas, it was something done with Rimuru’s knowledge, to set up for the next stage of the fight. In next week’s conclusion we’ll probably watch Rimuru comfortably defeat Clayman, and then the story goes back towards the status quo. I can’t wait to see what’s next in the volumes, but we’ll have to be patient for that. It does bother me a little bit that we are heading fast towards an “all was well and they lived happily ever after” situation. I do like my stories to be a little bit more gritty than this. There seem to be no consequences to any of the bad decisions made, and everything always goes Rimuru’s way. That’s obviously a shonen hallmark at this point, so it’s nothing new, but it’s something that shows like Demon Slayer and to an extent Jujutsu Kaisen do extremely well. There’s bigger stakes involved when characters actually die when they are killed (I’m looking at you, literally every character in One Piece besides the two obvious exceptions). Regardless, I thought this episode was good fun, but it wasn’t as mind blowing as I would have hoped. Next week is the conclusion and although I’m sad to see it go, I am looking forward to finding a new show to discuss weekly. I might do Demon Slayer’s new season, but I’m not sure about that yet. I want to do something that’s only one cour, because I’m eyeing up JoJo Part 5 as well, that’s coming in Winter. Let me know if you have any suggestions for what to keep up with during fall in the comments down below, and I hope to see you here next week for the conclusion of this show.
So this man was Carrion after all, and Raphael was about to point that out to Rimuru when he shushed her.It’s kind of sad that they did actually all care about each other.
After two months and nine episodes of build-up, we’re finally here! It’s time for Walpurgis. This episode covers the debate itself and sets up the fight that we’ve been waiting for all season. Let’s go through it step by step and I’ll give you my thoughts. First we are once again introduced to all the demon lords present. I gave the entire list last week so I’ll spare you a repeat.
Our small slime is all grown up and scary looking now.Clayman is not as intimidating as he likes to think
To favor a more lengthy episode we skip the opening this week, which I never have qualms about, even if the opening is a banger. Clayman tells the banquet his made up story about how he is the victim and his poor subordinate Myuran (I’m still not sure how to spell her name) was murdered by Rimuru. Not only that, he implicates Milim as the main aggressor towards Carrion. It’s basically a long story about how he’s never done anything wrong without showing any proof.
Rimuru telling it like it is
Rimuru explains his side of the story and shows some footage of Clayman’s people being abused and then quickly defeated by Rimuru’s people. His biggest arguments include Myuran not being dead, Yamza being turned into a small Charybdis and the clowns speaking about the plan being bad and how they shouldn’t have been involved. The clowns mention Yuuki (I presume) but don’t name him. Raphael tries to explain to Rimuru what is going on but he dismisses her too quickly as usual. He basically has an all knowing ally that keeps shushing. Clayman keeps stringing lies to defend himself but this can now only end in a fight.
The big showdown is happening
Guy Crimson creates a barrier for the two groups to fight in, and they both squad up. Rimuru has less people but when he tries to call on Beretta the barrier is already there. A lot of the fights seem fairly evenly matched, except for Rimuru versus Milim. The latter being on the attack the entire time. Clayman barely has to get his own hands dirty as he lets his minions fight everyone. Rimuru is trying desperately to figure out how to make Milim snap out of it, but once again he doesn’t listen to Raphael and thus misses out on important information. I get that we like skipping the hints in the loading screen, but Rimuru should really stop doing so.
Just let the all knowing voice in your head finish her sentences
The last important bit of this episode is that we learn about Noir, or Diablo, being even more powerful and important than we already thought. Him and Beretta are from the same demon family and from what I could glance, Diablo might even be of a similar stature to Guy. It makes me even more curious about Diablo.
Beretta speaks her mind
The last point I want to make, and I feel like I’m repeating myself, is that I really enjoyed the long set-up. I’m seeing this season get very bad reviews and I feel like it’s unwaranted. This anime is slower than some other shonen shows, but I think the shows that jump from action to action to action get painfully boring after a while. I think good build-up is needed to make for good fights. Else there is no narrative weight. Now we have all of the information we need to be fully invested and I’m a big fan. It makes the pay-off that much more satisfying in my opinion.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention, who shows up to save the day:
It’s everyone’s favorite tsundere ancient dragon!
My opinion on this show is clear by now, do you all agree that it’s been a fun ride to get here, or are you more on the side of some of the reviews I saw, that things have been too slow? I’d love to know your opinion! And of course, I hope to see you all here again next week. Hopefully it’s not as warm out by then, because it took my all to find the energy to write this!
Things are finally advancing quickly, after a very enjoyable, but slow start to the season. Since this episode really set the stage for the upcoming discussions, I think it’s for the best to look at this episode a little bit differently than normal. I will be skipping around through what happens today, so bear with me.
Veldora’s attention span has passed, back to manga
Shuna, Hakuo and Soei go to Clayman’s castle to take control of it while Clayman is at Walpurgis. The person guarding the castle is Adalman, the wight king (not the white king, like my subtitles said). He has an army of undead. Unfortunately for him, he is a bad match for Shuna, who not only uses holy magic that is very effective against the undead, but she’s also angry right now. She realizes after a while that Adalman used to be a priest, and we get a small bit of insight into his past. He used to believe in the god Luminus, but was turned into an undead creature by the former/recently returned demon lord Kazareem (the blonde lady that was with Yuuki and Laplace a few episodes ago.) He ends up being no match for Shuna. As a matter of fact, after Shuna inadvertently undoes his binding spell, he asks to be brought to her “god” as in Rimuru.
All the other ogres are very strong, so it’s no surprise that Shuna is far from a push-over, but that was amazing.
I like analyzing the deeper meaning behind things. I would never say I’m particularly good at it, I had to resit some of my literature classes in uni several times before I got a passing grade, but when the source material is interesting to me, I do enjoy looking for hidden things that might be there on purpose, or are there just by coincidence. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that all of Clayman’s people fall so easily. Yamza was an opportunist that was ready to run as soon when things went south. Tear, Footman and Laplace seem to be on the same team as him mostly because they have a common leader figure in Kazareem, but none of them seem to really trust Clayman or think him competent. Frey seems to have been lured in by promises of power by Clayman, but without her help he would have never been able to brainwash Milim. Even the followers of Milim seemed fine with jumping ship when it got to it, and now we learn that another one of his lackeys, Adalman, was only there because he was bound by his own past, and not because he actually wanted to work with Clayman. I think it’s fitting that all of his allies go down easily when he never bothered to give them a good reason to work for him. I wouldn’t be surprised if Clayman himself goes down easily after Rimuru figures out how to get Milim back in control of her own mind.
One more for the fanclub, and a pretty strong one at that!
And that brings us to the last part of this episode, that mixes in with the discussions had early on; the start of Walpurgis, the demon lords’ banquet. Misery, one of Guy’s maids, picks up the different demon lords and brings them to the discussion table. And here we meet all of the other demon lords, some for the first time.
Guy Crimson seems to be the oldest demon lord in attendance and from what we’ve been hinted at is probably the strongest person in the room. He seemed like a nice bloke when he was talking to Leon in a previous episode though.
The giant demon lord, Dagruel. We know very little about him except that he’s seemingly very powerful and his footsteps are loud enough to cause light tremors.
The Vampire demon lord, Valentine. I’ve highlighted the people in his party as well, because Rimuru pretty much confirms that the maid (the one on the left, the blue haired on on the right is Rain, Guy’s maid) is the stronger one there. So she is probably the real demon lord that Veldora pissed off ages ago.
I’m grouping Dino and Ramiris together for this one, since we know a lot about Ramiris and very little about Dino. All we know is that they’re on friendly terms. Dino is the lazy one that Ramiris spoke about earlier this episode. He seems like a nice person so far. Ramiris we’ve met so many times that I don’t need to talk about her much here.
We’ve already met Frey in a previous episode, when she put the mindcontrolling necklace on Milim. I do have to wonder what her endgame is, since there’s no way she believes Clayman can keep Milim under control right? There has to be another layer to this. That or she’s just not very smart, which is also a possibility of course. Shion does mention that the lion looking man behind her could be Carrion, since he looks like beastfolk. I wonder what’s up with that. Raphael seems to agree, but Rimuru shuts her down too quickly and she hmmmpfs away.
Leon Cromwell. The man, the myth, the bellend. He is the one responsible for Shizu’s condition and then death. He doesn’t seem to harbor any real emotions about the situation. He seems to have a very clear moral code, although not one that’s particularly good. The two don’t get off on a great start though, but Rimuru does get invited over to his place for a discussion. If he leaves here alive. That’s not ominous at all.
Last but not least, we have Milim, wearing her mind control necklace, and Clayman, the main villain of this arc. I wonder if that magical looking fox is like the conch in Lord of the flies or something completely unrelated. Either way, as soon as Clayman disrespects Milim, which he’s obviously doing to make a show out of his control over her, every other demon lord in the room looks on with disapproval.
With Carrion missing, that’s all 10 demon lords that are expected to attend, in attendance. The only ones not included her, that we know of, are the female vampire that is with Valentine, who might be the real powerful one as well as Demon Lord Kazareem, who is presumed dead at this point in time. Rimuru doesn’t count yet since he became a demon lord only after this meeting was called, but he was still invited, so that’s nice of them.
I hope this brings everyone back up to speed, I sure could use the reminder of who everyone involved was. Next week’s episode is called Walpurgis, and with all the fighting seeming mostly out of the way, we’re finally going to get into the thick of it. I can’t wait to see what kind of politics happen here. The fights, although they looked better this week, don’t interest me a great deal this season, I’m all here for the politics. Who is on whose side, who is going to fall, and who is going to rise. I also, upon further thought, don’t think the guy behind Frey is too directly related to Carrion, seeing as a large part of Clayman’s plan is to convince everyone that Rimuru killed Carrion and has to die for that reason. Or perhaps that is the way in which Frey is going to show her real colors. Maybe she holds a grudge against Clayman and has been working with him to betray him at the last second. Or I’m totally wrong, but that’s the fun in this, is it not? I am glad I got this review out in time, since it was an absolute banger of an episode, and I hope to see you all here again next week!
Edit – It’s very late and I can’t seem to figure out the formatting around some of the demon lord images. I apologize that it looks a bit chaotic and I hope to get back to this post to fix it at a later date.
So after 7 full episodes of build-up we finally get into the fights themselves. I’ve seen a fair bit of discourse on reddit over the weeks about how this show is taking too long to build up and it’s spent 7 episodes on 1 episode of pay-off. I agree with this sentiment in theory, but not for this particular show. I’m a big fan of good world-building, and I feel like Slime is doing a fairly decent job at this so far. I’m very excited about the political aspect of this show, and less about the fighting. The fights haven’t looked particularly impressive either, which is unfortunate but not surprising. Anyway, moving on to the episode itself. This episode covers three main fights, one of which got me quite excited.
Father Middray is very confident, and rightfully so. Suphia and Gabiru are no match for himGabiru is unfamiliar with modesty himself
The first fight was by far the least interesting to me. Very quickly it was obvious that this would be resolved through mainly talking, and that is exactly what ended up happening .Gabiru does get the better of Hermes, who is seemingly fairly strong, but the two of them do not seem to be a match of Middray. Having said that, it’s good to remember that despite being a bit of a joke character, Gabiru means business. We do learn some more about the dragon faithful and where their power comes from. They’re a similar species to Gabiru although not quite through the same path. Gabiru mentions that his sister looks more like a human, which I think alludes to her strength. I bet she’s the strongest out of the dragonewts.
Going from a fight where they talk about true strenght to a bloke relying on his magic items is a bit on the nose, isn’t it?
To no one’s surprise, Yamza ended up being a pushover. He says he’s on equal footing with Albis, but he’s not really. He has to rely on two powerful items and still gets rolled over like a small fry. Clayman has more plans for him though, and ends up turning him into a smaller version of Charybdis. That looks like a bad way to go. Also, this pretty much confirms that Clayman is fully aware of what is happening on the battlefield. Does his remaining confidence stem from the power he holds over Milim or does he have another ace up his sleeve. Regardless, I couldn’t think about this too much because I was distracted by a certain snake lady. I mean, come on, look at that design, how can you not immediately turn into a degenerate.hat suspected, Yamza ended up being the biggest pushover of the bunch.
Step, I mean slither on me, please.
When everyone gets ready to deal with the big new threat, Benimaru shows up and deals with it like it’s no problem. I love me some powerful main characters, but it is starting to get slightly ridiculous. One thing I like about Slime is that it has no issue killing off bad guys, but I’d like if there were more serious consequences for the main cast. Everyone on the good guys’ side seems to be surviving. As much as I loved Shion being revived, it did kind of take away the stakes.
Moving on from that, Benimaru threatens to fight father Middray, but luckily Gabiru and Suphia manage to diffuse the situation. We learn a lot about how powerful people are. Middray seems to be the best fighter present in a duel of sorts, but if it’s a fight to the death Benimaru would have the edge. It’s good to know that Milim’s people are strong enough to deal with Rimuru’s people. I expect Milim to be the least likely to have many strong underlings.
Crisis averted
Now we move on to the final fight, and it was the one I was most curious about. Ever since I’ve read Tokyo Ghoul (which I highly recommend, just not in the form of the anime) I’ve had a very fair distrust of clowns. I think it’s just smarter to assume that clowns are behind all that’s wrong in the world, just to be safe. It’s the same with these clowns. Laplace has so far been shown to be the most cunning of the three, but I have a feeling all three of them are a step above Clayman. Tear and Footman do manage to deal with Phobio and Geld pretty easily, before taking their leave.
Menacing
I really thought either Geld or Phobio would be killed or seriously wounded in this fight, and I’m kind of disappointed this didn’t happen. Benimaru seems to think he outsmarted the clowns by tricking them, but I don’t think he did. It feels like someone pretending to be smarter than they are. I hope the clowns end up being big trouble in the future. I am glad Geld is fine though, he was my favorite character in the spin-off. But imagine if he was seriously injured and the young goblin girl took care of him. That would be adorable.
I really hope we’ll get to Walpurgis next episode, that’s what I’ve really been looking forward to. That brings me to the following; I don’t know if there will be an episode review next week. Tensura airs on Tuesday evenings for me, and I’m flying out to the UK early Wednesday. I might do a quick review, but no promises. I hope you understand.
If we spend another episode on one of Clayman’s underlings I will be a little bit disappointed.
I don’t actually remember the name of the guy in the hoodie if I’m totally honest with you guys.
When last we left off, Chise had started going to the college, with Ainsworth keeping watch over her while being a teacher. We met a whole cast of colorful characters that I’ve half forgotten, but a few have stuck out. What I remember more vividly is the fact that someone from the church showed up at Simon’s house to complicate things even more. And that is exactly where this volume starts off. The situation escalates until Gabriella and Elias manage to temporarily calm things down. We then learn that the church has infighting going on. That’s no surprise in an organization that large. I wonder if this was always going to be a plot point, or if this is something the author thought up later. As someone who likes writing, I often wonder about the writing process of other works I read. Do other people do that? Let me know in the comments if you do or don’t.
And from Simon in the here and now, we immediately jump into this backstory. He’s been such an integral part of the story so far, yet we’ve learned so little about him. Turns out now is the time, and he’s had a sad past. He is cursed, and people he feeds deserts to die within a short amount of time. He was then lured into the church where he eventually ended up being sent to take watch over Elias. He admits to liking Elias’ straightforwardness, and I have to say I agree. I’m still not sure I fully trust this story though, I feel like someone put that curse on him and then happened to find him at his lowest point. Maybe I’m looking into it too much though.
We move back to Chise and Ruth who meet with Rahab, Lindel’s teacher and the time mage or self-proclaimed sea hag. Chise and Rahab have a nice heart to heart about Lindel, Elias, magic and human emotions. Stella has a more sinister one talking to her and from what we gleam it looks like she made some sort of pact with the Ashen One. I’m sure this won’t go south. After all of this, and Elias leaving Simon’s place as well, we go back to the college.
It turns out even Centaur parents pester their children about getting a girlfriend. I feel your struggle, friend. This entire volume seems to be themed about marriage and relationships as Elias slowly asks different people around him how they chose their spouses and what not. We learn a few interesting things. Renfred isn’t grooming Alice, which is a good thing. Angie doesn’t want to share with us why she chose to marry David, which I suppose is fair enough. I am slowly starting to learn some of the names though. Lucy is the scary roommate, Zoe is the guy who went full Medusa on us at the end of chapter 54, and Rian seems to be a nice bloke. I’m curious for this final chapter, to see what happens now that the situation is escalating at the college.
And here it is revealed Zoe is a Gorgon. His mother met his father and then one day laid an egg and voila. It’s a tale as old as time, beauty and the snake lady. All jokes and possibly copyright strikable references aside, Zoe was scared someone would find out, and at the same time noticed that both Chise and Elias weren’t fully human. They talk things over a little bit and it is hinted that Rian has some sort of motive since he keeps talking about making a pact. We’re then rudely interrupted as Ruth catches an eavesdropper; Philomela. This volume, just like the previous one, was really good! I’ve been enjoying this series more and more as time has gone on. And what you guys don’t get if you only read the chapters online through a reader, is the little extra story from the author where they talk about their process a little bit. I always love these bits and I think it’s a great motivation to buy the physical volumes. Let me know how you liked volume 11. I’ll see you all again in three weeks for the next volume. I apologize about the delay, but I’ll be very busy for a while, including a trip to the UK, and I’d rather be up front than do what I’ve been doing from time to time and delay things until the last second. I hope to see you all here again for the next one though!
Good evening everyone, I hope you’re all well. We’re now seven episodes into this series and things are finally picking up speed. When I watched this episode yesterday, I noticed some changes made to the opening, so let’s go through those before we start talking about the episode itself. For starters, they slightly changed how they show the main cast, making it a bit more fast paced. Then the long shot of Clayman’s home is replaced by showing off all the attendants to Walpurgis, as well as a closer look at who Souei and Shion are fighting.
Geld’s ready to get his revenge.
We then get a little bit more strategy with Benimaru telling us about his skill “born leader.” The beastketeers then ask permission to eliminate the leader of the enemy army. This turns into three different fights. The gang splits up and Geld’s group very successfully lures the main army into a trap. I hope there’s a twist coming because personally I feel like all of this is way too easy. Regardless, three fights start and we get a little taste of each.
The first fight looks to be between Suphia and Gabiru and Milim’s followers. This fight has me curious because I kind of feel bad. Milim is being brainwashed and her followers seem to be having a rough time because of it. It wouldn’t surprise me if this fight ends in a stalemate somehow.
Phobio has to fight both Tear and Footman, who he has a grudge against from an earlier arc, and rightfully so. What has me worried is that Laplace has been shown to be on a similar level to Clayman, and arguably smarter. I don’t know how strong these two are, but they definitely seem confident. They acknowledge Phobio’s strength though, but I still don’t see Phobio winning this. Could he become a hostage that Clayman can use against Rimuru? Geld has been shown to be very strong though, so when he shows up to help I get a bit more confident.
I think this match-up was always going to be the most straightforward, even before Gobta joined in. I figured Albis was the strongest of the three and Yamza has been shown to be a bit of a coward and a scumbag right before the fight. He proves this by immediately breaking the 1 versus 1 he promised. Luckily everyone’s favorite Goblin Gobta is here with his squad. I saw someone on reddit say that the novels have a Gobta side story, which I’m very excited for since he’s one of my favorite characters.
Have some faith in yourself, Gobta.
I feel like I say that this is the last bit of set-up every week, and as much as I’m thoroughly in love with this show, even I’m starting to get a little bit impatient. I want to see Walpurgis and I doubt I’m alone in that. But good build-up makes for good pay-off, so I suppose we have to be patient for one more week.
And with my job done, I’ll see you all again next week!
Remember how last week I said that this would be the big battle. I lied. I can only apologize. Instead we get a little bit more world building and character introductions. And some fun ones to top it off. Before the episode really gets going we see the different groups go on their different missions. The army goes to Eurazania, Elalude goes home to Thalion, Youm and Diablo go to conquer Falmuth and Veldora gets explicitly told to stay at home and watch the kids. Then the opening sets off. I’ve been listening to the opening a lot, and it’s been continuously growing on me.
Diablo is so certain of himself, he said it twice!
Clayman talks to Yamza, who has heard rumours about Veldora waking up again. Unfortunately for a lot of the parties involved, they end up hearing the fake story that Rimuru made up. It surprises me that it didn’t leak what actually happened. On one hand it’s not been long so it somewhat makes sense, but the idea that not a single person at that meeting was either a spy or able to be bought surprises me. Gives me good hopes. And good on you Clayman, for not falling for his bluff by falling for his bluff. He’s not being built up as a particularly smart character.
Poor Milim, I really want to see her shine again.
Speak of the devil, we finally learn about why Milim has been working with Clayman. Demon Lord Frey tricked her into wearing a brainwashing magic item. The show portrays her as a little bit remorseful, but this betrayal stings. Milim is so lovely and trusting, and to be betrayed like that is awful. Especially seeing how Clayman treats her afterwards. He promises to make Sky Queen Frey the ruler of the heavens, which seems to be the reason why she’s working with Clayman, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she at some point takes off the necklace to release Milim on Clayman. We’ll see what happens when Rimuru gets involved. Clayman and friends still certainly seem to be underestimating him.
You should learn what friends are, Frey.For now, Clayman, for now.
Now here’s a familiar face. I don’t believe we’ve seen Leon Cromwell in action since Season 1. He’s visiting an ice themed demon lord, who we quickly learn is called Guy Crimson, the lord of darkness. He is a big shot, one of the strongest demon lords alongside Milim. He has a whole host of weird looking underlings, and he seems to be demon-themed. That’s honestly a better theme than clowns or harpies, so he’s got that going for him. Vampires have also gotten a bad rep, so he might be the coolest one out there right now. He’s also the guy with red hair that’s been hinted at in the opening. Both Leon and Guy don’t seem like particularly bad people to be honest. And Guy seems to think the same about Leon because he’s definitely interested. Unfortunately for him, Leon does not reciprocate.
I would be cautious too around a guy who has abs like that.
We get a lot more talk about Walpurgis, the expectations they each have and Rimuru’s existence as well as Veldora returning. And we meet Veldora’s older sister, White Ice Dragon Velzard, Empress of Ice. She’s teamed up with Guy, which is probably one of the reasons why he’s so strong. Having one of the four strongest dragons on your side will definitely help. My prediction is this will become some sort of counter balance against Rimuru if these two end up clashing in the long term. But Guy seems to be several steps above Leon, who himself seems to be several steps above Cromwell. And Leon has a very specific goal involving the summons. Maybe he can even come to an agreement with Rimuru. It also sounds like the two of them have figured out that Rimuru might be a reincarnation, seeing as he’s so against Leon continuing his projects.
Oh no, she’s hot.
In an interesting parallel with Rimuru and Veldora, Velzard decides to stay at home and watch the kids as well, as opposed to accompanying Guy to Walpurgis.
Now I haven’t read the manga nor the light novel, so all of this is just guesswork, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this upcoming arc is going to set up some light banter between Guy and Rimuru, and give us a little bit of an expectation that the two will eventually clash. But I also thought that Diablo was for sure going to double cross Rimuru and so far that seems like I’ve been wrong, so who knows. Either way, as much as I have been enjoying this exposition, and I think it’s really well done, I honestly can’t wait to see the actual confrontation. I also plan to start reading the light novel in the near future and I might do some reviewing of that on here as well, perhaps to remind some of you about what happened in season 1, since a lot of it seems to have slipped from my memory overtime.
But enough about me, what did you think of this week’s episode? Did it go by too slow or are you enjoying the lengthy set-up that will inevitably turn into a great pay-off? Let me know in the comments down below and as always; thanks for reading!
I like her, design, voice and demeanor all at once!
We’re already at volume 10, time really does fly when you’re having fun. I currently have access to 15 volumes in total, and I don’t think that will change anytime soon. I say 15, but this most recent one hasn’t arrived yet, so let’s hope it’s here by the time I’ve gotten through the volumes up to 14. Maybe it’s a good thing I took one too many breaks. I wonder what series I should go through next. I have some ideas, but suggestions are welcome. I’m open to a lot of things, so books, manga and light novels are all possibilities! With that out of the way, let’s get back into it.
This volume introduces a lot of new characters, so it was definitely a lot of paying close attention while reading. I have to admit I don’t remember any of the names yet, but then again I still struggled with how to spell Cartaphilus until he was no longer really in the story. On that note, he’s currently in a slumber while Josef seems to just be chilling around and sleeping most of the time. We’re introduced to the Vice-Chancellor of the college, who seems shady as hell. The whole college smells of something weird, but I think the author wanted to make that very clear to us early on. Ellias wears a new face here, based on another person. It’s just somebody that he used to know. Musical jokes aside, I feel like we’ve seen that character before, but I could be wrong. She’s shown later on in this volume as well, seemingly someone who goes to sleep and wakes up in a different time period. That’s a pretty cool, albeit inconvenient ability, assuming you can’t really control which time period you end up in.
Something else that’s really cool, is that the Will o’ wisp from the graveyard is now Alice’s familiar. This makes her stand out even more among the college students, as alchemists generally have animal corpses or something of the like as their familiars, and not living neighbours. Ellias then goes on to teach a class on magic, which reveals that several of the alchemists have absolutely no talent for it. One even gets told he smells of rust. He seems like a nice kid though, so I wonder what’s up with that. Two of the other, seemingly arrogant, kids antagonize one of the neighbours and cause a fuss. Elias has to step in, and afterwards gets chewed out by Renfred. Not an experience he seems to enjoy.
Veronica has some mean girls energy, so I’m curious to see how that goes. Zoe Ivey looks like a main character, so I think she’ll become relevant to the story. That and she’s on the cover art, so that’s giving it away a bit. So is Alice, and I’m happy we’re seeing a little bit more of her. It’s the same with the girl we saw earlier, whose name apparently is Philomela. She’s part of the mean girls squad, but there seems to be more going on than meets the eyes. Is this going to be some classic high school drama in a more fantastical setting? I’m here for that. If it doesn’t drag on and has interesting enough characters, that is. At the very least a lot of their character designs are very nice. Not so much super strange or anything, they just seem to be well thought out. A little bit later we see that Zoe apparently sees something in Chise and Elias that the others don’t see. It makes me wonder if we’re going to see more mages, or even another Sleigh Beggy in this arc. There’s definitely some characters.
We snap back to a different place, now we’re in Simon Cullum’s home, who’s having a few visitors. The nun Gabriella seems to know quite a bit about what’s going on, but she also seems to be quite scheming. She tricks Ellias into visiting Simon while middle management is present and breathing down his neck. I can already see inadequacy in this kid. He seems like the type going exactly by the book and ignoring any subtlety a situation requires. He’s immediately going to talk to the manager, so that doesn’t bode well. And of course, as happens every other volume, Stella gets kidnapped again. I wonder what’s going to happen to her this time.
I really enjoyed this volume, although I feel like I might have to read it again just so I get a better idea of who all the new characters are. We also get some hints towards Ellias past, and the name Pilum Mirale. We also see who I presume is the time wizard and I have to say her character design is stunning. I can’t wait to see more of her. I love eccentric characters and I have a good feeling about this one. Tell me what you think of this volume in the comments, I really like the direction it’s taking and I’m very curious. I hope to see you all again next week for volume 11!
Opal Kaharis 