My coverage of this show probably wouldn’t be satisfying to most people. I have a tendency to pick and prod at a show, especially if I’m not sold on it. Hey, just giving you guys fair warning…

— Plus, it’s a Monday, and nobody feels good on a Monday.

— Apparently, magic is mediated by discreet units of magicules, and the dragon is fast running out of it. Fast in his terms, that is. It’ll still take another one hundred years before he kicks the bucket.

— I’m surprised that Veldora hasn’t gone crazy from being in isolation for so long (unless you consider being tsundere a mental defect, which might very well be the case). Maybe dragon minds are just more resilient. In any case, Slime Boy (should I just keep calling him Satoru?) really, really wants to free his new friend.

— Our hero is attempting to eat only the barrier around Veldora. That’s so crazy that it might just work. Apparently, everything can be eat–… whoops, it didn’t work. It’s still nice to have a disembodied voice help you out, though.

— Like most isekai protagonists, Satoru’s main goal is to find other people like him — other people who may have also been whisked away to this fantasy world. Things never seem to change that much from story to story. These series all seem to go through the same basic plot points.

— Next brilliant plan: just swallow everything. This includes both the barrier and the dragon. Since Veldora has nothing to lose, he goes along with it.

— Before we continue, the dragon suggests that they come up with a family name for their twosome. He is then ecstatic to hear Satoru’s suggestion: Tempest. In return, Slime Boy also gets a new first name: Rimuru. I think Slime Boy has a better ring to it. But honestly, I’m pretty bored right now. If this show supposedly gets better, it’s not happening soon enough. We’re a third of the way through the second episode, and we’re still dealing with things like naming ourselves. Yawn.

— So Rimuru engulfs the entire prison, dragon and all. With that, we’re finally ready to leave the cave… and listen to a pair of shady-looking men talk. Basically, Veldora just disappearing out of nowhere is bad news. Galvanized monsters, invading countries, blah blah blah. The dragon was acting as a buffer for all of these things, and now it’s gone. Whoops. But I mean, from the sounds of it, Veldora would’ve died eventually. He said he only had a hundred years left. Maybe these guys should had a backup plan for this eventuality.

— Back in the cave, Rimuru still hasn’t found is way out just yet. Instead, we get to watch him gain new skills. This is so goddamn exciting, you guys. Instead of watching interesting characterization, I’m watching a slime learn how to use water as a weapon and killing a giant serpent.

— Sigh, more skills. Essentially, Rimuru can mimic anything that he eats and analyzes. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is that the pacing feels off. ‘Cause what we get next is a montage of our hero defeating other cave monsters and gaining even more abilities. I feel like we’ve been character building for eternity. Not even characterization, mind you. Just literally filling out Rimuru’s ability list to make sure he’s as OP as possible before he even encounters a human being.

— It’s also remarkable how he doesn’t seem to mind at all that he no longer has a human body, that he may never return to his old life, that he may never see his old family and friends again (he must have had family members, no?). Maybe turning into a slime means you just don’t really have those worries anymore. I don’t need Rimuru to have an existential crisis and cry like your average mecha protagonist, but he doesn’t feel anything?

— Finally, after the episode is more than half over, Rimuru reaches the door that leads to the outside world. And along with that, he gets to observe his first humans. In a more morbid story, he’d eat them and gain the ability to mimic them. He’d be like the monster from The Thing. Eat humans, live amongst them, infiltrate their society… but here? Well…

— The girl goes, “We won’t be attacked out of nowhere, right?” Count your blessings that you’re not in Goblin Slayer.

— At least Rimuru has enough common sense to realize that the three adventurers would probably attack him if he makes his presence known.

— When the slime sees one of the adventurers activates his stealth abilities, our hero makes a joke about using it to peep on people. Would he even have those same desires anymore? If you don’t have a human body, would you even have human urges?

— Rimuru ends up just slipping out of the cave relatively undetected.

— It’s weird: the slime keeps using human phrases like, “The air tastes so sweet!” He then corrects himself immediately afterwards, because he knows he can’t actually taste anything. So what exactly is he experiencing that triggers these human-like responses?

— Oh boy, goblins.

— EAT THEM

— I know he won’t. He’ll probably never eat anything that has sapience. Still, I feel like if you’re going to do a story about turning someone into a slime, you have endless possibilities to explore their subsequent loss of humanity. Our hero, however, is simply a human stuck in a slime’s body. That’s just dull.

— So right off the bat, Rimuru is not only super powerful (we can tell from just his character creation alone), other creatures can sense that he’s super powerful. He doesn’t realize it right away, but he’s actually exuding a tremendous aura. Do you remember when isekai protagonists used to start out weak and had to get stronger over time? Actually, I don’t remember that day either. It feels like these jokers are always overpowered right from the get-go.

— Funny how the humans who opened the doors to the cave couldn’t sense Rimuru’s aura. Maybe they just don’t have that ability. Maybe they shouldn’t be poking around in dark, dangerous dungeons without it.

— Hell, even Rimuru is asking the same question.

— Anyways, the goblins in this universe are weak and pitiful. They’re also harmless. Because Veldora disappeared, their village has been harassed by monsters. Since Rimuru is pretty much responsible for their god disappearing, he may as well lend them a hand… or slime tentacle.

— We’re getting a super quick summary of the goblins’ plight. If this had been Overlord, they would’ve devoted like four episodes just to the goblin society and goblin sex alone.

— And right on cue, direwolves attack the village just as our hero is done accepting the quest. That’s convenient gameplay design!

— Anyways, that’s where the episode ends. We’ll have to wait until next week to see how Rimuru will most assuredly defend the goblin village from the direwolves. Personally, I still think the story is pretty boring. Basically, our hero created his character, spent some time grinding in a dungeon, and accepted his first quest. There’s nothing here that’s remarkable. Other than the main character being a slime, there’s nothing here that sets this story apart from all the other isekai anime series out there.

— Basically, I wish Rimuru was a little less human.