Sometimes, I don’t know if the story’s pacing is too fast or too slow. Maybe a little bit of both. 

— So what do you do after defeating a bunch of flying fish? You have a grand ol’ feast. Not only that, the scales can be used as crafting material. See? We should summon more calamity-class monsters. All’s well that ends well!

— Milim then invites Slime Boi to become a demon lord. Considering how this is an isekai — and a recent one at that — it’s probably a foregone conclusion that he’ll assume that mantle one day. But why? Why become a demon lord? Unfortunately, this is a question that even Milim can’t answer. Apparently, she can’t remember why or how she became one. One of those lolis with an old soul, huh? Still gotta censor that body, though.

— And with that, the oba-san takes her leave. Something about meeting up with the other demon lords at their annual demon lord convention. Let’s hope the these attendees actually bathe and shower.

— Later that night, Rimuru keenly feels one of Shizu’s lingering regrets. Something about saving five children stuck in the Royal Capital. And just like that, Slime Boi has decided to temporarily leave his newborn nation (more like a city-state) in order to do whatever he can for these kids. After all, a good leader should be able to delegate, and he has more than enough followers to keep Tempest running in his absence. This is just such a swerve. I think the story should have a done a better job building up to this. After all, if we’re talking about leaders and leadership, one shouldn’t just drop everything on a dime. Over the course of the series, we probably should have seen the guy dealing with these dreams. Likewise, we should have seen him grapple with this decision, debating with himself whether or not he can leave Tempest.

— Oh well. After a short journey, Slime Boi is finally in his very first human city. It’s a rather modern-looking place with modern-looking buildings. It’s certainly not what you expect to see in a story featuring generic JRPG monsters like goblins, slimes, and dragons. Even the receptionist looks like a flight attendant from our day and age. Maybe people who have been summoned to this world like Rimuru and Shizu are also influencing the world’s culture. Nevertheless, I like how he could enter the place with a mask on even though he needed to show his ID.

— So we meet Yuuki, the Grandmaster of the Freedom Association. Like Rimuru, he is from our world. In fact, he was the one who taught Shizu that line from Dragon Quest. At first, our hero and the Grandmaster comes to blows, but they quickly bond over weeb stuff. Our hero literally prints up a mountain of manga to earn the Grandmaster’s trust. I guess that’s one way to establish foreign relations. Yuuki then asks Rimuru all sorts of questions like how many Final Fantasy games have come out by the time Slime Boi died (19, apparently).

— The two of them briefly talk about whether or not it’s possible to return to their world. Yuuki believes so. He speculates that legends about mythological creatures might have resulted from monsters in this world crossing over to our world. Uh huh…

— Predictably enough, our hero has no desire go home. I guess he didn’t have any real friends (dude never even had a girlfriend in his 37 years of life), but fuck his family, huh? Well, not only is he a leader of a nation in this world, he also has a legion of sycophants. It doesn’t surprise me that he wouldn’t want to go back to being a lonely wage slave in our world. Nevertheless, like most isekai protagonists, Rimuru rarely spends any time thinking about his old life. It doesn’t necessarily bother me that these dorks never want to go home, but they don’t even really consider it. We never see them struggle with things like, “Shit, I’m never going to see my family again.” Hell, he wasn’t even freaked out about the fact that he’s become a genderless slime. Sure, he can shapeshift into something that looks human, but that still doesn’t make him one. But I digress. The point is, we’re up to episode 20, and all we get is Slime Boi telling us that he’s given up on returning home. How can you say that you’ve given up when you never even considered it? A little realistic character development wouldn’t hurt.

— Anyways, after a brief chat with Yuuki, Rimuru is now a teacher. In fact, he’s going to teach those five aforementioned kids.

— Yuuki also briefly mentions some girl (another former student of Shizu’s). She looks mean.

— So what’s special about these kids? They didn’t naturally come here, I guess. Instead, they were summoned, but blah blah blah, too much power for their frail bodies. As such, they’ll probably die in a few short years. Well, not if our overpowered slime has anything to say about that!

— Look, being overpowered doesn’t just mean being able to blow up a gigantic flying penis fish. It can also mean being able to accomplish anything you set your mind on without ever having to break a sweat. And that’s the frank reality about Rimuru. In just a short amount of time, the guy goes from being an unassuming slime to a leader of a nation. He’ll more than likely save these five brats too.

— But that about does it for this week’s episode. Why do I keep blogging this anime? ‘Cause it’s easy to watch and write about it. I don’t love it, but it’s not the worst show out there either. Most importantly, the return of interest here is rather high. Higher than most shows on my schedule (which has admittedly dwindled in the past couple of weeks, but I’ll fix soon).