I’m probably going to be on my manga review for a little while yet, while I recover from the Spring 2021 semester. Until then, here’s my review of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime vol. 15 (manga). As I’ve noted in reviews of previous volumes, this story seems to have a protagonist who cannot be defeated, only temporarily maybe a little slowed down. That has not changed; what has changed is something of a personality shift in Rimuru, the titular slime. In the previous volume several of his friends/followers die in a sneak attack by the nearby human kingdom. In this volume, Rimuru tries to become a Demon Lord in order to possibly bring the dead back to life. This is going to require sacrificing the lives of all of his enemies who aren’t dead yet, including those who don’t agree with what their command is doing. I’m pretty sure this is supposed to be some kind of pathos for some of the humans, like the one begging what he thinks is an invincible who knows what not to kill his family after he himself has been fatally injured for no apparent reason. The problem is that this only half works when it’s unclear how much awareness Rimuru actually has of what is going on when he’s in Demon Lord mode.
There is still the mystery of who is behind all the chaos, probably other Demon Lords, but who is being manipulated and who is doing the manipulating? There’s also the question of how/why Rimuru reincarnated with the ability that evolves in this volume to something that might be even more unbeatable than the original version, what is the point of introducing Diablo, and what’s going to happen when Veldora the dragon comes back which is hinted at pretty strongly in the epilogue. I saw on Goodreads this is a 20 volume series, so there’s still some room to explain and resolve at least some of the key issues. This series is heavily D&D/video game influenced, and this element has me wondering even more what the point of having Rimuru always win without hardly any effort, unless you count some emotional or maybe a little intellectual?
