Flash Review – That Time I Got Reincarnated As a Slime (Vol. 4)

Rimuru’s been having strange dreams lately, where the otherworlder Shizu has been visiting him in his dreams, begging him to save her former students. He dismisses them at first, but the nightly visions turn so prominent that he can’t ignore them any longer. Thus, he sets off to locate Shizu’s students and find out what’s up with them and the danger she’s warning him of.

Or that is the plot synopsis, except that I got halfway into the book and there was still no sign of any of that happening. Things were leaning in that direction, what with Rimuru embarking to another kingdom, but then he gets hung up on every little bloody thing possible, which is all the front half is: unrelated malarkey happening to bump up the word count. I think the most exciting thing to happen is Rimuru’s people getting into a brief fisticuffs with ambassadors, and then everything around is traveling and inventory check and diplomacy, and I was just sitting there wondering to myself, “Soooo, when does the actual plot happen?” Slow pacing was an issue in past volumes, but it was never this bad.

I took a break from this series after volume three to indulge myself in other reads and only recently found my way back, and I must say that this is not an easy series to return to. It’s not even that you need to chug cups of caffeine to make it through, but that it has so many characters. Like, the volume would be like, “Here’s George. You remember George?” and I’d be like, “Who the fuck is George?” After consulting the Slime Wiki, I’d find out that George is a bandit who appeared in exactly one scene, for three pages, back in volume two, but he’s name-dropped like the aunt who’s always nagging me about getting married.

The Verdict:

I dunno. Maybe this volume is good if you read it in tandem with the first three volumes, but I couldn’t bring myself to continue past the halfway point. I also started this series when I was fresh to isekai, and I’ve picked up other series since then, and the lot of them have bored me to tears, so now I go into isekai carrying that negative bias.