This is always the most interesting time anime-wise – that week where the old season and the new overlap.  Nearly every post is either a Series Review or a First Impressions, which could hardly be more different in terms of approach as a writer.  First Impressions posts are always written in the glow of hope – “every team is in first place on opening day”, as the old baseball expression goes.  But of course, when it comes to anything based on a light novel, the expectations are definitely tempered.

I was going to say something about how isekai is a strange phenomenon, but it really isn’t – it’s quite understandable, really.  The fandom of light novels tends, more than most, to be fond of wish-fulfillment and self-insert type stories.  And of course isekai is the ultimate platform for that.  Maybe there was a time, before it became almost unimaginably overused and tired, that the word “isekai” didn’t immediately elicit a groan from me – but that time has long since past.  The genre is overplayed and overdone, and almost nothing that slaps a ridiculously long title (often with the word “isekai” actually in it) on itself and surfs the wave is any good.

So why am I here?  Well, I have a real fondness for 8bit for starters.  They’ve produced two of the most under-appreciated gems of the last couple of years, Shounen Maid and Miira no Kaikata.  And they’ve put together a pretty solid staff for Tensei shitara Slime Datta Ken too.  The other reason is that “Slime” is generally regarded as one of the best of the isekai catalogue, for whatever that’s worth (in itself not that much, given how low the bar is).  It looks like a crap season anyway, so why not give it a shot?

And I’m not sorry I did.  I didn’t fall in love with the premiere or anything, but it was relatively light in cringe-worthy LN or isekai moments.  The art and animation were quite impressive for the most part (hardly a surprise, given the technical staff).  And while having a 30-something (37, in this case) otaku as the protagonist is probably second only to high-school loner (which should tell you something about the target demographics for isekai) when it comes to cliche, Mikami Satoru (Terashima Takuma) is a relatively sympathetic guy so far.

As usual we’re bombarded with exposition by explanation here, but that’s pretty much unavoidable with LNs – they’re required to hit the ground running at full speed.  And the whole premise – a guy gets (heroically) stabbed to death and winds up reincarnated as a slime with superpowers in an alternate universe – seems about as arbitrary as it gets.  Still, there was some funny moments here – I loved the tsun-dragon, but it was such a classic LN move to ruin the moment by having Satoru actually say it.  We really haven’t seen enough of the story yet to get any clear picture of whether it’s actually going to work, but the premiere had a sort of goofy charm that hopefully indicates a more sardonic and self-deprecating approach than usual for LN adaptations.  I’ll stick around for another ep at least, and we’ll see where it goes from there.