Off with a (bomb) bang. Animation looked pretty good, especially the wave controller scenes. I hardly remember any of this story at all so don’t think I can give as indepth comments as I did with tsukimichi. It feels a bit risky to introduce a pretty much entirely new cast after only one season. There was a lot of story for each characters, that I remember at least, back in season 1 but it feels like we kind of lost all of that if they’re going with a new crew, which I’m not sure whether will hold the interest the same way the originals did

So the Hibiki power up scene was one I had been waiting to see animated to see if I could make more sense out of it. And the result was… nothing, they didn’t show anything that made it any clearer, I guess there was nothing to learn about it. Unless I try to dig up who that voice actor was, was it the same as a character? Might just be a coincidence, though

And that power, for her, after already being considered dangerous long term by the demons 😬

Well this episode felt like another tease since Io also proves not to be much a threat, continuing the trend… Gonna have to wait a week to see how Sofia does instead.

I forgot to mention it last week but I did not recall reading anything about Lancer having a glow up from harvesting some souls or something. This whole time I had no idea who that even was at the end of the OP, I only thought of him in his smol form.

Also off-topic I’ve been playing Cassette Beasts for weeks now and got a bootleg (shiny) Tokusect which I’ve been using in honor of Makoto’s suit

I have no idea how they’re going to fit it all into three (I think that’s how many are left?) episodes. Which sounds crazy after most people would think they’ve been dragging their feet for the last 21. I’m trying to save my retrospectiveness for the final episode but I do wonder if this is a really difficult arc to adapt to anime. It flows much better as a novel since it’s just such a long series of events from the tournament starting until the end.

When I checked out the next episode preview last week I knew this was coming (flashbacks of what was going on with the heroes). Though I actually expected Makoto to not even land this episode, so that turned out to be wrong, only just.

There was some good foreshadowing this episode as well but I’ll resist writing about it, but do love the anime keeps some of the finer details.

People finally get an explanation for Hibiki’s outfit from the opening. “It’s just because of stats, guys, I swear”

Didn’t seem to matter to Io though, even with all their training and equipment he still shows his strength. But now he has Makoto in front of him, find out what happens next time on Dragonball Z Tsukimichi

I took screenshots of this convo as well 😆 Picked this game up when it went on sale for the multiplayer update, been having a fun time. Not too far into it though, been taking my time catching everything and ranking everything up first.

A good episode, quite a cliffhanger to end on though.

Them off-screening all the mob fights… maybe good to save some time, I guess not really important? MCs team wins, move on. Yea, I guess so. I feel like I’d be very confused why the lady knight with Souei was blushing but it seems like maybe people can figure it out themselves, I feel like I certainly wouldn’t without having watched the previous seasons any time recently.

Wait a minute, with the ice spell last week and the stage play this week… Am I in a gag anime? <insert always has been meme>

There’s a lot I forgot about the source material, including Shiki’s theory that the attack on the empire was also a diversion based on his views of which hero is a long term threat rather than a short term one.

Also is nice that we finally get to see the demiplane residents actually do something after all the training they’ve been doing. Convenient to have a small army in your pocket.

And not sure how to feel about the goddess meeting. Perhaps sad he didn’t get a punch in, but not for lack of effort at least? An interesting relationship where it seems they’re clearly at odds, and vocal about it, but can’t really do anything against each other easily too.

They’ve upgraded to hallway meetings and horseback meetings.

Jokes aside, the animation of the fights looked pretty decent this episode, or maybe I’m just action starved.

Having a unit of immortals looks to be pretty useful. And at least it seems more reasonable that Rimuru and Hinata don’t just talk things out when fighting has already broken out before they get there.

Maybe my interpretation is wrong and the firework spell was aimed at the devices. I wish it was more clear, as in the WN it clearly states it hit Tomoe as well, and I wouldn’t have expected her to have one. Here, we can’t really see that but I’m not sure if that’s just because of the view or a change. I assumed it had been a callback to the petrification stuff showing that Makoto could make people immune to things but, maybe not.

I’m sure you can tell I’m slightly biased here and overlook a lot of flaws 😆

It does feel kind of odd the demons can just march on both human capitals at the same time. Surely there should be like, a front line? Defenses? I suppose we’re meant to think they got passed them, or somehow avoided them like teleporting, though teleportation seems like a big deal, I’m not sure what Limia king meant by “they appeared by star lake”. Like, just spawned there?!

I can see what you mean in that a common complaint is to make one side seem smart, just make the other side act dumb. The hyumans do seem pretty lacking overall, though there are some who are at least realists like the princess. Rona always seemed like a pretty good strategist to me… but then again her first strategy is just “lol, hole in ground”. I much more prefer all the other stuff like glamored demons showing up next to the world leaders which shows how far their reach/planning is

Look up at the sky! It’s the aurora borealis! No wait, it’s just Makoto shooting off a firework 🎆

Hopefully people are a little happier that things are happening, but I guess it’s still very low action-wise. The mutants were never a threat at all to the main cast, and that’s spelled out very plainly by Zara. They can just stroll through the streets and clear any out on their way, while the actual guards, mercenaries, armies, can’t even handle a couple, and not without losses.

Can clearly see all the important people realizing just how powerful Makoto and crew are now, especially with Sairitz upgrading the honorifics used when speaking to Makoto. Hopefully means that Makoto will get doormat’d less often, but I guess we’ll see.

The transmission restoration felt a bit lackluster in the anime, but I guess it’s not that important. I feel like it wasn’t really clear what he did, not that the novel makes it any clearer, but obviously I think Tomoe is supposed to be implying he didn’t destroy the devices to disrupt telepathy, but instead shot a spell at every single person in the entire area to block or counter the device, that was my understanding at least, I could be mistaken.

And now we see that it was all a ruse! Oh my goodness, finally, this is what I’ve been waiting for. I love that this whole thing was just a distraction from the actual plot. Seems like the demons had a lot going on while we were stuck in Rotsgard, who knows what is happening in the rest of the hyuman world.

I didn’t really like Aqua and Eris in the novel, but I actually completely flipped my opinion in the anime. Their comic relief is pretty good.

Excited for the Cassette Beasts update next week? I’ve been checking to see if it’d go on sale for a few weeks/months now but I’m guessing it isn’t likely to with a major update on the way. Not sure if I should pick it up or wait for the next sale, how are you finding it? Been wanting to play a creature collector recently after watching so much Persona 3 but haven’t wanted to go back to my digimon/persona playthroughs

Slime isekai storyboard meeting notes: show don’t tell.

I’m going stir crazy from being locked in these rooms.

Now was this Rozzo family ever mentioned before? It always felt to me like a random group out of no where just to pad content. I guess it has ties to the “Merchants” that have been mentioned before but… It gives off the feeling of a random mafia playing politics with demon lords and gods, it feels so jarring, like a Bleach filler arc.

And I guess when they said Hinata is two weeks away, they meant real time. 🫠

Edit: I will say that fireplace looks comfy. I want some nice chairs, a glass of wine, and a roaring fireplace.

Any reason MATE over Xcfe? Just curious if the performance is close or MATE is better at things, not trying to question your decisions. I have a >9 year old PC at this point and installed Cinnamon on it but was finding it a bit laggy. I tried out the other editions but am sticking with LMDE for now, but sort of feel like I don’t really need nice animations, I just need more CPU for faster compile times, haha

Could’ve gone with an Estelle shot to farm that sweet, sweet clickbait😝

I guess it might be a good thing I’m not a director since I probably do focus on unimportant things. I just sort of always got the feeling from the source, and I don’t think this is a spoiler it’s just my feelings, that Root was a very conceited / egotistical kind of person. Maybe I just hallucinated that, because that’s where I’m coming from is when the anime doesn’t match my expectations of the character. Like I would’ve expected him to respond to being told someone is stronger than him with “You always were a kidder, Tomoe”. I don’t know, I feel like he’s not really matching with my expectations, especially since people are calling him Luto instead. Like, did they really change that? Why?! It’s like taking someone named Kuro that dresses all in black and being like “Actually, we’ll translate their name as Jeffrey. Close enough”. /rant

I knew as soon as I saw the preview post last week that I was going to have to prepare myself again for the comments on lack of action.

At least there was at least two fights this time, and both involving the main cast! Hey, that’s something, right?

I’m trying to imagine what people were thinking when Ilumgand was talking about helping the hero and not interfering with Makoto. Cliché second chance? Then Mio is just “nah”

It’s interesting Tomoe says that Root wouldn’t be able to scratch Makoto. I feel like we’re missing a lot of internal dialogue here, I couldn’t quite tell from Root’s reaction what he thought of that, did he just say “Interesting” or something? I feel like I remember there being a lot more thoughts in the source material, but maybe I’m wrong. Just feel like definitely feeling the weight of trying to adapt this as there’s probably a lot of thoughts being skipped.

I didn’t like Hinata when she originally appeared, doubt I was alone there. I like her a lot more here where she’s mostly just strategizing, regretting her initial encounter (appearance), and coming to her own conclusions about what is going on.

I guess this series has always grappled with people really not liking when it spends time on other characters, like the students here or on the heroes before. I never really minded that too much, like in Overlord my favorite volumes are 7 or 12. Think it helps keep things fresh seeing from another perspective as long as the characters are relatively important, though I guess we haven’t really seen any reason to care too much about the students besides the sisters so far.

To me that was fine, like I sort of interpreted it as: first they tried to let the professional (purple coats) handle things. When that didn’t go well it cut to the students pointing and discussing, so I would imagine they were strategizing / buffing (similar to their Blue Lizard fights). Though I guess it is weird to let the enemy (supposedly) power up as well, it did work out in the end, so I’m like, you can’t really blame them, maybe they needed that time to win too, we can’t say without knowing what would’ve happened if they didn’t prepare.

Edit: Thinking more about it I can agree with you that it could’ve been better. Even if they didn’t animate some generic fight scene in the background I think they could’ve improved it if they had the casters casting buffs on the frontline while the frontline pointed/discussed in that scene, just to make it seem like they were doing prep work rather than standing around.

I guess I saw a lot of hate on that other site for this episode but, perhaps it’s because I’ve read the source material, nothing here really surprised me, all those scenes (the sisters, merchant, teleporting, king/prince, etc) happened in the novel, which is kind of why last week I said “just one more episode, and then another and another” because I don’t really expect the climax of this whole thing any time soon.

The monsters do look a bit goofy, well Ilumgand looked a bit intimidating in some stills, maybe it’s just the ED effecting us.