Review: Your guide to ‘That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond’

During “That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond,” I laughed out loud several times — not at any intended humor, but at how utterly lost viewers will be without previous knowledge of the light novel, manga or anime TV series (or in my case, without my teenage daughter to guide me). “Lost” is probably a gentle description of how the uninitiated will feel, watching this sword-and-sorcery Japanese animated film with sudden relatives and “relatives,” business suits, actual manga being read by dragons in human form and a shape-shifting title character who is sometimes a blue glob.

Here’s the bare minimum you need to know before your “Slime” experience. The backstory — not explained in the movie — is a middle-aged worker in modern Japan is murdered and wakes up in a world of dragons, ogres, orcs and magic. He tries to make it a better place. However:

He’s now a “slime,” considered a lowly being in Japanese role-playing games from which the show borrows some world-building architecture. He has abilities (principally the power to absorb others and mimic their shapes and abilities) that will eventually make him the benevolent ruler of a whole nation. He’s called “Rimuru” here, and the series has no interest in Rimuru’s Earthly murder. There’s no effort to solve it. The film’s whole first part doesn’t involve the series’ characters and the movie takes a new one as its protagonist (“Which is really a shame because Rimuru’s very nice,” says my daughter). Got it?

“Scarlet Bond” opens with an ogre warrior getting cut down in a forest fight with lots of bad guys. He’s saved by Towa, queen of a nearby kingdom, who can restore life force at great cost to herself via a cursed tiara. She heals and renames the ogre Hiiro, who then finds his town destroyed, and somehow divines orcs have done this (here, big boar-man dudes) (not the forest bad guys) (I don’t know, dear reader, I’m just telling you what happened). He finds one of the orcs responsible: a buddy of Rimuru’s. He also finds ogre survivors living in Rimuru’s kingdom. One is his “brother” (really, best friend) and another his actual sister, whose prominent physical attributes, the aforementioned teen daughter explains as “fan service” and “jiggle physics.”

Anyhoo, all is forgiven and once Hiiro brokers an alliance between Rimuru and Towa, the actual plot begins. It has to do with poison and curses and greed and painless-looking sword- and magic-fighting. That’s because “Slime” is one of the nicer anime action series. From the title and Rimuru’s origin, one might expect snarky modern humor, but the proceedings are earnest — even soap-opera-ish. Many a thread is left dangling. Who has what powers and which abilities can defeat others are mysteries until they’re not. The movie isn’t unusual-looking or surprising, but my daughter assures me fans of the show will not want to miss it.

The rest of us will be immersed in warm confusion as things we just don’t understand unspool before us.