That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, often shortened to "Tensura" by fans, started as a free web novel by an author called Fuse. It ran online from 2013 to 2016 on Shosetsuka ni Naro, a popular Japanese site where anyone can post stories. It then became a light novel series with art by Mitz Vah, published by Micro Magazine from 2014. A manga version followed, and the whole series has since sold tens of millions of copies. The studio Eight Bit made the first anime season, directed by Yasuhito Kikuchi. It ran for 24 episodes from October 2018 to March 2019.

The show belongs to the isekai genre. Isekai means "another world," and these stories send a person from our world into a fantasy one. Here the hero is Satoru Mikami, a 37-year-old office worker in Tokyo. He is a nice man with a normal job and not much love life. After he is stabbed in the street, he wakes up in a dark cave. He cannot see, hear or speak, and he has no body he recognizes. He has become a slime, a small blob of jelly that is usually the weakest monster in fantasy games.

But this slime is special. He has a helpful inner voice called Great Sage that explains things to him, and a skill called Predator that lets him swallow things and copy what they can do. In the cave, he meets Veldora, a huge Storm Dragon who has been trapped by a magic seal for about 300 years. The two become friends, and Veldora gives him a new name: Rimuru Tempest. This choice starts everything that follows.

When Rimuru leaves the cave, he finds a village of weak goblins who are afraid of attack by a pack of wolves. Instead of fighting everyone, he talks, makes deals, and gives the monsters names, which in this world makes them much stronger. Soon goblins, wolves, ogres and other creatures are living and working together. Rimuru starts to build a town, and later a small nation, where monsters and humans might get along. Along the way he meets Shizu, a woman who was also pulled from Japan long ago, and her story has a big effect on him.

The show is mostly light and friendly. Rimuru is calm, kind, and a bit silly, and a lot of the fun comes from watching him solve problems with ideas from his old office life, like planning, trade and building roads. There are battles, and some get serious, but the heart of the series is about making friends, leading others, and creating a home where different kinds of people can live in peace. The show also looks at simple politics, like how a new country deals with its neighbors.

Tensura became one of the biggest isekai hits of its time. It led to more TV seasons, a film, short spin-off series and video games. The manga won the Kodansha Manga Award in the shonen category in 2022. This first season is the natural place to start, since it shows Rimuru's very first steps from a lonely blob in a cave to the leader of a growing monster community.