Heya guys, long time no see. I’ll be at Comic Fiesta this year at booth B-F19-F20, and I’ll be selling the usual books and other little tidbits stuff, including these all new Tensura… uhhh, something… I just finished these, I’ll come up with something to do with them to be sold at CF for ^o^
I Just Watched That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Episode 16 and Boy is My Nose Sore
(I’m told Tensuru is the correct shortening of the title, is that right? Calling it “this story” has gotten old.)
Our little village has become a well-organized town. The first story arc looked like an allegory for Japan’s postwar occupation and reconstruction. Is Tensuru going to continue the metaphor through Japan’s growing international influence in the middle of the 20th Century? If so, how subtle are they going to be?
About as subtle as a baseball bat. The metaphors in this episode are so much more on the nose my face hurt just watching it.
With many of the social reforms that had hampered Japan before the war sorted out, the country was about to experience the most rapid expansion of economic growth, prosperity, literacy, and infrastructure and real estate development the world had ever seen up to that point; but that wasn’t obvious at first. The country was still getting back on it’s feet, and America was determined to turn Japan into a trading partner whose economy was too inextricably linked with America’s economy for them to afford to go to war with us again. American business trainers poured into Japan to serve as “expert consultants”, including many who couldn’t find work back home for various reasons. Factories were coming back online, but most of the goods they were capable of producing were of low quality compared to their international counterparts. That meant it was time to change the game, to innovate and produce things no one else had ever thought of, like the portable transistor radio which took the world by storm in the late 1950s.
Rimuru Town is having a quiet day when the Dwarf King Dragul shows up with his army. He’s got a present for Rimuru, Vasta the now-disgraced bureuacrat/researcher whose harassment drove Master Kaijin and his brothers to Rimuru. Dragul has decided he personally has no more use for Vasta after the trouble the dwarf has caused. He tells Rimuru to use Vasta as he will and orders Vasta to redeem himself by improving the town’s productivity.
Pow! On the nose.
Kaijin: My King… That would allow Vasta’s knowledge to leave the Dwarves!
Dragul: Says the man who left the Dwarves himself? That is what this alliance is for. Make this land you have chosen to inhabit a leader in new and unique skills!
Pow! On the nose.
This time period was also the beginning of the Cold War. Exhausted from two world wars, the remaining great powers resorted to using subterfuge, coercion, and the manipulation of puppet states to attack each other without officially declaring war, making a real mess of world affairs in the process.
Clayman is the Demon Lord who sent the Orc army to Jura Forest in an attempt to create a puppet state there, and he is not happy that Rimuru and his friends have thwarted that plan.
Pow! On the nose.
He shows the video of Rimuru defeating the Orc Demon Lord to a Generic Fantasy Protagonist - Female who is eager to investigate “this toy”, as she calls Rimuru. The assembled Demon Lords agree that with Valdora AWOL the forest is up for grabs, and that GFP-F has first dibs.
Rimuru senses a disturbance in the force. It takes the form of a pink comet that hits the outskirts of town and reveals the GFP-F, who introduces herself as the Demon Lord Milim Nava, come to check out the town. She chats with Rimuru, who gets definite “too powerful to mess with” vibes coming off her.
And then his security team shows up to mess with her.
Ranga snatches Rimuru out of the way while the Kijin (evolved Ogres) try their best to kill her. They succeed in annoying her. It’s an impressive fight but I’m paying attention to Milim, what she says, how she acts, what she’s wearing, and…. Oh. My. Stars.
No. Uh-uh.
No way.
That can’t be – that isn’t the mid-century “Ugly American” trope rendered in bubblegum-pink kawaii?!
And yet, there it is, big as life and twice as cute. Never in a million years did I expect to see that.
During the mid-century Cold War, America went from being a large backwater country to being the greatest power on Earth. Bluntly, we were psychologically unprepared and didn’t handle the change well. The way we treated other people changed, and this resulted in the appearance of the “Ugly American” stereotype.
In the early-middle 20th Century the word “ugly” was used to describe behavior as well as appearance. If you were boorish, crass, mean, or bullying, you were “ugly” no matter how you looked. The Ugly American is tactless, boorish, bored, crass, gluttonous, immature, and immodest, a grown-up enfants terrible too powerful to spank or ignore. But most of all, the Ugly American is pure, unstoppable aggression.
It’s a stereotype we still see today, but with a twist. In the 21st Century there’s a defensive edge to the Ugly American’s aggression that wasn’t there originally. In my childhood the Ugly American exhibited pure hubris, a blind, overwhelming pride that couldn’t comprehend that any power (short of the USSR) existed that could hurt it. Nothing could make it fall – until it finally fell in Saigon on April 30, 1975, in full color and live in our living rooms.
But Milim as she is now is the Ugly American who hasn’t seen the precipice yet. She’s crass, immature, aggressive, bored, and insanely powerful. She wears a red, white, and blue animal-fang necklace, a red and white striped stocking, black bikini panties to signify immodesty, double ponytails and the mother of all cowlicks to signify immaturity, and most notably a cut-down version of a black leather biking jacket, the signature garb of the mid-century American bad boy, the domestic version of the Ugly American.
That’s INSANELY on the nose!
(Yes, normally I would be complaining about the sexism, but immodesty is one of the defining characteristics of the Ugly American trope. Male or female, the Ugly American is going to be scantily clad in the eyes of the locals. A male Milim would be wearing far less. It’s not a flaw, it’s a feature.)
That also clarifies something else. Earlier I speculated that “Demon Lord” referred to a high State official or a State. Here it clearly means not just a State but a Superpower. And if THAT’S the case one of the goals of the current story arc will be to see Rimuru turn into a minor Demon Lord just as Japan emerged from the mid-century as an economic superpower.
Meanwhile back at the fight, the Kijin are down and about to be dead. Rimuru steps in, and inspired by Milim’s childishness, distracts her with honey to end the battle. Like many spirits/metaphors, the Ugly American has more than one aspect. While the malevolent aspect leans toward “frat boy on vacation”, there’s a benevolent aspect which is more “well-intentioned cluelessness”. Rimuru is clearly trying to keep Milim in a benevolent state.
Milim asks Rimuru what are his plans in a conversation that’s WAY too on the nose. Replace “Demon Lord” with “superpower” in this conversation and try not to cringe:
Hey… Don’t you ever think of becoming a Demon Lord (Superpower)?“
"Why should I put myself through that kind of hassle?”
“Huh? But you’d be a Demon Lord (Superpower)! Aren’t they awesome? Doesn’t everyone want to be one?”
“Hell no.”
“Huh?!”
“Does something good happen when you become a Demon Lord (Superpower)?”
“Strong opponents come from all over to fight you! It’s fun!”
Ow, ow, ow!
“I get plenty of that already. Not interested.”
“What?! Then what do you even enjoy in life?”
“All kinds of things. I’ve got a lot to do. It’s crazy. Is there anything fun about being a Demon Lord (Superpower) besides fighting?”
“Well, no… But you get to boss Majin and Humans (lesser countries) around!”
“Doesn’t that just mean you’re bored?”
*gasp*
“Ah. She’s definitely bored.”
Ow, my poor nose! But, stripped of ideology, that sums up the Cold War with a brutal efficiency.
Intrigued by the possibility that Rimuru knows another way to have fun, Milim wants to see the village. Rimuru offers her friendship and extracts a promise from Milim not to hurt anyone, which she keeps for the handful of minutes it takes for her to meet the eminently punchable Gabiru. Rimuru introduces her to loud cheers from the crowd, which encourages her to announce that she’s staying, and that from now on she and Rimuru are “besties”. She’s loud, brash, shameless, bored, belligerent, determined to be up in your business, and to drag her business to your doorstep, with no concern for your feelings. There’s a host of dreary mid-century literary classics that she distills into one image which produces the same combination of hilarity and cringe as “Rogers: The Musical” from the Hawkeye tv show. It’s funny, embarrassing, and impressive all at once.
More to the point, there’s some very specific analogies to US-Japan relationships in the mid-century. In the my last post I talked about how during the Occupation the US built military bases all along the Japanese coast. After the Occupation the US evacuated them – except in Okinawa. Impressed by the wide harbor and large tracts of undeveloped land, Okinawa became the
home base for the US Northern Pacific fleet in the 1950s-1970s. There they perched like a house guest who has long outstayed their welcome, regardless of how Japan felt about the matter.
But it wasn’t just Okinawa that made Japan so attractive to the military. During WWII one of the major problems with waging war in the Pacific had been getting supplies, with the supply lines being over twice as long as it was in Europe. Japanese industry was back on it’s feet after being flattened in the war. While their products weren’t yet good enough to attract much interest abroad, they were literally “good enough for government work”. Japanese business became the commercial and industrial suppliers for the US military in the Pacific, drastically shortening the supply lines. Supplies that had taken months to reach the Pacific front during WWII could now be had in days. Those reliable supplies earned Japan accolades as America’s new “best friend”.
“And thus Demon Lord Milim, being more dangerous than a powder keg, became a part of the Jura Tempest Federation.”
Pow! On the nose.
It wasn’t a one-sided relationship. The steady cash flow that US military contracts provided Japanese industry enabled them to upgrade their factories from “back on their feet” to “world class”. And without those reliable supplies, the US would have had a much harder time waging war in Korea, and especially in Vietnam.
But having the most powerful and most aggressive military in the world on your doorstep during the Cold War wasn’t the easiest relationship. Even mainland America feared nuclear missiles would cross the ocean and destroy the entire country. Japan was a much, much closer target. If either Korea or Vietnam, or their allies China and the USSR, had retaliated against US forces outside of Korea or Vietnam, Japan would have taken it in the neck – and they knew it. It’s a situation mirrored in Rimuru’s emergency conference that night.
Goblin King Rigurd: It’s about Lady Milim. I never imagined a Demon Lord (Superpower) would take the initiative in coming here.
R: Yeah, but she did promise not to cause any commotion without my permission.
Dwarf: Yes, but.. what’s more concerning is what the other Demon Lords (Superpowers) will do.
R: What do you mean?
Dwarf: There are several Demon Lords (Superpowers), and they’re always keeping each other in check. Your declaration that Lady Milim is our friend means this village is now under her protection. Under normal circumstances that might be a good thing, but…
Swordmaster: Great Rimuru, you hold the position of supreme ruler. In other words, it will appear to the other Demon Lords (Superpowers) that the Great Forest of Jura has forged an alliance with the Demon Lord Milim.
Benimaru: The Demon Lord Milim will instantly gain more influence, upsetting the balance between the Demon Lords.
Rimuru: I see.
Rigurd: But in reality, there is no way we could stop Lady Milim.
Benimaru: Her strength was on a completely different level. If not for Great Rimuru, we wouldn’t be alive now.
Ouch!
And there’s the setup for the second story arc. I don’t know how long they plan to continue telling modern Japanese history as an animal fable – er, make that a “monster fable in an RPG setting” – but if they continue with the analogy Rimuru Village will see explosive growth and the attendant problems, the development of improved and some entirely new industries, and shenanigans from various superpowers – er, Demon Lords – that lead to Rimuru becoming a minor Demon Lord and entering into political/economic relations at that level.
Sounds like fun! See you later.
There really wasn’t space here to talk about the differences between the Kindly American trope and the Ugly American trope. If you want me to go into that topic in a separate post, let me know.
This was a fun read. I’m not sure about the “ugly American trope” as I’d never heard of it before but Tempest being a metaphor for post-war Japan is interesting and probably not all that wrong.
Here’s the Wiki on it. If there’s any interest I’ll do a more in-depth essay on the different American stereotypes Tensuru uses.
I Just Watched That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Episode 16 and Boy is My Nose Sore
(I’m told Tensuru is the correct shortening of the title, is that right? Calling it “this story” has gotten old.)
Our little village has become a well-organized town. The first story arc looked like an allegory for Japan’s postwar occupation and reconstruction. Is Tensuru going to continue the metaphor through Japan’s growing international influence in the middle of the 20th Century? If so, how subtle are they going to be?
About as subtle as a baseball bat. The metaphors in this episode are so much more on the nose my face hurt just watching it.
With many of the social reforms that had hampered Japan before the war sorted out, the country was about to experience the most rapid expansion of economic growth, prosperity, literacy, and infrastructure and real estate development the world had ever seen up to that point; but that wasn’t obvious at first. The country was still getting back on it’s feet, and America was determined to turn Japan into a trading partner whose economy was too inextricably linked with America’s economy for them to afford to go to war with us again. American business trainers poured into Japan to serve as “expert consultants”, including many who couldn’t find work back home for various reasons. Factories were coming back online, but most of the goods they were capable of producing were of low quality compared to their international counterparts. That meant it was time to change the game, to innovate and produce things no one else had ever thought of, like the portable transistor radio which took the world by storm in the late 1950s.
Rimuru Town is having a quiet day when the Dwarf King Dragul shows up with his army. He’s got a present for Rimuru, Vasta the now-disgraced bureuacrat/researcher whose harassment drove Master Kaijin and his brothers to Rimuru. Dragul has decided he personally has no more use for Vasta after the trouble the dwarf has caused. He tells Rimuru to use Vasta as he will and orders Vasta to redeem himself by improving the town’s productivity.
Pow! On the nose.
Kaijin: My King… That would allow Vasta’s knowledge to leave the Dwarves!
Dragul: Says the man who left the Dwarves himself? That is what this alliance is for. Make this land you have chosen to inhabit a leader in new and unique skills!
Pow! On the nose.
This time period was also the beginning of the Cold War. Exhausted from two world wars, the remaining great powers resorted to using subterfuge, coercion, and the manipulation of puppet states to attack each other without officially declaring war, making a real mess of world affairs in the process.
Clayman is the Demon Lord who sent the Orc army to Jura Forest in an attempt to create a puppet state there, and he is not happy that Rimuru and his friends have thwarted that plan.
Pow! On the nose.
He shows the video of Rimuru defeating the Orc Demon Lord to a Generic Fantasy Protagonist - Female who is eager to investigate “this toy”, as she calls Rimuru. The assembled Demon Lords agree that with Valdora AWOL the forest is up for grabs, and that GFP-F has first dibs.
Rimuru senses a disturbance in the force. It takes the form of a pink comet that hits the outskirts of town and reveals the GFP-F, who introduces herself as the Demon Lord Milim Nava, come to check out the town. She chats with Rimuru, who gets definite “too powerful to mess with” vibes coming off her.
And then his security team shows up to mess with her.
Ranga snatches Rimuru out of the way while the Kijin (evolved Ogres) try their best to kill her. They succeed in annoying her. It’s an impressive fight but I’m paying attention to Milim, what she says, how she acts, what she’s wearing, and…. Oh. My. Stars.
No. Uh-uh.
No way.
That can’t be – that isn’t the mid-century “Ugly American” trope rendered in bubblegum-pink kawaii?!
And yet, there it is, big as life and twice as cute. Never in a million years did I expect to see that.
During the mid-century Cold War, America went from being a large backwater country to being the greatest power on Earth. Bluntly, we were psychologically unprepared and didn’t handle the change well. The way we treated other people changed, and this resulted in the appearance of the “Ugly American” stereotype.
In the early-middle 20th Century the word “ugly” was used to describe behavior as well as appearance. If you were boorish, crass, mean, or bullying, you were “ugly” no matter how you looked. The Ugly American is tactless, boorish, bored, crass, gluttonous, immature, and immodest, a grown-up enfants terrible too powerful to spank or ignore. But most of all, the Ugly American is pure, unstoppable aggression.
It’s a stereotype we still see today, but with a twist. In the 21st Century there’s a defensive edge to the Ugly American’s aggression that wasn’t there originally. In my childhood the Ugly American exhibited pure hubris, a blind, overwhelming pride that couldn’t comprehend that any power (short of the USSR) existed that could hurt it. Nothing could make it fall – until it finally fell in Saigon on April 30, 1975, in full color and live in our living rooms.
But Milim as she is now is the Ugly American who hasn’t seen the precipice yet. She’s crass, immature, aggressive, bored, and insanely powerful. She wears a red, white, and blue animal-fang necklace, a red and white striped stocking, black bikini panties to signify immodesty, double ponytails and the mother of all cowlicks to signify immaturity, and most notably a cut-down version of a black leather biking jacket, the signature garb of the mid-century American bad boy, the domestic version of the Ugly American.
That’s INSANELY on the nose!
(Yes, normally I would be complaining about the sexism, but immodesty is one of the defining characteristics of the Ugly American trope. Male or female, the Ugly American is going to be scantily clad in the eyes of the locals. A male Milim would be wearing far less. It’s not a flaw, it’s a feature.)
That also clarifies something else. Earlier I speculated that “Demon Lord” referred to a high State official or a State. Here it clearly means not just a State but a Superpower. And if THAT’S the case one of the goals of the current story arc will be to see Rimuru turn into a minor Demon Lord just as Japan emerged from the mid-century as an economic superpower.
Meanwhile back at the fight, the Kijin are down and about to be dead. Rimuru steps in, and inspired by Milim’s childishness, distracts her with honey to end the battle. Like many spirits/metaphors, the Ugly American has more than one aspect. While the malevolent aspect leans toward “frat boy on vacation”, there’s a benevolent aspect which is more “well-intentioned cluelessness”. Rimuru is clearly trying to keep Milim in a benevolent state.
Milim asks Rimuru what are his plans in a conversation that’s WAY too on the nose. Replace “Demon Lord” with “superpower” in this conversation and try not to cringe:
Hey… Don’t you ever think of becoming a Demon Lord (Superpower)?“
"Why should I put myself through that kind of hassle?”
“Huh? But you’d be a Demon Lord (Superpower)! Aren’t they awesome? Doesn’t everyone want to be one?”
“Hell no.”
“Huh?!”
“Does something good happen when you become a Demon Lord (Superpower)?”
“Strong opponents come from all over to fight you! It’s fun!”
Ow, ow, ow!
“I get plenty of that already. Not interested.”
“What?! Then what do you even enjoy in life?”
“All kinds of things. I’ve got a lot to do. It’s crazy. Is there anything fun about being a Demon Lord (Superpower) besides fighting?”
“Well, no… But you get to boss Majin and Humans (lesser countries) around!”
“Doesn’t that just mean you’re bored?”
*gasp*
“Ah. She’s definitely bored.”
Ow, my poor nose! But, stripped of ideology, that sums up the Cold War with a brutal efficiency.
Intrigued by the possibility that Rimuru knows another way to have fun, Milim wants to see the village. Rimuru offers her friendship and extracts a promise from Milim not to hurt anyone, which she keeps for the handful of minutes it takes for her to meet the eminently punchable Gabiru. Rimuru introduces her to loud cheers from the crowd, which encourages her to announce that she’s staying, and that from now on she and Rimuru are “besties”. She’s loud, brash, shameless, bored, belligerent, determined to be up in your business, and to drag her business to your doorstep, with no concern for your feelings. There’s a host of dreary mid-century literary classics that she distills into one image which produces the same combination of hilarity and cringe as “Rogers: The Musical” from the Hawkeye tv show. It’s funny, embarrassing, and impressive all at once.
More to the point, there’s some very specific analogies to US-Japan relationships in the mid-century. In the my last post I talked about how during the Occupation the US built military bases all along the Japanese coast. After the Occupation the US evacuated them – except in Okinawa. Impressed by the wide harbor and large tracts of undeveloped land, Okinawa became the
home base for the US Northern Pacific fleet in the 1950s-1970s. There they perched like a house guest who has long outstayed their welcome, regardless of how Japan felt about the matter.
But it wasn’t just Okinawa that made Japan so attractive to the military. During WWII one of the major problems with waging war in the Pacific had been getting supplies, with the supply lines being over twice as long as it was in Europe. Japanese industry was back on it’s feet after being flattened in the war. While their products weren’t yet good enough to attract much interest abroad, they were literally “good enough for government work”. Japanese business became the commercial and industrial suppliers for the US military in the Pacific, drastically shortening the supply lines. Supplies that had taken months to reach the Pacific front during WWII could now be had in days. Those reliable supplies earned Japan accolades as America’s new “best friend”.
“And thus Demon Lord Milim, being more dangerous than a powder keg, became a part of the Jura Tempest Federation.”
Pow! On the nose.
It wasn’t a one-sided relationship. The steady cash flow that US military contracts provided Japanese industry enabled them to upgrade their factories from “back on their feet” to “world class”. And without those reliable supplies, the US would have had a much harder time waging war in Korea, and especially in Vietnam.
But having the most powerful and most aggressive military in the world on your doorstep during the Cold War wasn’t the easiest relationship. Even mainland America feared nuclear missiles would cross the ocean and destroy the entire country. Japan was a much, much closer target. If either Korea or Vietnam, or their allies China and the USSR, had retaliated against US forces outside of Korea or Vietnam, Japan would have taken it in the neck – and they knew it. It’s a situation mirrored in Rimuru’s emergency conference that night.
Goblin King Rigurd: It’s about Lady Milim. I never imagined a Demon Lord (Superpower) would take the initiative in coming here.
R: Yeah, but she did promise not to cause any commotion without my permission.
Dwarf: Yes, but.. what’s more concerning is what the other Demon Lords (Superpowers) will do.
R: What do you mean?
Dwarf: There are several Demon Lords (Superpowers), and they’re always keeping each other in check. Your declaration that Lady Milim is our friend means this village is now under her protection. Under normal circumstances that might be a good thing, but…
Swordmaster: Great Rimuru, you hold the position of supreme ruler. In other words, it will appear to the other Demon Lords (Superpowers) that the Great Forest of Jura has forged an alliance with the Demon Lord Milim.
Benimaru: The Demon Lord Milim will instantly gain more influence, upsetting the balance between the Demon Lords.
Rimuru: I see.
Rigurd: But in reality, there is no way we could stop Lady Milim.
Benimaru: Her strength was on a completely different level. If not for Great Rimuru, we wouldn’t be alive now.
Ouch!
And there’s the setup for the second story arc. I don’t know how long they plan to continue telling modern Japanese history as an animal fable – er, make that a “monster fable in an RPG setting” – but if they continue with the analogy Rimuru Village will see explosive growth and the attendant problems, the development of improved and some entirely new industries, and shenanigans from various superpowers – er, Demon Lords – that lead to Rimuru becoming a minor Demon Lord and entering into political/economic relations at that level.
Sounds like fun! See you later.
There really wasn’t space here to talk about the differences between the Kindly American trope and the Ugly American trope. If you want me to go into that topic in a separate post, let me know.
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Episodes 3-15: Postwar Japanese History as RPG Fantasy
What have we got? A salaryman turned super-slime, an AWOL dragon, a missing girl, an RPG mechanic that’s not taking itself too seriously, a fight style that discourages rematches, and a fascination with the 1930s-1940s. Where is this story actually going? How does it tie back in to the opening scene?
We pick up right after the first battle, which Rimuru ended by making the Direwolves a classic “offer too good to refuse”. Being sensible predators, they took him up on it. The Direwolves get the forest home they wanted and the Goblins get an ally against the next wave of invaders. It’s a win-win until the resources run out, but we’ll get back to that later.
Once everyone has recovered and is ready to listen, Rimuru lays down some sensible rules, to wit, play nice with each other and don’t bother the apex predat–, er, the humans. Then he – gives them all names? Wait, what? And it’s not just new names, like with Rimuru and the dragon. They don’t have any names at all, except for a dead young warrior who was named by a passing Demon Lord – okay, that’s what’s going on. It’s a historical analogy.
Feudal Japan had a hierarchical caste system: nobles, samurai, and farmers were at the top in that order, followed by the commoners in this order: craftsmen, merchants, laborers, entertainers, and criminals. One quirk in the law was that commoners could not be referred to by their surname in legal records, just by their given name and some identifying trait, like occupation or place of work. This gave rise to the false stereotype that they didn’t have any names. They did, but they couldn’t use them on official documents. The one exception was that they could be granted the right to use their surname on paperwork just like a member of the upper classes as recognition for some great service performed for the state.
And that lends more weight to the theory that this story isn’t really an RPG fantasy. I suspect it’s all a big metaphor, maybe history masquerading as cosplay? But exactly which historical period is doing the cosplaying? It’s not the feudal period; that’s already been done to death in manga and anime. It’s some other time period where a commoner businessman hero would be more appropriate than a upper class warrior hero.
It also means that in this world a Demon Lord is a high-level muckety muck, the equivalent of either a top tier State official or a State itself. Good to know, file that back for later.
Unlike when Rimuru and the dragon named each other, this mass naming takes a toll on Rimuru, and he passes out from exhaustion. When he awakens all the goblins and wolves he had named are acting just like people who have been publicly praised for their deeds – they’re healthier, happier, and more sure of themselves. Or in RPG terms, since this story is cosplaying as an RPG fantasy, they’ve leveled up.
(Although I doubt Rimuru thought of it, much less intended it, it’s also a really impressive potlatch. Nothing says “I’ve got power to spare” like publicly giving away so much that he’s subsequently incapacitated for days.)
Getting back to the village’s resources, Rimuru lays out an immediate goal of providing everyone in the village with “food, shelter, clothing”. The food part is going pretty well, with the evolved goblins and evolved wolves working well together; but the village lacks trained craftsmen with the know-how to make better shelter or clothing. Rimuru calls on his business experience and decides they need to hire specialists to bring the missing skill sets into their busines – er, village. To that end, he leads a small delegation to the nearby dwarven kingdom of Dwargon.
Along the way, Rimuru has a private conversation with the son of the Direwolf he killed in battle:
Rimuru: I killed your father, which means you should want revenge, right? (I’ve been wondering that all along.)
Ranga: I do think about it. But Master, you not only spared us after defeating us in battle, you also gave us a new name. I have only gratitude toward you, and no resentment at all. Our loyalty belongs to you and you alone, Master.
Oh. THAT’S where this story is going. This isn’t a fall-into-fairyland story in an RPG setting. It’s an allegorical retelling of the story of postwar Japan in an RPG setting. That’s why it starts with the end of WWII. That’s also why the RPG mechanic is so loose. It’s just a tool to make sure that the fantasy elements line up in the right order!
It’s an interesting history, how Japan got from Ground Zero to where it is today, but first let’s go over how Japan got from feudalism to the firestorm we saw at the start of this story.
Japan had few natural resources, a caste system that that gave warriors high status and artisans and merchants low status and low capital, and a society that had spent centuries locked in a series of internal wars. On paper it looked like a recipe for destitution, and that’s what Admiral Perry’s expedition expected to find in 1851. Yet Japan had a stable middle class in spite of all these obstacles largely thanks to the incredible ingenuity of their craftspeople.
But while that ingenuity was busy dealing with those great natural and artificial impediments, the rest of the world had launched full throttle into the Industrial Revolution. Japan’s government was horrified at how far behind they had fallen in technology and willing to do whatever it took to catch up, even going so far as to make the ultimate sacrifice – give up the feudal caste system. (After a civil war and a very determined Emperor made it clear they had no choice.)
Freed from the worst constraints of the caste system and with a mandate for change, Japanese craftspeople made great progress in modernizing their country. This resulted in their culture begining to lose the structure of a feudal society and start to take on the shape of a modern society – the status of craftspeople rose, the status of merchants rose higher, and with mass communication the status of a handful of entertainers rose the highest of all, while jobs available for private warriors evaporated to the point where many ended up working for the criminal class. In the midst of great progress for the commoners, the once-mighty samurai had fallen hard.
By the early 20th Century, the remnants of the old feudal system had started to put the brakes on Japan’s continued progress. The commoners, including most businesspeople, lacked reliable access to credit to upgrade and expand their businesses. Worse, the country lacked basic worker protections and worker’s rights. As projects grew more complex and ambitious, these limiters made business more tentative, especially in the face of the Great Depression. Demand grew for the government to enact social reforms to protect both workers and start-up businesses.
These demands rubbed the Old Guard the wrong way. They had already sacrificed their caste-based privilege for modernism, and now those ungrateful commoners wanted more? They had a counter-offer, an exciting new proposal called fascism.
Modern society is built on Progress, driven by Innovation, and fueled by Great Minds. Since you can never be sure when, where, or in which body the next Great Mind will show up, the only workable solution is to give everyone equality and a free comprehensive education so Great Minds can find their inspiration and purpose, leading the way to more Progress. (That’s the theory at least. It’s an ideal that’s never been completely met, but how well a culture measures up to that ideal determines how much Progress they will make in the next generation.) Equal opportunity for all doesn’t sit well with those who prefer to be at the top of hierarchies. They wanted a way to have their cake and eat it too. Fascism promised conservatives all the advantages of their old feudal class system with all the conveniences of modern living. It was a win-win! Until it proved to be an utter catastrophe.
Instead of the social reforms they needed, what the Japanese working people got was overwrought nationalism, incredibly vile jingoism, and a disastrous war. Ironically, Japan’s class prejudice was a decisive factor in their loss in WWII. Before the war Japan’s military strategists put together a meticulously detailed report on the state of the American military at the time which showed that the war was winnable. But the Japanese military strategists ONLY checked out the American military. Blinded by their own class prejudice, they didn’t look at the American industrial base, at how quickly the military could be resupplied and expanded, or at how rapidly American civilians could be recruited and trained for war. That blind spot would prove fatal to their ambitions.
And that leads us up to the time period right after the horrific firestorm that began this story, the postwar period. Japan has been devastated by the war. There’s widespread homelessness, destitution, disease, and starvation. Much of the country has been reduced to rubble, and the all-important industrial base which Japan had given up it’s feudal identity for has been deliberately shattered. (In all fairness, the American military strategists chose the strategy which they calculated would produce the lowest number of casualties. Even the atom bombs were thought to be less deadly than a fullscale invasion of a country pumped up on the jingoistic nihilism that the government propaganda machine was spewing out by then.) “Japan”, said General MacArthur, “has fallen to a fourth rate nation.”
In other words, it metaphorically looked a lot like the goblin village does at the beginning of our story, as translated into a family-friendly isekai. Which means the time period underneath the cosplay is the Postwar Reconstruction.
Reconstruction brought the Japanese people into close contact with strange and powerful aliens known as “Americans”, people who were completely different from them, except for the ways in which they were surprisingly similar. Luckily, of all the American stereotypes for them to meet, they got the Kindly American, a distinctive trope of the 1930s-1940s, unfortunately not seen much since then. But where did the Kindly American trope come from?
Considering America’s postwar abundance it can be hard to remember that the most of the population of the young country and it’s colonial antecedents had by that time spent over 200 years in poverty. America was the Land of Opportunity, but for most people it wasn’t the Land of Prosperity. While there were plenty of natural resources – somewhere – without safe and reliable transportation those resources might as well have been in another country. In just one example, the middle of the country depended on the Mississippi River for transportation, but until the invention of steamships that transportation was only one-way as the current was too strong to row against for long. Getting back after taking your crops to market with your income for the entire year in your pocket was a perilous walk through hundreds of miles of bandit-filled wilderness, with no guarantee that you would make it home alive.
What kept the country working under those constraints was the incredible ingenuity of it’s craftspeople, but without reliable transportation to provide the resources they needed and a widespread middle class to buy their goods, they were mostly treading water. The middle class largely existed in isolated pockets in coastal towns and cities. That began to change in the 19th Century, as steamships, roads, canals, and trains began to connect the country. The increased flow of goods led to an increased growth in the middle class, which created a demand for more and better goods. In 1869 the Transcontinental Railroad finally tied the largest parts of the country together, and within a few years American finally had a nation-wide middle class. With their supply lines worked out and a roaring demand for products, American craftspeople could finally turn their ingenuity to innovation, and that, in conjunction with similar developments in Britain, led to the greatest period of technical, scientific, and cultural breakthroughs since the Italian Renaissance.
But American progress and innovation depended on the participation of the American middle class, both to supply new innovators and to buy products. That first nation-wide middle class was born in 1869 and died just 60 years later in 1929. Suddenly, large parts of the country were plunged back into poverty. Business ground to a halt.
By now America had had 60 years to reap the benefits of ingenuity. They had confidence in their renowned skill as mechanical engineers. What if something similar could be used to solve this problem? Something like – social engineering?
It did. A combination of charity, public works programs, and worker’s rights laws known as the New Deal pulled the country back from the brink of destitution and made the US one of the strongest countries in the 1940s. After failures to enact similar programs in other countries led to a world war (among other reasons) the US was convinced that exporting what had worked for them was a solution to about 90% of the world’s problems that could lead the way to a lasting world peace. When they conquered Japan and installed military bases all along it’s coastline, they rolled up their sleeves and went to work rebuilding the country they had just bombed to pieces along the model of the New Deal.
This trope, this person who is absolutely convinced that getting everybody fed, housed, and gainfully employed will solve almost every problem, and that world peace will come as much from hammers and shovels as from swords, who is both strong and kind, is called the Kindly American. This story puts a Japanese person in the role of the Kindly American helping someone else’s culture in the same way that America helped Japan during the Postwar Reconstruction. Following the Kindly American trope, Rimuru is an excellent fighter who fights to end the fighting, not to destroy his enemies. But his progress comes less from his growing fighting skills and more from his excellent managerial skills and with that the ability to organize and implement those hammer-and-shovel projects. Like all good managers he identifies a problem, finds a solution, and most importantly gets out of the way to allow the people he so fervently believes in a chance to shine. It’s not a trope we see much anymore. We have become more cynical, and so have our stereotypes. I’ll say more about the Kindly American trope in another essay.
The basic theme of this story is laid out in Episode 6, after Rimuru has finally met the little girl brought over on the fire tornado during WWII. Shizue Izawa was bound to a Fire Ifrit and has had a long and storied career as an adventurer, but is still melancholy over the fact that the last sight she had of her homeland was her mother’s burned corpse lying in the middle of a blazing inferno. Rimuru opens his memories to her and shows her how Tokyo was rebuilt from the ruins of war into the gleaming metropolis it is today, casting the vision of the modern city over the valley of the goblin village. To a child of who grew up in war and was forcibly relocated to a medieval-style RPG world, it must have looked like something out of a fairy tale, this gleaming city of innovative craftspeople who, after their three-decade climb from ashes to prosperity, would go on to spark a third great wave of technical, scientific, and cultural breakthroughs that transformed the world. It’s a kindness which Shizue is grateful for, but it’s also a subtle hint that the same transformation is possible here.
The basic elements of the New Deal/Reconstruction we see Rimuru replicate in this story are:
1) “food, shelter, clothing”
Rimuru’s first priority was also the first priority of the American forces during Reconstruction, attending to Japan’s widespread hunger. Virtually the entire nation was starving. A food network was established even before formal meetings with the Japanese government were held. As Kazuo Kawaii put it, “Democracy cannot be taught to a starving people.”
2) worker’s rights
After the emergency food network was started, the second priority of the Occupation forces was to pass Japan’s first Trade Union Act (1945) whose goal was to “elevate the status of workers by promoting their being on equal standing with the employer” and protect them from harassment. It’s no coincidence that when Rimuru meets a dwarf Master Craftsman, the poor guy is being harassed by a petty government bureaucrat. Following the “model salaryman on a business trip” playbook, Rimuru is kind, helpful, and respectful, which wins him the business of three Master Craftsmen without needing much of a sale’s pitch. (It also be in brings him to the attention of Dwarf King, but more about that later.)
3) equal opportunity
The next priority of the Occupation forces was passing a raft of measures intended to ensure everyone had an equal opportunity in society. These steps included civil rights protections for women and others, as well as universal free education through junior high. The goal was to create an environment where anybody willing to work hard had a chance to become somebody.
These steps are shorthanded in the person of our Everyman character, Gobta. Originally Gobta is the smallest, weakest, and homeliest of the goblins. After evolution, regular meals, safety, a wolf partner, and martial arts training, he still LOOKS like the smallest, weakest, and homeliest hobgoblin you’ve ever seen, but on the inside he’s become a skilled fighter and a respected leader. Gobta has taken advantage of the expanded opportunities now open to him to become, not a Hero, but a “Citizen Soldier”, another beloved fiction trope of the 1940s.
4) enemies to allies
The underlying purpose of the Occupation of Japan, as with Marshall Plan in Europe, was to create strong enough ties between the nations involved that war would be unthinkable, or at least impractical. To this end a lot of effort was devoted to rebuilding the economies of Japan and Germany and turning them into indispensable trading partners.
In the last essay I wrote about how Rimuru’s fighting style was designed to remove the opponent’s impetus to fight and turn them into allies. This greatly increases the skills available to Rimuru and the village. The ogres bring in a more upper-class collection of badly needed skill-sets, the orcs bring more manpower, and Shizue’s final gift to Rimuru after he frees her from the Fire Ifrit is the ability to take on a human form – all necessary skills if he’s going increase the size and influence of the village the same way the size and influence of Japan’s major cities increased after WWII.
5) war crimes
“War crimes” were a new concept at the end of WWII. After WWI Germany was ruinously punished for the collective guilt of the fallen government, and that retaliation destroyed their economy. Resentment over the unfairness of the situation fueled the rise of the Nazi party. No one wanted that to happen again, but some agreement on justice needed to be reached that would satisfy all parties. The result was the war crimes trials.
The Nuremberg War Crimes Trials were used as a model for the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. They had established two important principles,
a) Anything that was a crime in peacetime was a crime in war time, and
b) “I was just following orders” did not absolve anyone from a crime.
The Tokyo War Crimes Trials added
c) If a superior officer knew that his troops were committing crimes and did nothing to stop, prevent, or punish his troops, that officer was just as guilty as his men. This is known as the Yamashita Standard of Command Responsibility, first used against General Tomoyuki Yamashita for “unlawfully disregarding, and failing to discharge, his duty as a commander to control the acts of members of his command, by permitting them to commit war crimes.” (It would later be used against the American officers who led the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam.)
Pumped up on fascist propaganda and a romanticized notion of “the Good Old Days” when samurai could allegedly kill commoners with impunity, some members of Japan’s military committed horrific acts with apparent abandon. Their trials, as well as the trials of the government officials who promoted the war, satisfied the need for justice and established the new rules under which military and political leaders would be expected to operate while removing the burden of collective guilt from the rest of the population, freeing them to concentrate on rebuilding.
In the story, the issue of war crimes is brought up even before the final battle with the Orcs is over. The Orc army sweeping through the forest is 150,000 strong and eats everything in it’s path, including the bodies of it’s enemies. It’s consumed the village the Ogres are from, and prompted the remaining residents of the forest to form an alliance to stop it. During the resulting battle, it becomes clear that the Orcs are being manipulated by an unknown third party, probably a Demon Lord, trying to create a puppet state in the area. In his duel with the Orc Lord, newly transformed into a Demon Lord, Rimuru finds out that the king was driven to trust a manipulative Demon Lord in order to save his starving people from famine, and now fears that if he dies they will be slaughtered by their enemies in reprisal for the atrocities they have committed. Rimuru promises to assume responsibility for the Orcs and spare them from the burden of their collective guilt before the Orc Lord-turned-Demon Lord will allow himself to die. As Rimuru later explains to his somewhat dubious allies:
“I don’t intend to charge the Orcs with any crimes…..The cause of all this was starvation due to a famine. Anyone, of any race, might have made the same choices under those conditions.”
“I’ve taken all of the Orcs’ sins upon myself….That was my promise to the Demon Lord Geld.”
Rimuru tries to get his allies to look past the devastation that happened and see a better future.
“It may sound like a dream, but I think we can all work together….All the races of the Great Jura Forest will form an alliance and build a mutually cooperative relationship. It’d be really cool if we could create a nation where all races could coexist!”
But to achieve that vision, they’re going to need the Orcs’ help.
6) refugees
By 1945 the war had left so many people homeless a new term had to be created, “displaced person”. Great cities were reduced to rubble, while many smaller towns and villages were so completely obliterated even surveyors had trouble finding where they used to be. In Japan over 40% of 66 urban areas were destroyed. After the war rebuilding the urban centers became a priority, and many refugees followed the work to whichever city had construction jobs available. Regions that had been relatively ethnically homogeneous now welcomed workers of every ethnicity, even former enemies, which laid the groundwork for later conflicts.
In the story Rimuru lays out his dream for a grand expansion of the goblin village, guided by his and the Dwarves’ knowledge and fueled by the Orcs’ labor. It’s a dream so appealing that it draws everyone into a agreement to officially work together.
But the son of the dead Orc Leader is concerned about unofficial reprisals. He approaches Benimaru, the leader of the ogres whose village was consumed, and offers his own head to pay his people’s blood debt and stave off future retaliatory measures. Benimaru is also in charge of Rimuru’s military forces, and promises to stay his hand as long as the orcs serve as good soldiers and workers. Time will tell how well this arrangement will work in the long term.
More importantly in the short term, the ogres and the orcs used the principles Rimuru laid down to settle their differences among themselves without Rimuru having to say anything. This shows that his ideals are no longer his alone, but are taking root in the hearts and minds of his people.
7) formal alliances
The final stage of the Occupation was the signing of the Treaty of San Francisco, which formally recognized Japan as a sovereign nation once again and set up the rules under which it would operate, while forming a new alliance with the US.
In the story, after three months of solid building in the village Gazel Dwargo, Hero King of the Dwarves, arrives with his army to check out the new neighbors. Impressed with what he finds, he offers a formal alliance with the hastily organized Jura Tempest Federation established under Chancellor Rimuru, put together just to accept his treaty. This gives an official shape to Rimuru’s dreams, as well as a formal mandate with formal boundaries.
All this was foreshadowed many times over, especially in Ranga’s speach to Rimuru which echoed the typical Japanese commoner’s lack of interest in vengeance against the American forces during the Occupation. Government propaganda had painted the American troops as monsters who would rape, mutilate, and castrate any Japanese that fell into their hands. The Japanese commoners were relieved to find out this was not the case, and extremely happy to actually get the social reforms they had wanted instead of fascism and war in the first place. As for the upper class, they tended to echo Rimuru’s exchange with Benimaru:
“You guys lost your home, too. Don’t you have any complaints?”
“I would be lying if I said we didn’t, but if it happens again, we will not disgrace ourselves a second time.”
But my favorite callback is sartorial. The Goblin Riders adopt a signature look of the US forces during the Occupation, the US Army Air Corps sheepskin-trimmed bomber jacket, and a recognizable version of that period’s Army Class A uniform of white t-shirt, pinky-beige trousers with matching arm guards standing in for the Army’s matching dress shirt, and brown combat boots. Set against their green skin, the effect calls to mind the nickname of that uniform, “the Pinks and the Greens”.
So that explains what is going on, but why? This is hardly the first time that postwar Japan has played a part in anime. The themes of Japanese children’s stories, manga, and anime have been strongly influenced by the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal thanks to the work of the Gakushuin University Children’s Literature Research Project whose members included Hayaou Miyazaki, but that’s a discussion for another time. To the best of my knowledge, never has the focus been so intent on providing such an elaborate fantasy retelling of the Occupation.
In order to answer that question, let’s look at what it’s not. It’s obviously not a historical retelling of events, in fact it leaves out certain matters specific to the Japanese Occupation such as the demilitarization of Japan at the request of the Prime Minister. Nor is it a straight-up allegory which matches historical personas up to fantasy personas one-to-one; instead who is taking on the historical role of Japan in various scenes changes minute to minute. And of course it’s not a full and sober reckoning with Japan’s role in the war; by my calculations that will arrive approximately 30 seconds before we get one from my own American South about the Confederacy. No, this is a fable, a story told with animals (or monsters) that talk and behave like humans which conveys a lesson.
So what’s the lesson? The lesson is that the techniques derived from the New Deal that were used to rescue Japan from it’s lowest point work. They make up a distilled formula that has been proven successful time and again with a diverse array of impoverished and dispirited communities, and should be remembered for when – not if – they are needed again.
And about time too. The WWII generation is almost gone. The children who grew up during the Occupation are Miyazaki’s age. Within a decade there will be no one left who remembers it first-hand and can tell children what it was like back then. It’s time to take the most important lessons of the day and distill them into a fable for children to enjoy and learn from. It’s interesting that the New Deal aspects are what the writer considers the most important lesson, however I can’t disagree with his choice.
But, as Rimuru says, “all good things must come to an end.” Episodes 16 and 17 takes us out of the Postwar Occupation period and into the next stage of modern Japanese history in a story that had me laughing my head off and cringing from embarrassment at the same time. See you then.
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Blogpost #7 OADs 1-2: Home Improvements
Tensura Season 1 was an allegorical retelling of postwar Japanese history up through the 1950s as an “animal” (monster) fable, focusing on broad strokes and foreign relations. I wondered if we would see anything about domestic events, and here we are. The first two episodes of the OADs focus on elements that became prominent in Japanese life during that time period. On the surface they’re silly comedy sketches, but there’s a lot more going on underneath.
The first episode is called, “Hey, Butts!”, and it has a simple premise. In spite of his indestructible body and spectacular successes Rimuru is suffering from an unspecified dissatisfaction, so he has his pet mad scientist make him some sleeping pills. Rimuru takes one and dreams that his people are also suffering from an unspecified dissatisfaction. To alleviate it, he introduces community sports, specifically Japan’s national sport of Sumo wrestling. Hilarity ensues. But underneath that story is a problem that goes back to the beginning of the modern city in the 19th Century.
Technological advances in the 19th Century made modern cities larger, denser, and more efficient than ever before, while public health advances made them cleaner and safer to live in. In spite of these advances, residents reported feeling a widespread unspecified dissatisfaction which they couldn’t shake. In order to deal with it, European and American intellectuals invented psychology, sociology, communism, modern physical fitness culture, several religions, and countless other cure-alls, to little avail. In 1946, the term “stress” came to be used to describe the unpleasant feeling caused by the “cumulative, non-specific dissatisfaction with modern life”.
The mid-century answer to stress was drugs, drugs, and more drugs, at a rate that makes today’s fentanyl crisis seem tame in comparison. The two favorites, easily available at any doctor’s office for any, all, or no complaints, were tranquilizers or “sleeping pills”, and amphetamines marketed as “diet pills” or “fatigue killers”.
Sleeping pills were the most prescribed medication of the 1950s. At that time there were no really useful treatments or medicines for psychological ailments that didn’t require hospitalization, so people were given sleeping pills not just for sleep disorders, but for anxiety, depression, and anything else that caused a patient disquiet. People with reasons far more vague than Rimuru’s were given tranquilizers by the fistful.
Amphetamines had been widely used during WWII by the German, American, and Japanese armies as an alertness pill; kamikaze pilots were given a special dose before being sent on their missions. “The Japanese called war stimulants ’ "senryoku zokyo zai” or drug to inspire the fighting spirits’ (Kato 1969: 592). Pilots were expected to fly planes for many hours beyond their physical capacity; soldiers were expected to fight as long as days at a time with no rest; submarine commanders and midshipmen were required to endure months of maritime service on meagre rations; factory workers laboured in subhuman conditions with deteriorating and broken equipment. Taking stimulants to enhance performance was a mark of patriotism.“ (Captain America’s "super soldier serum” was probably based on an injection of amphetamine cut with vitamins popular with upper class executives that was shown in an episode of Mad Men.) After the war amphetamines were heavily marketed to women as “diet pills”, specially manufactured in a rainbow of bright, cheerful colors so that, as the pharmaceutical companies told doctors, if a woman was unhappy with one dose, she could be prescribed the same dosage in another color to make her feel better. Japanese men also felt “compelled to take ‘fatigue killers’, which were advertised aggressively as therapeutic and beneficial.”
In the mid-century it was quite possible for a respectable middle class person to have one prescription for amphetamines, another for sleeping pills, AND to be advised by their doctor to use coffee for energy as well as alcohol and tobacco for relaxation – a condition that these days would call for an intervention. Popular opinion wouldn’t start to turn against tranquilizers and stimulants until the late 1960s to early 1970s, partly as a result of in-depth reporting on their overuse. After that, recreational drug use began to look like what’s available on the black market today.
(Meanwhile, back in the early 20th Century when the problem of modern psychological stress first showed up, Asian intellectuals were also watching the malaise develop in Europe and the European colonies in Asia and taking notes on the various attempts to treat it, knowing that it was only a matter of time before it showed up in Asian communities as well. Before the war they started kicking around the idea of treating these problems with exercise and traditional Asian practices such as yoga, Tai Chi, and mindfulness, but these ideas didn’t catch on until doctors stopped prescribing mood-altering drugs in the late 20th Century. It’s a lot easier to pop a pill than it is to practice Sun Salutations.)
Today we know the answer for that general malaise is rest, connection, and civic engagement. A widespread early to mid-century attempt to foster connection and civic engagement was through community sports. The Japanese love of traditional sports like Sumo wrestling goes back centuries. Interest in Western sports spread through the school system, which became universally available in the post-war era. By the mid-century Japan was considered to be one of the most sports-loving countries on the planet.
In the end Rimuru decides against the use of drugs and orders them locked in a vault, but I hope he does decide to introduce community sports. Soccer, with it’s global appeal, is probably a better choice. (I once saw an anthropological film of a Stone age village engaging in a communal rabbit hunt which looked like half a soccer game. Soccer may very well be close to being instinctive.)
The second episode is titled “The Tragedy of M?” Rimuru gets tired of being excessively manhandled by girls (something his former self could barely conceive of) and decides to make them bean bag cushion substitutes. This calls for obtaining special sand from a lake with a lake monster. Beach-related hilarity ensues.
I’m not what the “M” in the title refers to, but it could be Modernism, as the episode is a celebration of Modern design. Modernism was an umbrella term for overlapping congruent movements in the arts and philosophy that began in the late 19th Century and dominated the early 20th Century. While most Modern movements had died out by the mid-century, Modern design, with it’s emphasis on clean lines, functionality, and mass production, kept going through the 1970s. According to this episode Modern design’s greatest contributions were beanbag cushions, bikinis, Spandex, and pinup pictures.
(Y'know, I can’t argue with that list.)
The newest item on the list is the beanbag cushion, invented in Italy in 1968 to showcase Italian expertise and new materials. The oldest item on the list is the pin-up picture, originally invented in the late 19th Century to promote exercise to a public that was highly dubious of it’s benefits. Only later did the pin-up come to presented in a risque style. Either way, pin-ups were banned in Japan until the Occupation.
The bikini was invented in France in 1946 when designers took a wartime injunction to “use 10% less fabric on women’s swimsuits” as a creative challenge. Spandex wasn’t invented until later, in one of my favorite 20th Century stories.
Chemical companies came out of WWI with blackened reputations due to the invention of poison gas. DuPont wanted to turn this around by inventing a product that would make life easier for women. They decided the biggest problem they could make money by solving for women revolved around the girdle. In those days almost every woman in Western garb wore tight, constricting underwear reinforced with rubber and steel. They were painful and severely limited movement. DuPont set out to invent a fabric that would be just as supportive as rubber and steel but more comfortable to wear. The R&D took over a quarter of a century but finally in 1958 Joseph Shivers invented Spandex, the miraculous supportive fabric with four-way stretch. DuPont ordered thousands of yards of the new material in all colors and thicknesses, sure that they were about to dominate the girdle industry.
Then woman solved their own problem with girdles by abandoning them for feminism and pain-free movement. All that miracle fabric piled up in warehouses in what looked like one of the biggest boondoggles in manufacturing history. But what feminism taketh away, it returneth tenfold. Women stopped wearing girdles so they could exercise, for which they needed supportive clothing. It wasn’t long before designers were reaching for Spandex, to invent the sports bra in 1977 and the aerobic leotard in 1978. Modern athletic wear had arrived, and Spandex hasn’t stopped flying off the shelves yet.
In the end Rimuru has a new monster friend and the town has some new fashion and home decor choices that may or may not take off. It would be nice to see the beanbags again at a later time.
The final three episodes concern Rimuru’s days as a teacher. I’ll cover them next time.
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Blogpost #6 Episodes 20-24: Hopes, Dreams, and Monsters
Episodes 20-23 are the last story arc of Season 1. Episodes 24 sets things up for later.
We start with the wrap-up of the Charybdis story. The smiths are slavering over the monster scales, bringing to mind how postwar Japanese industry got off the ground by making toys out of the Occupation force’s thrown-away tin cans. Everyone else is slavering over filleted Megalodon. Which brings up a question I’ve been meaning to ask – how are they feeding everyone? They’re apparently feeding hundreds of thousands of sedentary people using hunter-gatherer techniques designed to feed small groups of mobile and semi-mobile people. That’s not sustainable. Granted, it’s clearing out the local dangerous wildlife, but it won’t last over the long term. Eventually they’re going have to either introduce some form of large-scale agriculture or import food by the tonne.
And that brings up a bigger problem. Tensura is an allegorical fable retelling of the fantastic growth of Japan’s postwar period, with an emphasis on foreign policy issues. So far we’re skipping domestic issues of the day like strikes and student movements. But Japan has lingering problems that went along with their superfast growth, including urban sprawl and environmental degradation. Are we going to cover those issues or not? They’re familiar enough to the target audience that their absence would probably be noticed. And how are they going to handle them? Satori was in general contracting. He’s no doubt aware of such problems back home, and theoretically could take steps to prevent or mitigate them in Jura. But if he does that, this story will no longer be a straight allegorical fable. But if he DOESN’T prevent those problems from showing up, the audience will wonder why.
At that point, the story will have to decide if they want to go on telling a straight-up allegorical fable, or if they are going to veer into wish fulfillment. We’re not there yet, but that crossroads is coming up.
Rimuru is enjoying the lady’s side of the bathhouse. Compliments are flowing, and Milim once again suggests that Rimuru become a Demon Lord. Once again Rimuru can’t see any merit in it. He asks Milim why she became a Demon Lord, but she can’t remember.
Milim gets ready to leave to speak to the other Demon Lords about the Jura Forest. Everyone begs her not to be tricked, but she claims she’s too smart – yet intelligence by itself is no immunization from the subtle forms of trickery that Clayman practices.
With everything finally calm, Rimuru gets a dream message from Shizu to honor her last request and see to her Otherworlder students in Ingrassia, the human kingdom that sent the mercenary scouting party. No one wants to see Rimuru go, but he assures his people they can handle their jobs in his absence.
A few days travel brings Ranga and Rimuru to the human kingdom, whose city shows even higher tech than the dwarves have. Judging from the tall buildings and the plate glass I would say about 1900-level.
(Hmm, plate glass and plate armor. That’s an interesting juxtaposition. So they have the magical equivalent of early 20th Century technology, but no firearms. That’s problematic. Maybe they’re fueling everything with magic instead of coal, but to extract that much metal and minerals they need dynamite (or the magical equivalent). And if they have dynamite they should have gunpowder (or the magical equivalent). Either way they should have some version of firearms.)
Rimuru makes his way to the adventurer’s association Shizue belonged to known as the Free Guild. There’s a tense moment with the Grandmaster Yuuki Kagurazaka, who recognizes Shizue’s mask and assumes the worst, before Rimuru and the young Japanese Otherworlder bond over otaku-lore from home with the help of a pile of manga recreated from Rimuru’s memories.
It turns out the Free Guild runs a school and makes a special effort to collect Otherworlders like Shizue and Yuuki. Some arrive spontaneously, while others have been ported over by cadres of wizards and stuffed with magicules in an attempt to create superweapons in a process called “summoning”. The summoning ceremony is apparently unpredictable and sometimes summons children too young for the process. Their immature bodies can’t handle the stress caused by the influx of magic, and they die within five years. The Free Guild currently has five such children, who were Shizue’s special students. Rimuru realizes that the children are Shizue’s lingering regret, and agrees to take her place as their teacher.
On the way to the classroom Yuuki explains how the immense effort needed to pull off the spell usually involves entire nations. Rimuru is stunned.
“Whole nations are involved in Summoning?”
“Yes. I suppose that was this world’s choice. Rather than strengthening armies so they can face monsters, it may be more effective to summon an Otherworlder of incomparable strength. That’s what they thought.”
Ah, that’s what this tale about. We’re covering the 1950s, and the most tragic story of 1950s Japan was the lingering deaths of the youngest victims of WWII by radiation poisoning.
Allied strategists planning the invasion of Japan confronted a dire reality. Japan was gearing up for what today we would call a “Vietnam scenario”, but one that would have made Vietnam look like a cakewalk. Every Japanese person had been ordered to kill the invaders, including children, the elderly, and the disabled. The anticipated death toll was between 5.5 million - 11 million people, including all the Allied POWs, whose mass execution had been ordered to take place immediately after Allied forces landed on Japan. Nothing the strategists had tried to mitigate that grim calculation had worked. So the US military deployed an untested superweapon in an attempt to save the lives of infantrymen, civilians and enemy combatants.
The conventional damage was shocking enough for Japan to call off the war. But no one anticipated the extent of the radiation damage. They couldn’t. The injuries shattered the known laws of medicine in 1944. While radiation could harm physical bodies in close proximity, they knew it couldn’t travel through the air like light and harm distant bodies. They knew light-type energy couldn’t poison those distant bodies as if it were a toxin. Even if it could, there was no proof that any environmental toxin could cause cancer. And everyone knew no toxin could penetrate a woman’s “cast iron” uterus (the metaphor used at that time) and poison her fetus.
They learned a lot after the bombs fell.
Yuuki explains that the summoning nations have abandoned the kids as defective and don’t care what happens to them. Tragically, this is similar to the fate of the hibakusha, the explosion victims, who at first were officially denied long-term treatment by both Japan and America. It wasn’t until the 1950s that the world first began to comprehend the magnitude of the injuries – just in time to watch the last of the children with serious radiation poisoning die. Their story would be immortalized in Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, as well as the burgeoning anti-nuclear movement Moms For Peace.
But they soon became mythologized, and not just for paper cranes. As mid-century people struggled to wrap their minds around the New World Order, the lethal fuel of modern superweapons was portrayed as giving powers to everything from insects to people in a bunch of mid-century horror movies – and especially giving dangerous powers to children, first in The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), then in Village of the Damned (1960), and most memorably to the most famous Children of the Atom, Marvel Comics The Uncanny X-Men (1963).
Rimuru pledges to do what he can to save the children. Yuuki is grateful.
Rimuru meets the kids. They behave like children who know they have a terminal illness but still have their energy – they run wild. There’s no nihilist like a hopeless child. On top of that, they’re extremely powerful because of the magicules they were given. Needless to say, they’re not impressed with Rimuru. But apparently Veldora, still deep inside Rimuru, reacts to the most perceptive child, a ten-year old girl named Chloe. Since Veldora’s been bound for 300 years they couldn’t have met before, so we’re likely looking at intergenerational, time-distortion, or reincarnation shenanigans.
Rimuru wins over the kids after beating them at magic dodgeball. He remembers that Shizue survived by being bound to a fire ifrit, and begins searching for gentler spirits to help tame the children’s out-of-control energy. A new merchant contact helps him find the hidden Dwelling of the Spirits. After they pass some tests, the Queen of the Spirits, aka Demon Lord Ramiris, agrees to help them call spirits to aid the children, as she did long ago for Leon, the Demon Lord who enslaved Shizue, back when he was the Hero.
(Rimuru files that tidbit away for later.)
One at a time, the children call spirits to come aid them. Three of the kids get a lot of smaller spirits too weak to do the job individually; acting on a suggestion from Ramiris Rimuru combines the small ones who appear for each of those children into a larger entity strong enough to help contain the child’s power and bonds them to the child. The class firebrand attracts a male fairy Ramiris knows, presumably a trickster spirit. And then there’s Chloe.
Chloe attracts SOMETHING, something female, insanely powerful, and that appears to already have a bond with the little girl. Once again, Veldora appears to react to her from deep inside Rimuru. Ramiris has no idea what it is, but babbles about possible intergenerational, time-distortion, or reincarnation shenanigans. On the way to Chloe the apparition – kisses Rimuru? Or is the kiss meant for….
Veldora, you sly worm. You completely forgot to mention that you were romantically involved with the Hero who sealed you up 300 years ago. The Hero whose mask Shizue inherited and gave to Rimuru, which Chloe has an affinity for.
With the help of the bonded spirits, the children appear stable. They should now be able to grow up in control of their powers. A final favor satisfies Ramiris, apparently the creation of a golem, although we don’t get the details.
Rimuru and the children return to the Free Union. Now that their powers are tamped down, they can be integrated into regular classes with other children. As a parting gift, Rimuru gives them Japanese schoolchildren’s clothes. Chloe is still reacting strongly to Rimuru, and Veldora-inside-Rimuru is still reacting strongly to Chloe, so Rimuru gives Chloe the Hero mask because “it just felt right”.
This story marks a significant departure from the established pattern. Previously the plot has been a fairly straightforward allegorical retelling of historical events, much as Tolkien did with Lord of the Rings. The perspectives were changed with which person was representing what entity being fairly fluid, but the outcome stayed the same. This is the first time an outcome has been changed, although if you’re going to veer into fantasy wish fulfillment at some point the fate of the hibakusha children is a good place to start. If there’s anything from the 1950s that Japan would want to change, that would be it.
Rimuru’s leave-taking is observed by two shadowy figures. One wears the clothes of a Champion, perhaps it is Shizue’s former protege Hinata? The other appears to be a demon who has been waiting for a summon from Rimuru – do what? – and a chance to “finally learn the truth of this world”. It’s obviously a setup for next season, and a reminder that we still don’t know who, how, or why Rimuru was summoned to this world in the first place.
The final episode is a continuation of the setup and a flashback to Shizue’s adventuring days. A demon has taken over a kingdom and turned it into a trap for adventurers. A dying adventurer summons an ancient and powerful demon for revenge, the very demon we saw stalking Rimuru in the future. Shizue and the demon team up to eliminate the threat. We learn that Shizue’s mask has some sort of time distortion abilities and that the demon is – already waiting for Rimuru? Curiouser and curiouser.
And that’s the season. It’s covered the postwar era and the 1950s, so the next season should cover the 1960s and Japan’s emergence as an economic superpower, which should correspond to Rimuru’s ascendance to minor Demon Lord status.
Retelling recent history as animal fables is a much more traditional use of the “journey to another world” trope than I’ve seen in other isekai, and it’s got quite a punch. That’s too big a topic just to tack on to the end of this essay, but I’ll write a separate essay on it if anyone asks for it. Dredging through the old horrors for this essay got pretty intense. I’m looking forward to taking a break while watching the lighter-weight Slime Diaries before diving into next season. See ya later!
ETA: On the advice of my Slime Guru, I’m doing the OADs next.
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Blogpost #5 Episodes 17-19: The Cold War
The remainder of the first season is mostly taken up with two story arcs. In-story they deal with the theme of strengthening relationships, and tangentially refer to Valdora. Metaphorically they deal with events that happened in Japan in the 1950s, and tangentially refer to nuclear weapons. But there are big operational changes that happen in each story, so we’ll take them one at a time. The first story is a Cold War analogy.
In some ways the Cold War was a disorienting time in Japan. The three major players, all superpowers, were China, the Soviet Union, and America. China formed Japan’s western border across the sea, while the Soviet Union formed Japan’s northern border, occupying what Japan considered it’s northern territories, the Kuril Islands. America held large tracts of Japan’s southern island of Okinawa. If overt hostilities had broken out between any two of the three Japan would have been crushed.
But this was the Cold War, and overt hostilities were a small part of the picture. Japan had previously fought and won wars with both China and Russia, and had lingering issues with those countries (Japan never signed a peace treaty with the Soviet Union because of the Kuril Islands.) During the Cold War Japan found itself relegated to a secondary status as China and the Soviet Union used it as a pawn in their jostling with America instead of dealing with Japan’s own issues with them. (Which is largely why Japan never signed a peace treaty with the Soviet Union because of the Kuril Islands.) Japan found the tendency of the superpowers to overlook Japan’s own legitimate concerns in favor of scoring points against each other – annoying.
On to the story. Like almost every Cold War tale it has elements of the cups and ball trick, so keep your eye on the ball.
We start with Rimuru getting a progress report from Vesta the Tech Dwarf. Vesta is able to synthesize Rimuru’s healing potions better than Dwargo’s techies can. He wants to mass-produce and sell low-quality healing potions after working out a deal with Dwarf King. Dwarves would supply raw materials to be assembled in Rimuru Town’s local factories. (This is similar to the arrangement Japanese factories formed internationally after Reconstruction. Japan is low in raw materials, but high in skilled workers. Japan became a leader in manufactured goods, starting with low-quality items and working their way up to high-quality items.) I am amused to note that Vesta has in his lab every early 20th century boy’s favorite DIY project, a crystal radio kit, although this set apparently has a magic crystal. Either way, it’s the first item we’ve seen of post-Industrial, even 20th Century tech. Rimuru starts thinking about a deal for Dwargo, presumably to be worked out over said radio.
Meanwhile back at the plot, everyone else wants to check out the new neighbors, including the two of the three Demon Lords we met with Milim (who promised neutrality) and at least two neighboring human kingdoms. Demon Lord Carrion sends a scouting party to claim the territory for himself. I feel doubly insulted on Milim’s behalf. First, because Carrion went back on his word to her. Second, because he chose a scouting party not much more powerful than the human scouting parties with an idiot leader named Phobio who thinks he can personally conquer what both an Orc Army and Milim couldn’t conquer. (Although since this is a Cold War story we can’t be sure that Carrion didn’t set Phobio up as a useful idiot.)
As a scout Phobio is a miserable failure. He should be quietly gathering intelligence to report back, and let his superiors decide what to do with the information. Instead he comes across an advanced town in the middle of nowhere whose inhabitants are powerful enough to hold off an Orc Army and tries to intimidate them into submission. It doesn’t work. He disfigures Rigurd and Milim pounds him into submission. Rimuru catches up to them, heals Rigurd, and tries to punish Milim be denying her lunch. That doesn’t work either. Milim is very much the 300 pound gorilla of Rimuru Town. She’s going to do what she wants to do, and all anyone else can do is encourage her to want to cooperate.
Back at Rimuru’s office Phobio refuses to believe what his eyes are telling him. He refuses to believe a slime is asking him questions or running the town. He belittles the monsters who serve Rimuru, and by extension Lady Milim for being a friend to a “lowly slime”. Phobio doesn’t know what to make of the fact that Lady Milim will obey a “lowly slime” even on little issues. Rimuru tells Phobio that his poor behavior could start a war for his boss with the forest alliance, but Phobio blows him off. He tells Rimuru that he’s looking for potential recruits for Lord Carrion. Rimuru tells Phobio that Carrion can make an appointment if he wants to talk, but privately doubts Phobio will deliver the message.
Milim is quietly pissed at Carrion for breaking his word. Phobio is quietly pissed with Milim for humiliating him. He can’t bring himself to take responsibility for his own foolishness or to blame a “lowly slime” for his comeuppance. Rimuru gets the details on the Demon Lords’ original plan to create a puppet state in Jura from Milim in exchange for promising her a new weapon.
Remember those two human kingdoms who are investigating the goings-on in the Jura Forest? The nearest kingdom sends in the (less than stellar) Adventurer’s Guild squad we’ve already met under the watchful eye of their boss. The kingdom further away sends a crackerjack mercenary team. On top of that Demon Lord Clayman sends in the clowns, aka a clown-based squad of “independent operatives” who coincidentally appear to only work for him.
Both human parties run into a very nasty monster, which doesn’t last long after it runs into a very hungry Gobta. Everyone ends up at the Chancellor’s table in Rimuru Town (including the monster, who is lunch). The humans are a bit freaked over the fighting, tech levels, the connections to the Dwarves they’ve seen, and that a slime is running the joint,. Rimuru is a bit freaked that tales about his prowess might attract the wrong kind of attention. He impulsively hires both groups of humans – the mercs to pretend to be the heroes who took out the Orc Army, and the head of the Adventurer’s Guild to train them to up to the point where they look somewhat convincing. Turns out the mercs have a few too many people mad at them back home, so they’re eager for a chance to make a fresh start somewhere else, especially in a place where diverse peoples are working together in peace and harmony. It’s a crazy plan that just might work – at least until someone with two brain cells to rub together comes along to verify it, or gets access to Clayman’s video of the battle.
Guild boss Fuze sets the mercs up with a fake reputation as heroes, and Rimuru offers to build a road to Fuze’s kingdom of Blumund to facilitate trade, in exchange for a contact with marketing savvy to get them some international commerce going.
All the scouting parties have one thing in common. Their initial reaction is disbelief that a slime could be that powerful or that the town could have grown so strong so fast. This is similar to the reaction other countries had to Japan’s rapid recovery after practically being bombed back to the Stone Age in WWII. Even with all the help, many observers thought it would take over a century for Japan to recover, not around a decade as they went through the fastest period of sustained progress in human history.
(This was hardly the first time the West found Japan confusing. My daughter the historian was once shown archival military footage of one of the first US landings on a Pacific island held by the Japanese. The American soldiers saw Japanese soldiers in the flesh for the first time, stopped in confusion and asked each other loudly enough for the microphones to catch it, “Why are those little guys firing at us?” At that time the cultural taboo that proper American men didn’t beat up on “little guys” was so deeply ingrained they had trouble believing they were supposed to fight them.)
Turns out Clayman’s hired clowns are the best scouts. They’ve been quietly taking notes the whole time. Their boss is intrigued. He also wants to know why Demon Lord Frey is the only one NOT breaking their promise to Milim, but Frey is apparently more concerned about the awakening of someone or something called “Charybdis”. It’s said to be a monster with the power to rival a Demon Lord, but in typical Cold War fashion all Clayman wants to know is if this great power can be turned into an asset.
That’s all the cups on the table. Now watch the ball.
By nightfall Phobio has had time to – well not calm down, but at least realize how badly he has messed things up. The townspeople have skills even his people lack. They would have made useful contacts, but he blew it. Instead of blaming himself for attacking the headman, he blames himself for not being able to take out the much more powerful Milim all on his lonesome. Either that or he blames Milim for being in the way. I’m not sure exactly which prejudice he’s using to deflect the blame from himself to her, but he’s got more than enough to do the job. He wants revenge on those who kicked his ass so he won’t have to tell Lord Carrion about his failure. (Damn son, that amount of hubris always leads to a dirt bath.) Phobio is aware that he’s not being rational, but he’s not ready to man up and accept responsibility for his mistake.
And that foolishness makes him entirely too tempting to the fools.
The clowns reveal themselves and offer him the power of Charybdis, power to rival a Demon Lord – if he isn’t too cowardly to brave the associated risk. His squadron tries to talk him out of it, but the chance to reach Demon Lord level and take out the woman who humiliated him is too tempting. He resigns Carrion’s service to devote himself to revenge. (Good grief, the lengths some young men will go to to avoid saying, “I screwed up.”)
The clowns take their mark to the cave where Charybdis is sealed, and tell him that in order to control the beast he must allow it to posses his body. And suddenly we’re in the middle of a 1950s Universal Pictures monster movie, complete with an idiot wanting more power than he can control. Turns out the clowns were planning to revive it by sacrificing a bunch of dragons to it, but the chance to use a sucker with more muscles than brains as a living sacrifice was too good to pass up.
The Dryads send word to Rimuru Town that Charybdis is coming, and suggest an air assault. Their rep explains that it’s an incredibly powerful mindless monster capable of dying and being reborn, originally generated by a cloud of magic from the storm dragon Veldora – okay, so not an Universal Pictures monster after all. This is Godzilla.
There’s an ancient trope about the Mediterranean gods smiting humans in retaliation for them making too much progress, either from multiculturalism (the Tower of Babel) or the conquest of fire (Prometheus). It simmered away on the back burner of human consciousness until the Industrial Revolution, when progress hit the accelerator. Coal-hungry humans dug more and deeper mines than ever before, and found the fossils of huge dinosaurs. The trope mutated to become the myth of a primeval monster awakened from the deep to smite humanity for its progress, either from multiculturalism (Cthulhu) or the conquest of nuclear power (Godzilla). So which is Charybdis complaining about, multiculturalism or technology? Looking at all the diverse peoples working together in Rimuru Town I’m going with multiculturalism. We can’t have folks living together in peace and harmony: it makes them so much harder to manipulate!
And this particular Godzilla brought his homies with him. The 13 excess dragon corpses have been repurposed to house evil flying armored shark spirits called Medalodons, just to make the day even more special.
Hearing that Charybdis is Veldora’s spawn, Rimuru quietly panics, just as he panicked at the battle with the Dire Wolves. He frets that Charybdis knows what he did to Veldora and wants revenge. In his panic Rimuru breaks his battle pattern and makes a critical error. He assumes he knows why the monster is attacking, that it’s after him, and he doesn’t investigate to find out for sure as he’s done with every other battle since the first one.
Milim offers to take care of the problem in no time, but the ogres persuade Rimuru that propriety insists that he, as the host, take the literal first stab at it. This arrangement hurts Milim’s feelings, and doesn’t please Rimuru either, but he can’t afford to appear weak in front of his people or their new allies. Fuze finds his thinking very human, and Rimuru confesses to being a reincarnated human Otherworlder.
The next day in the forest outside town Charybdis and his Old School mates show up, doing a remarkable impression of a B-52 Stratofortress leading a support squadron of fighter planes. They square off against Rimuru and every fighter he could round up, including a battalion of Dwargo’s flying knights. The battle goes as can be expected. The flying sharks are quickly but with a great deal of effort turned into sushi. Milim wants to play but gets benched. An all-out assault on Charybdis that lasts all day and takes out 30% of their forces barely makes a dent in the monster, and that damages quickly repairs itself. It doesn’t look good for our side.
Finally an exhausted Rimuru does what he should have done in the first place. He stops assuming he knows what Charybdis wants and finds out for himself. Turns out his assumption was wrong. Charybdis, as powered by Phobio, is only interested in Milim. He could care less about Rimuru or the rest of them. Just like with superpowers, in the grand scheme of Demon Lord vs. Demon Lord contests, their little country is only a pawn.
So Rimuru explains the situation to Milim, asks her to take out Charybdis but spare Phobio for his intelligence and political value, and recalls every other fighter. One minute later, the battle ends with one blow from Milim. Had Rimuru checked his facts before starting the fight as he should have done, they could have all been home in time for brunch. That was poor leadership on his part.
Rimuru removes Charybdis from Phobio and isolates it for analysis. The Dwarf Captain wants to meet Rimuru’s superweapon, but refuses to believe it’s really Demon Lord Milim (we have a pattern here.)
Phobio wakes up contrite and tell them all he knows. Notes are compared, and people realize that clowns have been behind a lot of the trouble recently. Milim says she doesn’t know anything about them, but suggests they may work for Clayman, who indulges in that sort of scheming.
Phobio offers his life in payment, gets forgiven, and Milim calls forth Demon Lord Carrion, who has been lurking in the shadows. Carrion physically reprimands Phobio, and tries to paint himself as a reliable neighbor they can come to for help. Rimuru presses him for a non-aggression pact. Carrion agrees – as the Lord of his kingdom, but NOT as a Demon Lord. How much wriggle room this grants him remains to be seen.
And where does that leave Rimuru? With a lot more foreign officials having met him, including a few potential allies. As for Carrion and Clayman, I’m tempted to say that the more bestial Carrion is a stand-in for Russia/the Soviet Union, while the scheming Clayman subs for China, but I don’t know enough to say for sure. I definitely trust Carrion about as far as I could throw Charybdis.
That’s as much Cold War skullduggery as most people can take. Next story we visit Japan’s entry for the Cold War’s greatest tragedy.
A new YouTube series by me in which I ahev comedic take on anime/movie/TV shows/misc. And this one is on the first episode of That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime
![无题 | 地丶點 [pixiv]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/b4ee0a7b4666a831b2d56ca0cd037022/tumblr_plr55g9epV1u2xpn7o1_1280.jpg "无题 | 地丶點 [pixiv]")
![え…！あ……うん。 | chocofox [pixiv]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/c3f0be5d6eba081b8704c75a4cbe6b5e/tumblr_plr5400wXv1u2xpn7o1_1280.jpg "え…！あ……うん。 | chocofox [pixiv]")
![リムル＝テンペスト | 大異 [pixiv]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/f23008fd67d071c7d0323e4357cdf7fd/tumblr_plr52piUTr1u2xpn7o1_1280.jpg "リムル＝テンペスト | 大異 [pixiv]")
