Review: That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond
One of the big weapons in the arsenal of any modern anime series, particularly majorly successful ones, is the time-honored movie entry. Historically speaking movie entries in anime series tended to be inconsequential filler designed to give the fans a nice little vacation with their favorite characters. They could also serve as entry points to potential new fans by giving them effectively a greatest hits album of what the series had to offer while also completely divorcing the film from series canon so nothing ultimately mattered. Such films were low risk, high reward affairs for all involved.
Recently, however, anime series have started to see a rise in films that are actually canon, such as Jujutsu Kaisen 0: The Movie and Demon Slayer: Mugen Train, as well as the entire catalog of Dragon Ball films starting with Battle of Gods. This has been a riskier venture, but with potentially higher yields. The risk is, by being canon, viewers get the most out of them if they are caught up with the series. The reward, however, is that because they are canon, they are natural honey traps to fans of the series, because of the fear that if they don’t see this film, they will be missing key details when the anime series’ next season comes out. This has been paying off in a big way as canon anime films have rapidly become among the highest grossing entries in the medium.
So when it was announced that the popular isekai fantasy series That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime was getting its first ever movie, fans and outside observers both wondered how it would go. Would it be filler? Would it be canon? This question only intensified when it was announced that the film’s script would be penned by none other than Fuse, the author of the books that the anime is based on. Well the answer, it turns out, is a weird midpoint between the two.
As it currently stands Scarlet Bond appears to be complete filler, as there is no clue when the events of the film will be brought back into the greater canon of the franchise. Yet at the same time, Scarlet Bond trades on the belief that everyone watching the film is caught up with the series, at least as far as the end of the second season of the anime. But it isn’t just the placement in the series itself that matters here.
Rather uncharacteristically for an original film entry in an existing anime property, it barely gives any time to explaining the mechanics of its world. Given that That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is a fantasy isekai series, it has a fairly robust and somewhat complex magical system in place. Part of this system is the power that names have. In this series when someone gives a magical creature a name, they evolve and tap into greater power than they previously had access to, and this is basically the only part of the magical system that is even only tangentially touched upon.
In addition to this Scarlet Bond just overall has a very weird sense of pacing. I will cut Fuse some slack because this is their first go at writing a film, but it is a nearly two hour long film, and an hour into the film they were still doing set up before actually getting to the conflict part of the admittedly rather basic story at play here. The core narrative of this film is an ogre from the same village that the ogres that are loyal the Rimuru, the titular slime, were from deserts a demon lord’s army before being cut down during his escape.
He is found and cared for by Towa, the queen of a small and once prosperous kingdom called Raja. Raja once was able to sustain itself on the wealth mined from a substantial gold vein under the kingdom, but the gold has since ran out. On top of this, toxins from the mining operations have seeped into the kingdom’s massive lake presumably used as their primary water source. Towa has to periodically use the magic of a powerful tiara bestowed upon her family by a goddess to purify the water, but in a cruel twist the tiara is also cursed, with each use of it spreading the curse on the wearer more and more.
The rest of the plot basically just deals with them trying to remove the curse and heal Towa, and that’s basically about it. The plot is so threadbare that there is an emotional climax that just doesn’t carry the weight I think it is supposed to because the film itself doesn’t carry any emotional weight, and thus it doesn’t feel earned. Part of the problem is that Rimuru and his entourage are involved, and given the place in the series it takes place in, Rimuru by himself is ridiculously overpowered for any threat in front of him, let alone any of the other hilariously strong characters he surrounds himself with.
There are a few beautifully animated fight scenes in the film, a particular stellar standout being a phenomenal tracking chase sequence, but I do mean an emphasis on “a few”. These fights are far too spread out to make up for the film’s glacial pacing and similarly also suffer from the lack of true tension. Ultimately That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond feels like going back to an early game optional side quest you skipped as a fully leveled character. Absolute diehards of the series might be able to squeeze more enjoyment from this film, but for everyone else it is probably just worth passing on.
