Tensei shitara Slime Datta Ken Movie: Guren no Kizuna-hen

tl;dr: A pretty generic filler film that’s decent enough.

This is a filler film that takes place after the second season of Tensura. As is generally the case with filler films, most everything it introduces will never be seen again after this film. Surprisingly, there was a pretty major exception to that in that this film is the anime debut of Violet, a character that’s pretty important. And I guess this film also somewhat fleshed out Diablo in ways that hadn’t been gone into in the anime yet. However, at the end of the day, the writing has to be careful not to do anything that ... will have any impact on the overarching story so it’s not like it did all that much with them.

Tensura is at it’s best when it’s combining lots of intricate plot lines and world building so not being able to actually do anything impactful long term is especially hindering as compared to filler films for other anime like battle shounen. Still, I suppose the plot was pretty good within the scope of what it could do. It was pretty simple, straightforward, and somewhat generic, but it was reasonably enjoyable.

It didn’t really do much with any of the main cast other than reinforce some character beats a bit, but it did a pretty good job with the two new characters Hiiro and Towa. They don’t really get character arcs either, but how self-sacrificing they are is enough to hold up their character for the span of a film and build up enough investment in them to give the emotional beats in the finale some weight. Though I feel it would have been better to make their relationship more clearly romantic to add a bit more spice to things.

The art and animation for the most part were a bit better than the main series, but not dramatically so. The exception to that was the action which was noticeably much better. None of the new character’s designs really stood out that much, and I feel it was a waste not giving everyone new outfits like filler films often do. The soundtrack was decent enough but not particularly memorable. The ED was the standard film white scrolling text on a black background, but the song was pretty good.

Overall not a bad movie at all, but it's obvious it could've been better.

Like most of the main seasons of slime, the story is serviceable and the characters are fun and easy to root for, but the focus and timing of the plot are loose and the animation budget seems to have gone into the wrong places. The story seems confused at times, not clearly working towards characterization and plot but meandering and loitering. A large chunk of the plot sort of rips off the basics of DBZ Broly. Many scenes look very good with detailed backgrounds, but the final fights are not ... juiced up to match. A few of the final moves, like Rimuru's Beelzebub could've easily been drawn out for spectacle but the opportunity was missed. The new characters are memorable and fun and its too bad they can't show up in S3 more.

One of the worst movies I've ever seen. The movie overall is at best mid, at worst complete crap. Movie is very boring to watch, the plot is shallow and the characters are forgettable.

There is no struggle or obstacles that our main character and his friends need to resolve, and even when presented with one, they are extremely mild and are treated like a pebble by a river bank. The characters suffer no consequences for their actions, everyone gets away scott-free so often that it makes me think why would there be any challenges to begin with?

If I wanted to see nursery rhym, I ... would have watched Cocomelon instead.