That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie: Scarlet Bond (2022)

I was really quite disappointed with this rather dryly animated fantasy adventure. It all starts when poor old "Mikami" gets himself murdered and is reincarnated in another world where he is thrust into a maelstrom of adventures centring around the beautiful, but mysterious, Queen "Towa" of the small kingdom of "Raja". She has been served loyally for many years by the ogre warrior "Hiro" who now has his work cut out for him when she falls ill and their water supply appears to have become distinctly malignant! His travels for an answer unite him with our recently arrived "Rimuru" who has already attained the status of demon lord and now they must strive to get to source of this malevolent curse in time. I suppose my biggest problem with this, is that the characterisations are drawn entirely from the preceding series'. If you don't know about them (I didn't) then much of this takes quite a while to get straight in your mind; who's who, etc. That's a shame, because as a well produced stand-alone movie, it ought to have acknowledged that new viewers, less familiar viewers, might want to join in. Yasuhito Kikuchi makes no such effort and so, largely devoid of character development, I felt rather out in the cold watching with little sense of involvement. It's still quite a passable adventure story, and there is plenty of action - but I felt a little as if I was watching through the (closed) shop window.