In the first few episodes of the second season, Rimuru’s desire to align with a neighbouring territory leads him to send a delegation led by Benimaru to the Kingdom of Eurazania, a nation of beast-people. The two nations exchange delegations of three, and when the two groups meet, they exchange a few words before they clash! In their ranks are the “Three Beastketeers” of Demon Lord Carrion—the powerful sorcerer known as Albis, the Golden Serpent; Suphia, known as the White Tiger Claw, who is a lycanthrope blessed at hand-to-hand combat; as well as Grucius, a demon and the so-called “Runt” of the Beastketeers.

Unable to stomach anymore insults hurled at her master, Shion steps into a battle that was initially meant to be between Suphia of Eurazania and the human Youm of the Jura Tempest Federation, but Youm ends up going head-to-head against Grucius in a clash of blades! While both sets of combatants exchange blows, Shion gets carried away and performs an extremely powerful attack that could blow everybody away, but the idle Albis transforms into her true form and gets in between her colleague and the Kijin. Meanwhile, Grucius is pleasantly surprised by Youm’s strength and compliments him for being the only human capable of pushing him in combat. Both fights, while massively competitive, served merely as a means for each group to assess the other’s strength.

One of the standout battles from this season of That Time I Got Reincarnated As a Slime is the one between the Kijin Shion, Rimuru’s trusted secretary and devotee, against Shogo, a Japanese summon like Rimuru who works for the Kingdom of Falmuth alongside his two companions, Kyoya and Kirara. His brash, impudent personality extends to his abilities, which simply enable him to overpower his opponents with brute force. Of the three otherworlders, Shogo was the one who seemed to enjoy bullying the residents of Tempest the most.

His battle against Shion would have been easy pickings for the Kijin had it not been for the anti-magic and anti-monster barriers erected by the forces of the Holy Church of Ruberios. For the most part, it appeared that Shion would win the battle with some difficulty; however, at the end of the episode, we are shown the aftermath of the battle which ended in Shion’s defeat and death. This incident would be the trigger that leads Rimuru to the path of evolving into a True Demon Lord.

Poor Shogo. After showing up to Tempest and causing all kinds of trouble, he gets exactly what’s coming to him when Gobta puts his intense desire to avenge Gobzo aside for the sake of the mission. Allowing Geld, the Orc King to step into the ring against the otherworlder in his place, Gobta was able to enjoy a front-row seat to the utter steamrolling of a disgusting dog of Falmuth. Geld quite literally beats the confidence out of Shogo in a beatdown so satisfying we wished we could have been right in there to see Shogo’s face turn into an Orc Lord’s art project. Talk about throwing hands! To make things even better, Shogo turned tail and ran back to his camp, where he then thought he could prevent being disciplined by Rimuru’s cohort if he sacrificed an ally to gain a powerful skill. Spoiler alert – it didn’t help him much.

The old man Kijin Hakurou was in dire straits after his first battle against the otherworlders of Falmuth. Feeling shame and anger about his loss and the deaths of his comrades, Hakurou was determined not to let Kyoya get past him a second time. In the coordinated retaliation from Tempest, Hakurou gets to go toe-to-toe against Kyoya a second time. Kyoya is incredibly confident from their previous match-up, but nothing could prepare him for Hakurou’s true power.

With Rimuru ordering the Majin Myulan and his faithful companion Shuna to deal with the barriers surrounding the city, the monsters of Tempest were able to claim their true power. Kyoya attempts to best Hakurou with a move that allows his thoughts to run at several times the speed, making him much faster than usual, but Hakurou is several steps ahead. The old man finishes the contest with a powerful slash that cleanly decapitates his opponent while telling him to use the extra seconds he has granted himself to contemplate the journey that brought him to such a fate. Hakurou used “decapitate”—it was very satisfying.

Arguably the most anticipated fight from this season of That Time I Got Reincarnated As a Slime, Rimuru vs Hinata had been alluded to at the very beginning of the season. Rimuru’s life was in danger, with an unknown assailant looking to avenge Shion’s death. When they eventually do meet, Rimuru is surprised to learn that Hinata Sakaguchi, the Chief Knight of the Imperial Guard and Leader of the Ten Great Saints, knows all about Rimuru’s otherworder status and Japanese origins.

Uninterested in having any kind of conversation with Rimuru, Sakaguchi very confidently presents her desire to end his life and begins an onslaught of attacks that put the all-powerful Rimuru in what’s perhaps the most compromising position in which he has ever been since his reincarnation. The fight concludes with Rimuru making use of the Gluttony ability’s trump card, which allows him to take on the traits and abilities of all the creatures he has devoured up to that point and unleash a monstrous power. He loses consciousness as the ability activates, leading us to believe that the Rimuru fighting Sakaguchi is a soulless yet violent collection of all Rimuru’s past meals. In reality; however, Rimuru created a doppelgänger of himself to buy him some time to escape the difficult battle and head back to Tempest.

This fight is definitely one of the top fights of the Winter 2021 season and with good reason: it is one of the few events alluded to in the very beginning of the second season of That Time I Got Reincarnated As a Slime, but it is also laden with lore, epic animation and sequencing, not to mention it is perhaps one of the few times we have seen Rimuru Tempest truly struggle in battle.