Tensura Season 1 Episode 5 Explained: Hero King, Gazel Dwargo
Full spoilers for That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Season 1 Episode 5, "Hero King, Gazel Dwargo." If you haven't watched, stop here.
This is the fifth entry in this blog's backfill series working through That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime from the beginning. Episode 4 left things on a deliberately unresolved note — a toast at an elf bar interrupted by an unidentified figure approaching, with no synopsis confirming who that was. Episode 5 picks up right where that uncertainty left off, and this time the trail actually leads somewhere: a rigged trial, a king's judgment, and a fortune-telling vision that points straight at the next episode.
When and where it aired
"Hero King, Gazel Dwargo" aired October 30, 2018, the fifth week of the show's original Tokyo MX broadcast run. Per Wikipedia's episode list for the season, it directly follows "In the Kingdom of the Dwarves" and continues the Dwargon arc that episode began.
Who made it
According to Wikipedia's episode-list and season 1 pages, this episode was directed by Yoshihiro Mori, with Junichi Takaoka credited for both the storyboard and as chief animation director — the same person handling both roles, per Wikipedia's episode table. That's yet another rotation from Episode 4's credits, continuing the pattern this backfill series has tracked of a different director and storyboard artist nearly every week of the original run. Eight Bit remained the studio behind the production.
Wikipedia's official synopsis, in full
Wikipedia's synopsis for this episode is notably terse compared to some of the plot-dense entries earlier in the season. In its entirety, it reads: "A fortune teller elf decides to predict Rimuru's destined one, showing him a vision of a girl parting ways with her family." That's the complete official synopsis — a single beat, focused entirely on the fortune-telling thread rather than anything involving Kaijin, Vesta, or the dwarven kingdom's politics. Everything else covered below comes from a different source.
The real plot: Anime News Network's review fills in the gap
Wikipedia's one-line synopsis leaves out most of what actually happens in the episode, but Anime News Network's review of Episode 5 — graded B+ — fills in the rest in considerable detail, and this post is treating that review as a direct, verified source rather than secondhand fan material.
Per ANN's review, the episode opens with the drinking celebration that Episode 4 ended on, and it doesn't stay festive for long. The gathering turns chaotic when Vesta — whom ANN identifies as the minister who deliberately gave Kaijin the impossible order for longswords — shows up uninvited, takes exception to Rimuru's presence, and picks a fight with the group. Kaijin knocks him out with a couple of punches, which, per ANN, lands the heroes in jail. ANN calls the trial that follows rigged, and it ends in a guilty verdict.
This is the detail that resolves the ambiguity this blog flagged back in the Episode 4 writeup. That post noted that some fan-compiled guides described a minister named Vesta sabotaging Kaijin's work, but declined to present it as confirmed, since the available synopsis for Episode 4 didn't mention it and research at the time suggested the conflict actually belonged to the following episode. ANN's Episode 5 review confirms that read was correct — the Vesta storyline is genuine content, but it's Episode 5's content, not Episode 4's.
Hero King Gazel Dwargo steps in
The episode's title points to its actual centerpiece, and per ANN's review, that's exactly where the trial ends up. Hero King Gazel Dwargo — the ruler of Dwargon himself — intervenes in the proceedings. Rather than letting the rigged trial run its course and imprison Kaijin, Gazel Dwargo instead hands down a different judgment: he exiles Kaijin and his assistants.
On its face, exile reads like a punishment, and ANN's review treats it with the weight that framing deserves. But the practical effect of the ruling is that it frees Kaijin and his people to leave Dwargon entirely — which means they're now free to join Rimuru's mission to rebuild the goblin village, exactly the kind of help Rimuru had traveled to Dwargon to secure in the first place. Vesta, meanwhile, doesn't walk away clean; per ANN's review, he faces a severe punishment for his deceit.
ANN's review has reservations — it calls some of the early material a bit stale — but it singles out the resolution: it says the trial sets up "one of the show's most emotional scenes thus far" and calls the outcome "a surprisingly melancholy resolution for an otherwise lighthearted series." That's a notable shift in register for this backfill series to flag — Episodes 1 through 4 have mostly played Rimuru's adventures for warmth and the occasional joke at his expense, and Episode 5 is the first to end on something closer to bittersweet.
What this means for Kaijin's arc
Structurally, this resolves the dangling thread Episode 4 set up without confirming. Rimuru's deal with Kaijin — magisteel ore for finished longswords, and in exchange, artisans for the goblin village — only works if Kaijin is actually able to leave Dwargon and make good on that arrangement. A rigged trial that ended in imprisonment would have derailed the entire plan before it started. Instead, Gazel Dwargo's ruling, severe as it looks on paper, clears the exact obstacle that was standing in the way. Kaijin and his assistants are now free agents, no longer bound to Dwargon's court, and the show has engineered a scenario where joining Rimuru isn't just appealing, it's effectively the only path left open to them.
It's also worth noting what this says about Gazel Dwargo as a character introduced via his own title episode. Rather than simply ruling in Kaijin's favor and calling it done, the king, per ANN, finds a way to let Kaijin off the hook without making the court look bad, which the review says paints Gazel as a competent ruler rather than just an intimidating figurehead. That's a more complicated piece of statecraft than anything Rimuru himself has had to navigate so far, and it sets Gazel Dwargo up as someone with more leverage and foresight than a rigged trial would suggest.
The fortune teller and the vision of Rimuru's "destined one"
Running in parallel to the Kaijin-and-Vesta storyline is the thread Wikipedia's synopsis actually focuses on: a fortune teller elf decides to predict Rimuru's destined one, and shows him a vision of a girl parting ways with her family. It's a brief scene by comparison to the trial sequence, but it's clearly being planted for payoff rather than treated as a throwaway beat.
ANN's review of this episode refers to the girl shown in that vision as "Shizu" in its own commentary. That's worth flagging carefully: neither Wikipedia's synopsis nor ANN's review of this specific episode states that the name is spoken on-screen in Episode 5 itself, so this post is presenting it as ANN's own framing of who the vision depicts, rather than claiming the episode names her directly.
It's tempting to connect this fortune-teller scene back to the unidentified figure who approached Rimuru's celebration at the end of Episode 4 — the timing certainly lines up. But neither Wikipedia's synopsis for Episode 5 nor ANN's review explicitly confirms that the fortune teller and that approaching figure are the same character, so this post isn't going to assert that connection as fact. It's a reasonable guess based on how the two episodes are sequenced, nothing more.
How this fits the show's shape so far
Episode 5 continues the widening of scope that started with Episode 4's arrival in Dwargon. Where the first three episodes stayed almost entirely within the Jura Forest, the last two have planted Rimuru squarely inside a functioning kingdom with its own courts, politics, and ruler — and this episode is the first to show that political machinery actually grinding into motion, with real stakes for a character the audience has grown attached to over the previous episode. At the same time, the fortune-teller subplot opens an entirely new thread that has nothing to do with Dwargon's internal politics, setting up what the next episode's title suggests will be a significant new character.
What this episode confirms and doesn't
To be clear about sourcing: the broadcast date of October 30, 2018, the episode's title, and the Yoshihiro Mori and Junichi Takaoka credits are drawn from Wikipedia's episode-list and season 1 pages, presented here with ordinary confidence as Wikipedia-sourced facts that weren't independently cross-checked against a second primary source. Wikipedia's own synopsis — the fortune teller elf predicting Rimuru's destined one and showing him a vision of a girl parting ways with her family — is presented with full confidence as official, Wikipedia-sourced plot content. The trial storyline — Vesta's impossible longsword order to Kaijin, the confrontation at the celebration, Kaijin knocking Vesta out, the rigged trial, Gazel Dwargo's exile ruling, and Vesta's severe punishment — comes from Anime News Network's review of this episode and is presented with normal confidence as a direct, verified source rather than fan-wiki material. ANN's characterization of the girl in the vision as "Shizu" is presented as ANN's own framing rather than a confirmed on-screen name-drop in this episode. The suggestion that the fortune teller might be the same figure who approached Rimuru at the end of Episode 4 is flagged explicitly as an inference, not a confirmed connection. No manga chapter or light novel volume correspondence is being asserted for this episode, and MyAnimeList's episode numbering wasn't used as a sourcing basis here.
Where to watch
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Season 1 remains available on Crunchyroll, with this episode accessible as the fifth installment of the original 2018 broadcast run.
What's next
With Kaijin and his assistants now free to join Rimuru's mission and the fortune teller's vision of a girl parting ways with her family hanging over the story, Episode 6 looks set to deliver on that tease almost immediately. Wikipedia lists the next episode's title as simply "Shizu," and Anime News Network's review of that episode describes Rimuru formally meeting Shizu, the Japanese girl who appeared in his crystal ball fortune earlier — which suggests the vision this episode planted is about to become a lot more than a passing scene. This backfill series will keep moving forward episode by episode from here, continuing to build the throughline toward the Season 4 material this blog has already covered.
Episode 6 is titled "Shizu" per Wikipedia, and Anime News Network's review of that episode describes Rimuru formally meeting the Japanese girl who appeared in his crystal ball fortune, so the vision teased this episode looks set to pay off almost immediately.