Tensura Season 1 Episode 6 Explained: Shizu
Full spoilers for That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Season 1 Episode 6, "Shizu." If you haven't watched, stop here.
This is the sixth entry in this blog's backfill series working through That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime from the beginning. Episode 5 ended by planting a vision: a fortune-telling elf showing Rimuru the person fate had lined up for him. Episode 6 is named after her, and it does what the previous episode's ending promised. The girl from the vision shows up in person, and the story gets a new thread that is considerably less cheerful than a goblin village's building projects.
A quick note on method before the plot. This post leans on two sources, Wikipedia's season 1 page and Anime News Network's review of the episode, and the two describe the central meeting in slightly different ways. That discrepancy gets its own section below, because it is worth being upfront about rather than papering over.
When it aired and who made it
"Shizu" (シズ) aired November 6, 2018, according to Wikipedia's episode list for the season. Wikipedia credits Masashi Kojima with the storyboard. It also lists Yasuhiro Ito as director and Kenichirō Katsura as chief animation director, though those two credits were each only seen in a single retrieval during research for this post, so treat them as Wikipedia-listed credits rather than something cross-checked against a second source.
One thing that is conspicuously absent: no per-episode writer is credited on the pages consulted, so this post is not going to attribute the script to any individual. The Episode 5 post noted a pattern of changing director and storyboard credits from week to week, and the names listed here continue that.
Wikipedia's official synopsis
Wikipedia's synopsis for the episode reads, in full: "When Eren, Kaval, and Gido, the group of adventurers that Rimuru saw earlier, have discovered Veldora's disappearance from the cave, they are ordered by a guildmaster to investigate the forest; a masked girl named Shizu asks to join them. When they run into trouble, they are rescued by Rimuru, who recognizes Shizu from the elf's vision. As Shizu reveals she was summoned to this world from Japan during the war, Rimuru shares some of his memories of a modern, peaceful Japan. What Rimuru doesn't know, however, is that Shizu's summoner, the demon king Leon Cromwell, has made her the vessel of the fire spirit Ifrit."
That is a dense paragraph, and it contains four distinct ideas worth unpacking. First, the adventurer party from earlier in the season, Eren, Kaval and Gido, returns with a reason to be there: Veldora's disappearance from the cave has been noticed, and a guildmaster sends them into the forest to investigate. Second, a masked girl named Shizu asks to join them. Third, there is trouble, a rescue, and a moment of recognition. Fourth, there is a conversation about Japan, followed by a closing line that tells the audience something the protagonist does not know.
What Anime News Network's review adds
Anime News Network's review of the episode was written by Paul Jensen, published November 7, 2018, and graded B. It opens with an observation about the premise of the series so far. In Jensen's words: "The problem with leading a bunch of Hobgoblins and Tempest Wolves is that you actually have to govern the place when you're not out adventuring." He goes on to describe the Goblin village, with the Dwarven craftsmen now in tow, starting to look "like a proper town with a substantial population."
That framing matters because it tells you what kind of episode this is. By ANN's account, the first stretch is Rimuru dealing with civic planning, the unglamorous side of being a monster lord. The review also notes, as a small joke, that Gobta gets forgotten in Dwargon, which the reviewer clearly enjoyed. It is a light beat, but it fits the episode's low-pressure tone.
Jensen then describes the arrival of a party of human adventurers, and Rimuru's own surprise at seeing one of them. In the review's words, one of the party members is "Shizu, the Japanese girl who appeared in his crystal ball fortune earlier in the series." The review adds that "While she has managed to retain her human form in this new world, it looks like her journey up to this point has been far harder than Rimuru's, and something may be amiss with her powerful abilities."
Two accounts of the meeting
Here is the discrepancy. Wikipedia's synopsis says the adventurers run into trouble and are rescued by Rimuru, who recognizes Shizu. ANN's review frames the encounter differently: as the adventurer party arriving at the Goblin village, where its members are surprised to find a bustling settlement of monsters and Rimuru gets his own shock on seeing Shizu.
These are not necessarily incompatible. A reasonable reading is that both happen, perhaps with the rescue in the forest followed by the group ending up at the village, or the other way round. But the sources consulted for this post do not settle the order of events, and without watching the episode scene by scene there is no honest way to say which version is the literal sequence. So this post attributes each version to its source and does not assert a single definitive scene order. If you have just watched the episode, you already know which it was; the point here is that the written sources differ.
Rimuru, Shizu and a shared Japan
The emotional core of the episode, per Wikipedia's synopsis, is the conversation about home. Shizu reveals that she was summoned to this world from Japan during the war. Rimuru, in turn, shares some of his memories of a modern, peaceful Japan.
It is a quietly effective pairing on paper. Both characters come from Japan, yet according to Wikipedia's wording they describe very different versions of it: she was summoned during the war, while he remembers a peaceful, modern country. Having Rimuru be the one to share those memories turns what could have been a plain exposition scene into an exchange between two people who each carry something the other has lost. The synopsis does not say more than that, and this post is not going to guess at details of the conversation beyond what the synopsis states.
ANN's review sums up the tone of the stretch in its closing: "'Slime has a lovely conversation with some scrappy adventurers' is never going to be the premise of a thrilling episode, but it does at least make for an enjoyable viewing experience," as he puts it. The reviewer also says he thinks Kaval's party has good chemistry, which helps the talkier material land.
The mask, and the questions about Shizu
The review spends some time on Shizu herself. Paraphrasing Jensen, the show is making too much of her mask for it to be merely a design gimmick, so the reviewer expects it to matter later. He also raises a question about why she appears so young given what her wartime arrival implies about her age. His exact wording could not be verified, so treat this as a loose paraphrase rather than a precise summary of his argument.
Both observations point to the same conclusion: Shizu is built as a mystery. The ANN passage quoted above, noting that "something may be amiss with her powerful abilities," is the review's way of saying the episode drops hints about her condition without explaining them. Whether the mask, her apparent youth and those abilities are connected is something the sources consulted here do not answer.
Leon Cromwell and Ifrit
The last sentence of Wikipedia's synopsis is the biggest piece of information in the episode, and it is addressed to the audience rather than to Rimuru. According to that synopsis, Shizu's summoner is the demon king Leon Cromwell, and he has made her the vessel of the fire spirit Ifrit. Rimuru, the synopsis stresses, does not know this.
Both names appear only in Wikipedia's synopsis among the sources used for this post. The ANN passages retrieved for this post do not mention them, so the review should not be read as confirming or elaborating on either. That means this post cannot say how the episode presents Leon or Ifrit on screen, or how much of that information the viewer is actually given. What can be said is that the official synopsis frames Shizu's situation as something imposed on her by a demon king, and that the viewer is told something about her that Rimuru is not.
There is currently no character page for Shizu, Leon Cromwell or Ifrit on this site, so none of them are linked here.
How it connects back to Episode 5
The Episode 5 post on this blog was careful about who the girl in the fortune-teller's vision was. Wikipedia's synopsis for that episode calls it "a vision of a girl parting ways with her family," and ANN's review of Episode 5 refers to "Shizu's crystal ball cameo." That post hedged on whether the name was spoken on screen, and declined to claim more than the sources supported.
Episode 6 settles the matter from both sides. Wikipedia's Episode 6 synopsis says Rimuru "recognizes Shizu from the elf's vision," and ANN's review says Shizu is "the Japanese girl who appeared in his crystal ball fortune earlier in the series." Two separate sources, same conclusion. The girl in the vision and the masked girl in the forest are the same person, and the fortune teller's prediction about Rimuru's destined one has now begun to play out.
How the episode fits the arc
ANN's overall verdict is measured. The reviewer calls it a slow, low-conflict start to a new arc, which is fair given that its main events, per Wikipedia, are a rescue and a conversation. The closing assessment is that Rimuru's first encounter with Shizu "raises some intriguing questions and sets up a potentially compelling storyline, so the series should be in good shape as long as it follows through on that potential." The review wraps up with "As setup episodes go, this one's not too shabby."
That tracks with where the season sits. Episode 5 was graded B+ by the same outlet and ended on a melancholy note; Episode 6 drops to a B and trades the courtroom drama for exposition and character work. For a backfill series, it is a useful reminder that not every episode needs a fight to matter. This one exists to introduce Shizu, put her next to Rimuru, and hand the audience a secret.
What this post confirms and doesn't
To be clear about sourcing: the title, the air date of November 6, 2018, and the credits for Masashi Kojima, Yasuhiro Ito and Kenichirō Katsura come from Wikipedia, with the last two seen in a single retrieval only. The plot synopsis, including Eren, Kaval and Gido, the guildmaster, Shizu's summoning from Japan, Leon Cromwell and Ifrit, is Wikipedia's. The review commentary comes from Paul Jensen's Anime News Network review. The scene order of the meeting is deliberately left open because the two sources disagree. No light novel or manga correspondence is claimed, and MyAnimeList was not used.
What's next
Wikipedia lists Episode 7 as "Conqueror of Flames," airing November 13, 2018. With the Episode 6 synopsis ending on Shizu as the vessel of a fire spirit, the title is suggestive, but this post has not checked a synopsis for that episode, so it is not going to say how the two connect. This backfill series will pick up there next.
Episode 7 is titled "Conqueror of Flames" and aired November 13, 2018, per Wikipedia. Given that Wikipedia's Episode 6 synopsis ends on Shizu being made the vessel of the fire spirit Ifrit, the flames in that title look like a direct follow-through, though no synopsis for Episode 7 was checked.