Tensura Season 1 Episode 7 Explained: Conqueror of Flames
Full spoilers for That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Season 1 Episode 7, "Conqueror of Flames." If you haven't watched, stop here.
This is the seventh entry in this blog's backfill series working through That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime from the beginning. Episode 6 introduced the masked girl from the fortune-teller's vision and ended on a piece of information only the audience had: that Shizu had been made the vessel of a fire spirit. Episode 7 is where that information stops being a secret and becomes a problem for everyone in the room. It is named "Conqueror of Flames," and per Wikipedia's synopsis it is built around a fight.
A note on sourcing before the plot. This post leans on two sources: Wikipedia's season 1 episode list, and a review on The Geekly Grind, a small outlet whose piece is a combined review of Episodes 7 through 9. Only its plot summary of Episodes 7 and 8 was checked for this post, and it is used here for plot detail only, not for any verdict on the episode. The Anime News Network review that anchored the Episode 6 post is not used this time. Where a detail comes from one source alone, the post says so.
When it aired and who made it
According to Wikipedia's episode list for the season, "Conqueror of Flames" (爆炎の支配者, "Bakuen no Shihai-sha") aired November 13, 2018. Wikipedia credits Atsushi Nakayama as director, Masashi Kojima with the storyboard, and Kenichirō Katsura as chief animation director. Those three credits and the air date come from Wikipedia's episode list and season page, which is about as solid as this blog's sourcing gets for production details.
As with earlier entries, no per-episode writer is credited in the pages consulted, so this post will not attribute the script to anyone. Readers of the Episode 5 and Episode 6 posts will recognise the pattern, with Katsura's chief animation director credit recurring from the previous entry.
Wikipedia's official synopsis
Wikipedia's synopsis for the episode reads, in full: "Shizu recalls the anguish she felt when Ifrit inside her killed her friend after considering her an enemy. Just as Shizu prepares to leave with the adventurers, Ifrit once again takes control of her and unleashes his flames upon the village. With his water attacks proving ineffective, Rimuru copies Eren's ice magic spell to take care of Ifrit's minions. Discovering that he is immune to fire attacks, Rimuru uses his Predator ability to swallow Ifrit, separating him from Shizu in the process and trapping him inside of his stomach along with Veldora."
It is a compact paragraph, and the episode's shape falls out of it neatly. There is a flashback to Shizu's guilt, a moment of calm that is broken, a fight in which Rimuru's first tool fails, a clever workaround, a discovery, and a resolution that separates the passenger from the person. The rest of this post walks through those beats in order.
Shizu's anguish
The synopsis opens inside Shizu's head. She recalls "the anguish she felt when Ifrit inside her killed her friend after considering her an enemy." Two things are worth noticing about that sentence. First, it frames Ifrit as a separate presence "inside her," which fits the closing line of the Episode 6 synopsis, where Leon Cromwell is said to have made her the vessel of the fire spirit. Second, the killing is described from Shizu's side, as something she felt anguish about rather than something she chose.
The Geekly Grind's plot summary of Episodes 7 and 8 points the same way. Its account has Shizu confessing that she once killed one of her dearest friends while possessed by Ifrit, and it describes the masked hero as "tormented by dreams of turning on her friends." That phrase is the outlet's own, and it is a useful shorthand for the dread hanging over the episode: the person the adventurers have been travelling with is also the person most afraid of what she might do to them.
One caution on attribution. The Geekly Grind's summary covers two episodes at once, so this post cannot say which individual scenes in it belong to Episode 7 and which to Episode 8. The Wikipedia synopsis above is the only source here that is specific to Episode 7, and where the two overlap, as with the friend killed by Ifrit, they agree.
Who Shizu is, according to The Geekly Grind
The same summary fills in background that Wikipedia's Episode 7 synopsis does not. According to The Geekly Grind, Shizu was summoned from Japan more than 50 years earlier by the Demon Lord Leon Cromwell, and she became his close aide. Wikipedia's Episode 6 synopsis, quoted in the previous post, gives the summoning and Leon's role as her summoner, so the two accounts line up, though the outlet adds the 50-year figure and the aide detail on its own.
It also says she later ran a school for children who had been teleported from another world. That is a one-source detail, so treat it as The Geekly Grind's account of the character rather than something cross-checked here. If it is accurate, it casts the "hero" label in a gentler light: a woman haunted by what a fire spirit made her do, who spent part of her life looking after children in the same predicament she had been in.
Then there is the title. The outlet says the party is shocked to learn that Shizu is the legendary "Conqueror of Flames," which is also the name of the episode. Per that account, the name carries weight with the adventurers. It is the reputation she carries, and it sits uneasily next to the fact that, as the Wikipedia synopsis describes it, the fire is also the thing she cannot control.
The calm before the flames
Wikipedia's synopsis places the turn at a specific moment: "Just as Shizu prepares to leave with the adventurers, Ifrit once again takes control of her and unleashes his flames upon the village." The word "again" matters. It tells the audience this has happened before, which ties directly back to the friend she lost, and it makes the timing deliberately cruel. Shizu is preparing to leave with the adventurers, and Ifrit interrupts exactly then.
The synopsis says only "the village," and does not detail who is hurt or what is burned, so this post will not guess. What it establishes is that a settlement is now directly in the path of a fire spirit, and that Rimuru is the one who has to deal with it.
Rimuru's water problem
Rimuru's first instinct is the tool he already has. According to the synopsis, "his water attacks" prove "ineffective." The Geekly Grind gives the reason in its own words: "Ifrit's extreme heat nullifies Rimuru's typical water-based attacks." The outlet is explaining the fight in terms of an elemental mismatch, and the simplest reading is that Rimuru's usual approach runs into something hotter than it can handle.
This is a good beat because it takes away the easy answer: Rimuru's first tool fails, and the episode has to find another one.
Copying Eren's ice magic
The answer, per Wikipedia, is borrowed. Rimuru "copies Eren's ice magic spell to take care of Ifrit's minions." Two details stand out. The spell belongs to Eren, one of the adventurer trio from earlier in the season, so the party Rimuru met in Episode 6 turns out to have something to teach him. And the target is specified: the ice spell deals with Ifrit's minions, not Ifrit himself. Wikipedia's wording draws a line between the spirit's underlings and the spirit, and the rest of the synopsis is about how Rimuru handles the latter.
The synopsis does not say how the copying works, how long it takes or what the spell looks like on screen, so none of that is claimed here.
Immune to fire, and the swallow
The turning point comes next. Wikipedia's synopsis says Rimuru discovers "that he is immune to fire attacks." The Geekly Grind says the same thing in nearly the same words, that "he realizes that he's immune to fire damage." Two sources, one conclusion: the fight stops being about whether Rimuru can survive Ifrit and starts being about how he can end it.
From there, Wikipedia describes the resolution: "Rimuru uses his Predator ability to swallow Ifrit, separating him from Shizu in the process and trapping him inside of his stomach along with Veldora." The detail that Veldora is already in there is continuity from earlier in the season, and Ifrit now shares that space with him. Ifrit is not destroyed in the synopsis's wording. He is separated from Shizu and held.
The steel webs
The Geekly Grind phrases the capture differently: "Rimuru captures Ifrit in his steel webs." The webs do not appear in Wikipedia's synopsis, so they come from this one outlet only. They are not necessarily in conflict with the swallow; the sources could be describing different moments of the same sequence, or the outlet could be emphasising the capture while Wikipedia emphasises the stomach. This post does not have the evidence to say which, so it leaves the two accounts side by side.
How it connects back to Episode 6
Episode 6, according to Wikipedia's synopsis, ended on the line that Shizu's summoner had made her the vessel of Ifrit, something Rimuru did not know. Episode 7 cashes that in immediately. The Episode 6 post noted that the title "Conqueror of Flames" looked like a direct follow-through but that no synopsis had been checked. Having now checked Wikipedia's synopsis, that guess holds up: the flames in the title are the same fire spirit, and the episode is about what happens when he takes control.
It also pays off the shared-Japan conversation from the previous episode. Rimuru and Shizu were established as two people carrying different versions of the same home. Episode 7 tests that bond in the worst possible way, by turning one of them into a threat to the other's village. The synopsis does not describe their final exchange, so this post does not either.
What this post confirms and doesn't
To be clear about sourcing: the title, Japanese title, air date of November 13, 2018, and the credits for Atsushi Nakayama, Masashi Kojima and Kenichirō Katsura come from Wikipedia. The official synopsis, including Shizu's recollection, Ifrit's attack, the ice spell, the fire immunity, the Predator swallow and Veldora in the stomach, is Wikipedia's. The Geekly Grind supplies the quoted phrases about Shizu's dreams, the "Conqueror of Flames" name, the nullified water attacks, the fire immunity and the steel webs, along with its account of Shizu's history. That outlet's summary covers Episodes 7 and 8 together, and its steel-web detail is not corroborated elsewhere in the sources used.
No opinion or score for this episode is relayed, because none was verified. No light novel or manga correspondence is claimed, MyAnimeList was not used, and no writer is credited because none is listed.
There is currently no character page for Shizu, Leon Cromwell or Ifrit on this site, so none of them are linked here.
What's next
With Ifrit separated from Shizu and held in Rimuru's stomach alongside Veldora, per Wikipedia, the immediate threat is over, but the synopsis leaves open what that means for Shizu and for the adventurers who were preparing to leave with her. Episode 8 is the next entry in this series. This post has not checked a synopsis for it, so it will not speculate beyond what the sources say.
Wikipedia's synopsis ends with Ifrit trapped in Rimuru's stomach alongside Veldora and separated from Shizu, so the next entry in this backfill series, Episode 8, picks up from there. No synopsis for Episode 8 was checked, so this post does not say what happens in it.