Cute Slime Mook

Some slimes draw near! Command? ^{> Identify} Clockwise starting from top left: Slime, Dogoo, Puni, and Poring

Dragon Quest was one of the most influential video games of its time, and is partly responsible for forming the Eastern RPG as we know it. But one rather minor monster from it also made a peculiar mark on gaming: The Slime.

While the Blob Monster was a staple of tabletop RPGs before Dragon Quest, Akira Toriyama's addition of a waterdrop-shaped form and an adorable smiley face made a particularly strong impression. The slime ended up becoming a Mascot Mook for the franchise, and naturally, like many of the tropes Dragon Quest introduced, a cute, low level blob became an Eastern RPG cliche in itself.

Unlike the standard amorphous Blob Monster, a Cute Slime has a rounded form, like a drop of water on a car's hood (or maybe a gumdrop). They're also more likely to bounce or roll around than ooze. One assumes they have a much higher surface tension or thicker membrane than your typical Ooze (more like the classic Gelatinous Cube of Dungeons & Dragons fame, but not as rigidly shaped). You might also note they have a strong tendency to be colored blue, at least the first or most numerous version is. Variations may come in a variety of colors (pink/red and green being fairly common). Since they're more solid than the traditional Blob Monster, their method of attack will usually be a bouncing body blow rather than an acidic slime tentacle.

The Cute Slime Mook is almost always a common, weak, low-level mook, but like the ones in Dragon Quest, may come in stronger or gimmicky variants. Common variants of slimes include different colors, slimes that are harder to defeat but offer greater rewards, or even expies of the Heal Slime. Like their inspiration, they always have cute, smiling faces, or at the very least, Black Bead Eyes. These slime-lookalikes are often mascot mooks for their respective series in themselves.

If you see one of these, it's likely the work is in a Standard Japanese Fantasy Setting. More serious settings may forgo the cute face, but otherwise keep the same general shape and characteristics.

Subtrope of Blob Monster, Adorable Evil Minions and Fountain of Expies. Compare Slime Girl, which is a different kind of cute.

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Examples

Anime & Manga

• Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai: In true Dragon Quest fashion, Gome is an adorable slime and a friendly companion of the party. Or at least, it looks like a slime, while it's actually the Tear of God, a magical artifact brought to life by Dai's wish.
• EDENS ZERO: Maria's true form is an little space slime with a big, round head and a froggy mouth. However, she's powerful enough in her human form to be one of Drakken Joe's Elite Mooks.
• The first episode of Hyperdimension Neptunia the Animation has Neptune and Nepgear get overwhelmed by a horde of Dogoos, who playfully initiate Tickle Torture to them without doing any actual damage, though the end result of the two covered in slime looked very... suggestive. They're generally portrayed as playful, but only become a nuisance in large numbers.
• The protagonists of Koro-Sensei Quest! are so useless that the cute slime mooks farm them for experience.
• Monster Musume: Suu initially looks like this when she first appears in the household. Centorea assumes that this makes her weak because slimes in video games are easy to defeat, but is quickly frustrated by the fact that Suu is, in fact, incredibly durable because things like swords can harmlessly pass through her body. Though it doesn't take long for Suu to turn into a Slime Girl and be revealed as nonaggressive, she still reverts to her cute blob form on occasion.
• Negima! Magister Negi Magi: The Slime Sisters are small and cute slimes that can shapeshift into girls and serve as Wilhelm's Adorable Evil Minions.

Literature

• Black Summoner: Clotho, Kelvin's first summoned monster, is a tiny slime. At least when it's not a Glutton Slime.
• Sui from Campfire Cooking in Another World with My Absurd Skill is a small blue slime with Black Bead Eyes who's very young and behaves like a Cheerful Child. He starts out as the typical weak slime, but quickly shows intelligence and skills beyond the slime norm.
• I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level obviously has them, and shaped like their Dragon Quest counterparts. Slimes with a pale coloring are evil, while the ones with darker hues are good, and apparently, they have souls as well; two of the main cast were borne out of a merger of them.
• KonoSuba: Comically subverted with Hans the Deadly Poison Slime. Having seen only his human disguise, Kazuma assumes that he's the Dragon Quest kind of slime and will thus be a pushover, but he turns out to be closer to the Dungeons & Dragons mold - a giant, nigh-indestructible Blob Monster that spreads decay in its path and destroys anything it touches.
• Rimuru from That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime is roughly the size of a watermelon, and is adored for his super cute slime form. He ends up making quite a lot of allies — especially women who enjoy holding him close to their breasts — by making friends through diplomacy. However, he subverts the "weak" reputation of this trope, as his "Predator" ability also proves to be extremely powerful, allowing him to take on the properties of anyone and anything he absorbs, which results in him snowballing to Ultimate Life Form and World's Strongest Man status. Knowing how to use this to bring peace and to resolve conflicts is the main goal of the series.

Live-Action TV

• The jellies in The School Nurse Files are semi-translucent blobs, only visible to certain people. They are the ghosts of dead people or the feelings and desires of living people. Some of them are dangerous.

Multimedia

• Baby I or Fresh level Digimon are often blobs with simple, cutesy faces. They are very weak and have almost no combat abilities, but will eventually evolve into stronger Digimon.

Tabletop Games

• Fabula Ultima is a love letter to JRPGs, so naturally it features this trope. The Mellow Ooze and Static Ooze are a pair of cute, low-level slime creatures with rotund bodies and perpetual cat smiles. The former is a naturally occurring Monster which can heal its allies by doing a magical dance, while the latter is an artificial Elemental which can zap foes with electricity.

Video Games

• AdventureQuest Worlds features Slimes like virtually all games by Artix Entertainment. However unlike its sister games the, the chibi artstyle makes the AQW slimes noticeably cuter, being a blob with a cute cartoony eyeball looking out.
• In ANNO: Mutationem, at Harbor Town, a nearby resident offers to show his unique specimen for a few credits. The creature shown is a tiny slime with a single eyeball and a small pointy head.
• The Punis in Atelier Series, which have prominent Blush Stickers and come in a variety of different colors. There are also faux punis and even pint-sized mini punis which appear to have pacifiers in their mouths. They were curiously absent from the Dusk trilogy, but made a return in the Mysterious trilogy with a new, taller shape.
• The Binding of Isaac: The Dips/Drips fill this role, as the cutest creatures in the game, being tiny drops of moving slime. They get a little bit grosser when you actually see them and realize what that slime is.
• Goopy Le Grande, one of the first bosses of Cuphead has a design that directly references the Slimes - he's a blue ball with a pointy tip and a smiling face. He's also relatively easy, being one of the game's Starter Villains.
• The Slimes in Dragon Quest are the Trope Maker. First conceptualized in the first installments of the series in the The '80s, they became popular enough to become the Mascot Mook, and many examples on this page take direct inspiration from their cute blue forms.
• Eastward: There are slimes taking the form of slugs with some variants being slightly bigger and able to expel electricity.
• Elona has the Putits, cute white blobs with two beady black eyes. They are one of the weakest monsters in the game, and also come in a slightly stronger red variant. Eating their flesh grants charisma, and they are also explosive breeders, so they're a popular choice for ranches. Interestingly, Putits exist alongside more traditional western faceless blob monsters.
• The Enchanted Cave features various colors of weak blob monsters with cute googly eyes.
• EXTRAPOWER: Giant Fist: The caverns beneath the Latour cult headquarters features bouncy, brightly coloured gumball-shaped creatures, how cute! They're like big, cuddly Pururu! Don't be fooled.
• Genshin Impact's Slimes are embodiments of elemental energy in the form of bouncy gelatinous blobs with big, round eyes. There's a variant for each of the seven elements, each of which comes in small and large sizes. They're one of the game's Mascot Mooks, and there are even official slime plushies.
• Giana Sisters DS: Jellyfishes look like adorable, spherical blue blobs with two googly eyes floating inside their liquid bodies.
• Going Under: The Emoozi slimes are actually nastier people than the demons; they're the ones who were contributing to its harassing work environment (they're the slimy members).
• Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass:
  • The first fight in the game is a Revolting Blob, a green blob of goo that manifested itself in Buck's room. After its defeat, Jimmy gets an ability to turn into Revolting Blob himself to aggravate enemies into attacking him, and to leak into hard-to-reach places.
  • On the more basic variety of "generic basic enemy blob of slime", Slimes frequently appear as enemies in the Everchip area, as a part of its nature as an homage/Affectionate Parody of 8-bit/16-bit fantasy RPGs. The Bookworm's Knowledge even states that "they are used for standard hero training in the Everchip".
• Kingdom Hearts III has the Flantastic Seven, which are a family of friendly flan-shaped Heartless with yellow custard bodies, brown caramel hair, and a crown adorned with one of seven fruits. Summoning them with the "Boinnng!" Command allows you to take on their minigame challenges for a chance to earn exclusive Ingredients; if you find them all and complete their minigames, you get an Orichalcum+, one of the materials necessary needed to create the Ultima Weapon.
• One of the many JRPG parodies in the Penultimate Fantasy Airship in Kingdom of Loathing, the Irritating Series of Random Encounters enemy appears as a large group of what appear to be exact copies of the slimes from Dragon Quest.
• Gooey from Kirby's Dream Land 3 highly resembles Akira Toriyama's slimes, right down to the googly eyes and red smiley face, but with the addition of an Overly-Long Tongue.
• The Legend of Heroes: Trails:
  • Trails in the Sky - The 3rd: A Slime Lump is a living lump of slime. It'll let out a shout that power up enemies when defeated.
  • Trails from Zero: The Frost Slime is a bright blue enemy with a shell in its body.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Chuchus are usually ugly blob monsters, but they were given a somewhat cuter makeover for The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. They come in many different colors, some with different abilities. The Buzz Blobs from most games are walking slimes with big eyes, they'll electrocute you if you try to attack them with your sword, with The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, and The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes featuring giant versions of these slime mooks as minibosses that attacks with lightning.
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: Slimes appear whenever Link uses Magic Powder on enemies, turning them into tiny slimes with a plant on their head.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask: The Mad Jelly is a mini-boss where it's an enormous slime that moves around as Link battles with a Gekko.
  • The Zols and Gels of The Legend of Zelda and the Bits and Bots of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link certainly have the shape and bounciness down pat, but just missed the cuteness that really solidified the trope. Like the Chuchus, the Zols and Gels were given a cuter makeover for Link's Awakening, the Oracle Games and the The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords games.
• MapleStory has its own slimes that are green, have starry eyes, catlike mouths, and long antennae.
• The Jellies, the slime equivalent in Miitopia are mostly pretty cute, being small and rather weak enemies. They tend to either have smiling mouths or eyes, but usually not both.
• The cubical Slimes in Minecraft can potentially be one of the first enemies you run into if you spawn in or near a swamp, and will often be in one of the smaller, easier to manage sizes. The smallest slimes are in fact completely harmless and be kept as 'pets' if you lure it all the way back to your base and give it a name tag.
• Jells resemble a humanoid blob monster in most Monster Rancher games, but were given a cuter makeover in Monster Rancher 3 with a more gumdrop-shaped body and black, beady eyes. According to the in-game lore, this is actually the monster's original form, but became more humanoid over the years after being exposed to humans, as 3 is a prequel to the other games.
• In Moon: Remix RPG Adventure, the Slymy is a mollusk which jiggle-hops up and down as it moves. It greatly enjoys when the player pinch its little tippy-top part with its fingers.
• The Dogoos in Neptunia are a much more direct parody, given the nature of the games. Much like the original Dragon Quest slimes, they come in metal and even jellyfish-like heal variants. The difference? They have adorable puppy dog ears and snouts.
• Pokémon has multiple Blob Monster mons, but Ditto most closely resembles the ones in Dragon Quest. A Voluntary Shapeshifter, it's shown in the anime and The Merch that it always keeps its beady eyes and goofy smile no matter what it transforms into.
• The titular Puyo of Puyo Puyo played the typical RPG slime role in the original Madou Monogatari games, but became a core gameplay element when the series became a puzzle game. There are many different types of Puyo with different effects, but the basic idea is to stack and match colored puyos while sending garbage puyo to hinder your opponents.
• Puzzle & Dragons has low level and adorable slime monsters for each element that can also evolve into bigger forms while retaining their cuteness.
• Ragnarok Online has the Porings, a weak Mascot Mook which are pink and have catlike mouths along with bubbles coming out of its head.
• Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale has cutesy slimes in various colors as the most basic of enemies.
• Risk of Rain: Gups are big orange slime creatures with adorable faces, clover-like antennae and tiny curved legs.
• Slime Rancher is all about raising a variety of cute, smiling slimes. Even the ones that are dangerous, either passively or because they've turned feral, are rather cute. Subverted with The Tarr who aren't even remotely cute, and are the only genuinely aggressive and dangerous threat in the game.
• The protagonist of the action platformer Slime San is one of these, and even leaves trails of goo wherever he goes.
• The Blobs in Snailiad. As Snaily progresses he encounters different coloured blobs which take more hits, culminating with the Boss in Mook Clothing Devil Blob.
• Songs for a Hero: Slime mooks are one of the enemies found in the third, sixth, seventh and eight levels, being cute, passive smiling green blobs that harm the Hero by touch. Most notably, they are the only enemies in the game that cannot be harmed by the Hero's ball of fire, simply catching fire and ignoring it (what can be useful to lighten dark places).
• Slimes in Stardew Valley are round and have cute, simplistic faces. Green Slimes are some of the weakest enemies in the game, but there are other colors of Slimes that are stronger.
• Super Mario Bros.
  • Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island: Slimes appear disguised as platforms until Yoshi touches them, which makes them morph into their actual form. Slime Drops are smaller versions which fall from the ceiling in "droplet" form.
  • Super Mario Sunshine: Swoopin' Stus are tiny blobs that emerge from surrounding goop, they move rather slowly and only jump towards Mario when they're near him.
  • In Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story, Spike Blops are tiny slime creatures wearing a Spiny shell.
• Terraria has many slimes of various colors appear as enemies. They all mostly take a form of a semi-transparent droplet without any visible features. They also have two boss versions: King Slime, and its more difficult Distaff Counterpart, Queen Slime. The various Town Slimes play the trope straighter, being an assortment of friendly, harmless slimes with facial features and accessories that will move into homes like NPCs.
• Moldsmal is one of the first enemies you'll run into in Undertale, and looks like a relatively harmless jello mold. It's also very easy to befriend.
• Voyage of the Eldritch: Samuel The Slime can multiply himself in this fashion, and some of his copies look adorable.

Visual Novels

• Slime from Dot Kareshi is one of many shoutouts to Dragon Quest and Eastern RPGs in general, although this being an otome game, he takes the form of a cute human boy.

Webcomics

• Lime the Slime from Monsters Can Be Heroes Too!. Upon meeting her, Coal is so charmed that she forgets she was supposed to kill a slime and brings her back instead.
• Swords: Bathad's Blade's soul usually appears like this. The only word is can say is "Stab" with different inflections.
• The Jellese/jellies in Unicorn Jelly are visually based on these.

Web Original

• Ovipets: One of the available species of pets are Slimes, which are simple blob-like creatures (although mutations can make their appearances more complex).

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