Slayers

Slayers is a 26 episode adventure comedy TV anime produced by studio E&G Films. It was directed by Takashi Watanabe (Boogiepop Phantom) and aired from Apr 7 1995 to Sep 29 1995. Set in a fantasy world filled with magic and monsters, we meet Lina Inverse. She's a powerful sorceress who's also known as the bandit killer. She's traveling the world stealing the stolen goods from bandits, meeting new people, and getting into all sorts of trouble. She ends up running into a swordsman named Gourry Gabriev who thinks he's helping out a little girl who's getting attacked by bandits. They end up forming a duo of sorts and sets out to travel the world. Where they are going, no one knows. Not even them. Lina Inverse is of course our main character. She's a 15 year old sorceress in season 1 and has quite the temper and hunger. She practice dark magic which she uses to destroy her enemies. The first person who ends up joining Lina on this little adventure is Gourry Gabriev. He's a powerful swordsman. However, he's also quite stupid and doesn't remember anything that doesn't involve food. You've also got other characters like Zelgadis Graywords, and Amelia Wil Tesla Saillune who make up our main group. The animation in this show leaves a lot to be desired. It has very few moments of stand out animation, and even the better animation is left for single attacks. The music in the show was nothing to write home about either. It didn't do much to add to the show and was kinda just there so the show had music. Overall I have to say that this show is not my cup of tea. I don't like the comedy on display in this series. It all feels very childish and not very funny. And as for the adventure part of the series, there isn't really that much to it. They are travellers who don't really have anywhere in particular they are planning to go, and no real goals. Things kinda just happen around them as they go and they get dragged into it. The show just feels empty, and there was not much enjoyment for me to get out of it. I would not recommend this show as I feel like there are other shows out there that are better than this.

The Slayers is considered one of, if not the, most popular anime of the nineties. Based on a huge series of light novels (over fifty) The Slayers is a comedic response to the more serious fantasy anime of the time, most notably Record of Lodoss War. This first season of Slayers came out in 1995 and I feel it’s only right to watch and review this series as we approach its’ twentieth birthday. So for the next few weeks, we’ll be exploring all five seasons of the show, as well as the movies and OVA’s. Lina Inverse is the star of Slayers, a dark magic user who floats around in search of treasure and monsters to slay. After stealing from a group of bandits she meets up with a knight named Gourry, an absolute moron despite his skills with the sword. Together the two battle monsters and bad guys as a man named Rezo wants a statue Lina stole in order to awaken a dark lord and get back his eyesight. Slayers has a very simple plot that allows it to be episodic while still carrying over a story. What I just described is the first arc, about eight episodes. In the second arc the characters are framed and being hunted by bounty hunters while in the third they have their final battle against the bad guys. The first arc does a really good job of getting you into the show, providing great introductions to characters in a wonderful blend of comedy and nonstop action. The second arc is a little rougher, with a Pokemon-esque game of cat and mouse between the bounty hunters and our heroes. There are some hilarious episodes scattered in here but these, for the most part, feel like filler. The final arc is the biggest offender for me as it slows the show down considerably, loses the humor, and spends much of it in a shonen-esque fight that goes on way too long. While the pacing and plot can be a minor issue, the world itself is the interesting part. While the unnamed fantasy land is pretty generic in look and legend, the characters that populate it are all so interesting, perhaps the main reason anyone will want to watch Slayers. While not all the characters are three-dimensional (in fact, I don’t think any of them are), they’re such good company, no matter if they are part of our good guys or one of the baddies. Lina Inverse, our heroine, is a loud, annoying, and really selfish person. As a main character she is completely unlikeable and the opposite of the fantasy heroes the viewer is used to. She uses dark magic for her own gain, is only friends with certain characters because it benefits her, and treats everyone as a stepping stone. She still does some good, though in the end I feel that she only does it to save her own ass and perhaps become a hero. Gourry is a knight and a complete moron. He joins up with Lina as her bodyguard and she later learns he carries the mythical Sword of Light, which she hopes to get from him despite the fact it is his family heirloom. In fact, we’re given to believe the only reason she follows Gourry is to get the sword from him (though there is a hint of a romance brewing between the two). He’s the comedic relief for the most part but he does, occasionally, get to be a complete badass. Later on we meet Amelia, a “hero of justice” who’s pretty much the clumsiest girl in the world. Her father, Phil, is the prince who looks like a barbarian and is a staunch pacifist (unless you get him mad, then get ready for his Goodwill Toward All Creatures Kick). Zelgadis is the son of Rezo who was turned into a Chimera and banished by his father. He’s probably the most level-headed character with the best motivation. Then near the end we’re introduced to Sylphiel, a girl in love with Gourry who is only there to make sure the heroes win the final battle. Then we have the bad guys. Rezo the Red Priest wants to resurrect a demon lord in a bid to get his eyesight back, something that has driven him crazy for years. He was a good guy but his search for sight made him go nuts, leading to his eventual death. Later, he returns as a clone created by a woman named Eris, one of his followers who loved him and wants to see Lina and the gang die for killing her beloved master. The bad guys are all competent people with good intentions and backgrounds who are thrust into crappy situations. There are a ton of much lesser bad guys strewn in but the main villains may be more sympathetic than any of the heroes. I felt especially bad for Eris who couldn’t understand why the man she loved was taken from her. Rezo and Eris are just misguided. Meanwhile the “heroes” are all idiots, which leads to a lot of great comedy situations but doesn’t make you care about their well-being. One of my favorite examples of the stupidity of our heroes is when Amelia asks Lina to blow up a hill using her magic so that the townspeople don’t have to walk over or around it in order to get to the next town. Thus, Lina uses her magic selfishly to blow the hill into a crater, and accidentally unleashes a hoard of malicious ghosts sealed within. Hell, in the first episode Lina, in order to defeat a dragon, winds up blowing up the entire town she’s supposed to protect. She’s out of control and is the kind of character that in any other series would be the bad guy. And that right there is why Slayers is so damn good. It’s making fun of traditional roles and tropes in fantasy. The good guys are selfish morons while the bad guys are the ones you feel empathy towards. Does that mean that the series as a whole suffers because we aren’t as impressed by the heroes? No. It actually makes it more fun. So you’ll watch this show for the characters and not the plot, but I’m sure you’ll be stuck to the show for two more reasons. First, the animation is so wonderfully nostalgic. The character designs are cute and nearly everyone gets those massive shoulder pads so prevalent in 90’s anime. The animation screws up occasionally with bad lighting effects, graininess, a small part of the frame not colored, any number of issues you can think of. But I feel that lends it charm, something I’m sure people don’t like to hear a critic say (imperfections are so cute!) but I think looking at something from a nostalgic perspective, it shows the leaps and bounds that have been made in animating anime. The second reason you’ll stick? The music is so damn good. From the opening (a super cheesy, totally nineties theme) to the closing, every piece of music helps make an entertaining package all the more fun. Some of the music sounds Scooby-Dooish, lending that child-like feel you want from a good cartoon. And that’s what Slayers really is; a cartoon. It doesn’t take itself seriously at all and manages to give even an older viewer a sense of childish nostalgia. A lot of newer anime fans don’t understand where I come from when I talk about the eighties and nineties and how different anime was compared to now. Anime treats itself a lot more seriously nowadays than it did twenty years ago. In fact, I hesitate to call anime cartoons anymore because the medium has carved its own niche. Comedy anime nowadays aren’t comedies in the way of cartoons but in a more realistic sense, using words and realistic actions rather than silly faces and slapstick. And this is alright, it makes anime a unique medium. Hell, from the outset there were anime that weren’t like cartoons and saying that anime nowadays is different from back in the day is pretty obvious. Cartoons in America are a lot different too; as time goes on, things change. But an anime like The Slayers is very rare nowadays and watching it after some more recent series, it comes as a breath of fresh air. It’s not at all an amazing anime in any way, but it’s a lot of fun and memorable. It’s a great escape from the monotony of modern anime and, even without comparing it to anything, still stands as a good show worth a watch if you haven’t already seen it

After watching Slayers I think the easiest way to say it is this. "Slayers is one of those anime that I WISH I could have watched as a kid." It was one of those classics that was part of the great anime boom of the 90's. just a year before DBZ made it's debut in the west. And while it may come across as cheap because of it's obvious budget restrictions. Slayers is very self-aware on multiple levels and try's to make the most of what it does. and frankly it does a lot of things better then most modern day shonen. For Example: lets take ..."Bleach" A Shonen that feels the need to throw buckets of dialogue and exposition about HOW attacks work and WHY someone was able to dodge a certain attack. which just break the flow of the scene instantly and just makes me shout at the screen. "FIIIIIGHT ALREADY!" None of that in Slayers. if there's combat, IT'S JUST COMBAT and details surrounding the scene are handled either before or after the matter at a campsite or an Inn. Which isn't only more satisfying to look at, but makes more sense. Nobody interrupts a life-threatening fight scene to explain how an attack works or extensively compliment their adversary on how smartly they dodged their magic-super-beam! Slayers DOES things and SHOWS things. and only explains things if it needs to! I don't need to know how Lina's Dragon Slave works. I see what's happening right there on the screen. she uses an incantation that summons the forces of dark magic and launches it in an all destroying ball of energy. I don't need a single word of exposition to come to that conclusion. The same is done with the jokes in the show. it's the 90's so we're bound to get some more cringy material here and there but they never linger on them for too long. making the fast pacing work for the jokes that do work. the lesser are more easily forgotten and the more memorable ones have more impact. Moving on to the Characters. How do you even put this...our main character Lina is special (especially in this day and age). In a current anime world where Moe is the norm and self confident girls in anime are either blank slates, tsundere's and other stereotypes. Lina is one of those Spunky happy go lucky types that you rarely see anymore. She has a few stereotype staples like the "Food-lover" gimmick but she is very multilayered beside that. with genuine emotional shifts and opinions. She's a greedy treasure hunting adventurer, but would shove all of that aside if a hairy situation requires her expertise. even her Goofy moments are balanced well with moment where she's alone in her bedroom processing and monologueing about how to handle a situation they have to face. Goury on the other hand is relatively simple. but contrasts Lina pretty well. I've alway's felt that people who watch the show actually experience it through Goury, he's a simpleminded warrior that regularly needs explaining about whats going. so as Goury is getting information so are we, which creates a natural form a exposition. he's capable, and likable but not really deep. I would have liked to see him a little more worked out. The remaining main cast members are quite enjoyable as well. and they don't play into the obvious pitfalls like making Zelgadis Lina's Rival. I was especially worried about Amelia being the whiney little brat type but...she's actually pretty fun to watch. she's may be the over enthusiastic kid in the group BUT she isn't useless! not as powerful as Lina but still is a capable mage that can hold her own. I would say only the villains hold a bit of a weak spot, you don't really get to know them as well as the rest of the cast and they leave a lackluster impression. even when certain heartfelt moments take place on the villains side. it...doesn't leave a strong enough imprint for one to really care. then again drama isn't the strong point of Slayers. And that also ties in with the Story of Slayers. because...well there isn't a real grand scheme or goal for our cast collectively, It's more problems they face on the way and try to overcome. making things feel a bit episodic...but they're not. which is actually quite smartly done, every episode usually has a problem that occurs and is solved. but also ties in with the overarching plot. not everything though sometimes it's just complete filler, still...it's enjoyable filler. And that is probably Slayers greatest strength. even if you know the episode has nothing tied in with the overall arc it's still fun to watch. without giving to much away I was very skeptical about the episode where Lina would get married. the whole setup just screamed "dud-filler-episode" and I was proven wrong, they played it out great! In overall Slayers is a fun ride for anyone interested in a classic DnD, Medieval Fantasy adventure.

I decided to start the year by watching something new and different, even though I'm still looping with Sakura Card Captors! But in parallel I fit into my grid Slayers. I met him in this video of youtube channel Anime Whatever, and my research is an anime so much known here in Brazil (less by me, I did not understand why). In the anime, we continue journey with Lina Inverse, a powerful witch who accompanied the swordsman Gourry Gabriev, Princess Amelia and the magician swordsman Zelgadis Graywords, face bandits, monsters and demons. Lina has a terrible fame, for always causing unnecessary destruction wherever she goes, due to this, she is known by many nicknames not nice! The story of the anime is interesting, but often it becomes confusing because in an instant they are fighting, and suddenly everything is solved in the blink of an eye. On the other hand, the series can get you quite a laugh, it is stuffed with comedy, which are often starring Lina and Gourry. You also will not find much romance in Slayer, the characters do not seem to care too much about it, they just want to move on with their journey, and Lina just wants to know how much she will earn with something, which makes her somewhat ambitious When it comes to money. The fight scenes are very simple, the characters only launch their spells, which cause explosions, or fight with swords, which to a certain point of the anime doesn't seem to cause much damage to the enemy, at least until the end of the series, where there are "Strong" scenes with lots of blood. So if you are a lover of the animes of the 90s just like me, and Love a comedy, be sure to check out this anime!

This is, by and large, not a great show, but it's a pretty good time if you don't set your expectations too high It's a goofy children's show with a fairly loose story and simple characters, and if you take it at that level you'll enjoy it just fine. On the whole the show does make a good enough job of making the characters likeable, so I'm curious to see where the franchise goes after this, but it's not something I'd say is a must watch unless you're otherwise interested in the franchise or this era of animation The animation style is quite basic, but I'm quite fond of it - not the best of its era, but does the job in conveying action and emotion. Overall, I'd say this show is no higher or lower than a five; it's quite enjoyable, but beyond its relative fame it also doesn't really stand out much compared to other stories of this kind that I've seen.