The Slayers

Where monsters rampage, she’s there to take them down! Where treasure glitters, she’s there to claim it. When an enemy rises to face her, victory will be hers! Her name is Lina Inverse, the bandit killer, the spooker of dragons, and a terror known world-wide for her explosive power, reckless attitude and merciless reputation. Nations cower when she approaches, and yet, they might just be surprised if they were ever to lay eyes on her in person. As a nomadic mercenary sorceress, and a relatively small teenage girl at that, Lina’s only real motives are to survive, and to acquire enough money to keep herself fed and comfortable on her journeys. She only steals from bandits, but she also only helps those who pay her to, staying out of situations that don’t concern her or her companions... But when the world is at stake, that’s when the gloves come off, and the forces of evil had better flee in terror of this one woman weapon of mass destruction.

So if you hadn’t noticed, I usually prefer to open up this portion of a review by talking about the production company behind any individual piece of media, but unfortunately, this one’s a bit of a mystery. I went into this project, and through my entire rewatch, convinced that Slayers was entirely produced by the deservedly famous JC Staff, but apparently that’s not true. ANN does have them listed for it, but they also include asterisks stating a lack of confirmation on the first three seasons and all the movies. Wikipedia says that only seasons 4 and 5 were produced by JC Staff, while the first three seasons(including this one) were produced by a group I’ve never heard of before called E&G Films, who died in the early 2000s. ANN doesn’t have E&G listed at all for that, instead listing SoftX, who also produced Tenchi Universe, Battle Athletes Victory(Really?) and the early Pokemon TV show, and TV Tokyo, who also broadcast the series.

Thus, I don’t know who to credit and/or blame for this, but the visual quality of Slayers is kind of a mixed bag, but in a mostly positive way. You can tell almost immediately that this series was aired in the mid nineties, specifically 1996, and it definitely shows, but I also don’t think it’s entirely fair to say it looks bad by 1996 standards. If anything, I feel like Slayers is somewhere on the high end of what you could expect out of a televised anime at the time. There were a ton of corners cut, mostly relying on frozen faces with flapping lips and the occasional frozen key frame in the background, action lines and recycled footage, but these tactics aren’t abused nearly as frequently as in other shows from around the time like Saiyuki. The animation in Slayers is lively whenever it needs to be, smooth at some points and janky at others, usually depending on the tone of the particular scene. Shows that look like this are usually beset more by technological limitations than financial ones, but there is a pretty big silver lining to that issue.

Being from 1996, this particular season of Slayers was both hand drawn and cell shaded, and here is where the beauty of the series truly comes from. Even in the more generic settings, like the random cities that the cast keep stopping in, you can still see each brushstroke across the background, a detail that really comes into play in darker and more foreboding locations, such as within caves or ruins, and especially in action scenes where Lina unleashes her consistently beautiful magical attacks, some of which straight up change the colors of the world around her, an extension of the highly attentive lighting of the series. As for the designs, my only real complaint is that a lot of the less important enemies(bandits, beastmen, the like) looked really generic and borderline interchangeable, but the main cast all look distinct and unique, and in some cases downright iconic. You could never forget the design of pink sorcerous Lina or blue swordsman Goury, nor the elements of yellow that visually tie them together. The big villains, unlike their henchman, can look pretty damn terrifying at times.

The English dub is surprisingly good, considering when it came out and who produced it. From what I gather, it was licensed by Central Park media, but like Now and Then, Here and There, they hired a smaller company to dub it, namely Taj Studios, yeah these credits are getting kinda weird, but for what it’s worth, it is a pretty strong dub... Eventually. It takes a little while for everything to fall into place, but we do start off on a high note with Lisa Ortiz as Lina, which is arguably her most popular role considering just how well she embodies the character. Her slightly shrill, slightly raspy snark not only matches the attitude of the character, but may even elevate her beyond the capabilities of the original seiyuu. Her companion Gourry is voiced by Eric Stewart, who voiced both Brock and James in Pokemon, and his portrayal seems to borrow equally from both roles, as he possesses that straight-man demeanor of Brock as well as the dim-witted foppishness of James, combined into a character who just might become annoying if he didn’t have such perfect chemistry with Lina. He also plays several bit parts throughout.

When I said the dub became really strong eventually, there’s a good chance you knew exactly what I meant. There are two other main characters in the cast, and at first, each one was assigned to a different small time no name who didn’t seemingly have a ton of anime acting experience. First was Zelgadis, whose arc I can’t really talk about for spoiler reasons, but he started off being voiced by David Cronin, a guy who only has two other anime roles, and while he’s okay when staying in a low register, he sounds hilarious when he has to emote. He is later recast with Crispin Freeman, which is a huge improvement. Then there’s Amelia, the outgoing and chipper fourteen year old who's obsessed with justice, and she’s played by Joani Baker, who despite having a slightly bigger resume, including GTA4, is borderline unbearable until she’s replaced with Pokemon’s Veronica Taylor. Rachael Lillis also has a few memorable cameos, RIP. In any case, Lisa Ortiz is the star of this dub, and she also elevates the performances of every actor that she has chemistry with.

While we’re talking about Lina herself, I should probably use that segue to point out that there are two hugely effective elements in this series that make it as watchable as it is, and she is one of them. Lina is one of the most likeable and compelling characters in anime. Her moral alignment is blended cleverly enough that she’s not some self-righteous do-gooder, but she does HAVE a conscience and a moral code, so while she does primarily fight for her own interests, she would also never commit an act of evil upon the innocent. Her actions tend to fall in line with all of this very consistently, an approach that I wish western media would apply to popular morally grey characters like Harley Quinn and Deadpool, whose portrayals can be a bit morally confused to say the least. But more importantly, another advantage that Lina has as a character is the way she approaches the challenges and opponents set in front of her. Don’t get me wrong, she’s all for spamming offensive spells at an enemy until it dies, but she’s also not above strategizing and looking for new methods, which make her much less predictable than she could have been.

Like, there’s a scene I love where she’s been captured and bound in chains that will electrocute her if she uses any magic. What does she do? She uses magic anyway, gritting her teeth and just tanking the electrocution long enough to blow open the door. She then uses her chains against her captors, lassoing them with it and inciting an incantation that electrocuted both her and them, showing some straight up Carman V-chip energy. You can never tell just how she’s going to solve a problem, but most of the time her plans come together in the most hype ways possible, which goes a long way towards keeping her OP ass from feeling like a Mary-Sue. The other strong element of this series is the world-building, which is very cleverly not revealed all at once. If nothing else, you can not accuse Slayers of making shit up as it goes along... This franchise has a deep, well thought out magic system and comprehensive lore, making the world it takes place in feel very real and authentic, and the cast is just living in it.

I also really love the fact that Lina and Gourry have more than enough chemistry, and Lisa Ortiz is a talented enough actor, that no matter how much exposition she has to dump to explain what’s going on to Gourry(and more importantly, to the audience), it never feels tedious or boring. And there’s a lot to explain about this plot, so that advantage goes a long, long way. Their dynamic becomes even stronger as the rest of the party forms, especially with regard to the character of Amelia, whose hare-brained obsession with justice clashes with the more cavalier Lina and Gourry, evolving them beyond the straight-man-vs-fool rut that they were starting to get stuck in around that point, making her Sailor Mars style puzzle piece that instantly improves the writing upon her inclusion onto the team, well, at least past her rocky introduction... But since we’re talking about the writing, we should also go over the weaknesses of this season, because there are a few.

To start, and I want to get this one out of the way quickly, the structure of the season is a little uncoordinated. I can’t entirely explain why, because there are some obvious spoiler reasons attached, but if you’ve seen the season, you should already be aware that the climax of the second half feels noticeably weaker than the climax of the first half. This is probably an unfortunate side effect of following the light novels, which started out as collections of the short stories the creator first published... But instead of blending them all into a cohesive narrative like JRR Tolkien, Hajime Konzaka just published them in an anthology like Mercedes Lackey did with Vows and Honor. As a result, quick spoiler warning here: They go from battling the ultimate demon lord to the less powerful clone of the guy who summoned him, with a lot of filler episodes in between. Beyond that, the execution of the series is a bit rough in general, especially with the contrast between the comedy and the drama/action.

The humor is extremely hit or miss, maybe even more miss than hit when I think about it. I think the worst of it is probably in episode 1, the scene where Lina meets Gourry for the first time, dealing with a swarm of bandits, and Lina starts mugging the camera and making some uncharacteristically fourth wall breaking commentary about the situation and her role in it, something she never really does again, and thank God, it was painfully unfunny. From then on, as much chemistry as Lina and Gourry may have, their dynamic is defined by some repetitive banter that the actors only barely manage to make work, and some pokemon level slapstick that they sadly can not make work. The humor works a lot better when it’s more securely in character, like their reactions to the situations they find themselves in, basically the kind of in-story moments where it doesn’t feel like they’re making an effort to play to the audience or TRY and be funny.

Either way, this humor is obviously meant to skew extremely young, and since this season is the one that’s most heavily dedicated to comedy, there’s a lot of it, and it stands in stark contrast to the more dramatic or action-based material. Lina and her friends face world-ending threats in this show, and I’m not just talking about Captain Planet villains laughing maniacally over some over-the-top flamboyant scheme, I mean fucking demonic entities from hell, and they don’t just posture and make threats, they fucking kill people. This show can get extremely dark, and it makes no bones about just how serious the bad guys are, so you can imagine how jarring it feels when, directly in-between two of these encounters, the team flies off to a magic college to find out how cloning works, and we see a million chibi Linas fighting a million chibi Gourrys. I’m sorry, I was really getting into this battle for the fate of mankind, I’m not quite in the mood for this non-fuckery right now.

Another issue is the character of Syfiel, a shrine maiden who kind of just joins the party out of nowhere at one point, and somewhere around ninety percent of her personality is the fact that she’s in love with Gourry. To be fair, she doesn’t do NOTHING for the plot... She tells the party about the potentially dire consequences of using Lina’s most powerful spell, The Gigaslave, and she does heal Lina at one point, but overall, she doesn’t really add anything crucial to the story. Her voice actress is terrible, and yet unlike Zelgadis and Amelia, she doesn’t get recast. I feel like she’d blend seamlessly into any other anime’s cast, but the other four main characters are so awesome and memorable... Especially Lina, who’s one of my personal favorite anime characters of all time... That the comparison just immediately drives home how boring she is. Even Amelia’s father feels like more of a main character than she is, and he is literally a joke character.

Beyond that, the story feels rushed at parts, it relies on a few too many coincidences, there are several ideas and story elements that are introduced and then quickly forgotten or abandoned, and the narrative overall feels kind of rough with way too many instances of things just happening... Or at least, that’s how I used to feel. Something about me has changed from my last rewatch of this season to this one, and it has greatly recontextualized my feelings towards it. A year and a half ago, for the first time in my life, I finally had the opportunity to play Dungeons and Dragons, which I have been ever since, and more than any other anime I’ve ever seen, Slayers feels like an actual DND campaign. And to be clear, I don’t actually know if it was based on one, but I know Record of Lodoss War was, and that show was boring as fuck(although a full on, unvaccinated case of Covid also contibute to me dropping it).

If you look at Slayers as the animated retelling of a really casual tabletop campaign, a lot of details suddenly start to come together. Sure it feels really random that Lina would pick up a special item out of a bandit hoard, and people looking for it would be at her door within days, and the item winds up having world-ending attributes... Unless that item was placed there by the Dungeon Master as an important quest item! Sure the main character feels overpowered, with some of the most powerful spells in the world at her disposal, only to come up against issues that require more complex solutions that she sometimes has to let another party member solve... Because the DM is going out of their way to balance the game against a min-maxing player! I’m not exaggerating, there are moments where Lina figures out some crucial detail of a villain’s plan on the fly, and I used to roll my eyes at these scenes, but now? “Oh shit, she just Nat-20’d her insight check!”

And to be clear, I’m not saying that this in any way invalidates the criticisms that could be lobbed at this series. No anime is perfect, every anime has its flaws, and it’s up to you as the viewer to decide whether or not to allow those flaws to prevent you from enjoying the material. All I’m saying is, that by looking at Slayers Classic from a new perspective, I had a lot more fun watching it this year than I did the last time I checked it out. There are still a lot of parts of it that I find inexcusably lame, like its occasional traipses into annoyingly unfunny territory, but I still love everything that’s cool about it, and I feel a great deal more forgiving towards some of its weaknesses. Besides, with Slayers Next just around the corner, the best is yet to come.

Slayers is out of print from both Central Park media, who released it on its own, and Funimation, who released it in a box set with the second and third seasons. That box set used to be really cheap and easy to find, but somewhere over the last few years, copies have skyrocketed in value on the secondhand market. The same could be said for other entries in the franchise, which have become somewhat rare on physical media. The exception to this rule is seasons 4 and 5, which are still available on Amazon, albeit for an elevated price. The original light novels are available from JNC, and as for the manga, well, you might as well try your luck at a used book store.

I don’t like to think of myself as an anime boomer. I can’t stand the middle aged dudes who gatekeep the otaku label, commenting on your favorites list that you “Don’t watch anime” because you don’t show enough older anime street cred. I doin’t want to be that kind of person, but I do think it’s important to occasionally expand your horizons by watching older anime than you’re used to, especially the ones that came out before the industry switched from cell animation to digital painting. It’s important to see how far the industry has come over the years, both in terms of what we’ve gained artistically, and what we’ve lost. On that note, I think Slayers is a damn fine place to start, especially now that anime and Dungeons and Dragons have both made their way past the subject of schoolyard bullying and into the mainstream. It’s a fun, engaging fantasy adventure romp that may be rough around the edges, but that rough still has a few diamonds waiting to be discovered.

I give Slayers a 7/10