released 21 jan 06 / last mod 01 jun 07 / greg goebel / public domain
* I ended up wading through much of the SLAYERS swords-and-sorcery anime series and wrote individual reviews of the various installments. However, given the similarities of the various parts of the series, it makes a certain amount of sense to cover all of them in a single review.
* The first-year SLAYERS TV series introduces sorceress Lina Inverse and her swordsman partner Gourry as they jump from one adventure to another, encountering various other heroes and villains as they do so. Lina is egotistical, bad-tempered, rash, and loud, while Gourry ... well, the easiest way to describe him is as a drifty blonde surfer-boy type who's taken up the battle sword -- I am always a bit puzzled that the Japanese seem to have picked up the dumb-blonde stereotype, when no ethnic Japanese are blonde. Lina and Gourry are both ravenously gluttonous and bicker incessantly.
The production values are mediocre, the story concept is not very imaginative, and there is plenty of standard anime hokum laced through the stories. Still, if the adventures of these two are nothing all that new -- Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser they're not -- the stories still seem to have been put together by people who understand the swords-and-sorcery genre fairly well and have the ability to carry on an entertaining story line with amusing characters. As far as anime hokum goes, I suppose it's something that anybody who watches the stuff has to expect and at least tolerate -- of course, they had to have a stock "hero in drag" episode -- or even acquire a certain grudging fondness for.
* SLAYERS seemed interesting enough for me to pick up the second-year SLAYERS NEXT series. Lina and Gourry are now part of a foursome, also including the taciturn half-golem warrior Zelgadis and the wildly idealistic junior sorceress Princess Amelia -- who played parts in the first season series. The four travel the countryside, seeking adventure and loot (not to mention good restaurants and food), and leaving a fair amount of destruction behind them.
OK, first thing to say is that, in general, what can be said about the first season can also be said about the second season. On the negative side, the artwork / production values are mediocre, the story concepts not extremely imaginative, and the scripts are laced with a good dose of predictable anime hokum. On the positive side, SLAYERS NEXT is consistently entertaining, snaps along nicely, has amusing characters, and doesn't take itself too seriously. It might not be brilliant and might not much impress even an open-minded non-anime fan, but it is a conscientious piece of work put together by sensible people that tries to give the viewers their money's worth.
They also occasionally throw a few surprising curves at the viewer. For example, while I groaned when they did another "heroes in drag" episode in SLAYERS NEXT after doing one in SLAYERS, in the end ... ah, you'll just have to watch it. There is also a satire on Japanese pop-music idol culture that took me above the usual "hahaha" reaction to the humor in the series to howling, and those who are fans of the truly bizarre Argentine fantasist Jorge Luis Borges will find a nice little link to one of his stories.
SLAYERS NEXT remains mediocre but does add some refinements to the original SLAYERS series. The theme music seems a bit snappier, for example, and the various characters are developed a little more, though that's partly because they don't have to be introduced in this series as they had in the first. They also throw in new characters, including the sly and devious "Xellos, the Mysterious Priest" and Martina, a scantily clad villainous sorceress who combines extreme clumsiness with having a few screws loose upstairs.
SLAYERS NEXT is also, I would say, paced better, though it does become somewhat melodramatic in the final episodes. I did buy it, and in fact some of the visuals had some pizzazz, but it was pushing the limits of what a lightweight concoction like this might reasonably expect to achieve.
* SLAYERS NEXT coming across as promising, I went on to pick up the third and final TV season collection, SLAYERS TRY.
SLAYERS TRY follows the same formula as the previous season. The foursome of Lina, Gourry, Zelgadis, and Princess Amelia are retained, as well as the demonic smart-aleck priest Xellos. SLAYERS TRY introduces a new character, Filia, a dragon priestess in human form. Filia is pretty and endearing, if sometimes overly feminine while having major strength and destructive capabilities. However, Filia is about the only thing that's really new about SLAYERS TRY.
While SLAYERS TRY maintains the fair-to-competent production qualities of earlier SLAYERS series, it basically repeats the same general formula of its predecessors: the gang is confronted and must resolve an apocalyptic threat. SLAYERS TRY is nothing particularly new, and if it is moderately entertaining to watch it is not particularly memorable.
What is particularly disappointing about SLAYERS TRY is that it does very little to advance the relationships of the characters. The SLAYERS NEXT series did seem to hint that there were some changes in store, but the scriptwriters were clearly unwilling to take the plunge and change the scenario in any significant way.
Obviously this was done on the expectation that there might be follow-on seasons for SLAYERS, meaning the scriptwriters didn't want to paint themselves into a corner by, say, marrying off the characters or bringing out Xellos' barely latent malevolent personality. With the final result being too indifferent to support a fourth season, it seems like they tried to dodge the bullet and simply walked into it instead. (I would be astounded if they knew they weren't going to have a fourth season and still didn't bother to stick their necks out.)
* The end of the TV series was not the end of SLAYERS -- but it should have been. One of the first follow-on productions, SLAYERS BOOK OF SPELLS (SBOS), was a set of three 25-minute episodes, recasting the SLAYERS concept slightly, eliminating Lina's normal gang of cronies for a new companion, Naga the Serpent, a statuesque, overbuilt, scantily-clad female adventuress along the lines of a Frank Franzetta or Boris Vallejo character and possessed of a mocking laugh.
I once observed that the mark of a bad comic book is that even the people who made it obviously don't think much of it (unless of course they are operating at an "Ed Wood" level of self-delusion), and this same principle applies to SBOS. The production values are indifferent at best and the scripts are painful to watch, not merely because the scriptwriters seem to have been working in their sleep but because the humor is all but nonexistent. The writing is about at the level of a weak Saturday-morning cartoon, with some "jigglevision" thrown in and not improving matters in the least.
I am far from against mindless silly entertainment. However, though SBOS does achieve the "mindless silly" part of the equation, it doesn't come close to reaching the "entertainment" element. I suppose people who have "never seen an anime they didn't like" would be able to swallow SBOS, but any anime fans who have mixed feelings about the genre, as I do, are certain to find SBOS on the bad side of the mix.
* The team-up of Lina and Nagha was also exploited in SLAYERS: THE MOTION PICTURE (STMP), in which the two take an economy boat trip to the magic disappearing island of Mipross, so they can enjoy the hot springs there. Of course, as would be the case with any self-respecting magic disappearing island, the two find that things on Mipross are "Not Quite What They Seem". This item clearly demonstrated the bankrupcty of the SLAYERS series. Once again, the production was completely by-the-numbers and the scriptwriting was tiresome at best.
The only conclusions I can make from SBOS and STMP is that SLAYERS is an idea whose time has passed. There seem to have been some other installments but I suspect they are best ignored. Maybe someone will come back to the concept and reinvent it in a fresh fashion one of these years, but I won't hold my breath waiting for it to happen.
