Ranked #1124

Slayers Revolution

Slayers Revolution is a show that isn't going to turn anyone who hates Slayers, but for Slayers fans it's a perfectly acceptable continuation of the series.

I have watched Slayers from the beginning. I have the previous collections, and even some of the movies (god knows why). I have fond memories of watching it in high school, and although it's nowhere near the best show I've watched, I have a lot of fun with it. This new Slayers show is bound very closely to the ones that came before it (somewhat surprising since they were so long ago), so I have a hard time imagining what it would be like to someone who hadn't seen the previous series. I have to think that it would be very hard to get into.

Slayers Revoltion is a bit mixed, at first. On the good side, the animation is higher quality, although new viewers will probably be turned off a bit by the character style, which, though a bit smoother, is pretty much the same as the old designs. The music is basically the same as before, and they managed to get the same VAs, so right from the start, the series feels like Slayers.

A new character is added early on in the series: a little beast thing named Pokota. One of the first problems I have with Revolution is this character. His personality is to much like Lina's, and watching them fight gets old pretty quickly.

Slayers has never been the most original series. Both Next and Try cribbed quite a bit off of the original, and Revolution is no exception. Especially in the first half, I felt like the series was just retreading old ground. This got much better during the second half, as did a lot of the problems, but I almost gave up before that point.

The second half of the series is a lot better, and feels like it's going somewhere. In addition to the general acceleration of the pace, this part was structured differently than the usual Slayers seasons. Probably because the season was so short, there were a lot more plot episodes, and a lot less filler. Not that I don't enjoy Slayers filler, but it was an interesting deviation.

In the end, this series was really just half a season. There were a lot of things set up that weren't resolved. A lot of the more interesting plot threads, in fact. Because of this, and because they've gotten some of the more annoying filler out of the way, I have high hopes for the next Slayers season, if they manage to get one out. read more

Story: Really poor compared to the story in Next and Try. It just gets way too predictable because none of the main characters do any training whatsoever so it's pretty much always the same spells. When will they learn that Fireball doesn't do anything to other magic users? The end is lame because of the cliche method used to win. If you read the series description, it says that Gourry needs a new sword, he doesn't really get one for keeps even though that was what they were doing in the first place. Along with filler, I give the story a 5. It just seemed very dry to me and it left a lot of things not taken care of. I have to say though, that episode 8's fight was great and was the highlight of the series.

Art: I gave a 10 because I loved seeing the characters I grew up with animated in a clean and consistent way. I'm also glad they got rid of those small vertical black lines under their eyes, I hate those...

Sound: Same cast doing the voices, I didn't mind that. It was great to hear Megumi Hayashibara doing voice acting again. Ost didn't really stand out to me. The opening and ending songs were okay but just not as good as the classic songs from the older Slayers series.

Character: I loved seeing Xellos again. He was in the opening and the ending making me think there'd finally be a main character in this series who actually knows what he's doing. I thought "Oh, man. This is gonna be great." Sadly, he hardly did anything and it took him a while to show up. He was totally ineffectual at the end too... he gets a less than one minute cameo in the last episode. While this section seems biased, Xellos was the main reason I watched this at all because the other characters are lame and very weak for a series like this. As mentioned in the story section, none of them are any stronger and they think junk like Fireball can take out a major enemy. Amelia and Zelgadis don't seem to be needed because they don't do anything. They aren't even good backup. For example...

In the previous Slayers series, Xellos would get weakened by positive statements. Say "The world is a happy place." and he'll kind of topple over and get weak. In episode 8 that I mentioned in the story section, Xellos fights Lina and friends (I know, awesome right?) but none of the characters thought to use positive thinking as a weapon. No, instead Lina and Zelgadis use Fireball... I guess after so many years the characters and writers have forgotten everything and threw continuity out the window.

The writers need to step up on these characters because this show is more than comedy, there's fighting so... the mains need to figure out how to do that and not be terrible at it.

Now for the new guys. We have Pokota who is the Terriermon-looking thing who pretty much only argues with Lina. EVERYBODY argues with Lina so this was nothing new and it looks like Pokota's here to stay. He didn't stick to me either like Xellos did, as soon as I saw Xellos I knew he was good people. As for the villains, I didn't care for them. They even integrate Rezo back into the story which seemed lame to me.

Enjoyment: Episode 8, that is all I needed to see. The rest was pretty hard to sit through. Had to force myself to finish it, it was a pain waiting each week for a new episode hoping Xellos would do something only to be sadly disappointed. I did not enjoy watching this series.

Overall: They set us up for another season since a lot of the enemies need more development. One has a beef with Lina that went unexplained, one's name is Rezo spelled backward which has to mean something and one is now half horse and half tiger living in the forest. Trust me, those aren't really spoilers. I know I'll go and watch it despite my complaints if one comes out but I hope it's better than Revolution. I don't care that the averages of my scores don't add up to 6 but it's really that bad.

Feedback would be greatly appreciated. Hope this helped. read more