The plot follows Lina Inverse as she searches for a magical artifact called The Claire Bible which contains some very necessary spells for her. Her friend and comrade in arms Zelgadis wants the book in hopes to returning to his human form. The band once again comes together and it's off on a new quest.
The visuals are clearly the most noticeable improvement with character designs, setting and static backgrounds appearing to be more crisp and detailed. Castles and underground labyrinths look a lot better, and there are also some pretty moments when the characters travel to other dimensions or alternate worlds. The final battle towards the end has a nice dark, end of the world like setting that truly feels as if this is the end. The battles look a little better as well despite the lack of choreography at times; the light shows are still something to get pretty excited about. The BGM is still just as good creating the right feeling for whichever situation is necessary.
This season sticks to its guns delivering the comedy along with action and it does succeed a good portion of the time; but one's enjoyment is clearly going to be decided on how much they bought into the characters earlier on. The first half of the series spins its wheels on delivering something of a plot. It's true that smaller details come into play, such as a major demon by the name of Gaav possessing a hidden motive to lure out Lina which leads into his personal feud with another demon; but there's so much filler taking place and stories that serve no purpose it's difficult to hide that this stuff is simply to prolong the series. I did have fun watching some of this, yet the lack of progress grew a little frustrating. The second half finally starts to deal with these plot threads that were introduced, and things to start get good, and I mean really good leading up to a couple of good battles and an ending worth waiting for.
Lina sees some development and becomes a bit more well rounded, and some of the side characters receive a bit as well coming together more as a family; the characters aren't even 60% developed but they really don't need it because their personalities alone carries the weight. Some of the battles are quite creative with nice outcomes and I loved their use of teamwork on some things.
In closing, although Slayers Next looks better and retains everything that made it special in the first place. It still suffers from the repeated jokes and obvious episode stretching; the jokes worked very well in the original because it was new stuff and many times unexpected. I like the characters a lot, still I need something more than watching Lina blast bandits to bits and watching the gang chow down practically every episode. It just gets to the point where some things aren't as funny anymore. I still recommend giving this a shot to everyone who fell for the original series.
Highs: Maintains everything that made it great, better visuals
Lows: Needed better progress, some jokes are redundant
