Slayers

Powerful, avaricious sorceress Lina Inverse travels around the world, stealing treasures from bandits who cross her path. Her latest victims, a band of thieves, wait in ambush in a forest, thirsting for revenge. When Lina is about to effortlessly pummel her would-be attackers, the swordsman Gourry Gabriev suddenly announces his presence. Assuming Lina to be a damsel in distress, the foolish yet magnanimous man confronts the brigands in order to rescue her. After defeating them posthaste, the oblivious cavalier decides to escort Lina to Atlas City. Though not very keen on this idea, she ends up accepting his offer.

However, without realizing it, Lina has chanced upon a mighty magical item among her most recent spoils. Now two mysterious men are hunting the young magician and her self-proclaimed guardian to obtain this powerful object for apparently nefarious purposes. This way they begin their adventure, one where the fate of the world itself may be at stake.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Adaptation:	Slayers: Super Explosive Demon Story, Slayers
Sequel:	Slayers Next
Prequel:	Slayers: The Motion Picture, Slayers Gorgeous, Slayers Specials

Koyasu, Takehito
Japanese

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Staff

Kobayashi, Noriko

Producer, Associate Producer

Haigney, Michael

Producer, Script

Watanabe, Takashi

Director

Iwasaki, Yoshiaki

Episode Director, Storyboard

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Opening Theme

"Get Along" by Masami Okui and Megumi Hayashibara

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Ending Theme

"Kujikenai Kara!" by Masami Okui and Megumi Hayashibara

Reviews

Oct 16, 2009

Archaeon

Recommended

The mid 1990s were a bit of a special time for anime, kind of like a mini golden age. Akira had opened the doors to the West and, after a taking a little rest, the second great expansion of anime began to gather pace. Titles like Ghost in the Shell, Martian Successor NADESICO, Fushigi Yuugi, Golden Boy, Escaflowne, Macross Plus, Giant Robo, and the ever contentious Neon Genesis Evangelion became firm fan favourites and cemented the media's place as a viable form of entertainment in the West.

In amongst all these great shows came a fantasy series that would literally change the way studios would approach ...

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May 28, 2013

angelsreview

Mixed Feelings

This show doesn’t take itself too seriously and that’s what I love about this. It’s much like a dungeon and dragons game where you’re just with a group of friends who jokes around. Even Glass Reflection has said (want more of that, go to the other reviews) and each character has there own personality.We follow two characters most of the times, Lina who is a sorceress with a chip on her shoulder and Gaurry, a rather bumbling warrior. The two work rather well together from the moment they met and are the main reason why the show keeps going on. The two argue like an ... old married couple but its Gaurry’s heart and Lina’s knowledge that makes the dual work so well in every little case they go. Sure you have some of the stereotypes that happen once in a while, like the ‘stupid’ blond haired Gourry and the little loud mouth girl Lina, but I never found them predictable. I believe one of the reasons why they made him like that is because then we have a sort of open book to help us get into the world. Since he doesn’t know the world (or plays dumb) we get a reason for Lina to explain the things we won’t understand.

Zelgadis is a rather interesting character as he is half stone in his whole body (immature jokes aside fokes). (Kurai: “Ha! Hard as a rock even in bed!” Angel: *smacks him hard on the head* “What did I just say?”) He is also a sorcerer and in the first half, we see him as a protagonist. Now, I don’t think I’m spoiling anything when I say he ends up turning around and teaming with the other characters. Amilia was more annoying then the others but her character sort of grew on me. Lets see, I believe Zelgadis is Chaotic good and Amilia is really Lawful good if you want to get into D&D.

The storyline isn’t really a one directional storyline but it actually changes halfway through. It’s not that it goes into a completely different storyline but it does throw a couple twists and turns. Sadly though, we never get a full sense of the world they are in. They throw things in on last second and then take a little bit of time trying to rectify the change of the world. Now, they have really good luck though in this because most of the explanations actually seem to work but that’s because they didn’t put a standard to the world in the first place.

The artwork does show its age but this was made on cells. Even though its classic, it’s rather clean and when they do stray away from the artwork, its mostly to show a gag rather then just a whim. We do get some still images and overused footage but I never was bothered by this. I have to say their costumes are really ridicules though but that’s a norm for any fantasy style show. The whole magical jewels on magical jewels for a sorcerer, the armor that actually doen’t look like it would protect him to well on his legs, it’s just one of those things. IT is like they made this a stereotypical fantasy but then joke about that same thing at times.

Lina’s English voice was one that I had to actually grow to like, hers and Amilia. They were a little too high but not as high as the Japanese version. I couldn’t get into the Japanese version sadly because of Lina’s voice but the English is another matter. I think some of the jokes also work better in the English but again, it might be regional for this. They talk about lots of items that really aren’t in there time frame like cheeseburgers and such. It gives another layer to the show.

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Mar 26, 2018

Imaishi

Not Recommended

As a person who is actually quite a lot into old anime, in fact even stuff much older than Slayers, I'm honestly bewildered by the amount of praise this show gets, and I think its status of an old classic might be heavily influenced by nostalgia. The anime is severely lacking in multiple areas, most of all it's just boring and completely devoid of anything unique.

Slayers tells a story of Lina Inverse, a powerful yet inconspicuous magician who travels around, kills monsters, fights bandits and robs them of their treasure. Over the course of the show, new adventurers, starting with a travelling swordsman Gourry, join ... her party and together they explore the fantasy world. You know the drill, and have probably heard something similar many times, because this is nothing new. Nevertheless, this extremely popular idea can definitely turn out very nice and become its own thing, if the authors bring their new twists and details to it. Sadly, this is not the case with Slayers.

Everything, starting with the setting, is bare of nuances and unique ideas. The anime is set in a generic medieval-fantasy world, with magic, creatures like trolls and dragons, princes, knights and the like. Philosopher stone and sword of light. Old and boring. There is also the demon-king sealed long ago and sought to be revived by his followers. You have never heard of something like that, have you?
While this could still allow for a great and compelling story, with brilliant and interesting characters, Slayers definitely doesn't deliver, it actually doesn't even seem to try.

The plot progresses in a pretty messy pattern, and despite not being very long, brings to mind 300+ episode shounens. It randomly jumps back and forth between important events revealing old mysteries, and completely meaningless, inconsequential fillers that shouldn't even be there, because they are neither interesting nor funny.
The story just lacks direction. The characters don't pursue any real goal to drive the plot. Something is happening, our adventurers just get dragged into it, do their job to solve the problems, rinse and repeat. Some of it can be pretty cool , but it all feels kind of pointless.
The mood and atmosphere also swing in completely unnatural manner, and it does stand out sometimes. Two characters are killed shortly after finally uniting with the main party, and you know what? Not even a minute later, the main trio is back at an inn, stuffing themselves and laughing out loud joking. There is not even a moment of grief or sadness, just a few shocked faces for a second.

Speaking of jokes, the humour is one of the weakest points of Slayers. It's extremely repetitive, childish and ham-fisted, appearing regardless of danger or situation at hand, and is at fault in the show rarely having the proper atmosphere. Lina has small breasts. That is the joke, hahaha... I won't be discussing wether this alone is funny or not, as that's purely subjective, but repeating this time and time again, episode after episode, is definitely boring and actually gets quite annoying, even if it could be funny at first. Gourry is stupid and doesn't understand the simplest of explanations, Amelia is clumsy, trips over and falls on her face. Oh, there was another joke with Lina, you know, she's on her period and can't cast powerful spells then, isn't that funny? You know, it's THAT time of the month, wink wink, haha...

This humour is also detrimental to characters themselves, because it's all around, and in fact pretty much defines them.
While there is focus on Lina, and she does get enough screen time and characterization to be more than just her breast size, it's a real problem with other characters. It's hard to say anything meaningful about Gourry other than that he's stupid and has bad memory, and Amelia being also silly and clumsy, because most of their scenes are either fighting or reusing the old jokes. Most of the characters are just very poorly characterized and thus it's hard to truly care for them. They're not unlikeable, but they definitely are forgettable and undeveloped. This should never happen in a show that wants to be more than a silly comedy.

The arstyle is mediocre, and character designs, save for Lina and Zelgadis, seem effortless. The animation is poor even considering the time it was made, and just screams low budget. Overall the anime doesn't look terrible, even if it's aged, but the visuals definitely don't help to make up for other aspects of the show either.

The music is actually pretty good and fitting, and few of the tracks are especially good and memorable. It's nothing spectacular, but it does its job well, and in my opinion, is the strongest aspect of the show.

Overall, Slayers is a very disappointing experience. It's a huge cluster of overused ideas and tropes. The story has weird pace and goes nowhere, the characters are basically running jokes, and at times just annoying. It's full of bad, repetitive humour and lacks fresh air, making the whole show pretty boring.
It's not the worst watch ever, it's not offensively bad at anything, but it doesn't really have anything going for it either, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, because there are shows better at everything Slayers does. It's just completely mediocre.
I really can't see why it achieved the status it has now, and personally see it as just another, uninspired fantasy adventure, severely lacking in character. I would only watch it if you want to see what one of the most popular 90s anime is all about.

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