>nostalgia (n): a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations
I've been watching Slayers media recently. I've never heard of this series because I've never been big into anime or manga, but I was told it was a "huge influence" on a lot of content creators popular today. Granted, I don't like much of the content being spewed out here in the West, so it was more of an experiment to see "what went wrong". I was trying to see what negative impacts Slayers brought to the table.
As you've already guessed, I like it tremendously. I binged the entire show in a week around my work schedule, movies and OVAs included. Now I'm stuck with a problem because I'm feeling an emptiness I haven't felt for something before. I feel hollow, wanting something that I can't describe.
I know Yea Forums probably isn't the best place to discuss Yea Forums-related things, but is there someone on here that can explain why I feel bad now that there's no more Slayers-content for me to go over (besides the manga)?
There are slayers next and slayers try, and slayers revolution and slayers evolution-R. Go watch them all instead of blogposting shit.
Jacob Collins
Fuck the manga. Read the original Light Novels. I love Slayers as well and got into it via the anime, but the books blow the anime straight out of the water. They are written from Lina's pov and are an overall better blend of humor and serious fantasy than the anime could muster without the benefits of prose.
The first saga (effectively that basis for the first season and Next) is volumes 1-8, which received official (though wonky) translations by TokyoPop before their (well deserved) demise. The second saga (volumes 9-15) was never really adapted (though characters in it have appeared in some of the later manga stories) but it still well worth the read. After saying that hell would freeze over before he would write more Slayers outside of the Special prequel series, Kanzaki recently started up a third saga. Good luck hunting down the shitty fan translations, but it is still totally worth it.
Also, controversial opinion, but check out the anime Lost Universe. After passing over adapting the still-in process second saga, the anime team went off an created Try, which delved into Kanzaki's large multiverse mythology. Lost Universe is a space opera the same team created to act as a mirror to the Slayers anime by showing another world within the multiverse and how the lore changes between dimensions. Unfortunately, since season 2 was never made, the ultimate payoff is missing, but I still think it is worth watching if you want more of Slayer's overall tone.
Nolan Hernandez
>wonky
Wonky how?
Jack Reed
>I know Yea Forums probably isn't the best place to discuss Yea Forums-related things Ah, you're just an off-board tourist that believes to know better than us. Why don't you go back to your regular board and try discussing Slayers there?
Evan Lee
I wasn't aware there was so much more content for this stuff. Looking at Funimation's uploads' view-count on YouTube I would've thought that Slayers was some sort of "obscure" thing that got drowned out by more-popular works at the time.
It was clearly just a joke. It's like saying Yea Forums has shit-taste in music, or /fit/ is nothing but manlet homos.
Benjamin Bennett
Slayers is cool
Elijah Morris
TokyoPop had some seriously amateur-level practices. Most notably, they were terrible at name consistency. Even in the same book, they may switch spellings for pronouns. You have to stay on your toes at times to keep up with their inconsistent spellings. Overall, the writing is fine and frankly much between than the Volume 9 and 10 fan translations, which just don't have natural English syntax.
man Yea Forums has some of the shittiest responses to people trying to talk about good anime or get more into it
Sebastian Perez
This.
NEXT brings in a piece of shit so well-received he's arguably everyone's fan-favorite or in their top-three, and despite what some would call a grievous disservice in the ending NEXT manages to wrap up everything so tightly it was a shock that there could be a season after it.
TRY starts off slow and has a DA-tier villain, but then works its Slayers magic by making a one-note become someone the audience gets heavily-invested in while also having an animation feast-for-the-eyes finale with a conclusion that's super-satisfying for its implications.
The anime is one of those things where everything went right and went out with a bang instead of lingering.
What happened to Naga, anyways? Apparently she was very important in the first part of the story, and was a well-received character, and yet when it came to the anime they don't even mention how she's Amelia's older sister. It's like she doesn't exist.
I might be wrong but it looks like some bullshit related to intellectual property rights. I mean, it seems like movies and tv series were done by different studios. Also, even in Revolution or Evolution-R where Nagi had a small cameo as an animated suit of armor they were not allowed to mention her name or show her directly.
Nolan Robinson
I didn't like Evolution-R/Revolution much, but I still love the original. And I still remember a lot of major moments of the first, Next, and Try even though it's been like literally 12 years since I last watched those. For some reason one part that still sticks out for me from Try was part way through, when Lina is starting to summon the LoN as a last ditch effort thinking apocalypse is ny, and Amelia tries to get the otherworlder to oppose it while everyone else is telling her to stop. And he's like "imagine, the power of our mother, summoned to this place" and sort of just wants to see it. It really kind of drove home for me the alien point of view, the awe that crossed dimensions.
I'll add that they both had fantastic music still, and neither was bad, they just didn't click with me quite as much as the original three.
Josiah Reed
>Mountains of fucking isekai shit getting translated >No one has yet to touch the new vol. 16 I WOULD CAST THE GIGA SLAVE AND PURPOSEFULLY FUCK UP THE INCANTATION IF I DAMN WELL COULD. LoN just take me now.
>Except for Revolution and Evolution-R... Were those based in the novels too? They somehow felt off from the earlier ones, like a regression of character development somehow and some other oddities. Never knew whether it was just a so-so adaption or anime original or what.
Michael Fisher
Nah, the last 2 seasons were garbage and full of plot holes. As far as I remember authors even forgot that they already killed Zanaffar and they made him reappear without any logical explanation.
Bentley Thompson
>Nah, the last 2 seasons were garbage and full of plot holes. As far as I remember authors even forgot that they already killed Zanaffar and they made him reappear without any logical explanation. I always wondered if it was just me forgetting stuff after a long break. I ended up dropping them part way through, yet somehow I didn't hate them per se anyway. I was bummed though.
My memory is cloudy but Zanaffar isn't so much a specific character as an entire class of chimera beasts that are born when sorcerers try to create the Zenaffa Armor and screw it up. A true perfect set was worn by the elf Memphis in the later novels.
Evolution-Revolution was the bastardization of anime-original and whatever remaining plotlines from Vols 1-8 that the first two seasons had left untouched. Duclis and the Zanaffar armor were taken from Vol 5, and Zuuma is from Vols 4 and 6. However, stuff like Pokuta and the Rezo jar etc were all completely made up by the anime. Essentially, it was just a bunch of recycling whatever was left from saga one, because the anime utterly refuses to touch saga two with a ten foot pool.
Mason Campbell
>Evolution-Revolution was the bastardization of anime-original and whatever remaining plotlines from Vols 1-8 that the first two seasons had left untouched That makes me happy than, explains why it was such a clusterfuck and mediocre followup to Try. Although it definitely is weird they went that route rather then just adapting more material.
Mason Smith
>TRY starts off slow and has a DA-tier villain YOU TAKE THAT BA- >but then works its Slayers magic by making a one-note become someone the audience gets heavily-invested in while also having an animation feast-for-the-eyes finale with a conclusion that's super-satisfying for its implications. Oh okay, carry on.
I've never heard of this. Also I believe the studio did both the films and tv series, jc staff.
Connor Parker
The ultimately "problem" with saga two is that it changes the party completely. The second saga completely drops Amelia and Zelgadiss. Truth be told, the anime actually increased their screentime from the original books. The side-effect is that the Slayers anime is seen as a four-man group with Xelloss as an unwanted fifth. Trying to rewrite the second saga with Amelia and Zelgadiss in tow was apparently too much to handle. Hell, the anime team had a hard enough time finding anything for them to do in Evolution-Revolution, so their insistence to keeping them around was largely meaningless. Also, saga two isn't too funny, really. Luke and Milina are almost entirely serious characters, and the situations are higher stakes (though technically lower threats--Slayers is actually an inverse difficulty scale, but Lina is continuously forced to tackle shit without spamming world-ruining cheats).
Jordan Bennett
Slayers was pretty big in the 90's, they made a lot of content for it. Its past its hey day, but slayers has a lot of fans and will likely still continue in the future, when ever they decide they want to reboot it.
Jonathan Rodriguez
>because the anime utterly refuses to touch saga two with a ten foot pool. Megumi Hayashibara is only 52 and still active. Is there any hope?
There's easily another 2-cours worth of story that hasn't been adapted yet.
>jc staff. Then it is even weirder. They did not even include Slayers into the video created specially for their anniversary youtu.be/dfRqgX3SqDc
Jeremiah Wright
>though technically lower threats--Slayers is actually an inverse difficulty scale, but Lina is continuously forced to tackle shit without spamming world-ruining cheats That I actually always really liked about the Slayers setting vs so many others, that magic is often very much a step function rather than a smooth curve. Lina has both fireball and dragonslave say, and boosted versions, but there is still an absolutely enormous gulf between them and the next step after that is basically summon-god-might-annihilate-the-universe. So it's not possible to just have power level comparisons, she (and others) can't simply smoothly adapt exactly as needed but have to consider collateral damage and tradeoffs to some extent. Made things a lot more interesting despite having a "strong" MC, because her world-ruining cheats have a strong emphasis on the "world ruining" bit. She's simultaneously a big threat but can also potentially get screwed by an enemy that is merely very strong but doesn't justify blasting everything else over.
I can't think of many step function powers used in magic settings in anime, at least not anything made in a long while.
Levi Robinson
I mean theoretically if a caster has enough pool and bucket capacity, a Fireball could equal or exceed a Dragon Slave in power. You also have to consider things like time needed to recite the incantation.
Angel Nelson
NICE pussy.
Easton Jackson
Honestly, I kind of feel like Evo-Rev sort of ruined any chance for saga two getting done. That said, hope has been rekindled to a degree since Kanzaki has decided to revive the brand. With saga three now begun, it is possible that Fujimi Shobo may want to commission another anime series. I wouldn't count on it, but it won't necessarily be a surprise if it does come to pass.
John Gutierrez
Perhaps, but in the actual series that isn't the case for humans, in contrast to mazoku and the like. So she (and others) can't face an enemy that is 167% stronger and simply work 167% harder, they have to decide whether it's worth jumping up to the next tier and using a spell that hits 2000% harder (or whatever it is) or whether they can get away with something else or call on allies or whatever. It makes for something a bit different then a lot of stuff.
Related, it's also a good example of why series with offensive bias are inherently more interesting than balanced.
Jack Thompson
You think they might just shitcan everything that happened in EvoRev if they did decide to do saga 2? It's obviously much more recent then Try, but I don't think they generated many brand new fans out of those either and older fans or those who read the books would be fine with it.
Oliver Morales
At this point in time, it would probably be best to straight up adapt Vols 9-15 nearly as-is and not try to work in any degree of continuity with the previous anime adaptions. Of course, as we have seen with some recent anniversary projects from Dengeki Bunko, this practice is a double-edged sword, since it tends to alienate the older fan base. Of course, said revival projects (such as Kino's Journey and Boogiepop) more suffer from being shitty adaptations then for being more faithful to the source material.
Julian Foster
>since it tends to alienate the older fan base. I think it'd work for Slayers though. I don't think EvoRev have any particular fanbase. And for Slayers/Next/Try it's been so long that I suspect most people remember mostly the feel of it and general characters, feel and world. v09+ do follow up on the high level events, that could be good enough.
>Of course, said revival projects (such as Kino's Journey and Boogiepop) more suffer from being shitty adaptations then for being more faithful to the source material Right that's the real thing, at the end of the day implementation is the hard part regardless of source material. Kind of a coin flip there whether they could revive the old slayers magic but still have it adapt to how tastes and expectations for anime have evolved since then.
Julian King
>/fit/ is nothing but manlet homos Wait, this one is true though.
The threads when Rev-Ev was going airing were great. Staying up to watch Chinese streams in terrible quality were fun times.
Bentley Rodriguez
Well, I'll keep my fingers crossed that maybe another anime adaptation of Slayers starts up in the next ten or twenty years, just so I can get the same experience.
Is that a seam line, or is that actually the outline of her vag?
Brayden Peterson
>Is that a seam line, or is that actually the outline of her vag? A little of column A and a little of column B. Rui Araizumi always knows what he's doing.
> Imagine thinking you like Slayers before Lina meet Xeros and summons the lord of nightmares
Watching that for the first time was as good if not better than the first time Goku goes Super Saiyan.
Kayden Bailey
Considering how the series gave an in-universe reason as to why the Giga Slave can't be used repeatedly, showing her reaction to Gourry's death if she fucked up using it against Shabranigdo, and then the resolution's statement of being willing to sacrifice themselves while also showing how their confessions to each other gave a happy ending meant it wasn't just a testosterone boost, there was also an impactful, happy feeling towards it.
The resolution to TRY really compounded the happy feeling when we see how it all turns out.
>Seeing Fibrizo finally get the spanking he deserved Big Mommy L-sama DESU it was actually a real miracle that 2 of the 5 Demon Lords were taken out and a third was incapacitated. Xellos alone could have EASILY initiated a total party kill on the entire cast many times over by now if it weren't for their powers being needed to deal with other more existential threats. Makes me wonder what Zelas Metallium & Deep Sea Dolphin are doing in the new saga Kanzaka has started.
They're the most-blessed, having their city built on a massive circle of protectioin. Absolutely nothing bad should happen to them, but it does because of naive ignorance (Philippe), instigating conflict (Naga), or a combination of the two (Amelia). I suppose it's just supposed to be ironic that the safest city is met with some of the most destruction.
I mean, heck, the Saillune women are fucking STACKED and beautiful, if there was a curse involved they'd be as flat as Lina and as ugly as Prince Phil.
Their mother was assassinated and 2 other members of the family tried to kill Prince Phil as well. I guess taking a step back their family isn't much different from the fates that befell other royals throughout history. Before passing, did Naga & Amelia's mother OHOHOHO~ too?
Considering Naga found the sorceress outfit in her mother's closet, it's not unlikely that during her hey-days she was also filling out the role of "sinister sorceress" before getting hit with a rousing speech of pacifism from Phil and settling down.
Just slap her face on any ojou-hentai and it will have the exact same effect, retard. The only reason people remember Naga is because of her annoying cuntish laugh, her ridiculously oversized chest, and being a worse character than Lina. She's overly hated to the point where they won't even let her be in the anime, putting her into a suit of magical armor so no one can see her stupid fucking face.
Zachary Peterson
in retrospect it's really impressive that they were able to pull off adding new characters to a very established group dynamic without fucking it all up and souring the audience on them
Dylan Bell
Hajime Kanzaka is surprisingly smart when it comes to his product. Something fans have been howling for years to see is Luna, Lina's older, more-attractive, and arguably stronger sister considering she's a living aspect of the Fire Dragon, yet he refuses because he knows it'll ruin the dynamic between the characters that has already been established. Any other content creator would've caved to audience peer-pressure. Instead, he's doing what's best for the work, and it's paying off with what's been released.
>wears crotchless tights to take a piss on the road >wears red tights / pants in case she's on her period >does hero-for-hire work not to be a good person, but to fund her food bills >regularly washes her clothes and takes baths whenever the option is available to her >causes mass destruction and attempts to con her way out of footing the bill >has a complex about her appearance
How come no other series has made a woman this practical and realistic?
Eh I thought it was pretty good and comfy, it's not a series that is top of modern Yea Forums's mind by any means yet there are a still a lot of good old fans who remember it. And it reminded me to get back into the novels after like 10 years which I appreciated.
Adam Stewart
It was Mother's Day paisen. That should tell you something about the demographic.
I still like old Digimon even though the show quality is what it is. I only started watching "real" anime in 2010 so I haven't watched enough series to be feel nostalgic about them. Maybe Hyouka?
Wait what why? That's one of there most well known shows they made back in the 90s.
Joseph Evans
Even orphen is on there.
Lincoln Bennett
I'm rewatching Slayers right now and man is it mediocre. I have no idea why my teenage self liked it so much. Probably going to stop after Next, the series peaks there anyway.
James Hernandez
Darkness beyond twilight, Crimson beyond blood that flows, Buried in the stream of time is where your power grows.
Chase Butler
I have the exact opposite opinion. I went back to watch Slayers and found it great, and the first season was the best, followed by Next and Try. Try had too much fucking filler and had no idea where that shit was going most of the time. It was still entertaining though.
