The Slayers Group Watch Thread

[Octopus Prime]

Time to put this project to bed, I guess…

XENO! The Price of Revival!
YESTERDAYS MEMORY! Days Regained
ZERO HOUR! The Destroyed One!

I feel like “Xeno” might be cheating but it’s not like there’s an excess of X-words.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Also Spoony largely echoed everything I was geared up to say about last weeks episodes; I appreciated that we got one last Goofy Episode before the finale; and it was a Goofy Filler Episode that did, in its own way, advance the plot;

Rezos soul gives everyone a bunch of irrelevant side-quests which everyone assumes is because he’s gone a bit loopy from having his soul jammed in a bucket for years, but it turns out it’s because he was trying to help everyone except the party, and that’s because, Crab Satan notwithstanding, Rezo is a pretty solid dude.

Then we get a flashback to Zel in his human days (which *really* could have been a whole arc instead of that Zuma nonsense) where we get a refresher on Rezo when he was all hopped up on Crab Satan Juice to remind us that, no, Rezo pretty much sucks.

Which also ties in to the fact that Rezo can not make up his mind about wanting to be resurrected.

I wonder if that’s going to be relevant at all?

Probably not, there’s only a couple of episodes left; not really any time to explore why a guy with complicated morality and possessed by Crab Satan may be indecisive about being brought back to life

 

[Octopus Prime]

Hate to see it go, but love to see it leave; great bunch of episodes to close out the series on.

Xeno is largely concerned with Rezo still being weirdly indecisive about whether or not he wants to be resurrected or not; finding all kinds of excuses not to do it and good reasons for people to bring him back; ultimately landing on the fact that only Potato’s original body can house his spirit; so if he comes back Potato will be stuck as a Digimon forever.

And Potato says “Well, not like being a stuffed toy has been an impediment, so sure, whatever”, and so Rezo is revived and this makes Ozul die for some reason and Rezo looks even more sinister than ever and his spooky music kicks in…

And in Yeaterday we see that, well, that was a fake out; Oxyl died because she was only built to survive to see the Hellmaster Jar taken care of, Rezo popped into Potato’s body which was way less ominous looking, and then went straight to work reviving the people of Topherasia, and everything looks great and we have a weirdly anti-climactic, good time finale for the series…

Exceeeeeept…

Turns out that Rezo still can’t see despite having a new, healthy body with functional eyeballs. And he still hasn’t explained why he had so many contradictory requests for what was supposed to happen to his soul. And also Xellos is around keeping a close watch on him.

And then we learn that you can take the soul out of the Crab Satan, but you can’t take the Crab Satan out of the soul; Rezo realized that Shrabranigdo was stuck in the Jar with him, and if he got resurrected, ol’ Shabby is coming back with him. And he wanted Lina to be the one to have final say in bringing him back because she is the only person on the planet who has a chance of killing the Dark Lord; this whole plot was him trying to commit suicide by Inverse.

And then The Ruby Eye opens up and the whole (extra long) finale is one big rematch against Crab Satan; who got a real glow up since his last appearance which was helped by the fact that the animation in Evolution is WAY nicer than season 1 as well.

We get two of my favorite things in any anime (spontaneous volcanos forming because of an intense fight and also the theme song kicking up in the middle of a climactic battle, and it’s the Next theme song, because they know what the best theme song is) and we get the party exploiting one of the long forgotten rules of magic / demon fighting, but it’s not enough and Shabby nearly gets a TPK…

And then Potato sacrifices his own sole breaking his Hellmaster Jar letting him reclaim his original body long enough to hold back Shabby letting Linda cast an Amplified Giga Slave; permanently destroying Ruby Eye.

And as a final “Whoops, my bad” Rezos soul returns Potato back to his stuffed animal body (since his original got Giga Slaved), and Potato’s dad says “I love my Digimon son” and Xellos (who was decapitated earlier) says “Huh, in the end I guess they really were… Slayers”

And I said “Oh! They were the Slayers all along!”

And we fade out in everyone going off on a new adventure.

Hooray!

 

[Egarwaen]

While the rest of this season has veered between "great comedy filler" and "shoddy and unstructured plot", I think these final episodes are actually pretty good. The party's various plans for dealing with Shabranigdo make sense given what they know at the time they make them, the dramatic arcs for Rezo and Pokota are engaging, the fight scenes are fun... Overall a high note!

 

[SpoonyBard]

This time Octo said pretty much what I was going to!

This season was a messy ride, but I think it stuck the landing. Biggest shame about it was that they basically did all that to retread the Rezo arc from the first season when there was other stories from the novels and manga they could have pulled from. Hell, there have been other shards of Shabranigdo in the story they could have used, but they gave a re-do to the one the anime already started with. (fun bit of trivia, I've since learned Zuuma was from the novels/manga, he originally appeared as one of Kanzel's servents sent to kill Lina during the Seiruun plot during the events of NEXT, and persisted for awhile after popping up to try and kill Lina and eventually fusing with another monster, like he does here, but in his original appearance the monster he fused with was the remains of Seygraam, and I can't help but think that would have been so much more interesting than the two forgettable mooks he fused with in this series)

I appreciate them threading the needle and creating this convoluted method to bring Rezo back and also accounting for Shabranigdo returning and having it make sense with what we know. We already know Rezo is the sort to take extreme precautions, see his Plan B for killing Shabranigdo by absorbing the original Zannafar in Sairaag, so having a Plan C just in case he ended up dead anyway with the Hellmaster's Jar is totally in character. But once again the fact that he didn't know Shabranigdo was sealed within his soul came back to bite him, and when his soul was sent to the Jar he had some unexpected company.

But if course Rezo is still the biggest jerk around and instead of having the jar smashed he decides to take Pokota's body anyway just because he wants to see, knowing that he can (probably) leave Shabranigdo up to Lina once more.

Literally retreading the showdown with Shabranigdo and ending it with Lina casting the Giga Slave (and turning her hair grey again), only this time with her relying on her amulets for the magical amplification instead of the sword of light, felt like a bit of a cop-out, but I won't complain too much. The show did a lot to win me over by playing Give A Reason during the final battle, after all.

Ultimately the series ends with the usual status quo. Amelia going back to Seiruun to do Princess things. Zelgadis going off on his own once again. Lina and Gourry running off to find a new sword for the latter. And Xellos teleporting away with his usual wry smirk. Nothing is changed! Everything is the same as always!

Honestly remembering to stick Prince Phil, Sylphiel, and Wiser in the final credits but giving them no lines just feels like a slap in the face. You could have been using these characters the entire time in Evolution-R! Why remind us of them now?

But this is the end of the series, for now. It could always come back again, I suppose, and there actually have been some new Slayers stories published as recently as a couple years ago, so who knows?