The Slayers Group Watch Thread

[Octopus Prime]

I honestly don’t care that much for Shabbys design; the weird lump in his head or the fact that he never actually moves.

That’d be fine if he was just a spooky looking matte background like they used to do on He-Man, but it’s kind of off putting here.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Jackpot has one of my favourite things in anime; a fight so intense a volcano breaks out. And a full episode of explaining that Shabby is really tough really doesn’t sell it as a concept nearly as well as seeing it in action.

Just about every other arc in the whole series is dealing with the aftermath of this episode, too, so that’s something.

Shabranigdo is also a very gracious loser; you may not like his politics but you can’t fault his attitude.

Shabby also knew Zolfs name, but just called Rodimus “the old man”. Sick burn on you, Rod.

And Zel leaves the show for about a dozen episodes to work with a vocal coach; he’s going to sound like a new man when he comes back!

 

[John]

Jackpot: I thought at the end of Impact, Shabba was all transparent because he was psychically taunting the crew, but I guess it just took him a while for the transporter to work? Either way, this was an ok battle, except for the Deux Ex Machina way of beating him. "Well, I can't use regular dark magic, because you're the source of all that and stuff. So let's just use this other dark magic spell, which happens to draw from a totally different bad guy that no one has ever mentioned before". Also, I guess you needed Rezo to hold him back, which I called in the last episode.

Zel leaving the party was fine, but I hope they get some new blood soon! You don't want all the experience of a 6-member party going to just 2, they'll overlevel and the trash mobs will end up scaling higher than the bosses.

 

[Octopus Prime]

No spoilers, but there’s a real good reason nobody ever considered, let alone mentioned, the Lord of Nightmares up to that point. Also, I think Lina may canonically be the only person to know the Giga Slave exists, let alone how to cast it.

Also, I think two of my favourite characters appear in the next episode, so that’s something to look forward to

 

[Egarwaen]

No spoilers, but there’s a real good reason nobody ever considered, let alone mentioned, the Lord of Nightmares up to that point. Also, I think Lina may canonically be the only person to know the Giga Slave exists, let alone how to cast it.

I think this is in fact practically the entire plot of Slayers Next?

 

[Octopus Prime]

A very large portion of it at the very least

 

[Egarwaen]

The worldbuilding in these episodes is neat - it’s interesting to see the quick tour of the three types of magic, and an explainer about what Zel and Lina do differently. It’s pretty cool that Snabronabro doesn’t just sit around plotting but immediately sets to work releasing vile miasma and deploying hordes of trolls. “After 10,000 years I’m finally free! Time to destroy earth!” with no fucking around.

The fight with Sagnobrobro itself… Isn’t much. In contrast to all the other action so far, there’s no actual framing. It takes place in the middle of nowhere, and other than there being ground, it’s totally irrelevant to the action. It’s neat that he’s got an adds mechanic, but everything else about the fight is disappointing.

 

[Purple]

"Well, I can't use regular dark magic, because you're the source of all that and stuff. So let's just use this other dark magic spell, which happens to draw from a totally different bad guy that no one has ever mentioned before"

In fairness we're still only 12 episodes into a 100+ episode series, so it'd be weird if every bit of worldbuilding was already explained at this point (although a shocking amount has been honestly). But also it's not without precedent as this pair of episodes explained that Dragon Slave is named as it is due to language drift over the year from being Dragon Slayer, and it should be taken for granted that there must be at least one other big powerful spell of that nature because that's what the whole show is named after. Slayers- Dragon Slave (originally Slayer), the spell Lina casts all the freaking time but probably shouldn't because there's really serious collateral damage, and Giga Slave (originally Slayer) the spell Lina almost never casts, and really shouldn't have that almost in there, for reasons we'll get around to explaining later.

Also personally, I like Shabranigdo's look. Part Tim Curry in Legend, part crab, part tokusatsu monster.

I'm also really amused that the verbal component of Giga Slave is just full on over the top megalomaniacal villain raving, as opposed to Dragon Slave's just kinda casually making a pact with crab-Satan.

Anyway he's looking forward to next week's sudden downshift in tone, as we enter a new era where the source of all evil is defeated and there is no need for further violence.

 

[John]

I don't think you can take just how far a series eventually went into account when looking at an early episode. At the time, this was halfway through the first season, and given the lead times on animated shows they only knew they were contracted to write a 26 episode season. Sure, some worldbuilding stuff will have to feel like it's dropped out of nowhere considering we're all basically Gourry, getting exposed to all the lore for the first time. It doesn't change that the answer to their major boss battle is a deus ex machina. I could've seen them invent some Shamanistic inversion spell that Zel could cast on the Lightsaber, which when Lina channeled her dark magic through would convert it to a Light based attack. Instead she just name-drops Morgoth when she's taking down Sauron.

 

[Zef]

Instead she just name-drops an extrelemely lackadaisical, capricious, fourth-wall-breaking Eru Iluvatar when she's taking down Sauron.

(Though TBF she honestly thought she was namedropping Morgoth)

 

[Egarwaen]

It feels like it's one of those "intended to subvert expectations" beats - "wait, the girl sorceress took out the dark lord in episode 10?" - that's been robbed of some of its strength over thirty years of escalating "the girl sorceress takes out the dark lord" stories.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Slayers is the Seinfeld of Fantasy Anime

 

[Zef]

Is Martina the Kenny Bania to Lina's Jerry

 

[Octopus Prime]

Her only magic component is Ovaltine

 

[Octopus Prime]

I hope everyone is in the mood for some low stakes, comedy filler episodes, because starting tomorrow, we’ve got

KNOCKOUT! The Seyrune Family Feud
LOVELY! Amelias Magic Training

 

[Zef]

It's very amusing to me, for some reason, that the background motivator of the first arc ("I'm heading for Atlas City!") finally comes up at the end of "JACKPOT!", but then the next episode starts and, whoops, nothing worth telling happened there so let's move on to the next arc that's actually interesting. I'd call it a MacGuffin if the Orihalcon Philosopher Statue weren't already it.

 

[Purple]

It's just one of those shows where anytime things are actually going smoothly we skip ahead until the next time there's a terrible disaster or like a fish guy being weird.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Knockout is indeed a low stakes comedy episode, but it introduces the teams fourth party member and an important NPC, so you can’t really call it filler.

Amelia and Phil are possibly my two favourite characters, and this is a good introduction to both of them; Amelia in particular. She’s a magical princess of a fantasy kingdom so By God, she’s going to act like a magical girl. Far past the point of common sense. To the extent that even Gourry has to admit she’s preposterous. I love that.

Phil is just a delight; so relentlessly friendly and optimistic that he can’t conceive of the fact that he looks intimidating and with such raw positivity that he can destroy Monsters with a big ol’ hug (and drop kick).

I’m going to assume that the Monsters in this episode were junky cannon-fodder Monsters, not the Mini-Boss kind elsewhere in the series.

A bunch of the jokes in the episode didn’t quite land, but a lot of the physical stuff with Amelia did; and we got Gourry acting as the straight man for ince

 

[SpoonyBard]

KNOCKOUT: As Octo mentions, this really isn't a filler episode (the next one though...) and the new characters are very important. But this episode is where I had to nope out of the dub. I was fine with poor performances from incidental one-offs or characters that didn't stick around too long, but not from the main cast. Zel is getting replaced by the next time we see him and Gourry is growing on me, so I was hoping that Amelia's dubbed performance would be closer to Lina's, but uh, nope. Maybe she gets better later, but her introduction here was quintessential 'poor 90s dub'. Not even bad enough to be entertaining on its own right, just not great. So back to the sub I go, though I'll flick on the dub track now and then when I want to see how the english cast did things.

Anyway, that aside, Prince Phil is probably one of my favorite supporting cast members in the anime, perhaps in ALL anime. It's hard not to love a guy that has such poor self awareness that he A) can't understand how intimidating he looks, and B) thinks being a pacifist means you can just throw the word 'Pacifist' before an attack name. Pacifist Crush and Kindness To All Creatures Kick and the like are just the sort of absurdity I love about this world.

This episode also feels very RPG-like in that Lina gets roped into a side quest from an NPC, dives into a dungeon with a whole host of fantasy monster tropes, and even calls their prospective foe a 'boss monster' before entering the last chamber. And the only thing that could have made Randy's betrayal more obvious would have been if he were introduced as a Chancellor or a Vizier.

My quibbles with the dub aside, Amelia's introduction encapsulates everything you need to know about her. Loves justice, lacks common sense, seemingly indestructible, has a short fuse, knows magic. The running gag of Gourry nonchalantly prodding her with a twig to see if she's still alive is great too.

And props to the episode (I guess???) for doing an entire gag around Phil and Randy seeing a bathing Lina and not going for another flat-chest comment. Though it's still pretty squicky since they're both grown men and she's still like 16.

LOVELY: Ok THIS episode is more like a filler episode. Not that this is a knock against it, it's probably one of the better filler episodes of the first season. We get more insight on Amelia's character, in that she's REALLY determined when she puts her mind to something, to the point where she basically tunnel-visions to the extreme. She's so bent on learning the Dragon Slave that she doesn't even stop for a moment to process just how destructive it is. The episode also has one of my absolute favorite Prince Phil moments, calmly explaining the meaning of life to a bunch of ghosts who actually seem to be listening intently.

One thing about this episode has driven me nuts for years, and that's the music playing during Amelia's 'training' montage. It's this oddly dramatic piece that doesn't appear on the TV OSTs at all, from what I can tell. It's not a one-off, I'm pretty sure it pops up now and then, but I can't find it on any of the OSTs. Not even from the future seasons, or the motion picture.

This episode also highlights an inconsistency with the power of the Dragon Slave. Lina casually uses it to dispatch some bandits, point blank, and no one in her party seems any worse for wear. Later she uses it and reduces an entire mountain (though it looks more like a hill, or a plateau?) to a giant crater, with the level of destruction closer to what we saw in the first episode. Maybe the power of the spell is modular, after all when Zolf cast it they were in an enclosed room at the top of the tower and it didn't even bring down any walls. I know the real answer is that the spell is as destructive as it needs to be in a given moment, but it does kind of affect the conflict of Lina trying to figure out how to dissuade Amelia from learning this super destructive spell if said spell's destructiveness is variable.

Lina must have done considerable damage to the surrounding villages with her dragon slave for an act that was ostensibly done to make the villager's lives better. Even if every home were miraculously spared destruction, reducing the big hill to a deep crater doesn't exactly make their lives easier when it comes to crossing it, it might even be MORE difficult.

So overall it's an episode with weird stakes and inconsistent internal logic, but still has good character moments and Amelia is still full of hope and optimism even though she nearly brought an entire village to ruin. And the moment with Lina getting possessed by various ghosts was great in both audio tracks, and started a series-long runner of Lina doing violence to Gourry due to some awkward situation that was out of his control.

 

[John]

Knockout: Finally we see one of the girls who's been in the opening credits since the beginning, and she's... Yuffie. Or a stereotype that Yuffie was based on, more likely. Don't want to introduce another woman as a rival/equal, so she can be the spunky kid who has some growin' to do. She was fine, though I'm not sure the party needed another jokey groan character with Gourry right there.

It's very amusing to me, for some reason, that the background motivator of the first arc ("I'm heading for Atlas City!") finally comes up at the end of "JACKPOT!", but then the next episode starts and, whoops, nothing worth telling happened there so let's move on to the next arc that's actually interesting. I'd call it a MacGuffin if the Orihalcon Philosopher Statue weren't already it.

They didn't even show the city at all, or mention it once, as far as I could tell. Maybe there was a hidden timeskip where tons of interesting stuff happened that gets teased out later, but I think that's a different type of show. Note to anime writers: do more cribbing from Book of the New Sun next time.

The hot springs trope was done pretty well, probably the least skeevy from any that I remember. Still didn't need to be there, but you gotta fit in the fan service I guess.

 

[Octopus Prime]

I think Atlas City shows up a few times in later series; it’s an important socio-economic hub for the kingdom but largely devoid of any crazy fantasy quest, stuff

 

[SpoonyBard]

I'm pretty sure the party visits Atlas City early in NEXT.

It IS weird that JACKPOT ends with Lina and Gourry heading off there, and then we pick up in the next episode without a mention. I guess that, plus the fact that Lina's hair color has returned to normal, is meant to imply that KNOCKOUT takes place a not insignificant amount of time later.

 

[Octopus Prime]

I don’t think Amelias VA changes throughout the series (though I didn’t check to confirm), but her voice definitely does. It was pretty jarring to hear her in KNOCKOUT compared to how she sounds going forward

 

[John]

It sounded like a weird reverb effect was applied to it in post, making it sound like a young Cheetara from Thundercats. Definitely odd, but it didn't strike me as unlistenable at all. This is a silly show, so silly voices are par for the course for me.

 

[Zef]

A bunch of the jokes in the episode didn’t quite land, but a lot of the physical stuff with Amelia did

Nope, she crashed every single time!

 

[jpfriction]

Having watched up almost to the end of the first season, these two are my favorite episodes by far. Phil is the best, they should have swapped him in for that grumpy golem guy.

 

[Egarwaen]

I haven’t finished this week’s assignment yet but the part I did watch confirmed my prior opinion that Amelia is fantastic. She provides an important balance to Lina’s hedonism - while she’s not nearly as idealistic and benevolent as she pretends, she’s still got an urge to stick her nose in that drags the other characters out of their comfort zone.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Nope, she crashed every single time!

Any landing you can walk away from is a good one.

And she backflips away from them

 

[Purple]

You know what's a nerdy RPG thing we haven't gotten into? Detailed maps we don't really need to care about because really we just skip over any travel time to get to the important stuff anyway.

The opening shot of the intro gives us this map of the region we're in for the first 2 seasons:

Next season that gets upgraded to a clearer, labelled map:

Look there on the right and you see Sailoon, which Phil is crown prince of. And yet for some reason subs go and spell it like Seyruun or whatever. Granted, the same map has D mons Ocean there so, grain of salt.

Nerds being nerds, and there being an official tabletop RPG because of course here is, there's also this clearly labeled version floating around.

And while I'm at it, there's also a brief look at the full world map in the season 2 opening. It's kinda crab-shaped with a weirdly circular central ocean.

Again, just kinda bringing it up as a curiosity. I do find it really interesting that the reason the first couple seasons are focused on just this one region and have so many crazy powerful magic people running around is that the whole region has been sealed off from the rest of the world as kind of a secondary demon-lord defense, and the world beyond has been doing its own thing in a less magic-focused way for Some Time and it's really kind of a shame that, unless I forgot something, that is not in any way at all explained until after it's ceased to be relevant.

But anyway, this week's episodes pretty much speak for themselves. Amelia joins up, so we'd have the core four characters all together if not for Zelgadis not having quite accepted his destiny as a sidekick yet. The two play off each other real well once both around at once though. And Phil of course is just the best.

Also I am inclined to disbelieve the whole "Lina is like 16" thing, as featured on wikis and this thread and this episode where bandits are talking about how she's described in dire warnings which is the only source for that I can think of. I kinda peg her more as like, mid-20s, just tiny and selfish and prone to violence, causing people to lowball estimates. Because I mean if we aren't assuming that, how the hell young would Amelia have to be?

 

[Octopus Prime]

You’d really think that the entire region that three quarters of the series take place in is under a magical quarantine because it has to gosh-darn many hell gods running amok in it would be a big deal that would warrant more than a cursory comment after the situation was resolved.

The incantation for the Dragon Slave was different again. I also assume that she only burned a first level spell slot for the Dragon Slave she attacked the bandits with, since it didn’t leave a massive smoking crater in the forest. Or maybe it did and nobody commented on it,