The Slayers Group Watch Thread

[Octopus Prime]

Once the clock hits “tomorrow”, we can watch

OH NO! Linas Wedding Rhapsody
PASSION! Shall We Give Our Lives to the Stage?

They sound like they’re real important episodes to the on-going story!

 

[John]

OH NO: Well, here's the confirmation that Lina's only 15 years old. Oh anime, you're the creepy uncle that no one wants to talk to at holidays sometimes. Aside from that grossness, this was a fun sidequest, even though the whole premise could've been circumvented by the rich son just saying "Nah, I'm not gonna do that". His dubbed voice did sound like he was recording his first podcast in a non-soundproofed room from a phone, but the actual acting was fine. I noticed this was another episode with a poorly shopped title card, wonder if there were Notes given late.

This time we see Fire and Ice spells canceling each other and fizzling out, but when Lina did that earlier it always caused massive explosions. I guess magic knows when it's being cast for Plot Purposes.

 

[Octopus Prime]

I like to think that years are a little longer on the Red World, so her being confirmed as 15 really translates to her being about 20 by our standards.

And nobody will convince me otherwise.

Also; Vroombuddy came back to life with no explanation and I don’t believe one is ever forthcoming.

 

[Torzelbaum]

Also; Vroombuddy came back to life with no explanation and I don’t believe one is ever forthcoming.

He was only mostly dead / exploded.

 

[SpoonyBard]

OH NO!: Oh hey Lina really is 15. Thanks for making all the mild sexual comments regarding her feel even skeevier, 90s anime!

Anyway wow this episode is some filler. Lina and friends decide to help little rich boy drive away an evil sorceress by agreeing to pretend to marry him in exchange for 5000 gold coins out of the goodness of their hearts. Some more really good performances by Hayashibara here as she takes on a ditzy persona as the bride for no real reason. The wanted posters continue to haunt them as their cover is blown to the evil sorceress rather immediately, but instead of calling Lina out immediately she instead hires a bunch of goons and tries to spring a trap, but then Zangulus arrives and effs it all up and it all ends with the sorceress defeated (we assume??? we never really get any proper closure there but we last see her being exploded by Lina's Mega Brand so...) and the team all ride away on a cart while Lina laments losing out on five grand not helping little rich boy as well as they possibly could.

And Zangulus has some new sidekick all of a sudden with a stupid name. Vromoo? That name is stupid and dumb. But he is also exploded by Lina at the end of the episode so he's gone forever. Good riddance.

Meanwhile Zangalang is really starting to let his inner Vegeta show as he crashes the wedding with the supposed attempt to capture Lina, but instead just heads straight for Gourry. All he accomplishes, really, is ruining the whole wedding.

And this is not even the most disastrous wedding ceremony he'll ever attend!

PASSION!: Y'know.... Just looking at the episode titles, I had this episode completely confused with a totally different filler episode in the second season. (If you know you know)

But as filler episodes go this was still pretty good. The super hot-headed play director is one of my favorite one-offs in the first season, guy is absolutely out of his gourd. And yet he saves Lina from the guards (in, uh, his own way) because the only thing that ultimately matters to him is THE STAGE. Even after Swordsman-Vegeta-With-A-Hat totally wrecks the play with his monster buddies he's still more concerned about the performance. Dude's committed. Or, should be committed. One or the other.

Lina is very incensed to learn the play is about how much of a total asshole she is, Dragon Slaving villages left and right. considering the timeline and how recent those wanted posters are, this play had to have been in the works for awhile now. Maybe it was comissioned by that village elder from the first episode? Suffice to say, it's hard for Lina's companions to really refute the play's presentation of her. I really like the touch of the story misunderstanding what a 'Dragon Slave' is, though, that's cute. Amelia finding her calling as an exaggerated hero performer is also far too perfect. I like to think that between seasons she started a theater scene in Seyruun that the entire kingdom feels obligated to attend because she just works so gosh darned hard at it (and her dad is terrifying)

Anyway, Zongalos starts out this episode arguing with some new sidekick with a stupid name. Vrugglemuggle? That name is stupid and dumb. But he is also exploded by Lina at the end of the episode so he's gone forever. Good riddance.

There's also a REALLY familiar looking werewolf paling around with Zarkin' Frood, and I wonder if THIS was the point in the light novels where Dilgear made his brief return. He's not named, but it is totally just Dilgear's design, with a palette swap. Hey this IS an RPG!

Oh and by the end of the episode everyone learns the true meaning of THE STAGE, and Zangulus completes his inevitable transformation into Team Rocket.


Anyway, next week is......... uh. Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh. There were two episodes I was mostly worried about having not aged well in this season, one was the fourth episode with all the period jokes, and the other is.... the next one. Buckle up. It will, at least, be the last filler episode.

 

[John]

OH NO!:

Anyway wow this episode is some filler.

I've seen this filler comment a few times from a few people, and don't quite get it. Is it because the episode isn't part of an overarching plot? At this point in the story, there isn't a true plot, just some people traveling to some far away location, and having adventures on the way. Having these little vignettes seems like the point to me, and I'm enjoying the journey, not just looking to the destination. Episodic content's still content!

 

[Octopus Prime]

It's pretty much a series long pattern; A couple of episodes of easing into the characters and story, then a medium-length arc with a moderate threat, then about a half dozen episodes of random goofiness to wind down before the major season-ending enemy.

Granted, as noted before, precious little in the whole series actually matches Shabranigdo in terms of power, but otherwise that's the trajectory we're dealing with. Nothing wrong with goof-em-ups, but you're going to be let down if you're expecting development

 

[SpoonyBard]

Eh, I don't mean Filler in a bad way. It's just that these, well, episodic episodes are a different thing entirely. Honestly I've been liking them more than I thought. But once we watch the very next episode we'll basically be starting the 9-episode final arc.

 

[John]

Gotcha. I read filler as negative, something that's not needed, something a creator put in as a money saving endeavor, like adding cellulose to fast food burgers. The context I'm hearing is filler as the in-between episodic episodes used as breaks between arcs, not the wood pulp used to save a few cents.

 

[Super Megaman X]

It's pretty much a series long pattern; A couple of episodes of easing into the characters and story, then a medium-length arc with a moderate threat, then about a half dozen episodes of random goofiness to wind down before the major season-ending enemy.

And it's precisely this plotting that helps to make Slayers the best anime ever. I've never seen anything since that seems just so immaculately paced.

 

[Torzelbaum]

Gotcha. I read filler as negative, something that's not needed, something a creator put in as a money saving endeavor, like adding cellulose to fast food burgers. The context I'm hearing is filler as the in-between episodic episodes used as breaks between arcs, not the wood pulp used to save a few cents.

Or because the next story arc in the manga hasn't been completed yet and obviously you need to show something. Can't just have your IP sitting fallow.

 

[Purple]

Yeah, I already sang my praises for the comedy sandwich on relatively serious bread formatting forever ago, and I still say they do a great job of switching it up just as you're about to maybe get sick of one or the other.

Anyway, I'm gonna go ahead and assume that Lina, being clearly in her mid-20s, just said she was 15 to this apparent creep proposing to her on the spot to get him to give up on it, and he just didn't buy it, because I just can't read her that young, doing so makes a bunch of things creepy, and it's the only reason it would make sense for him to start upping the bribe so much when actual teenager Amelia is right there and like, we've established she's weirdly easy to talk into doing absolutely anything. Having straightened that out though, a fairly fun episode. Nobody really falls for anyone's anything, and everything explodes. No moral. Aside from maybe that doing sex work is more emotionally demanding than a lot of people realize.

And then we have THIS episode which I knew wasn't THAT episode because I distinctly remember when that one happens and also Zelgadis was around for it. And also because I have a particular memory of this episode because back in the 90s trying to help my family build the whole series on VHS I accidentally bought tape #5, which contained this, dubbed, leaving me very upset by the voices. Otherwise, honestly a pretty good one. I love how only Lina can be bothered to try and care about the running plot while the other two just go native immediately, and just what an absolute dangerous wild card the director is. What's his actual backstory? Who knows! Why is he hard to work with? He does really arbitrary things and isn't above murdering his own cast with explosives. Is he dependable when fights break out or are about to? Surprisingly yes. Also surprisingly cool with major ad libbing. Also this episode has some Beast Men, which are almost as good as Noonsa in "OK that is technically what the monster description says but I really don't think you're supposed to just full on go with a random assortment of cute cartoony furries working as mercenaries."

And next week... yeah. That should be... interesting to rewatch at this point in my life.

 

[Egarwaen]

It's also a pretty big departure from the plotting of the first arc, where every episode has a role to play in developing Rezo's scheme or Lina's chances of fouling it. Here, Oh No and Passion are just... Things that happen while the characters get from Point S to Point... S'. I took issue with the characterization of Lovely and Knockout a couple weeks ago as filler as, despite lacking any real progression of a larger arc, they're still dedicated to introducing and developing Amelia. Even Navigation had some plot development in it, establishing that Lina's party is having trouble with provisions and treacherous terrain.

Oh No and Passion don't even have that going for them. The characters start and end in the same circumstances; the cart from Oh No doesn't stick around, and the play in Passion doesn't resolve the bounty problem. We don't learn anything new about the characters; we already knew Lina was greedy but a bit of a softy regardless, Gourry goofy, and Amelia easily influenced.

Still the episodes continue to be well-framed and staged. Oh No is skeevy AF, but the Church fight is a lot of fun even if it's simple, with three sorcerers constantly tripping over each other. And Passion's stage battle has some good back and forth, including showing Lina's ability to fight without blowing up the entire neighborhood. Once again the monsters demonstrate self-interest and self-preservation; they're not mindless killers, they're here to get paid!

 

[Octopus Prime]

Passion was definitely a more fun filler episode; love how deeply invested the audience was in what was clearly a terrible play.

Also, Amelia is a great actress, able to adlib The play going completely off the rails and commit to it so fully that she’s genuinely surprised when Zangulus loses his mask

Appreciated the detail that nobody in the troupe knows anything about magic, so they make the logical assumption about what her wrecking towns with a Dragon Slave means.

Real advanced lighting and sound setup for a cheap theatre group in a medieval fantasy kingdom, too

 

[Octopus Prime]

Also noticed that Vroombuddy is apparently the leader of the pair. But the chain of command means nothing for a guy so desperate to have a rival.

I gotta say; Zangulus has gone way up in my estimation in terms of Slayers villains; he… he just wants an arch enemy so bad and nobody respects that.

Also, it just occurred to me that while I knew Amelias voice winds radically different from her first couple of appearances; i didn’t realize it was going to happen so abruptly. I guess it’s less obvious when you’re spacing things out to an episode every few days rather than all at once.

 

[John]

Passion: I want to know more about the Director's backstory. Just how much of his memory is invented from plays, and how much does he actually believe? At some point, memories that you tell yourself happened (or are told happened to you) become real, as your brain fills in the gaps. In his reality, is Lina truly his daughter come again?

The non-human races are opening up a bit more, now we've possibly got gecko/lizardmen, cows, goat/ram, bears, foxes, even little raccoon/tanooki people? Or are these just normal bandits who have much better costuming skills than the theatre troupe? Could go either way.

 

[Zef]

OH NO is the closest Slayers will ever get to a straight up, ripped-from-Takahashi's-notepad Ranma plot, up to and including Hayashibara dialing it up with a cutesy act but falling back on her usual personality at the drop of a hat. I love it.

On the other hand, I don't know why, but PASSION feels very much like a Western cartoon plot. A good one, though, and I'm 100% sure one of the two theater critics is based on a real person from the production staff.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Tomorrow we can watch

QUESTION! He’s Proposing to THAT Girl?
RETURN! The Red Priest is Back

One of those is still a filler episode so you don’t need to feel obligated to watch it.

 

[Purple]

QUESTION of course, is a must.

 

[Zef]

One of those is still a filler episode so you don’t need to feel obligated to watch it.

Oh, it's the second one, isn't it

 

[SpoonyBard]

QUESTION?!: Y'know, about 2/3s of the way through this episode I was thinking that it wasn't as bad as I feared. Definitely some 'lol man in dress' comedy but it was pretty tame, and Gourry unconvincingly doing a falsetto voice and somehow fooling that one guy was funny, and any opportunity for Lina to acting like a shrieky damsel is usually a good time. (that poor cockroach, just minding its own business)

But then the battle with the sea dragon started. I had completely forgotten about this aspect of the episode, I was just remembering the sea dragon as a nondescript monster, but nope. It has a very effeminate appearance, deliberately seeks out pretty boys, and as Gourry later notices, is male. The sub uses the term 'gay', but the characters are clearly saying 'okama' in those lines which is a totally different term with its own connotations that I'm just not qualified to get into. Suffice to say, using 'gay' as the stand-in for 'okama' particularly for a character (monster or otherwise) that was a bit predatory to other men certainly is a choice.

Meanwhile Zannykins is mountain climbing with some new henchman with a dumb name. Vroomba? That name is stupid and dumb. But he probably freezes to death at the end of the episode so we'll never see him again! We also learn he has a stupid Friar Tuck style hairdo, what comedy!

RETURN!: Nothing of consequence happens in this episode.

Besides learning that the original Hero of Light slew that great beast Zannafar in Sairaag and in true RPG fashion planted a tree in its corpse which grew into the giant holy tree Flagoon. And the last party member seen in the intro, Sylphiel, finally showing up and revealing she actually already knows Gourry and rather obviously has the hots for him. And the party learning the one who put the bounty on them is someone named Eris who is connected to Rezo. And infiltrating a strikingly out of place sci-fi horror lab. And them learning what something called a 'Copy Man' is from Zangbang's new sidekick with a dumb name. Vlumbum? That name is stupid and dumb. But he dies several times by the end of the episode so we'll never see him again.

And Zelgadis finally returns from his sabbatical at a speech therapist, if you're watching the dub, and sounds like a whole new man.

Oh and Rezo's alive. Somehow. It is a mystery! A baffling, baffling mystery with no hints whatsoever elsewhere in this very episode.

So yeah. Besides all that. Not much. Skip it.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Yeah if you skip the entire sea dragon fight, Question isn’t nearly as bad as I thought. Then the sea dragon shows up and nope.

A lot of the slapstick in the episode really worked, and Zangulus and Vroombutt on the mountain was a solid gag. And eagle-eyed viewers may notice one of the very few appearances of Naga in the TV series.

 

[Purple]

OK so when I saw the preview for Question I was mixing it up with the OTHER episode with crossdressing shennanigans that, as we're getting back into serious mode now, I guess is in Next? This one I totally forgot about, and... I have pretty mixed feelings. I'm actually pretty fine with the whole Gourry in drag thing. They need disguises, he's kinda got the build for it, and the guy who's hitting on him the whole episode upon realizing he's a guy is still into it, and when we're doing this trope, that's definitely my favorite variation on it. But then we've got the drag dragon and like... aside from how I can make an English language pun here I'm not even sure what the gag is even supposed to be with this. It's just... random non-sequiteur homophobia darkening an otherwise enjoyable series. That's 90s comedy for ya. Shame. And ultimately of course I also just really don't like this episode because Gourry is just like, totally out of character? Look at him all keeping a cover story straight, being aware that he's being taken advantage of, knowing the geography of the reason, and having ideas that aren't basic fighter stuff.

Also random blink and you'll miss it cameo, but I'm pretty sure Naga walks by in the foreground when they first get to town? Hair's the wrong color, but the outfit's pretty unmistakeable, and if I have the timeline right, the OAVs hadn't been made yet so we've just got book illustrations which typically don't have the same palettes as anime adaptations. Pretty sure she gets at least a walk-on every season but they're real easy to miss.

Anyway with Return we're easing back into Relatively Serious Drama Mode, and, yeah, was just starting to get burnt out on the really wacky stuff. I swear by the pacing. We also firmly establish that Gourry's wherewithall was a single episode abberation. Totally forgetting stuff that happened on camera just a few episodes back and his own childhood friend/love interest. Classic Gourry. Thankfully. Plus, hey, Sylphiel's here! The character who exists sometimes but is never missed when she's not around which is most of the time. She's really too straight for her own good (in the not comedic sense, but I mean I could do with less dude-pining too I guess). You can tell she's a dedicated white mage because she wears a tie. We get some nice chimera exposition, and I do like the reveal that Vrumugun did, in fact, die all those times, there's just spares. And hey! Zel's back! Full core party finally! And we also have the actual villain of season 1, Copy Rezo. Which... on the one hand feels kinda lame, but it IS actually a very D&D thing to do, and he's called "Copy Rezo" which is just fun to hear people say repeatedly. Also what'shername who's even more forgettable than Rodimus.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Copy Rezo is honestly on my shortlist of favourite Slayers villains (haven’t seen that episode yet to see if his motives are explained, but he doesn’t really care about Lina and all, except as a means to an end; he wants to prove he’s the superior Rezo, and that means doing basically the same plan but a little bit smarter and killing Lina because that was something the original Rezo just couldn’t manage.

Plus, dude is way more into being an Evil Wizard; this is a man who doesn’t work a day in his life because he loves his job that much

 

[Zef]

RETURN!: Nothing of consequence happens in this episode.

I will not stand for this Sylphiel erasure.

Then again, this episode's budget was exactly one cup of cold ramen and a single Ramune, and after the ad break, the ramen was gone and the Ramune was warm, so everyone in the team left to the nearest bar to get wasted and left the night custodian in charge of the key frames.

 

[Octopus Prime]

To be fair, the show itself is largely responsible for Slyphiel erasure.

Also, you can really tell that the budget was hurting a bit for RETURN; the big climactic fight near the end looked terrible.

Love that Gourry has already forgot that he was instrumental in saving the world from the god of monsters, like, a month ago. And also apparently they never mentioned it to Amelia at any point in time

 

[Egarwaen]

Return also has a lot more conversations that are cuts between close shots of faces with only the mouth moving than we’ve seen so far.

And while the fight looks like garbage, it’s still well-arranged, with a bunch of different threads crossing over and a big finish.

Question is an awful episode.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Get your DVDs or Streaming services warmed up; because tomorrow we can watch

SHOCK! Sairagg Falls
TROUBLE! Rahanimu the Furious Fishman

Thanks for the spoilers, episode title. Now I know that there’s going to be a fishman.

 

[Purple]

 

[Zef]

Gosh, with all the collateral damage Lina's battles cause, I sure hope her fighting with copy Rezo doesn't extend to the city!