PinkuBentoBox

My anime watching habits seem to increasingly fall into a certain pattern. Whenever a new season starts I will invariably gorge myself on the latest shows, reveling in their general newness. Usually I justify this by saying that I’m ‘trying them out’ to determine which shows I’ll follow on a weekly basis. In actuality that choice is usually made well in advance, though in the end it is somewhat dependent on the mercurial whimsy of fansub groups and my own personal and exacting requirements as to when and how our subtitle pirates purvey them. But I digress. We are now well into the meat of the current season, and I find this is usually the point that I’ve pretty much abandoned most shows as a weekly indulgence, paring the list right down to just a few. It’s not that I lack time, though it is true that my temporal management skills are somewhat lacking, but if I desired I am certain I could fit other shows into my rotation. Instead, I find myself repeating the same pattern I went through in previous seasons: rather than watch what’s current, I find myself going through my ever-expanding pile of complete shows from seasons gone by. I’ll settle on a ‘new’ show and consume it completely in the space of a few days.

Anyway, this was an overly-long lead-in to what I hoped might become a semi-regular (hah!) thing here, wherein I talk about an older show that I’ve recently finished watching. Any semblance of content on this site is an improvement, I think. Admittedly it’s actually taken me several weeks to get around to finishing this entry.

I don’t have any intention to write this as a review or a summary. I assume that most people have actually seen these things by now. You can find that information in a lot of other places. My intention is more to just give general impressions and observations about the show in question and its significance (if any), since I think that actually has the potential to be somewhat more interesting than the usual overly-worded garbage I vomit up here.

Anyway, by now everyone knows that Slayers is getting a new outing next season. I can’t help thinking that the producers missed the bus on that one about five years ago, but whatever. Let’s talk about Slayers Next!

First off, I feel I should come clean on something: this was not the first time I’ve seen the show. Slayers was among the first anime series that I saw when I first got into the hobby, which when I stop and think about it is nearly ten years ago. I downloaded and watched all of Slayers, Slayers Next and a bit of Slayers Try. All VHS rips, combination of official sub and fansubs. That was back before fancy things like broadband or DVDs or DivX - these were 50mb video in RealVideo format and I believe 320×200 resolution most of the time. My single run through Slayers Next was done at lightning pace, I think I marathoned the whole series in a day, so it tended to blur together in my mind. Additionally the CD-R I burned the episodes to ended up getting scratched so I couldn’t give it another go, and eventually I sort of shelved it in my mind, only to have it resurface when Slayers Revolution was announced, reminding me that I should really rewatch the 3 TV series. Not the OAVs, they were shit. Also not the original because I’d seen it several times on DVD. I never purchased the Australian releases of Next and Try (they had significant production flaws, plus $120 was way too much).

I think that I won’t find many people that would argue that Slayers Next is anything but the strongest offering of the bunch, overall. I have seen people arguing that Slayers itself is a horrible waste of time and that it might as well be someone’s D&D fanfiction and stuff, but those people clearly have no friends. Or taste.

It was interesting to go back to an old classic like this and really realise how much our expectations have changed when it comes to the content of our shows. And before someone misunderstands me, I am definitely not one of the people who ascribe to the notion that fanservice is rampant in every modern anime produced and moe is creepy and gives anime a bad name and so on. That’s neither here nor there, and the subject for a completely different entry. Suffice it to say that I disagree.

If I had one criticism of the original Slayers TV, it is that there are aspects of it which have really aged badly. Animation is a given, since the show was produced for television broadcast with an average mid-90s anime budget. I don’t think that Slayers Next looks quite as dated as The Slayers did, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a combination of the fact that it literally isn’t as dated, and the fact that it likely commanded a more expansive budget simply by virtue of its predecessor’s success on the market. I presume that it was successful - the fact that it’s spawned three TV seasons, a theatrical film and a pile of OAVs and specials would seem to indicate such. Regardless, this isn’t a show you’re going to trot out to show just how good 90s TV animation could look (unlike, for example, Card Captor Sakura).

A more pressing issue that The Slayers had was one of aging humor. To put it bluntly, what was considered extremely comedic in the mid 90s is not necessarily what we find amusing today. Now, I freely admit that I am very likely bringing some of my own personal bias into this judgement, and I am obviously not the weather vane for anyone’s sense of humor but my own. However I don’t think that I’m the only one that would have this perception. One only needs to look at the comedy shows recently which have been popular and contrast their execution. I think some of this is likely to do with other shifts in overall composition. We don’t really have the same kind of response to a girl getting angry and hitting people / setting them on fire at the slightest provocation any more - the Tsundere archetype has become so firmly ingrained in modern anime composition that you can barely spit without hitting a pair of them.

Of course, Lina Inverse as a character is not what we would usually pigeonhole as a tsundere character. That particular moe archetype carries a lot of baggage with it, most importantly it implies that the character has some kind of hidden weakness of character, a deep-seated [i]need[/i] to have The Generic Male Protagonist breach her hardened outer shell. On the other hand, it’s clear that the original author of the Slayers novels was somewhat cognizant of this particular storytelling trope, because there are aspects of it visible in Lina’s character, particularly in her relationship with Gourry, which is one of the key plot elements of Next (and oddly is largely brushed over in Try). It’s also interesting to note that there is some inconsistency in her characterisation. A lot of people rightly point out that Lina is structurally a bit of an oddity in the anime space. A female character who is not overtly sexualised, either in appearance or actions, who is easily the most powerful of any of the protagonist group, is often motivated by greed or gluttony, and has a temper like a bear with a sore tooth.

Most importantly, she is not reliant on some dumb bloke with a big sword to bail her out of trouble all the time. I think this is an interesting point. Heroines with strong character in anime are not uncommon at all, but it’s very interesting to note that in almost all modern male-oriented anime where the central and usually titular character is female, the actual protagonist will be a male character. Despite having such character fortitude and ability, she needs to be reliant on that male protagonist. Lina Inverse is generally held up as an example of being one of the few heroines that avoided this trap. Then again, the climax of Next had her ass being hauled out of the fire by a dumb bloke with a big sword.

Generally speaking, the rest of the major Slayers cast are not really anything to get excited about. Amelia is pretty much a caricature and is probably the weakest of them in terms of characterisation. I also thought that with the whole ‘King Phil is dead’ subplot that pops up towards the beginning of the show they had a really good opportunity to develop Amelia, but unfortunately they didn’t take it. Zelgadis, meanwhile, is very inconsistent. It often feels like the writers can’t figure out how powerful he is, not to mention that they often forget the fact that he’s supposed to be made of stone. I feel like they could have pushed this better, making him a more tragic figure than he is. Despite his apparent drive to become ‘normal’ again, it never feels like he’s really been inconvenienced by his form. Additionally in the back of my mind I have a suspicion that he’d be a far more compelling character if he was a girl.

Gourry probably got the most interesting character development in Next. We see his relationship with Lina develop and grow - and then get cut off completely in the epilogue, which I thought was a little disappointing. Having him taken off and forced to fight against Lina’s group was interesting. I don’t know if it was deliberate or not, but he felt a lot stronger when he was fighting against the group. I suspect that this is mainly simply because he’s basically a guy with a big sword, albeit a magical one, and unfortunately his ability doesn’t scale up very well. Lina can learn new and more powerful spells, but Gourry is really capped and he begins to feel like he’s standing in the shadow of everyone else. I also really appreciated them bringing back Gourry’s rival, Zangulus, as their rivalry in the original season was one of the best parts of the show. Unfortunately Zangulus felt like a bit of an afterthought, and they effectively wrote him out of the story going forward by hitching him up to Martina.

Martina herself is probably the weakest addition to the cast. I don’t think I ever felt amused by her antics. She was really only a vehicle for comedy relief, but I question their decision to include her at all rather than using the existing cast. If they really needed a character like her, then I don’t see why they didn’t slot in Naga, who has never appeared in the TV series stuff. Naga is basically Martina with a stronger character and an annoying laugh. And bigger boobs. As well as providing a potential avenue for comedy relief she provides some significant character development potential for Amelia and Lina, especially given that at the time that Next was produced, it hadn’t been officially revealed that Naga and Amelia were sisters.

In contrast, Xellos as an addition to the cast fit in perfectly. He practically eclipses the rest of the cast, with the arguable exception of Lina. Initially I wanted to say that Xellos actually represents the genesis of a new character archetype in anime, but to be honest I’m not sure that that is a valid argument. He is undeniably an evil character. He manipulates those around him in order to advance his own agenda, waiting for the perfect opportunity to screw everyone. His schemes and plots are intricate and often nest inside each other. Yet his outward persona most of the time is that of a jovial wandering priest.

I’ve heard it said many times that often the most interesting characters in anime - and in storytelling in general - are those which defy the usual definition of the hero or the hero’s ally. The Anti-hero is a concept which has gained a lot of traction in modern storytelling, especially in the last decade. We can see the rise of this sort of character especially in the last few years, with some of the most popular and compelling shows featuring anti-hero protagonists. Code Geass’ Lelouch, for example, who is practically the definition of the Byronic hero. Death Note’s Light and Akagi’s titular Akagi show is the true gamut of what’s possible.

However, Xellos does not fit the definition of anti-hero at all. He is quite clearly a villain, and thus he dodges classification with these other characters and I don’t believe that it is fair to consider him to be anything more than potentially a stepping stone towards the development of this trope. In fact, I think it is more valid to say that he’s an early expression of a more general societal trend towards finding these sorts of ‘grey’ characters with uncertain motives and morals. It is true that these characters tend to be far more popular, and that’s likely because they are far more interesting and compelling to the modern individual.

The seemingly ambiguous nature of Xellos is probably accentuated by the two major villains in Next. Personally I didn’t really care much for Gaav. His character, especially in comparison to some of the more interesting cast members, is straightforward to the point of tedium. Stupidly strong and generally a bit of a dick, he’s basically your bog-standard fantasy bad guy, which admittedly is in keeping with the setting, but is simply a bit uninteresting. His eventual demise is reasonably anticlimactic too.

Hellmaster Phibrizzo by comparison is a much more interesting villain. So often anime villains fail to actually be villainous. Phibrizzo is definitely not one of these examples. Where Gaav was tired and uninteresting, Phibrizzo is sinister and malevolent. He stands out in comparison to all the other villains in the franchise aside from Xellos in this regard. I think the main thing that makes him work is that he’s one of the few characters to successfully manage to attempt to break the party down mentally instead of physically. I can’t help but think that the show’s plot as a whole would have been much stronger had they spent less time early on with filler - did we really need that tennis match? - tied up the Gaav arc sooner, and spent more time with Hellmaster.

Overall I think that Slayers Next is undoubtedly the high point for the show. Originally I was going to talk about Slayers Try here too, but the entry is overly long as it is, and most of the comments here are pertinent to Try as well.

Since Slayers is a pretty old show and very well known and liked amongst the anime enthusiasts who have been watching for a fair amount of time, I’m sure that there are some interesting thoughts out there. Do share.

Tune in next week* for more old animu. Probably Lost Universe or Outlaw Star since I finished them recently too.

* more like in six months when I’m next feeling un-lazy lololol

P.S. The Slayers NEXT OP, Give a Reason, is still one of my personal favourites and has what has to be one of the best intros in an Anime OP, ever.