So I was reading this entry at ANN, specifically Enoki Films ‘presenting’ Slayers R, the imminent new Slayers show. Now, putting aside that I thought Enoki had been dead for years and the implication that this show might actually have been pre-emptively licensed, the ‘plot summary’ really grabbed me.
Part I - Episodes #1-#13
The story unfolds in the usual pattern with Lina involved in a fight with bandits in the woods. Gourry arrives to her rescue and escorts her to Atlas City. Lina and Gourry struggle to defeat Rezo the Red Monk, who has awakened as the Demon King after finding the Stone of the Wise. Lina is interested in Gourry’s sword, the “Sword of Light” and allows him to accompany her after leaving Atlas City.
Amelia and Xellos the Priest join Lina and Gourry and they encounter many weird incidents relating to the Demon Tribe. Lina realizes it’s because the weapon she used to defeat Rezo, “the Giga Slave”, is empowered by tremendous forces. Hellaster Fibrizo takes Gourry as a hostage and demands that Lina give him the Power – Giga Slave. Can Lina defeat this powerful enemy and save Gourry?
Wow. Just wow. We’ve waited what, ten whole fucking years since Slayers Try, and they’re going to piss away the first half of this by summarising the first eight novels again just so they can retcon Slayers Try out of existence? What the hell? I want to believe that I’m reading this wrong and there’s no way they’d try to condense something that took maybe 45 episodes (when you cut away the filler) into the space of only 13? For the love of god, why? Sure, they changed a few things towards the end of Next in order to fit Try in, but why can’t this just make a few small changes and continue as if Try never happened?
I hope this doesn’t mean that they’re trying to pitch Slayers at a brand new audience rather than the sizeable existing one. That could bode very, very badly for the characters - the last thing I’d want to watch would be Lina reduced to a tsundere moeblob.
Guess we’ll have to wait and see. This news knocked my interest down significantly, though.
I’m usually pretty prompt with these entries, generally doing them about a month out. I’ve been slacking off recently I guess, since next season’s only a week away and I’ve already been beaten to this by some far more thorough entries than my own. Anyway, here’s a list of the upcoming shows next season (beginning in July) which I intend to be watching or at least have enough interest in to check out seriously. As usual there’s a few others which I’m also going to keep an eye on and I’m sure there will be one or two that I won’t be expecting at all.
Continue reading ‘July 2008 Anime’
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!
Continue reading ‘Old Animu: Slayers Next’
You know, instead of teasing fans with a project that’ll never happen, ADV should just take the 50 million or so they’ve raised for their hypothetical live action Evangelion and just put it to licensing the new Rebuild of Evangelion movies and promoting the everloving shit out of them. Get those into mainstream theaters, because not only has Anno soundly beat them to the punch at getting a cinematic Eva remake out there, but his is so well done that there’s really no way ADV could top it.
Continue reading ‘Rebuild of Evangelion: Parentheses in (THE) Title’
Back in 2006 I was rather scathing of xxxHolic when it came out. I decided to give it another go recently and finished watching it last week. Once I got past the jarring art that pops up every now and then I found I quite enjoyed it. Interesting how perceptions can change over time. 