Sureiyâzu

I was actually -forced- to watch Slayers at first, but I fell in love with it and have rented the entire series at least four times. I've memorized most of it and have even dedicated a website to it. Zelgadiss is one of my favorite all-time anime characters, and I love Crispan Freeman's voice. The sub are okay, but I love the dubbed versions, Eric Stuart is perfect for Gourry, I think.. If you do get the dubbed versions, watch out.. Ameria/Amelia's dubbed voice at first is horribly, terribly, nails-on-the-chalkboard annoying....

Slayers Next shows you that maybe sequels can be better than the originals. The series of Slayers gave us a not-so-typical leading female and continued to add more amusing characters. Slayers Next throws us a couple more fun characters and an interesting and fun storyline.

The Slayers: The simply HILARIOUS adventures of 4 typical fantasy (almost right out of Dungeons & Dragons) characters, but each has some frightening physical/personality "difference." Of course, this equals fun and laughter.

Lina Inverse, the main character, is a fiery red-head sorceress whose one goal in life is to run around the world destroying just about everything in her way so she can have LOTS of money, and get cool stuff.

Gourry Gabriev, her sidekick, is a blond-haired "warrior" type guy who just happens to have no intelligence at all. He means well, but he's just plain stupid.

Zelgadis, the "serious type," is a sorcerer that happens to have his body gnarled into that of a golem. His skin, hair, etc...all made of bluish-green metal and stone.

Amelia begs her own category: a dark-haired "Justice Freak" whose obsession with Heroes and Justice is...well...disturbing.

The four journey about, and nothing but the most bizarre, clever obstacles stand in their way: Being forced to act in a bad play, Lina's forced making-out with a fish, Gourry always changing the subject to the flatness of Lina's chest, or even fighting the Devil himself, the four have it rough.

For the best viewing, it's recommended to watch the show in Japanese, because the voice actors have professional training (it's like actual on-screen acting there), and thus portray their characters PERFECTLY. The English dubbing is O.K., but it's just a good idea to watch it in the original language, because it's meant to be that way.

While I enjoyed this series, I found it to be a little anti-climatic when seen after "next" and still having that series fresh in mind. In "Try", the plot is more complicated (I got totally lost at times), the filler-episodes are somewhat less good than the previous fillers, and I was very disappointed in that Lina cast the Giga-Slave after what happened last time. There was no chemistry between Lina and Gourry this time =( , but on the other hand, Amelia is starting to get hooked on someone (hehe...). Also, I totally adored the interaction between Filia and Xellos. And I loved Valgaav! He had that sad, pained air about him that just makes me want to be on his side instead...

But what's up with no Drag-queen episode? ;-) I missed that. Would have loved to see Zelgadis in drag again... ;-) The closest they got in "try" was dressing Gourry up as a mermaid to make a virgin sacrifice out of him for a dragon.

See it!

/Anna

To paraphrase the introduction on the video box: "In ancient times, stories abounded of brave warriors performing heroic deeds...this is not one of them." :)

Slayers makes fun of not only RPG/D&D anime, but everything else--including the kitchen sink. Jokes, gags, and rampant violence aside, though, this story also has quite a bit of drama and character development.

Personally, I felt that the subbed version was much better--Megumi Hayashibara is perfect as the cute but slightly underdeveloped (but don't say that to her face :) Lina Inverse.

Definitely a series worth watching.