slayers

By Hajime Kanzaka and Rui Araizumi. Released in Japan by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Elizabeth Ellis.

The first three volumes of Slayers are filled with humor and wackiness, but they are also very, very dark, with the third one ending in the destruction of an entire city and everyone in it. It often feels like a fantasy version of Dirty Pair, with Lina and Gourry accidentally spreading chaos as they go from town to town. This volume, which introduces another one of our “regulars” (I use the word in quotes because everyone in the novels except Lina and Gourry tends to be mostly absent half the time.) also features a lot of dead bodies, and has Lina almost die at least three times, to the point where her waking up in a hospital bed is almost a running gag. Despite that… this feels like an attempt at a lighter, fluffier volume of Slayers. Sure, there’s assassination attempts on royalty, assassination attempts on Lina, betrayal, and lots of death… but any book with Prince Phil and Amelia in it is by definition lighter. Even if Amelia feels a bit odd at first.

When this book was first published, both in Japan and North America, it had a much more serious cover, featuring Lina and Gourry. But J-NC has licensed the updated reissues, and they know what readers want, and so we get Amelia pointing at us for justice. As for the plot, Lina, Gourry and Sylphiel arrive in Saillune and are caught up in a royal struggle, as someone is trying to kill Prince Phil. Lina, who has met the prince before, is underwhelmed, but she and Gourry quickly agree to help him try to resolve things, despite the fact that his brother seemingly has a mage on his side who can do all sorts of lethal things to our heroine. But how many “sides” are there in this battle? And why would the villain be trying to kill Lina personally as well?

As stated, Amelia shows up here for the first time, and seems… surprisingly savvy and clever. Honestly, it feels like her characterization takes a step back as the book goes on, with the author realizing on the fly that she’s funnier when she’s goofier, hence the additional cries of justice and the pratfall towards the end. The book is funny, though sometimes it’s not as funny as it would like to be – the way Sylphiel is written out of the book is simply dumb, no two ways about it. I was also very impressed at the traps that are created for Lina in the book, with the endless corridor you can’t get out of (which Lina promptly does), the evil bug that nearly succeeds in annihilating Lina and puts her in the hospital, and an assassin that really, really wants to kill her. We do get some reasons as to why this is happening towards the end, but a lot of it is still vague, and no doubt will be examined in the next book.

This book is very 1990s at times, and “ha ha, it’s funny because he’s not handsome!” is not the laff riot it’s meant to be, but this was a very solid Slayers, and introduces one of my favorite regulars, even if she’s not quite cooked characterization-wise. Next time we’ll meet another regular, a certain “priest”, and things should get even more chaotic.

By Hajime Kanzaka and Rui Araizumi. Released in Japan by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Elizabeth Ellis.

Like virtually every English-speaking fan, I was exposed to Slayers via the anime long before Tokyopop put out the novels way back when, and also long long before J-Novel Club rescued them. This means that more than anything else, I am surprised at how short and plot-heavy these books are, having absolutely no time for anything that would count as a breather. The author’s afterword in this book talks about the fact that he frequently sketches out hints of backstory that he then never gets into, because doing so would “make the world smaller”. Which is a very fantasy author way of thinking, I suppose, but it also means that character development and depth take a backseat. No one suffers more from that here than Sylphiel, the newly introduced priestess, who gets to be nice, have a seeming crush on Gourry, and that’s about it. Now, to be fair, that’s all she was in the anime too, but at least it took 8-9 episodes to show us that.

The book starts badly, in misogynist fantasy “of Gor” territory, with Lina and Gourry captured by some goons who decide to rape her, and Gourry convincing them not to by implying Lina has syphilis. It’s meant to be funny, but isn’t. It turns out that EVERYONE is after them lately, as there’s a wanted poster with their faces, as well as Zelgadis, on it… and the bounty for their capture is being paid by Rezo the Red Priest. Which is a surprise to Lina, who killed him in the first book. Getting of the bottom of things takes them to the woods outside Sairaag, a city that was destroyed in the legendary past but has now recovered and is a bustling metropolis. They meet up with Lantz (remember Lantz? From Book 2?) and a bounty hunter named Eris, as well as Sylphiel, who Gourry had met previously in an adventure that is frustratingly never explained to us. Can they escape the Red Priest again? And is this really him?

There are some strengths here. Sometimes the humor does work – there’s a wonderful part where Lina and Gourry fend off a fishman by simply changing their clothes, as Lina says they can’t tell humans apart… then she fails to recognize Lantz because he now has a beard. Rezo – if that is who this really is – makes a suitably creepy villain, especially at the end, and the artwork showing him off is horrifying. And the reveal of another villain is pretty well handled and surprising. Unfortunately, the book’s shortness as well as its deliberate avoidance of depth means that other things meant to be tragic and horrifying just aren’t. Our heroes never enter Sairaag or see anyone in it, so its destruction – again – lacks any impact, especially as Sylphiel recovers pretty fast from the loss of everything she’s ever known. It desperately needs fleshing out, something that anime actually did… well, not much, but at least they actually go to the city!

Basically, more modern fantasies have spoiled me for character depth, and Slayers can sometimes seem lacking as a result. This is the danger of iconic series who have been imitated a bit too much. In the meantime, for those anime viewers wondering where Amelia was during all this, well, the anime swapped book 4 and 3. Which means next time we get to see both Amelia AND Phil, something that makes me happy no matter how short and outline-ish the book ends up being.

By Hajime Kanzaka and Rui Araizumi. Released in Japan by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Elizabeth Ellis.

These books came out in the early 1990s, but they got a recent re-release to prepare Japan for new volumes after a long break. As a result, the afterwords from the author that we see here are new. In this one, the author talks about the struggle to make Slayers into a series… as he points out, when you defeat the demon lord in book one, where do you go from there? The answer is that awkward second book, very similar to that awkward second album. Last time I pointed out the anime skipped it, but I’d forgotten that they did circle back round to its events in Slayers Next, a full season later. It’s not hard to see why they skipped it – there’s no regulars other than Lina and Gourry, there’s less humor and more horror than you’d expect from a series like Slayers, and the pacing also feels very odd, ambling along for 2/3 of the book before realizing that it actually has to come to a conclusion.

Lina and Gourry, on vacation in the city of Atlas, are doing the usual (Lina inciting bar fights by punching out creepers, Gourry snarking at her) when they’re hired by one of the local sorcerers to be his bodyguard. The head of the sorcerer’s guild has vanished, so there’s a bit of a power vacuum going on at the moment, and protection from the other side is needed. Lina is, frankly, not all that interested, but she gets more so when they’re attacked by two demons with masks. Fighting ensues… then, when Lina and Gourry go to investigate the competition, they find, buried at the bottom of an underground lake in a crystal prison, the missing head of the sorcerer’s guild. What follows is amazing to Lina and Gourry but not to the reader, who probably guessed what was going on about Page 40. The main surprise is when one of the characters involved DOESN’T die.

It has to be said, the most annoying aspect of this book is how it handles Lina. Gourry is supposed to be the big dumb muscle, though the anime exaggerates that to the poi not of parody. Lina, though, is supposed to be the one who gets what’s really going on. Unfortunately, here she’s got to be unable to make sense of the actual power struggle among the sorcerers in order for the plot to function, and you sort of slap your head a bit when she lets the cheerful obvious bad guy out of his prison and then walks away. She’s clueless. There’s also a lot more grotesque horror than I’d expect in a Slayers book here, with graphic descriptions of body mutations and diabolical experiments. And even then, the obvious payoff – the evil sorcerer is killed in a murder-suicide by his creation – doesn’t actually happen. (The anime fixed this.)

So yeah, overall a disappointment, although Lina’s narrative voice is still a lot of fun. That said, I know the series picks up again soon, and am definitely looking forward to more.

By Hajime Kanzaka and Rui Araizumi. Released in Japan by Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. Released in North America by J-Novel Club. Translated by Elizabeth Ellis.

Slayers has had a very long history, both in Japan and North America. In Japan the first novel, this one, came out in 1990. It ran for ten years, then stopped, but recently put out two more novels a couple years ago. These are the ones with Lina and Gourry as the stars. In addition, there are well over 30 novels called Slayers Special (unlicensed, and probably unlikely to be), which started in 1991, and star Lina and Naga. They take place before the main series, and are lighter in tone. Not that the main series is all that dark. This is one of the earliest fantasy comedies out there, and signs of its humor are present throughout this first volume – sometimes to the book’s detriment. And then there’s the anime (based on these novels), which started in 1995, spawned several sequels, and was most old-school fans’ first exposure to the series. Oh yes, and the Slayers OAVs, which started in 1996, also brought out over here. Tokyopop licensed the light novels in the pre-light novel boom, and released about half of them before cancelling the series. Now we have these new books, with a new translation.

Light novels were shorter back in the day, and that shows with this first volume, which barely makes it above 125 pages. Given that the anime spread this out over the first ten episodes, those who saw the anime first may be startled by the fast pace of the books. They may also be startled by Lina Inverse’s first-person narration. For those who are not intimately familiar with the series, a North American anime fandom touchstone, Lina is a powerful teenage mage wandering the land, who quickly meets up with Gourry, a buff blonde swordsman who becomes her protector/punching bag/love interest. Together, they get into trouble. In this first book, that trouble is Zelgadis, a chimera who is searching for a way to turn himself human again, and his minions; and Rezo the Red Priest, a very suspicious and smiling priest (but not THAT very suspicious and smiling priest). Throughout it all, Lina deals with all of this with her magic powers and knowledge, her cunning, and Gourry’s sword, which she really, really wants for herself.

Lina’s narration is great, and really gives the novels a different feel from the anime. Her ego is huge, and she’s constantly praising herself, but she makes sure to subtly puncture it throughout. Fans of Gourry will be surprised at what they see here – Gourry is not a genius, and constantly has to have basic information explained to him, but he’s not a dimbulb either, and he definitely feels more mature than Lina. And, for that matter, more mature than Zelgadis, who may be the fandom’s most beloved character, but boy, does he get off to a bad start here, kidnapping Lina and then telling his goons to rape her. Now, the main reason he does this is so that the writer can make a dumb joke about the way fish people have sex, but it certainly reads like a joke from a different era these days. And then there’s the fights, which are well handled but which the anime, obviously, would make a much bigger deal out of.

Despite a few hiccups, I’m delighted to see the novels back in print in North America. If you didn’t read Tokyopop’s version when it first came out, be aware the 2nd novel was not adapted to the anime, so it’ll be new material to you. Enjoy one of the classic comedic fantasies.