Anime: Slayers Revolution

First off I'll say that I'm a huge Slayers fan and have seen the slayers tv show at least 6 times over the years. If you are new to the series my review may be a bit biased and geared towards avid fans. From here let us commence.

I must say the quality of the animation may not be top notch by today's standards but comparing them to the originals they are a definite upgrade. Fear not dear veterans, this improvement in graphics does not deviate from its art style. The characters still look and feel the same. Something to look forward to are the updated spell effects.

With almost a 7 year hiatus from the last production the voice actors are back once again. As Megumi Hayashibara is back as Lina Inverse, you can be rest assured that she will be doing the soundtrack as well. Again the spells are back with a few new additions.

Although the story may have started slow and didn't really end in the first half of the season, it still basically follows the same slayers formula and slapstick humor. It starts off with the introduction of the characters and leads to minor sidequest(s), from there the main story and a more serious tone. Since this is just the first half of the season, we can look forward to the continuation in 2009.

The lovable characters are the main selling point of the anime for me. Lina, Goury, Amelia, and Zelgadis are finally back and reunited once again. We still have the same unrelenting Lina, dimwitted Goury, justice filled Amelia, and level headed Zelgadis. Don't forget the erratic and mysterious Xelloss. This installment of Slayers also brings in a new "guest" character.

Watching through the episodes I was constantly bombarded with nostalgic memories of the series. The story and settings seem all too familiar. Though the current story may seem generic to the average watcher, dungeons and dragons style fantasy anime is scarce these days. If you want a sword and sorcery anime with a chunk of comedy and action with a hint of seriousness, then look no further than slayers revolution.

In a few words: they rushed the end.

I was extremely eager to Slayers Revolution (SR) after it was announced early this year because earlier works of Slayers were simply amazing. However, after a few episode, I was disappointed. The main story did not take shape before the 6th or 7th episode and then it quickly ended without development of any kind. Sure they fought a big boss, but what was the point? I find that bringing these extra characters at the end serves absolutely no purpose to the main point. With some mentions of the characters from the 1st season, I was excited to see how the stories will connect, but unfortunately the connection was never made. Maybe their want to surprise the views with a continuation, but that is totally unnecessary. I hope a continuation of SR will be made soon to unravel of the mysteries presented in this season. Still, they should have simply made a coherent story without all the annoying sidetracks.

PS, my score could be biased. If you want tot watch Slayers, watch the first and second season. I find myself unable to rate any "Slayers" lower than 7 because of how great this show was back then.

After a long break, a new series of Slayers. The original was fondly remembered by many, though personally I've always felt it was somewhat overrated. As always I'll do my best to remain objective, but this has been a particularly controversial series, so my apologies in advance if I slip into partisanship on occasion.

I'll start with the less subjective: the animation. A sterling effort has been made to bring this up to modern standards while remaining faithful to the style of the original, but sadly there's only so far the Slayers look can be taken. The magical effects, and to a lesser extent the character designs, are simply not suited to high resolution; Slayers fireballs were never meant to look like real fire, so the greater detail only makes them more incongruous, and the same goes for the ice and similar effects. Where the animators can do something completely new, such as the fantastic opening sequence, they've done very well, but sadly this isn't the case for most of the series. I can't really blame the creators, because a more radical shift in style would doubtless have upset the fans, but nevertheless the result is somewhat awkward. The voice acting does not have the same rise in standards to contend with, but suffers from some sameiness in the supporting cast; however, it's always competently done, and there is nothing to complain about in the voicing of the main characters. The music, as always, is well chosen and eminently suitable.

Where Slayers Revolution falls down most heavily is in the cast, and it's here that I get the feeling the series should have been left to lie. Here the series creators should really have bitten the bullet and dropped some of the main cast to make room. But they opt for trying to please everyone by retaining almost every main character from previous series, and add several new elements. So we have a main "party" of five, along with two sometime hangers-on and a whole slew of new villains, and the series (doubtless wary of the armies of character fanboys) isn't willing to favour anyone overmuch. The end result is that no character has enough screentime to show or develop any depth, with the exception of the lead, whom the writers wisely refrain from messing with. While trying to give Lina a dark side and inner demons to confront could have made a bad series a lot worse, having no-one change substantially over the course of the show is far from ideal. Again, this is a problem that stems from the substantial legacy of Slayers; the characters' personalities are by now well fleshed-out, and changing any of them would be met by vocal opposition from parts of the fanbase; nor would introducing a single new character and throwing the burden of developing on him have been well-received either. But again, this results in a deeply unsatisfying show.

This legacy also makes it very difficult to construct an interesting plotline. With all the main cast there, our protagonists are capable of killing gods, so finding a believable challenge for them can be somewhat difficult. In the early part of the series this difficulty is especially acute, and the show resorts to the cheap technique of having the mostly-friendly, always-secretive and extremely powerful Xellos require the main party to do what the story requires. It does pick up towards the end, however, and while the final arc may be somewhat simplistic, this doesn't prevent it from being a satisfying return to Slayers form.

This show was never bad enough for me to stop watching, and with the focus away from the weak plot it would lose very little a second time around. But the extremely thin characterization and poor storyline means Slayers Revolution is not a series I can recommend.