The 90s Fantasy Comedy Anime That Needs To Be Saved For Future Generations
Fantasy has been on the rise for the past decade, following the success of Game of Thrones and then the rise of Dungeons & Dragons thanks to actual play podcasts, but today, thanks to a quirk of license agreements, one of the greatest fantasy anime of all time has been removed from streaming. Of course, I’m talking about the saga of Lina Inverse and Gourry Gabriev, The Slayers, which managed to walk the fine line between absurdist comedy and constant danger.
For years, the franchise was available as part of Funimation, but following Crunchyroll’s buyout, it has yet to reappear anywhere, and that’s a shame.
The Slayers Is A JRPG In Anime Form
The Slayers takes place in a magical world set up like a classic Japanese role-playing game, with four schools of magic (Black, Holy, Shamanistic, and White) that draw power from different sources at the center of a simmering cold war between dueling God-like beings. The first series, composed of 26 episodes, starts with the pair trying to stop Zelgadis, a combination of a human, golem, and demon, from resurrecting the fallen demon king.
Along the way, they pick up strange new allies, acquire magical artifacts, and learn the true nature of their world in what’s basically a Dungeons & Dragons campaign in anime form.
Pokes Fun At Itself
I first came across The Slayers when I was in college and first playing Dungeons & Dragons, and not to date myself, but this was when the video of “I cast magic missile at the darkness” was brand new, so the anime was mind-blowing. Lina’s decision to unload her most powerful magic at the start of a battle flies in the face of the usual anime battles, and, typically done for comedic effect, she has no concerns about collateral damage. She is not your typical anime hero, but that makes the show stand out even decades later, as it’s not afraid to poke fun at fantasy tropes and even its own heroes.
Multiple Series Over A Decade
The Slayers was a smash success and was quickly followed by more series, including Slayers NEXT, Slayers TRY, and then an eleven-year wait for Slayers REVOLUTION and finally, Slayers EVOLUTION-R, which finally brought the story of Lina to a conclusion, for now. Throughout the franchise, as characters came and went, Lina Inverse slowly developed into an actual hero, so despite the humor and absurdity of the first two series, there is character development. Mostly.
Never Easy To Find
One of the reasons The Slayers had trouble catching on in the West is that its broadcast rights were originally owned by Fox Kids, which means someone, somewhere, didn’t actually watch any of the episodes as they aren’t quite kid-friendly. Since editing out all the questionable content was too much, Fox let the series languish while Funimation pumped out DVDs and box sets. It’s a sad echo of the current fate of the series, which is, again, almost impossible to watch.
The Perfect Anime For The New Age Of D&D
REVIEW SCORE
When The Slayers comes back to Crunchyroll, at some point, I highly recommend it, especially if you enjoy the humor of Dungeons & Dragons podcasts like The Adventure Zone or Not Another D&D Podcast (in fact, Lina, and later, Naga the Serpent, are similar to Emily Axford’s characters, while Gourrey is a total Jake fighter, and saying who Caldwell would play is a spoiler).
Few anime can balance humor with world-ending stakes, but The Slayers, through multiple series, OVAs, and movies, manages to do it with style.
