So for whatever reason, when I picked up the Slayers box set back in... November was it? I decided I'd just post about them all at once. So if it sounds like I don't really remember various parts, it's because I probably don't.
Slayers- Good stuff. The show just does everything Shonen right; it introduces the core of the cast quickly (that is, it immediately establishes Lina and Gourry), clearly defines their overall skill level and prowess, has a great sense of when to break up the action/drama/OHFUCKWEAREFUCKED with silliness, and keeps the plot flowing at a good pace. Further, it goes far, far out of its way to establish that every member of the group at a given time is contributing to fights, and with one exception (beating Rezo-Shabranigdu) it never devolved into "only the main character can do anything useful". And even in that case, they spent an entire episode establishing that even Lina was out of her league, and that it's pretty well miraculous that they won at all. Copy Rezo isn't as compelling a villain, but the storytelling around him is very strong.
It of course must be said that the main cast is just very compelling in general. I mean, that pretty well IS Slayers, why people like it, but wouldn't want to give the impression that I wasn't paying attention >.>
Slayers Next- Pretty good. The show had evolved and really knew how to sell the silliness, and Martina in particular was consistently great. Unfortunately, serious episodes fell flat more often than not, because the show had suddenly fallen into the Shonen Trap; every enemy is only interested in Lina Inverse, and only Lina Inverse can beat ANYONE. See, at the end of the season, facing down the top general of the Dark Lord of your world? Sure. It reinforces how much of a fluke beating Ruby Eye in season one was, and again pretty well every option was exhausted in figuring out how to deal with Phibrizzo. it's okay to have your big season ender involve using the psychotically dangerous spell of uncertainty. Less okay is having every minion of the big bad, every lesser demon and peon, require the bloody Ragna Blade to kill. I mean, was there a good reason to have weaklings just shrug off Ra Tilt? To throw off Gourry's attacks like they were nothing?
While that sounds overly negative, it's more because it took me a while to explain the point. Still overall good, great at being funny and the deus ex machina is one of the best executed I can think of.
Slayers Try- It's fairly obvious, just watching this, what was going through the writers mind. They knew they had another series based on Kanzaka's work, Lost Universe, coming up. They knew that, technically, it shared a setting with Slayers. They were probably a little bored adapting the novels directly. So, they decided to do up some fanfic, expand on the connections between the two series, and close out Slayers (at least for a while) and set up some Lost Universe hype. That seems well and good, but well... you can kinda really tell that Filia and Valgaav are products of fanfic. The flow of the series is all off, with a bunch of episodes of hardcore dragon-related angst followed, at a profoundly stupid moment, by 4 very silly episodes that exist just to get the party back together.
It's not... really that bad, entertaining enough, but the flaws are blindingly obvious.
