Oh yeah… The Slayers! (But just season 1 🙂 )

You know you wanna watch this one again. The Slayers is classic anime… and I don’t just mean “old”, I mean CLASSIC. Swords and sorcery comedy adventure… heavy on the comedy, including fourth wall breaks and meta-humor. A cast of crazy characters that only get crazier as they bounce off of each other. In spite of some serious themes and plot lines it never gets too heavy and always ends happy (99% of the time). Don’t get me wrong, characters die… sometimes even good characters, but by and large this is an uplifting feel-good anime that you can count on to brighten your mood.

There are five seasons… I’d really call it four, and the last one(s) came out probably 10 years ago now… and the first three were old then, so the animation’s nothing special. In fact it’s full of the anime cliches… but it’s also so old that it’s ALL hand drawn, even the backgrounds.

So, let’s talk about what makes this show great, the characters! (just the core for now)

Lina Inverse is the star of the show (as she’ll occasionally remind you). She’s a 15 year old sorcery genius and all around brat. She has a short temper, thoughtlessly blows up entire towns, kills bandits to steal from them and is occasionally wanted for various crimes. While all that sounds pretty deplorable, she always seems to mean well and is very endearing as a character.

Next is her partner in crime Gourry Gabriev. He’s a strong, handsome, highly skilled swordsman who’s also dumb as a rock. In fact, the exposition is usually Lina explaining things to Gourry… multiple times. It’s a good thing he’s a good-natured and easy going lunk because the rest of the group (especially Lina) harp on him quite a bit for his dull wit.

Not quite there for every adventure, but somehow around for most is Amelia Seyruun, a child princess of Seyruun who wants to be a “warrior for justice”. Ridiculous poses from high places while spouting grandiose introductions seem to be her hobby. She’s a skilled magic user in her own right (and her skills develop through the series) and she’s very valuable to the team. Unfortunately just like Lina she usually delivers more chaos than justice.

Finally there’s Zelgadis Greywords, a part-human, part-demon, part-golum who sometimes comes along for the ride when his goals mesh with the team, and sometimes opposes some or all of the rest when they clash over his personal quest to recover his humanity. Both a skilled sorcerer and swordsman, he acts as the team’s voice of reason and straight man almost all the time.

Between the four of these highly skilled and accomplished, but also dysfunctional individuals we get the painfully funny adventures of The Slayers. If you have never seen this, the first three seasons are super-cheap AND excellent! What are you waiting for?