Slayers eps 19-26

[meganbmoore]

Random notes as I have little of substance to say that I didn't already say:

1.  Characters in this show continued to be amazingly sensible.  Especially Amelia.  Sharp metal things and magical projectiles headed her way?  Duck behind the guy with impenetrable, rock hard skin.  Get told to beat it before she ends up in the line of fire?  No complaints, no questioning, that girl is hoofing it.  Dangerous things flying around the room?  Crawl under them.  So she can hide behind the guy with impenetrable, rock hard skin.  Meanwhile, they still manage to make slapstick running away be the sensible thing to do.

2.  They also plan.  Intelligently.  And competently pull off plans and traps.  I was flabbergasted.  Regularly.

3.  For once, in an anime/manga that's supposed to be about a strong, intelligent female heroine...it actually is about her.  The guys aren't decoration or wusses, but for once, their story isn't made to be more important than the main character's, just because they're the guy.

4.  Female characters were modestly, sensibly clothed and didnot have ginormous breasts.  Except Eris.  The chest and outfit were the clue she was truly evil.

5.  The universe almost ended because a guy didn't want to be blind anymore.  That's, like, the antithesis of all anime and manga, where eye loss=good.  Especially Clamp.

6.  One day, someone will shoot blood out of their shoulder, have forehead blood spill down and cover half their face(converniently missing the eye and not blinding them) or get run through, and they will actually be affected by it, and maybe even die, and I'll call them wusses.

7.  Is having half your vision obscrued by your bangs just a really "in" thing for 90s anime?  Both Zelgadis and Gourry suffer from it...and Gourry's bangs regularly switch sides...

8.  Zel continues to be stoically, sarcastically emo, and to pretend that he's evil and not nice.  I continue to be amused by that.  *pats him on the head*

9.  Was there any point to Sylphiel's character?  At all?  I mean, she wasn't really annoying and made herself useful, as all girls in this series do, but there seemed to be no purpose to the character.  She didn't even really serve well as a third wheel in the Lina/Gourry romance, because those two are too oblivious to even notice everyone assumes they're sleeping together.  Maybe she was just there to have a token sweet, shy girl.

11.  When people stand around talking about how the OTP is too stupid to realize they're the OTP, it is A Sign.  That they need to have it explained so they can just go make babies get it out of their system already, that is.  Like in SDK.  Zelgadis, I nominate you for explaining duties.  Granted, you'll end up as much of a red, stuttering mess if you tried as Amelia and Sylphiel would, but I'd enjoy it more.

12.  Yes, I scoured youtube for clips of Tiiba, The Giant Demon Chicken who menaced Sylphiel and then proceeded to kick everyone's butts until a magical stone tablet fell out of the wall and bonked Lina on the head.

Also, cool MV, but embedding is disabled:  http://youtube.com/watch?v=H1BLW7xSetI

Comments

[bzoppa.livejournal.com]

You just finished the first season? Are you going to watch Slayers Try and Slayers Next?

My journal title (In the Name of Justice, Love, Truth, and Food) is from the third season. It's not as good but it knows it's a sequel and doesn't pretend it's not rehashing previous plot points. They do some cute things with the 'ships, I thought.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I plan to watch the other seasons. When I get them.

Plus, I suspect 70+ episodes back-to-back wouldn't be a wise move.

[crumpeteer.livejournal.com]

Part of the thing that strikes me about the male characters is that they are trying to help the female character on a quest in the same way females generally help the male in fantasy. They're not useless or superfluous, they're simply secondary characters helping the main one.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yup. It has the role reversal, but not at the expense of the male characters, or or having to go the "like a man" route.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Don't pat Zel on the head. His hair is made of sharp wire, and he has to use wirecutters to trim it. XD

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Excellent point. He also styles it to look like demon horns(it's rrrreeeeeeaaaalllllyyyyyyyy obvious from the back.)

Only Kougaiji is as good at trying to be the bad guy and sucking so very, very badly at it.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I love Zel. He's my second-favorite character in Slayers. XD My favorite character is Xelloss, but Xelloss hits all my trickster-character buttons.

I'm going to have to rewatch the 2nd and 3rd series.

Oh yeah - there will be in future Slayers episodes, one in the upcoming series, and one in the movie prequels that deal with Lina before she meets Gourry, female characters with massive boobage and very tiny costumes. But they both get to be over-the-top ranting pratfalling characters, which makes up a bit for the fanservice. :)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Everyone loves Xelloss. I am coming to have Very High Expectations there.

i have the OVA because I was told that it took place before the series, but have since been warned off. I did, however, stumble across a shojo-ai fanvid of it. The maker of the vid made sure they got the other girl's bouncing breasts as the exclusive item of the frame several times. If nothing else, I can watch it and mock it.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yup. Don't expect much from the OVAs. There was a girl who did a rather accurate cosplay of her about a decade ago. I suspect that the pics are still out there, as the costume was rather tiny, but a quick search doesn't reveal them. I can find plenty of Naga cosplay, but none of them have the, er, pneumatic-ness of the one I'm thinking of.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Well, as evidenced by the Cassie Edwards posts, I can survive most things if I can mock the *hem* out of them.

[the_rck]

The first time I saw Slayers, I saw just a few episodes, at a convention, and had no idea what the title was. I wondered for years what happened next because the convention switched to a different series right after a cliffhanger. When I found out what series it was, I powered through the first season very rapidly.

After you've finished watching the series, there are a couple of fics that I'd recommend highly. It's not a fic fandom that I've poked around in very much (frankly, it scares me a little), but there are some good stories.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Every anime fandom that actually is a fandom scares me.

What kinds of fics?

[the_rck]

Well, my most enthusiastic rec is Slayers Reflect, Chaos, Rebirth. It's a long post-canon series that, to me, feels enough like canon that I sometimes forget that it isn't. I don't recommend it until after you've seen all three seasons, well not unless you don't mind spoilers.

A Flower Whose Name I Don't Yet Know is probably mostly safe now. It's about Sylphiel. She has a chance to nurture a seedling that could become a new Flagoon, but she's also stuck with a helpless, newly resurrected Copy Rezo. It gets very sweet at points. It does kind of go off at an angle from canon, but I thought I'd suggest it anyway.

The fandom is full of Xelloss/Zelgadis fics and fics that pair Lina with anybody but Gourry. Some of each are, of course, well written and quite readable. Others are dreck.

I can also recommend a decent fic that's aiming at Sylphiel/Zelgadis but has other plot going on.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Slayers fic was really my first exposure to fic. Unfortunately I never encountered any good ones, and was traumatized for a long time at the image I ran across in one of Zel and Xelloss curled up together on a couch feeding popcorn to each other.

I mean, that scene would irritate me to the point of exploding involving any characters, because I am allergic to schmoop, but THOSE TWO? AAAAARHHHHHGGGGRGRGGRRRRHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm not sure I read any Slayers fic ever again. (though recs for good fic welcome. XD)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

My first exposure to fanfic was the Magnificent Seven TV show. It fetured 7 attractive men and one attractive female who was there minimally as one character's love interest(in season one, more prominently in that function in season 2) but mostly to have a female voice and a "common person" representative.

I'm sure you can imagine what kind of fic that spawned.

ETA: That fic sounds horrifying. It sounds as scarring as the SDK fics where Kyo is suddenly tripping over his tongue apologizing to Yuya and being all mushy and grovelly.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

GOD YES. Even with your minute and a half AMV exposure to Xelloss you can already tell he's Not That Sort.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yes. He seems more the Yukimura sort. "Heee...I have 503270 things going on in my head and you'd never guess more than 2 of them, and if I flirt with you or seem sweet, you should be suspicious because I am Up To Something and just trying to throw you off...and it'll work because messing with heads and pwning people is just What I Do."

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Bingo!

One should never pay attention to what Xelloss says. One should always pay very close attention to what Xelloss does not say.

[the_rck]

It is wrong to think of Zelgadis and Xelloss being lovey-dovey and happy and... Yeah. I have seen some fics that pair them that do it well, but there are an awful lot more that don't. (There are also fics that have Xelloss and Lina being lovey-dovey or Zelgadis and Lina. I don't buy them, either. It's just not in character.)

I do recommend the two fics that I linked above, especially the first one. My other Slayers recs are at my recs page. I've only got five or six of them, so they don't have a page of their own (I arbitrarily made seven the threshold for a sub-page). The fandoms are alphabetized, so Slayers is near the bottom.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I could see Xelloss doing it just to screw with your brain, but everyone else would instantly react with suspicion and defensiveness. XD

Thanks! I'll check them out. :)

[lostopenwindows.livejournal.com]

Reading your posts reminds me of how amazing and hilarious Slayers is. If only I could find the discs...

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I approve of this disc finding, which is presumably followed by disc watching.

[lilac-breeze.livejournal.com]

...I'm starting to think that someone doesn't want me to comment on your entry. First, LJ ate my comment, then just as I was about to post it again, the power went out. Thank god for Firefox and its amazing ability to restore the text I had typed in this little box!

Ah, Slayers, how I love that series. It was my first big anime obsession back in the day, and Zel was my very first anime love. He still has a very special place in my heart, and I'm sure he always will.

Reading your entries has made me want to watch Slayers again. I really should, I can't even remember the last time I sat down and watched any of the series. I watched the movie again not too long ago, and while I do enjoy it, it just pales in comparison to the TV series as far as I'm concerned.

Are you going to continue on with Next and Try? I can't wait to see what you think of Xellos... *chuckles*

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

"...I'm starting to think that someone doesn't want me to comment on your entry. First, LJ ate my comment, then just as I was about to post it again, the power went out. Thank god for Firefox and its amazing ability to restore the text I had typed in this little box!"

This is how I feel about entries, half the time.

My first anime obsessions were Wolf's Rain and Spiral. It explains a lot.

I plan to watch Try and Next. And, since I have it, the OVA. Dunno about the movie, though.