Patreon Pin Up 12/7/20 (Patreon)

EDIT: Judging by a very salty PM I received, the obvious must be stated it seems: these are intended as adult versions here. They may be teenagers in the show, but my depictions are meant to be over 18 years old.

Slayers, an anime/manga series very dear to my heart, celebrated its 30th anniversary this year. On a side note, I'm soon to pen a 400-page manuscript entitled I'm So Old My Tears Are Filled With Fucking Dust. It's an autobiography in case that wasn't clear. 

Anyhow the topless one here is Naga from the series, with Lina glaring behind her. I've got a lot to say on this one, so read on if you're interested in my lengthy overview of Slayers. If not, I hope you like the pic all the same! 

So why do I love this old show so much? Well, the early 90's was a time before Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy brought medieval fantasy into the mainstream (and even further before HBO's Game of Thrones made the genre hot.) Back then, ongoing sword and sorcery stories were almost exclusively for dedicated dweebs only, and pickings were relatively few. 

So here comes this anime that feels not only like a D&D adventure playing out on screen, but a hilarious one with a lot of heart. In all its iterations it centered around the adventures of a single character: a teenage sorceress named Lina Inverse. 

This character was and still is a huge influence on me creatively. The gist of Lina is that, in the fiction of the world they've presented in the show, she's the real deal. She's an unstoppable black magic prodigy who is the most dangerous person on Earth. The catch is that she doesn't look the part of a badass sorceress at all. In fact she looks kind of ridiculous in her oversized mage costume. She's also short and not implied to be especially good looking. (And she's constantly teased for having a flat chest, pretty creepy in hindsight since she's supposed to be fifteen years old.) She's never getting the respect she deserves, instead perceived as infamous and reviled like a monster wherever she goes. She knows she's awesome, and how frustrating it is for her that no one else seems to think so is comedy gold to me. 

Lina alone could have carried the series, but Slayers did a great job of surrounding her with companions who clash with her in just the right ways. She gets a swordsman who's spacey to go against how book smart she is, a shaman who's calculating and strategic to go against her impulsive nature, and an optimistic priestess to go against her cynical and selfish instincts. It was all great stuff, but I think my favorite companion came from the prequel movies, where Lina only had one partner: a rival sorceress named Naga. 

Naga had no subtlety in her design, she was the blatant opposite of Lina in every way. Tall, sexy, and killing it in the evil sorceress costume, she was also obnoxious, dumb as a brick and wildly inept with her powers. Furthermore, Lina and Naga never actually become friends as far as I know. They're partners of convenience, rarely missing a chance to backstab each other. Couldn't ask for a more fun duo to go on adventures with.   

So if you're still here and you've listened to me go on this long, would I recommend Slayers now, to someone new? Hard to say. It's not easy to track down, Funimation had the streaming rights last I checked, and I wouldn't wish their service on my worst enemy. If you're interested, tracking down the comics may be a better choice to start with. 

And that's all I have! Thanks for reading, and I hope your week is off to a good start.