Slayers - Post Viewing Thoughts

I had finished watching all five seasons of Slayers finally. I certainly do feel like I missed out on something epic in my childhood. I knew the show existed, and I was interested, but just wasn't able to convince my mom to rent the tapes since I was already watching plenty of anime back then as well. Some of which are similar, but also doesn't quite compare to Slayers in terms of the events that occur. By that I mean, most of the other fantasy setting anime will have the protagonist grow from being an inexperienced fighter, to a competent combatant. Lina however, is already pretty strong from the start, and does grow in strength for sure, but growth was not a big factor in the story; at least not as much as the other fantasy anime goes.

I have to say, having watched all five seasons one after another, it's interesting to see how much more production value goes into the later seasons compared to the ones before. I mean, it's normal for the most part, but it's just more apparent when you watch them one right after another. The overall improvements in the series were noticeable, and made the experience that much better after the first season.

Slayers was also more unique than I had originally thought about the series as well. Much like what I've already described above in the first paragraph, growth wasn't an important factor, but more-so the slaying of greater enemies that you don't get too many of in many other anime series. At least, not to the extent of Slayers.

Also, the filler episodes can be a bit goofy at times, but I've come to terms with how filler episodes are handled in general. >_> I've always been one who appreciates fillers, but it still left me that feeling of wanting to see what happens next in the main plot line. Thankfully for Slayer's case, the story progresses at a decently fast pace, as well as the fillers, so you don't wait around too long for something epic to happen. In fact, some of the fillers can be pretty crazy, especially the 4th episode of Slayers Evolution-R. That one was especially ridiculous, it was amazing.

I do also have to commend the story writing though, for maintaining a grand scale from the beginning to the end. Spoileriffic details below.

Spoiler:

From the start, I was amazed that they started the story from a fairly epic scale, and had the confrontation so early on. I wasn't sure what direction the series would take after defeating Shabranigdu at first. But seeing the subsequent main plot were equally epic, if not greater, it was definitely a pleasant surprise.

That continued pretty much throughout all of the seasons, and it makes me realize how well the writer had set up the dark lords and what not.

Well, after checking out the Wiki on what episodes there are, it seems like there are some OVAs left for me to watch, so I guess I'll be hunting those down. In the meantime however, I'll be watching some other stuff for a while.