The Slayers
2005-12-16 07:36:13
I originally stated there were 19 novels in this collection; I was incorrect, there's 15. I had a brainbump and mixed it up with another series I read. The original author in Japan was Hajime Kanzaka, who was a young and starting author at the time; I find it interesting to watch his style develop, myself.
The Slayers Novels were originally announced to be released in its 15 novel form by TOKYOPOP before they first began publishing, bringing a wave of excitement to the anime crowd. It brought reform to the face of Japanese pop culture; instead of reading a comic book, you were reading an actual BOOK that just had an occasional picture page. FMA soon followed suit, but FMA's didn't have the same kick, if only because the slayers novels are the heart of the Slayers series, and founded everything thereafter, while FMA's books were the spinoff.
TOKYOPOP has canceled the Slayers novels. I'm making an effort to fix this, and I can't do this without your help. They're a great series. Information on how to help resolve the undue cancelation is at the bottom of the review.
The Slayers graphic novels are considerably more accurate in terms of their own spells than the Slayers anime, at least staying consistent in terms of cause and effect for the detail minded. There's noticeable differences, like the demons needing to chant and other whatnot, that shifted during the make of the TV version. The most noticeable differences are the personalities of the characters, all of which have minor tweaks between here and the animated screen; the most obvious is Xelloss, who can and will take an innuendo shot when it is available, and be a cold and cruel and overpowered bastard right in the open. Beyond anything in the show, even.
Other characters are quickly defined as the books progress, and you can feel Hajime mastering his hold over them and placing them strongly in definitive places in the group.
The series goes through a lot of sub-genres, from mystery, to suspense, to horror, and action. You can feel Hajime as an aspiring novelist testing his footholds in different areas and finding his strong points. His writing in the first book dwindles off suddenly towards the end as he tries to compact it in time, and the second book suffers the same fate, although not as dramatically. His writing tightens up over time, although his description waxes and wanes enough that it's caused some misfires between himself and his concept artist. Still, if you have a vivid imagination you can play with it all you wish. You wouldn't be reading the book instead of watching the anime if you didn't.
My biggest gripe was with TOKYOPOP to begin with, before the cancelations. My own friend has emailed them angrily offering to do the editing for FREE because some of it was so sloppy; I'd considered doing the same thing. Whole words can be omited or added, while other words are horribly typoed, quotes are missing or punctuation vanishes. Some books are worse about it than others. I've seen "The" typed as "Tuhe". Come on, word processor has a spellcheck feature for this.
Still, the translations are done pretty well. Not perfectly, but as well as we could have expected from any translation on our side. It's a matter of the editors being crappy spellcheckers.
Then, we were disappointed with the announcement that they claimed book six was the last one, after having originally announced all 15 coming out; considering I have the list of all 15, I know that's pretty much bull.
This is a great series for those interested in high-level fantasy with a twinge of comedy, and for the story to be cut short and future fans to be deprived [much less past fans, considering the books started in the late 80s and only recently were translated - we've waited a LONG TIME for this] is travesty.
We can make a difference, and I'm trying to.
Visit the provided link for information on the Slayers Challenge movement to restore the graphic novels. If we don't bring our beloved books back we can rest happy knowing we've probably spammed the begeezus out of their mailboxes enough to make them set up real life spam filters somehow.
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