Slayers
Slayers is a Japanese light novel series written by Hajime Kanzaka and illustrated by Rui Araizumi. The novels have been serialized in Dragon Magazine since 1989, before being published into individual volumes. They follow the adventures of teenage sorceress Lina Inverse and her companions as they journey through their world. Using powerful magic and swordsmanship they battle overreaching wizards, demons seeking to destroy the world, and an occasional hapless gang of bandits.
Slayers inspired several spin-off novel series and has been adapted into numerous manga titles, anime television series, anime films, OVA series, role-playing video games, and other media. Including the spin-off series and digital copies, the novels have sold over 22 million copies. The anime series is considered to be one of the most popular of the 1990s.
Plot
Setting
In the Slayers universe, the ultimate being is the Lord of Nightmares, the creator of at least four parallel worlds. An artifact known as the Claire Bible contains information about the Lord of Nightmares' task to regain its "true form", which is only attainable by destroying these worlds and returning them to the chaos that it itself is. For unexplained reasons, though, the Lord of Nightmares has not acted upon this desire by itself so far. On each of these worlds are gods and demons, fighting without end. Should the gods win the war in a world, that world will be at peace. Should the monsters win, the world will be destroyed and returned to the Sea of Chaos.In the world where the Slayers takes place, Flare Dragon Ceifeed and the Ruby-Eye Shabranigdu are, respectively, the supreme god and demon. Long ago, their war ended more or less in a stalemate, when Ceifeed was able to split Shabranigdu's existence into seven pieces in order to prevent him from coming back to life, then seal them within human souls. As the souls are reincarnated, the individual fragments would wear down until Shabranigdu himself would be destroyed. However, Ceifeed was so exhausted by this that he himself sank into the Sea of Chaos, leaving behind four parts of himself in the world. A millennium before the events in Slayers, one of Ruby-Eye's fragments revived and began the Resurrection War against one of the parts of Ceifeed, the Water Dragon King, also known as Aqualord Ragradia. Ultimately, the piece of Shabranigdu won, but Aqualord, using the last remnants of her power, sealed him into a block of magical ice within the Kataart Mountains. Nevertheless, Shabranigdu's lieutenants remained at liberty, sealing a part of the world within a magical barrier, through which only demons could pass.
There are four types of magic within the Slayers universe: Black, White, Shamanistic, and Holy. Black magic spells, such as the famous Dragon Slave, call directly on the powers of the demons and are capable of causing enormous damage. White magic spells are of an obscure origin and are used for healing or protection. Shamanistic magic is focused on manipulation and alteration of the basic elements of the natural world and contains spells for both offense and convenience, such as Lei Wing, Fireball, or Elemekia Lance. Holy magic uses the power of the gods, but the aforementioned barrier made its usage impossible for anyone inside before the death of the demon Hellmaster Phibrizzo. As a rule, demons can only be harmed by astral shamanistic magic, holy magic, or black magic which draws power from another demon with greater might than the target.
Above all other magic, however, are the immensely destructive spells drawing power from the Lord of Nightmares. The two spells of this class are the Ragna Blade, capable of cutting through any obstacle or being, and the Giga Slave, which can kill any opponent, but which could also destroy the world itself if the spell is miscast. Some have claimed that these terrible spells, drawing their power directly from the Lord of Nightmares, constitute a fifth form of magic: Chaos magic.
Story
The protagonist of Slayers is Lina Inverse, a teenage wandering genius sorceress with many nicknames and much infamy attached to her that she refuses to acknowledge. Lina narrates the history of her various adventures, ranging from whimsical and silly to dramatic to even outright world-threatening crises, in which she becomes involved along with her traveling companions everywhere she goes.Production
The first Slayers light novel was written by Hajime Kanzaka for entrance into Fujimi Fantasia Bunko's first annual in 1989. After it won, the new author was asked to create a follow-up. Kanzaka initially thought this was an impossible task as the characters had already defeated the Dark Lord. He called the second book a turning point for him and said it was initially very difficult to write. However, as soon as he added the "spike-wolves and stuff", from his love of yōkai and kaiju, the "words just flew off the page". Kanzaka set the second book in a city so that Lina could not solve the story by simply casting one big spell. He said that this taught him how using circumstances and setting could change the "flavor" of a story. The author also said that the second book is intentionally "heavier" than the first.Kanzaka described his writing process as like trying to put together puzzle pieces that have been scattered about, figuring stuff out as he goes instead of following an outline written beforehand. As a new author, he said he was not good at submitting plot summaries to his supervisor, who wanted them before he started writing. When the supervisor passively accepted the plot summary of the third Slayers novel, but was then ecstatic with the finished book, he stopped asking for plot summaries. Kanzaka assumed that he had finally realized that the finished story was always going to widely diverge from the initial summary. The first three books were written as the author thought up stories, but volume four on tell a grander epic. Because the first novel was written as a one-off before evolving into a series, there are some inconsistencies with the later installments. A few of these inconsistencies were corrected in the 2008 reprints.
Kanzaka stated the reason Zelgadis and Amelia do not appear in "part 2" is because of the plot point concerning a character's death. Although he speculated he could have written around the healing spells, it would have taken a lot of extra steps to get there and dragged everything out a lot longer than necessary. In the afterward of the fifteenth novel, the original final installment of the series, Kanzaka said he wanted to end the story in an open-ended way in order to allow readers to imagine what happens next to Lina and Gourry. He also described the Slayers video games, television shows, and comics as "parallel part 3 stories".
Kanzaka makes references to people and events not depicted in the novels, such as Lina's older sister and Gourry Gabriev's first visit to Sairaag, which he referred to as "flavor" to stimulate the reader's imagination and clarified that they are not foreshadowing. He explained that the fictional world would feel smaller if everything that appears in the story is explained; something he learned from a teacher's comment in design school. Although some of these he has not even thought about, like Gourry's visit to Sairaag, others he has created a backstory to, such as Lina's sister. Zuma's backstory was omitted because the novels are told from Lina's first-person perspective, but Kanzaka gave some of the material to the staff of Slayers Revolution so it could be included in the anime.
Media
Light novels
Slayers began serialization in Dragon Magazine in 1989 as a short story series written by Hajime Kanzaka and with artwork by Rui Araizumi. The chapters were then published as light novels under the Fujimi Fantasia Bunko imprint across 15 volumes from January 17, 1990, to May 10, 2000. Although the original story ended with the 15th volume in 2000, Kanzaka began a new arc 18 years later in the May 2018 issue of Dragon Magazine, which was published in March 2018, to celebrate the magazine and Fujimi Fantasia Bunko's 30th anniversary. He described it as "kind of a reunion" and said he had not decided to relaunch the series yet. Volume 16 was published on October 20, 2018. A third story arc began in the November 2019 issue of the magazine, released in September 2019. The author described this as "Rather than an official history, the third arc is going to be more like one of the possibilities, a parallel existence to the TRY TV anime and the Water Dragon King manga, I guess." Volume 17 was published on October 19, 2019.On September 7, 2004, Tokyopop began publishing the novels in English, ending with the release of volume 8 on January 2, 2008. On July 3, 2020, J-Novel Club announced their rescue license of the series at Anime Expo Lite. They first release the novels digitally, with the first chapter uploaded to their website that day. Their physical release of Slayers began in July 2021 and is a 3-1 hardcover omnibus edition based on Japan's 2008 revised edition that featured new illustrations and covers.
- Slayers Special is a spin-off prequel series of 30 novels published from 1991 to 2008. Each consisting of one-shot stories chronicling the exploits of Lina Inverse and Naga the Serpent before the events in Slayers. Five additional volumes were released under a new series title, Slayers Smash. between July 2008 and November 2011.
- Slayers Delicious, a four volume prequel featuring Lina and Naga, was released between 1997 and 1999. These four stories were originally published separately by Fujimi Fantasia in mini-bunko format, and later they were included in different Special novels. A one volume crossover between Slayers and the series Sorcerous Stabber Orphen was published in 2005 under the title Slayers VS Orphen and was later reprinted in 2013.
- Slayers Select is a best-of compilation of Slayers Special. Its five volumes were published in August 2008, September 2008, June 2009, February 2010, and March 2010.
- Slayers Anthology was released to mark the 25th anniversary of Slayers novels in January 2015. It is a compilation of six stories, one of which was written by Kanzaka and five by fan writers. It is illustrated with previously unpublished pictures by Araizumi and contributing artists.
- Slayers Spirit, released in 2025, is the first short story collection in 13 years.