The final series of The Slayers, and it is arguably the best of the three, but takes a slightly different way of doing things this time.
Thanks to Lina and her groups victory in Slayers Next the Mazoku barrier that had sealed off the portion of the world in which they lived has now disappeared, allowing them all to explore the outer world. This is something that everyone naturally wants to do and thanks to a priestess (with a tail) called Filia Lina, Gourry Amelia and Zelgadis end up on their way as well. After totalling the port that is. Filia is a priestess of the Fire Dragon King whose temple has received a premonition of disaster with apparently on Lina can stop. Well, they tried Lina’s sister first, but she was busy and ordered her little sis to do it! The root of this prophesy is another legacy left by their past victory in Next, and so they and Xellos end up going off to save the world yet again!
This series is a little different from its predecessors in style in that it pays heed to past events and the story is somewhat less typical of what has become Slayers’ parody style. Theres actually less parody in here and the comedy is more about situation and character than send up. The show is also less episodic. The format of first battle, filler, last battle is still there but it melds better as a continuous whole, each part moving logically on from the next and blurring the lines. It feels more involved and just works better overall. Also the comedy and silliness is also blended better, the whole show having a mixture of the two rather than obvious times when it is dead serious or flat out comic. It does still have moments of strong comedy and strong seriousness, but again they just blend better into the whole. Sylphiel is gone, replaced with the more pro-active Filia but she does try to steal the stage a little too often from the established cast. She does however have a great repartee with Xellos!
Who should watch this? Same as the last two series’ Once again there’s some blood and some large scale death scenes featuring non-humans. Plenty of wanton destruction too as par for the course.
The visuals here are again like those of the past series’, but don’t improve in them. If anything it looks a little cheaper at times, but only just. As far as new characters go half of the designs I like a lot but the other half look nastily oversimplified when compared to the regulars. In the second half the two new bad guys who come in look like poor Dragonball Z characters while their comrade we’ve seen since the beginning looks wonderfully elaborate and imposing. It’s a shame it has these pitfalls because it otherwise looks pretty good.
Same dub cast, same advice for it. Don’t bother. They do try and there are some good voices in there, but on the whole it just doesn’t feel worth listening to if you have the choice between that and the Japanese.
This is a little different in feel to the last two and which is better out of Next and Try depends on personal preference. This feels more complete as a whole and less silly overall, but I would say it is simply slightly different to Next rather than better or worse. Strangely Next had a more epic feel to the final battle so the end might be a little more underplayed than you might expect.