Hear all the praise this show gets

The first season is so-so, but the 2nd is fucking awesome and 3rd is great. The modern seasons are shit.
The movies and OVA's are great.
And I watched everything for the first time two years ago and it rose to one of my all time favs, so no, time has nothing to do with it.

Slayers is one of the few that get "generic fantasy land" right, the characters are endearing, and its actually funny.

It definitely has aged, however, and it's got that particularly 90s feel to it.

For generic fantasy land, I prefer Lodoss or Rayearth

Indeed.

Lodoss is a fine show but just too damn dry for me. I want my fantasy shows to be, well, fantastical!

Feel the same way, more than half way into 2nd season. I do enjoy the characters and their chemistry they have with each other and pretty much everything this user said but I just can't sit through more than 1 episode at a time.

Watch the movies and OVAs instead

They are set before the series and storywise entirely separate.

What this guy said. Unlike the show they got BD remasters, and they look like pure sex.

It actually does, but like all light novels they are shitty books. You will enjoy things more when it leads up to more of a mystery format, with Lina and co. investigating things and red herrings being thrown here and there.

If you aren't a sucker for generic European fantasy land then it's definitely harder to get into. But if you are, it's fantastic. /tg/ loves the shit out of it, for reference.

>All the blu-ray Slayer movies have 3 seeders on nya
Ouch.

The chink release? I'll seed it for you user.

Yeah I just realized it's non-English, I'm an idiot.
I downloaded that massive collection of slayer stuff, but it didn't have the movies, I'm redownloading that now to see if maybe I fucked something up.

That release includes English subs actually, all of their BD box releases do

I think it's generally overrated as a franchise. The only season generally accepted to be really great is Slayers Next, and even then only if you like the humorous episodic stories since there's still quite a bit of them even though the main plotline is good too.

My favorite is actually Try though. I just really liked the main plotline (with the whole barrier surrounding the continent down concept and the main cast basically visiting a new world), even though the humor was weaker than Next.

Oh? Then I'll download those too, thanks.

the first 2 seasons/series and the OVAs are great.

the newer ones were awful

>but like all light novels they are shitty books
Sounds about right

It definitely didn't age well.
Loved it as a kid, but couldn't stand watching at all once I revisited it lately.

It does, but liking the anime still doesn't mean you'll like the novels.
The tone is really strange in the books.

The first season is average, the next two are good, the two after are mediocre. Where it really shines is the OVAl

In my opinion, the a lot of the shows love comes from a degree of nostalgia. It is consistently entertaining as in you want to keep watching the next episode, but the animation isn't great and it finds itself in a fighting show rut and get too stupid at points. There are still some really entertaining bits though, especially with the tighter arcs in Next.

Try was wholly anime original however, and stretches its main story arc over all 26 episodes. It loses the tight pacing that Next enjoyed. It doesn't help that the thing turns into off brand Dragon Ball by the end, and that the filler episodes aren't even funny.

The OVAs/Movies on the otherhand don't really burden themselves with an overarching plot, but really let themselves loose as just fun movies. It helps that the production values are much better which gives way to some pretty shots of fantasy landscape and some really neat looking spell effects. Naga is great as well. All you are really missing out on is worldbuilding.

Nope. You're pretty much spot on. There are better written and animated hentai OVAs in fantasy settings.

I'm rewatching it right now, it remains solidly top tier. Being a lifelong /tg/ man definitely adds to my appreciation.

I wish I could do a Slayers based game with Cred Forumsnons

There is a slayers rule book somewhere so a roll20 game IS possible. Just make sure you get the actual one and not Ironclaw...

you know good titles besides Words Worth and Dragon Pink?

Words worth was exactly what I had in mind when I made that post, so not really.

Fucking Dragon Slave that shit.

Slayers is one of my favorite series ever. I owned the fucking VHS of it long ago. Have the dvds now. It's a shame it never got a proper remaster. The dvds are basically just vhs rips as far as I can tell.

As for the show I don't see how you can hate it if you enjoy fantasy. REAL fantasy at that. Japan doesn't seem to like doing straight up fantasy anymore that isn't seeped in isekai or mmo/DQ shit. My only complaint about the series would be it getting kind of tiresome at times how Lina is so OP. Next was particularly bad with this but 1 and 3 season at least had her working more as group with the others to fight things. Mostly.

OVAs and movies are fucking great too. Although it seriously pissed me off how they teased Naga's appearance in the more modern series. God that movie and series were so bad. Never have I felt such disappointment.

for me, it felt like those hentai fantasy OVAs are the parallel version of fantasy shows

Words Worth = Lodoss War
Dragon Pink = Slayers

it's just fantastic

I have that book and I can say that it is terrible. It kind of does the magic system right, but a lot of spells are missing (Vu Raya, Ruby Eye Blade, Meteor Fall, Necro Vood, ect.) and mechanically it isn't anything special. As a setting book it is even worse. It gets lots of fluff wrong and it is too lazy to even include a setting map.

You should read up on this guys guide on doing Slayers in GURPS
robkelk.ottawa-anime.org/rpgs/slayers-spells.html
The system itself does a much better job at simulating Slayers with ritual path magic. The melee combat is especially good at emulating the neck on neck sword fights(Moreso the ones in the LNs) through the active defense system.

youtube.com/watch?v=kJXR280wbEg

The Words Worth game is actually pretty fun. Worth looking at if you are into sword and sorcery VNs.

I wouldn't say that Slayers is super traditional, but I agree that isekai and mmo shit is a serious cop out. It is either to shove in an otaku virgin loser nerd MC in as a self insert, or use MMO mechanics as a crutch to explain the fights rather than making up their own magic system, opting to copy WoW instead.