01/06/2022
Slayers is old and therefore good.
I found Slayers by seeing the main character in an anniversary line-up image on /a/, I saw it was 104 episodes long with multiple OVAs and thought well I’ll give it a go I doubt I’ll finish it. Then came the decision of subbed or dubbed. The English dub is of that dangerously 90s quality, by no means bad, unpolished, and loud. Instantly upon hearing Lisa Ortiz’s portrayal of Lina Inverse in the pre-opening monologue I knew the dub was for me. A long-time watcher of anime I find that there’s something missing with subtitled anime when I watch it. I find I don’t take in the voice actor as much as I build a synthesis of their voice and my inner voice reading the subtitles. Watching subtitled anime puts too much of myself into someone else’s work. Gourry another main character has the same voice actor as Seto Kaiba in 4kids’ Yu-Gi-Oh, Amelia as Ash Ketchum in 4kids’ Pokémon and Zelgadis as Kyon from the dub of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I never watched Slayers as a child, but it feels like I did.
The show originally from an award-winning light novel from a bored office worker writing what he thought would win the competition is simple. A basic anime style with manzai comedy in a basic japano-european fantasy setting. Its simplicity is its essence, in my pretension I often surprise myself when I just find something fun, even though I keep doing it. If I can’t cite a work in a philosophical discussion is there any point in consuming it? Often, yes because its fun.
Slayers has notghing important to say. It doesn’t try to say anything really. It has strange pacing, its unfunny and sometimes very poorly animated. There’s very little to recommend about it. Except that I like it a lot. It’s plagued my mind since first seeing it. I haven’t searched eBay for “name of thing I’m into” like this since I was very young just typing in “Pokémon” to see all the stuff I wasn’t sure if I wanted enough to go to my parents, hat in hand begging to be bought a Groudon figure.
Adding something to your personal canon is a strange feeling, maybe only if you’re as autistic as I am. Do you have the space to champion more media as informative to you as a person? Do you deserve to have more? Does adding more dilute what is already there? If more things can feel this personal to you does that make you a simpler person? Does anyone care? Probably not.
Media worship always feels dirty and hollow to me even though it often is my main activity in life. Modern atomisation has left me without a local community, little attachment (that wasn’t built myself by constructing esoteric ironic belief structures) to my nation, and few friends. I do have a list of media though that I pretend explains me. A lot from Japan, a country I’ve never been to and have no gnosis of. It feels like I arrived too late to truly engage with the early online communities, but I spent much of my childhood lurking forums and seldom poasting. I certainly arrived too late to Slayers. I tried to join the Slayers discord under the promise of hidden media only being posted to the discord. My heist plan was set, I got in, but discord doesn’t allow you to lurk. Instantly I was given welcome messages, I ignored them. I trawled through their channels looking for the promised scans of manga or whatever it was I was looking for but instead I found people posting about their lives, selfies, and the meals they cooked. This wasn’t what I wanted, I’m not used to communities of shared interests I formed a personality of contrarianism and individualism around puberty’s inception branching off from the perceived norm and getting into manga, weird websites, and video games but deeper than other kids because I really get them. Except that’s a lie. I was in an anime club and played video games with my friends for years. I tell myself that I am unique in my media interests no one else would like “an unknown 90s anime” like I do, except the thousands of people that do and talk about it every day, no one else likes Kingdom Hearts as much as I do except everyone who does. I like to isolate myself in fandom monasteries, monk-like reading ancient texts I secured from the Romes of whatever is on the front of my mind at the time of my swirling canon. Never will I meet others of my faith because I’m frightened their faith is greater than mine. I’m sure it is.