ahb writes

Brunhild is not a particularly interesting character to follow, but she's all readers have. In a fantasy world beset with multiple warring nations (which readers never learn anything about), advanced technology (which readers never see), and heightened geopolitical drama (which readers never encounter), this silver-haired teenager is the centerpiece of a private war. As such, when the little girl's peace on a paradisial island is blown to bits by the Norvelland Imperial Army, she's captured and turned into a political officer for the publicity ambitions of an apparently small and resource-starved country. Brunhild goes along with the ruse, if only to bide her time until she can settle the score with the man whose weaponry killed her father.

At the fore, the challenge with BRUNHILD: THE DRAGONSLAYER is that each problem with how the story is written and structured ultimately feeds or coalesces into the next. No single issue is greater than another, but rather, taken as a whole, the book's poor writing style swells and magnifies to the point where it's impossible to look away.

For example, the author's tendency to inject random backstory and retroactive continuity to fill in obvious storytelling gaps speaks to extraordinarily poor planning and a propensity to ignore key worldbuilding details.

Why conjure a backstory for a random character who appears in only one scene and has only four lines of dialogue? Perhaps the scene's sudden and incipient relevance wasn't an issue until now. Why wait until one is well past the book's midpoint to explain the political landscape of a country the main character has inhabited from the onset? Perhaps the relevance of the territory's cultural details' were likewise immaterial until the author needed them to be.

Narrative miscues that skew continuity are not uncommon, and here, they occur alongside a bevy of overwriting and shallow character development. Whether any one issue is meant to paper-over or hide any other issue is anyone's guess. For example, when a city is attacked by white dragons, the author spends two paragraphs explaining the actions of a random bystander, an old man, whose awe and confusion vacillate wildly. Why include this narrative aside? Perhaps the author realized, only 10 pages from the end, that the book has only a few named characters in a bustling capital city and that readers have no idea what the average resident is like.

Regarding the main characters, Brunhild is a wily teenager who possesses the subterfuge and curiosity native to the eternal deity who raised her. However, her narrowmindedness ironically posits her encounters with iridescently transparent secondary characters as being similarly, rudimentarily uninteresting. Brunhild befriends a navy colonel, as well as a young man, Sigurd, the son of the officer who killed her dragon-father. These relations aren't bad, in and of themselves, but their arcs rest on such clear and obvious trajectories that one cannot be blamed for finding them interminably boring from the onset. Sigurd, age 17, is a pissy young man constantly trying to prove himself. As such, he's prone to admiring impressive feats of strength, he's easy for others to manipulate (emotionally), and he's blind to his own limitations.

The overwriting smudges things large and small. Of the small, readers stumble into numerous ventures of hyper-literal language, salty affectations for bad grammar or syntax, and myriad occasion for utterly atrocious fight scene coordination.

Alas, one ponders what little a translator can do when the result is as awfully comical as, "The white dragon let out a final cry like a honking goose and crumbled, then died" (page 157). Other examples are practical but cringeworthy, such as, "But now the white sands were red, as if they'd been splattered with crimson paint" (page 7) and "She attacked Sigurd with words sharp like blades of ice" (page 110).

These stubborn and uncooperative missives typically accompany passively overwritten passages that complicate otherwise straightforward dialogue. Did Sigurd want to hold Brunhild's hand? No. Instead, "He would have liked to hold her hand tightly, if possible" (page 95). Is Brunhild querying whether a religious zealot believes in her plan? Not quite. Instead, she says, "I understand if there is any confusion" (page 103). So much of BRUNHILD: THE DRAGONSLAYER is written in passive voice that any number of the book's strange or farcical lyricisms are worth plucking for such vexing analysis.

The story's secondary characters, all low-level military officers, are one-dimensional and lack complex agency (again, more like a fable than a novel).

The lack of effective storytelling depth afforded the characters, the setting, and the worldbuilding, likewise extends to the book's fantastical themes.

For one, this book about dragons doesn't do the creatures any favors in terms of how it renders them in readers' imaginations. Further, when exceedingly random story (fantasy) elements yank the story off the rails in the Third Act, one wonders whether any editor with any common sense questioned why such a story was worth publishing in the first place.

The action/fight scenes bear all of the evidence of an author who didn't conduct any research and likely wrote the scenes on the fly. How does one block a punch and lose a glove as a result? Bad writing, apparently. Even more awkwardly, when a character is clawed from a giant dragon "through the flesh of his right leg" (page 90), Brunhild assuages further movement with a delightful bit of nonsense: "It's no use trying to stand with that wound [..] If you move around too much, you'll tear your tendon, and there's no coming back from that" (page 91). In the novel's final scene, a character is written as "fir[ing] his thunder" (page 157), whatever that means, despite the book having clearly explained that the character's powers are lightning-derived. Whoops.

The latitude afforded to writers to do what they may with stories containing imaginary creatures, in imaginary lands, with imaginary abilities comes up short when the narrative conjures wild, irrelevant, and preposterous solutions to generally common, event-driven challenges. For example, when Brunhild and Sigurd enter the heart of the city to defend the populace from attacking dragons, they have no weapons, except, for Brunhild, who randomly appears "bearing the legendary dragon-killing sword Falchion in her hand" (page 91). Too bad the sword was never mentioned before, breaks during the fight, and is never spoken of again.

In another example, readers learn about the sudden and mysterious substance, called ether, which comprises the physical makeup of gods and angels. Why is this information relevant? Actually, it's not relevant to the story at all, but the author is 12 pages from the end, and must apparently contrive a solution where none presently exists.

Can't destroy the bad guy (who appears in only a dozen pages) who has made himself inhuman? Well, why not let the protagonist wield deus ex machina to invent something that can destroy him? Problem solved, right?

The most hilariously bad example is the book's concept of the Balmung Cannon, a rumored weapon wielded by the naval officer who killed Brunhild's dragon-father. Is it a physical cannon? Is it a supernatural ability? Is it part of a naval warship? The term is bandied about, but readers don't learn what the darn thing is until they're roughly 120 pages into the 167-page novel. The reveal is just as awkward and ridiculous as everything else in the book.

And then there are story elements that plainly constitute terrible writing. The author's concept of dragon-speak, a universal translator language, is fairly nifty. That is, until the author uses the concept to justify characters speaking different languages, characters conveniently possessing telepathy, and characters acquiring other, heightened empathic abilities: "Understanding the True Language meant being fluent in every language of the past — and into the future" (page 42).

Bad logic is frustratingly common. The best (worst) example occurs when one learns that a certain naval captain "had said that, after his expedition had ended, he was going to invade another ocean" (page 147). Wait. He's avoiding familial responsibility by invading a whole ocean? How in the world does one naval officer, of a single "amphibious assault ship," from a resource-deprived nation, conjure the wherewithal to invade a whole ocean on his own?

Or how about the moment that brings the core cast together for the final showdown? Following a scene break, readers enter to read: "Was it a coincidence that the newborn dragonslayer came to that park?" (page 148). Yes. Absolutely. That is the very definition of a contrived story.

BRUNHILD: THE DRAGONSLAYER is a campfire fable masquerading as a professional novel: Average characters with outsized problems turn to silly or unreasonable solutions, often from the trembling hands of an amateurish demiurge, to conjure a life lesson that is wholly undemanding and rote.

General Davian, for example, is a shrewd man whose work as the head of a group of bureaucratic spies means he's both hungrily circling the periphery, and nurturing contacts at the center, of the spate of incidents and intrusions concerning the degradation of T-space. Davian heads the Imperial Bureau of Data Collection and Analysis, more commonly (cryptically) known as The Unseen Hand. Davian is a great character. His brilliance has known limitations, yet he fearlessly queries whether someone, or something, has infiltrated the empress's inner circle, and won't settle until he's uprooted every fiber of danger on Throneworld. As such, one ponders whether FS-3 will become allies, burdens, or obstacles toward that aim.

And what of the team itself?

Shore leave sets these buff ladies to their own devices: Jo, the big and impatient one, goes on a bender; Harpo, the silent sniper, hits the range (and at Jo's urging, tries to get laid for once); Pusher, the calculating corpsman and field surgeon, mixes and matches off-the-clock work and drowning herself in trash culture; and Hap, the combat engineer, takes to local academia, notably eager to chat about T-space interstitials (and maybe also get laid).

These habits and whatnot aren't simply six- or eight-page anecdotes of the co-protagonists readers got to know in the heat of battle; these events are cleverly interwoven with an array of splinter plots that expose the reader (and the characters) to the humbling and dangerous social and political dynamics that shape this universe.

THE FORGED v2 focuses as much on corrupt admirals as it does ambitious university professors, spends as much energy validating a super-hot warrant officer (and her very legit interest in Harpo) as it does expose the clueless, impulsive, and gleefully reckless nature of the empress (entranced by Victory's boldness). The current volume is written such that each of these stories, and more, explores the characters they profile in addition to adding one small puzzle piece to the larger, greater, and more compelling narrative. Cassandras are going missing? Davian's crisis intervention team has too many morons? Assassins around every corner?

A book this entertaining, and beautiful to read, no doubt, doesn't always have the life-span that comics fans typically find (and appreciate). Hopefully, the damning array of competent but luckless characters and their exquisite but treacherous intergalactic environs will maintain its pursuit of the remarkable long enough for the rest of the comics world to catch up.

Kon is a middle-school student bunking at a small apartment complex. Fellow tenants include a few students, a part-timer, and the landlady. This is a fantasy manga, but it takes place in a peaceful urban milieu; all of the characters are good-natured and sensible, and much of the drama is limited to easily resolved internal monologues native to worrisome young folk.

Kasane Himesaki, the landlady, is a rather peculiar sort of scholar. In a world where these so-called "bugs" throw things out of whack for days or weeks at a time, and reality warps in amusing (though not particularly deadly) ways, Kasane appears wholly immune to their effects. The fact that Kasane is an author and researcher of so many of these events is an even wilder thought to ponder. She's a kind woman, but she thrives on asking difficult questions, always hopes for the best for her tenants, and is true to her word. Kasane is the type of person who feels better about herself and the world when someone she cares for succeeds following an honest and earnest effort.

GOD BLESS THE MISTAKEN v1 is a chill urban fantasy book. One might remark on the overplayed hand of Kon as a middle-school student who is clearly more intelligent and dynamic than average, but the manga's cast is delightfully diverse. For example, Kousei is a part-timer who looks rough around the edges but genuinely cares for his friends, while Akira, a sleepy film student, often shies away from conversation but won't neglect a great opportunity to invite others to join him when he spots something cool or fun.

The manga tiptoes around, but doesn't entirely ignore, deeper or more emotional subplots. Readers don't know what happened to Kon's biological family. Readers don't know how or why Kasane is immune to the effects of the bugs. Readers may certainly have their own suspicions, but the genial style and easygoing narrative of GOD BLESS THE MISTAKEN v1 likely means one won't find out for a good long time.

The gods pepper the continent in ways big and small, tangible and abstract, personal and communal. All manner of people pray to the gods of beauty, gods of wine, gods of luck and fortune, and "gods of ways" (presuming the adherent is lost). People also pray to the gods of rivers, gods of broken sandals, gods of arts and learning, and gods of safe haven (again, if one is ever in need of such). In GODKILLER, there is word of differentiation among these dozens and dozens of gods (e.g., "Old gods, new gods, merchant gods, wild gods," page 214), but there is no hierarchy, order, or conscientious structure to their materializing or their behaviors.

The lack of organization among the gods means a lack of organization among those who revere them, those who obeys them, and those who pledge war with or against them. First, the gods fought among themselves. Then, humans fought against the gods. Then, further still, the humans convinced some of the gods to align with their needs, ultimately setting humans and gods against other humans and their gods. Later, or now, humans have turned against all gods. And while much of the fighting is over (e.g., Mertagh, the god of war, is dead), countless other gods still simmer beneath the gaze of the warrior king.

But it's a complicated fight made all the more so because readers enter this remarkable conflict on the shoulders of four characters in a multiple-point-of-view novel.

GODKILLER is good fantasy, but drags its feet on character development. For example, Elogast, a former knight with some form of post-traumatic stress disorder, is a baker who cares too much and thinks too much; he is insurmountably boring. Inara Craier, age 12, is the last scion of a noble who deals more in whispers than in proclamations; however, as a shut in, the girl is far too haughty, ignorant, and inconsolably witless when she should know better. Regrettably, that's half of the main cast.

A frequent problem with multiple-point-of-view books is that their stories very rarely require more than one perspective character. To be blunt, if most or all of the characters are in the same location, possess interrelated goals, and must surmount the same enemies or obstacles, then why bother with switching perspectives every 10 or 12 pages? Further, since the novel is written in third person, readers do not learn anything new or unique in any given chapter (guided by any single point of view) that they could not also have learned in any other chapter. It's a waste of energy.

Kissen, an amputee whose trade is killing deities for coin, is a woman with a grudge against the gods. Hergruff nature and keen individualism rubs everyone the wrong way, which makes her a great character to position opposite the wild and fantastical, war-torn grievances of the gods. Kissen is bruised, scarred, and often left for dead; she has fought to break curses and sunder a thousand shrines; she is a godkiller. Want to clean out a corrupted river god? Want to break into a forbidden city? Drop some silver for a professional godkiller.

To wit, Kissen is the title's most vibrant character, but is cleanly robbed of much of the story's focus due to the unasked-for desire to balance the story with, for example, the heedless anxieties of a penitent baker who longs to be forgiven for sins that aren't even his.

Kissen is the novel; the book's dynamism runs parallel with reader interest in this character and this character alone. Absent Kissen, GODKILLER isn't worth the time.

The beauty and danger of Kissen the godkiller is what drives this novel forward. Readers trace her story, her regrets, her wayward ambitions, and her unending fatigue. Regrettably, genre conventions occasionally sideline this inside-out exposure, and the novel's preoccupation with half-resolutions (as is often the case with part-one books) promptly pushes its functional themes out of their proper place. To a point, Kissen isn't the loner she projects, she's actually a person who has made a new home and a new family for herself despite a multitude of past trauma. But the intrusion of a sister-character, a friendly-rival character, and a romantic-interest character, all at the same time, unnecessarily complexify Kissen's story to the point where readers actively forget why they should be invested in this character in the first place. That's not good.

These complications are not isolated, and mirror other storytelling affectations that seek familiarity in awkward spaces, only to engender unequal narrative footing. For example, when a cobbler and his wife cross paths with Elo, Kissen, Inara and others, the two claim to seek an audience with a deity associated with the birthing process, after having been granted a "fertility blessing" of a kind. The twist? The midwifing god is dead, and Berrick and his wife, Batseder, "mean to have [the blessing] removed" (page 94). Such a desire is respectable within the fantasy-frame of the story, but premise doesn't make much practical sense. The presumption that childbirth will go wrong because the god of midwifing is dead is one thing, but presuming the whole birthing process will go doubly wrong because of a long-past blessing? Is that because a dead god cannot consecrate or make good on the premise of a past promise? Nobody clarifies the boundaries (or evidence) for why this is the case; as such, the logic doesn't really hold, and readers are left to pick up the pieces.

The vague curse-speak and histrionic nature of a nonhierarchical god-talk doesn't always succeed when toeing the line between original fiction storytelling and the downright weird and inexplicable, context-deprived nonsense of fantasy literature writ large. Relatedly, readers can't always tell whether the author is being hyperbolic and metaphorical or being curiously specific. Does a character have a literal nest of twigs for a heart, with a little flame inside, or is that a decidedly eccentric application of figurative language? Does that river god have actual physical limbs, or is she described as a supple creature with "flesh" just for readers' imagination? Hard to say. Often, the context is not immediate and delayed by one hundred or so pages.

Other, more technical headaches arise from the novel's tenuous relationship with diction and syntax.

One can never be too certain what goes on in the mind of an author drafting a work of fiction that may or may not pull language, culture, craft, and religion or mythology from any one or more periods in world history.

The author's frequent use of Middle English variance for singular verbal phrasings, for example, strikes one as messy and odd, if not out of place. In such cases, the author uses span as the past-tense phrasing of the verb "to spin" (e.g., "They span to face the sound," page 125; "Kissen's head span from the force of her fall. . ." page 273; "She smiled and span so fast with her spear. . ." page 275).

Elsewhere, the use of markedly obscure definitions for exceedingly common descriptors obfuscates meaning. Specifically, the author relies on an obtuse definition of close that aligns to "hot," "stuffy," and "uncomfortable" (e.g., "It was a close, damp day, and the little breeze they had was refreshing," page 113; "It was hot, close, and sweating, smelling of river fish and pickles," page 147). One example of which is particularly vexing (i.e., "hot, close, and sweating"), considering that "sweating" isn't even an adjective. (Unless, of course, the author means to say the walls of the Inn were literally sweating.)

Incongruous or neologistic applications abound. Sometimes, GODKILLER shifts into readers' view with terms that become clear with context: "She released her arrow, and it silvered the air. . ." (page 184); "He took wing to Inara. . ." (page 243). "Silver" and "wing" aren't common verbs, but they function appropriately here.

However, other times, readers aren't so lucky: "Inara grabbed his reins and was almost picked up bodily as he reared" (page 122); "Kissen wasn't going to let him stupid that easily" (page 196); "Kissen worried at her gold tooth" (page 223). Denominalization is very common in this novel, as are the self-same practices of modifying adverbs, coopting verbal phrases, or privileging dialectical word variations that can leave one scratching their head over misplaced modifiers and wayward appositives. For example, the sentence: "She poured herself an ale as Kissen rubbed the sleep from her eyes, then passed her some as well" (page 72), isn't wrong, structurally speaking, but is undoubtedly the bane of professional editors everywhere.

GODKILLER is full of characters with unearned arrogance and mythologies too fractured to know their place, but perhaps that's how things go for a densely-written fantasy story that deliberately leaves more unspoken than it dares reveal (Kissen: "Can you explain why a knight is travelling to the city he helped destroy?" page 128). It's an intriguing book. But the excess in character perspective and the abundance of fragile egos can leave one weary.

Alas, one trundles through chapters focused on boring characters and speeds through chapters on more dynamic characters.

This novel is also a good example of a contemporary author who worked extraordinarily hard to provide diverse literature to diverse readers. Notably, pantheism is not uncommon, and the stridently unbalanced and complicated nature of this book's multi-god world is best left unqueried, for everyone's sanity. Beyond that, however, the book contains characters with myriad skin colors, characters with disabilities, polyromantic relationships, bisexual relationships, and so forth. Although readers are a little bowled over at having all of this shoved at them within the first 30 pages, things eventually settle into a more genial pace. The only conceivably egregious errors occur later in the novel, when one character shames another into coaxing her into having sex as means of pity (only, it's not the rebuke that's egregious, but the fact that the character reverses her position and blatantly gives in only a half-page later).

Altogether, GODKILLER is a bumpy and stubborn read. The wild fantasy at the book's backbone leaves more questions than it answers and very few of the characters feel as destined for the scale of the narrative as they should be. (One also ponders when the publishing world will rid itself of needlessly fanciful maps that don't tell the reader anything.) Still, the book hones its themes and conjures its curses with an ambition and a curiosity that matches the strange, god-agnostic world its characters readily inhabit.

Alas, Book 13, Presages of Incarnation gets things rolling with some very heavy, old-school spellcasting. Milgazia, the dragon elder, and Memphys Rhinesword, his young traveling companion, a prim elf, join up with Lina and Gourry when it becomes clear that a spate of regional demon spawnings might not be so accidental.

The end of the previous volume saw the heroes fighting off Sherra, General of the Dynast, out in Gyria City, the capital of the Kingdom of Dils. Sherra is dead, but if that's the case, why is Gyria City still the locus for mysterious weather patterns and assorted demon appearances? Sherra may be toast, but the Dynast's plot probably isn't.

"The way that Sherra had smiled in the moment of her defeat . . . Perhaps it was satisfaction knowing that she'd played her part perfectly" (Lina, page 105).

This installment produces a good bit of lore and old magegraft. Milgazia wields a bevy of fancy draconic magic that Lina's never seen before, while Mephy wields what she terms Ritual Armor, called Zanafa Armor (apparently produced by the knowledge of the Claire Bible and capable of establishing a connection to the astral plane). Both Milgazia and Mephy's skills are much-needed round these parts, since most of Lina and Gourry's foes are pure demons. If King Wells Xeno Gyria is so dangerous and corrupt that he must be taken down by tools of such a high caliber, then perhaps Gyria City is more doomed than the heroes realize.

Hatred in Selentia represents a substantial emotional shift. Lina searches for an old friend, treasure hunters Luke and Mileena return to the fold, and readers witness a major character death. Slayers has generally done well to keep pace with episodic villains whose danger largely do themselves in, but in this instance, someone finally falls.

Lina and Gourry find themselves in Selentia City, called the "city of temples" in the Kingdom of Ralteague. Apart from being a worship center of Flare Dragon Ceifeed, Selentia is home to numerous subordinate faiths, each of which is constantly feuding and vying for power. The problem? All that jockeying for position is leaving head priests dead. In terms of worldbuilding, this volume grants readers an incredible, incisive view into the political dynamics (balance) between regional clerical regimes and local sorcerers' councils. Lina's not above acknowledging any one of the two might be more rotten than the other, but she draws the line when outside forces corrupt them both to their individual benefit.

In the end, Selentia burns at the hands of a few sad, chaotic individuals. Lina and Gourry struggle to strike down a seemingly benign ally.

And when the battle turns grisly, a quiet moment in an abandoned chapel leaves one whispering for calmer times: "Just . . . Just one worthless little demon did all this…" (page 214).

Those strange weather patterns? Those recurring demon spawnings? Those unlucky towns prone to chaos sown at the hands of a few reckless demons? Volume 15, The Demon Slayers! pulls together a few intriguing threads, exposing for readers a horrible but very compelling "what if" scenarios concerning powerful spellcasters who might one day lose their way. Following a few rogue encounters with pure demons terrorizing random villages, Lina and Gourry find themselves on the road back to Sairaag ("the world's unluckiest town," page 251), in Empire of Lyzeille. Fortunately, they've reunited with Milgazia and Mephy, who could help in a pinch. And, wait, is that Xellos? For yet another highly questionable reason, the priest of Greater Beast Zellas Metallium briefly reappears (and apparently still owes Lina two coppers), pledging his trademarked non-involvement style of involvement.

The final volume checks all of the boxes in terms of producing excellent tag-team action, as Lina is thrown into a subdimension infused with magic (i.e., zero spellcasting lag) and Gourry can finally let loose the full power of The Blast Sword (i.e., no more power limiters). The result is bittersweet, though. On the one hand, the duo must confront an old ally, belay known weaknesses, and sacrifice something they hold dear. On the other hand, if the demons have succeeded in completing a "ritual" to locate the next host of the Dark Lord, then by all means, anything goes.

By the book's end, Lina shows remarkable maturity: she weeps for lost allies, she demands clarity from overpowered foes, and she refuses to be taken advantage of by those with too much time to spare (e.g., amazingly, backtalking Xellos never felt so good).

Similarly, Gourry steps up: he knows when to leap in to protect Lina and when to hold back and let her take the lead, and he never permits the darkness of humanity shade his hope and opportunism for what the future may bring (Gourry: "No matter how heavy the burdens we carry, being human means we have to keep moving forward," page 314).

SLAYERS Omnibus v5 produces some fine character development, some of which feels slightly overwrought in the moment but eventually plays well as the narrative unfolds. Lina learns (and casts) a handful of new spells, and doesn't hide her surprise when things go slightly awry (e.g., in a magical subdimension, she casts ra tilt for the first time). Importantly, she finds an epic use for those demon blood talismans she conned off of Xellos way back when. And who could shrug their shoulders at Gourry's level-up? Milgazia initially claims Gourry's new blade isn't good enough against pure demons, so the old-timer inscribes dragonic magic, in dragon's blood, on the blade (and that was before they realized it was the infamously sharp Blast Sword). Combined, Lina and Gourry's boost in maturity and battle presence make them a fearsome duo, particularly when combined with draconic magic and astral magic, as backup.

The omnibus's author notes articulate why Zelgadis and Amelia never reappear in the novel series, but one's heart breaks for the numerous opportunities that certainly would have been appropriate. Zel and Amelia, after all, specialize in shamanistic magic, which is highly affective against demons. Lina and Gourry face almost nothing but demonoids, demidemons, and pure demons for the series' final five volumes.

And while the story arc focusing Luke and Mileena reaches a fair conclusion, the open-ended ending, insofar as how Lina and Gourry move on from the emotional tumult of that encounter, feels a bit off. Not bad. Just off.

Did Lina and Gourry really stave off another Incarnation War? Did these two adventurers truly quell the rage of Dynast Graushera on the mortal plane? Could they really partner with the hunting parties, holy knights, and special forces of neighboring nations to slay demons writ large (including aiding Lina's sister, the so-called Knight of Ceifeed)? A lot has happened in the last two years "and change," according to Lina, but one feels this non-conclusion conclusion is a considerably rough landing. Even a brief cameo from Greater Beast Zellas Metallium and Deep Sea Dolphin, the final two of the Demon Lord's five lieutenants, can't quite clear up the sideways smile and heartwarming finale that sees Lina and Gourry off on a miniature vacation by the time the credits roll.