#slayers prime

I just finished watching Slayers Prime with my 6 year old daughter. It’s been fun re-watching it with her and getting her thoughts and perceptions of the show. One thing that struck me is how much she loves the slapstick and how she’ll bowl over laughing. And I mean she will be rolling on the floor laughing. To me the slapstick can be annoying and concerning at times, and as an adult I think there’s a tendency to take it very literally when I don’t think it is meant to be (hence the Lina is an abusive shrew stuff I see from time to time). In the first episode, for instance, Lina blows up a town with a Dragon Slave (something she would never do in the novels, btw), but miraculously, none of the villagers die. Yet later Copy Rezo destroys half of Sairaag with a Mega Brand, killing many including Sylphiel’s father, and it is the devastating event that adults would see it as.

Anime is an interesting mix from a western perspective, because it is geared for children (it is, or at least when Slayers was produced it was written for children) but has complex plotlines that children’s cartoons in America did not have when I was growing up that adults can also appreciate. But I think this leads to a lot of adults watching it to take the slapstick way too literally. Watching with my daughter I can really see how she responds to the visual gags but sees them as gags that are funny, not serious. Her vocabulary, especially as a child with speech delays and hearing comprehension issues, is delayed so she really is drawn to the visual aspect of it in a way that I am not. 

Which is why I think so many kids cartoons rely on it. On that note, when I re-watched some old Disney and Looney Toons shorts I was stunned by how violent and creative some of the slapstick was (and decided it was the origin of many a BDSM kink as well, but that’s a topic for another post). Adults see it and become alarmed and take it literally, but I think kids see it very differently. 

On that note, my daughter does not hit or mistreat others and is very gentle. Back when I could send her to school (has it only been 3 months since everything closed?) her teachers would brag about how she was so well behaved she would go up to kids who were having a difficult time and model the desired behavior and help get them on track. Basically I don’t think watching slapstick causes kids to act violently and what’s more important is how violence is treated between members of the household. If a child is raised in a household where violence is not condoned, they aren’t going to start mimicking the slapstick they see on tv. 

On that note, she absolutely loved his Blast Bomb and slaying of that one Mazoku. I don’t think she realized how powerful Xellos was until then.

Other notes:

She said correctly called Rezo and not Zel as being the bad guy early on in Prime.

She says that Lina, Gourry, Zel, Amelia and Sylphiel are all her favorite characters.

She does not like Martina.

She correctly realized it was Prince Phil standing outside Amelia’s window when they thought he’d died.

For some reason, she decided to call Kanzeil a chicken head.

yDay 25:  How did your feelings about Amelia evolve through the series?

At first, I hated Amelia. Admittedly, my friends predisposed me to dislike her because when they were talking about how awesome Lina was they were also talking about how annoying Amelia was. But I think I would have been annoyed regardless. As Slayers was my first anime I didn’t understand the tropes she was honoring and was wondering what on earth she was on. She also interrupted the adventures of Lina and Gourry vibe of Prime that I enjoyed and really pushed her way into their duo even though neither or them were that keen on letting her join their party, and I was resentful of that a bit. With Shabranigdo destroyed I was hoping for Lina and Gourry to travel on their own for a bit, but in came Amelia! And I didn’t feel as though she added much to the group. 

What made this worse was the English dub. There are things I like about the dub, but Joani Baker’s portrayal of Amelia was not one of them. Her voice somehow managed to be this hideous mixture of old crone and sickly sweet little girl and every time she spoke I cringed. I absolutely hated her. 

Keep in mind, her first 3 introductory episodes were all I saw of her for the longest time before we got additional box sets in, and I watched those tapes over and over again, so it was a lasting first impression. 

We eventually got the rest of Prime, and Veronica Taylor took over voicing for Amelia, and it was a marked improvement because I would no longer cringe every time she talked. But given that Amelia was the character who was in over her head and needed help and protecting, it didn’t do much to change my opinions on her. It wasn’t until I saw NEXT and saw that she was maturing, becoming a stronger fighter, and saw the friendship moments that she had with Lina that I started to like her. The episode with the hot springs where Martina returns was a huge turning point.

At that time, there was a lot of vitriol in fandom directed towards her. While I understood where it was coming from given that I did hate her at first, given how her character did mature and grow I felt it was undeserved. So I fell into a pro-Amelia camp as a result of it and swung in this direction of how awesome she was and shipped Zel and Amelia, but not as strongly as I did Lina and Gourry.

With time, the fandom settled down and the haters went on to other things, and the novels were translated, and between the fact that I’m no longer defending her and some of the insights from the novels, my feelings about her have changed again to a sort of, meh. I’m at this point now where I think some of the contradictions of her character are interesting, such as how she clings so fiercely to a concept like justice given what happened to her mother. I mean, if there’s one person in the world who should know that justice doesn’t always triumph it should be someone whose mother was assassinated. I also appreciate her strengths and her friendship with Lina, but I also realize that if I knew her in real life she would likely drive me up the wall. There’s a firm wall between realizing this and still appreciating her as a character even if she’s not high on my list of favorite character anymore, pretty much because I think she’s gotten enough hate to last a lifetime. And given how strongly I relate to Zel, this has sort of dampened my enthusiasm for Zel and Amelia as a ship. (Note, I’ve never been a a one of those fans who had a crush on Zel type thing, it would have felt narcissistic to do so since I always related to him in a platonic, kindred spirit type way, so it’s this genuine I can’t see Zel and Amelia working out thing now, not a jealousy towards her character that some fans had type thing. Of course, these things aren’t always logical and rational so I could be very wrong here).

So Amelia is the character who I’ve had the most topsy turvey relationship with. From absolutely hating her to absolutely adoring her, to a sort of mellowing sort of, “she’s ok” type thing. Only one thing has remained consistent. While re-watching the first season with my daughter I was so glad to be done with her three intro episodes so I wouldn’t have to hear Joani Baker anymore! I usually watch those episodes with Japanese audio now, but my 6 year old’s reading skills aren’t good enough yet for subtitles, so I had to suck it up. They really need to re-dub those episodes with Veronica Taylor!

I just finished covering the events of Gaav’s Challenge in Something Wild AKA Gunginiel Knight and I started thinking about what a wonderful job the anime did adapting an already tense fight to the screen. And I think to truly appreciate what they did I have to rat on Slayers Prime a bit. I think the most brilliant thing they did during the fight scene with Gaav was that at some point all of them had been gravely injured and could not fight.

In Prime when fighting Copy Rezo and Eris is putting Rezo’s legacy in it’s place they encountered a problem with too many characters and not enough to do. Literally Sylphiel and Amelia just spend a lot of time during the fight scene standing there (and in Sylphiel’s case annoyingly screaming for someone to stop Eris). I wonder if a lack of budget to animate something to keep them occupied played a factor but it annoys me when I re-watch it (Gourry being ruby mind controlled just doesn’t account for why all of them were kept busy with him).