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Slayers - Volume 13 - Chapter SS




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Bonus Translator/Editor Chat!

[Meg/ED]

Well, since we signed off last time contemplating Jade’s prospects in this volume, shall we start off this time by addressing the elephant in the room?

[Liz/TL]

Yeah... poor guy. Above-average-but-not-exceptional adventurers are just not faring well here in the second arc.

[Meg/ED]

This admittedly wasn’t as unexpected as Dilarr’s rather abrupt end, but it hurts in a different way. Jade was a genuinely good guy, and we actually don’t see a lot of those in Slayers (as most of our cast is flawed in very humanizing ways)! Maybe that should have been a red flag unto itself. But I’ve been stewing on his untimely demise for weeks now, and I’m still not entirely sure what to make of it. It definitely darkened the volume, but I’m torn. The author has told us previously that the deaths in this arc are meant to inspire us in some way, so I don’t want to dwell on Jade’s death to the point of missing the lightness in this story.

[Liz/TL]

I think it’s just surprising because most of the story is spent looking for Jade, and even though Lina is pretty darn pessimistic about their chances of finding him throughout, the “rules of storytelling” suggest that we should at least run into him and exchange a few words before tragedy strikes.

But I think in part because of how short and efficient these novels are, and in part because of Kanzaka’s “make the world feel bigger than our heroes” philosophy, he frequently eschews traditional narrative setups and payoffs, in favor of just... letting the villains act really rationally. Lina basically has to explain to us why we shouldn’t expect the trope you’d see in a typical story where, because we didn’t see the transformation ourselves, it should turn out the demons were lying about it being Jade.

I’ll bet if we got an anime adaptation of this arc (and they decided to leave all the darkness intact), we would see his transformation on-camera.

[Meg/ED]

That’s true! I was also wondering if we’d get a bit of story from Jade’s perspective (like, maybe him sneaking around in the castle beforehand) if this got animated.

[Liz/TL]

Oh, that would be really good. I bet we would. Or maybe he and Lina would run into each other in the castle before getting separated, or opting to scout out separately for a while... At the very least I bet we’d get the “prologue” where Jade tells Maias to go looking for Lina. Or maybe as a flashback.

[Meg/ED]

Exactly. That would certainly raise the personal stakes, but in truth, it’s not really like the ante needs to be upped when the premise of this volume is potentially having another Incarnation War on our hands, right?

[Liz/TL]

Yeah, and how do the events of this volume tie into that? The author is cagey about it in the afterword, but we’ll just have to wait and see as we get into the arc climax... On the brighter side, at least Maias survived and gets to keep being a guard! So you know, good for him.

[Meg/ED]

I was glad to see Allus still kicking too! And speaking of the brighter side, it would be criminal not to give due credit to our two guest stars this volume.

[Liz/TL]

Yeah, having Milgazia and Memphys around was a treat! And “constantly upstaged” Lina is a really funny Lina.

[Meg/ED]

Seeing our virtuoso sorcerer on the back foot is comedy gold for sure. It’s also a really good reminder that there are beings in this universe far more powerful than what we’ve seen up until this point—and that’s a double-edged sword. I was admittedly quite worried for Milgazia for a second there in the final fight (the same way I was worried for Luke last volume), but I really enjoyed the fact that this kind of somber volume ends on a high note with some good old-fashioned teamwork.

[Liz/TL]

Showing how casually more powerful Milgazia and Mephy are throughout most of the book and then showing them cringe in terror at the thought of fighting Dynast was really effective.

One of the things I didn’t really get from the anime as a younger person (and I’m not sure if that was the show’s priorities or my own—you inevitably pick up far more subtle details about a work as a translator than as a viewer) was a real sense of how much more powerful the demons get as you go up the hierarchies. I feel like the novels want you to be acutely aware of how hopeless it should feel for a human to go up against one of Shabranigdu’s lieutenants with the Giga Slave off the table.

While we’re talking demons, can we mention how freaking creepy Mianzo was? Sometimes the series’ demons can fall into a bit of a rut of “monocolor and featureless” but the dripping lady-head root-demon is one hell of a memorable image.


[Meg/ED]

Agreed. We have different moods of scary in Slayers, and Mianzo is firmly filed in the full-on creepy category. We haven’t talked a lot about the series art along the way, but I was really glad we got an illustration of her! That’s going to haunt me like the picture of copy-Rezo did.

[Liz/TL]

Ooh, it’s good. I can see why, if you were choosing what from the volume to portray, you’d choose that. A+ design work, plus the visceral element of her always talking like her mouth is full of water. And that setup was pure horror. The idea of being in a rainy house and hearing the drip-drip-drip of a leak... but it’s getting closer? Masterful. But I digress. We were talking elves and dragons, yes?

[Meg/ED]

Yes, of course! I really hope this isn’t the last we see of Milgazia and Mephy. I think they make a great duo and they’re a lot of fun to have around, but I also understand that they’re a little too powerful to take on every adventure. Hopefully we can catch up with them sometime under less dire circumstances—even if that’s unlikely, given their disinclination to meddle in human affairs.

[Liz/TL]

Yes, although there’s an implication that Mephy had some meddling done by another woman from Lina’s past...

[Meg/ED]

I absolutely adore the dashes of backstory and lore that get thrown around in this volume. A certain larger-than-life sorceress may go unnamed here, but we all know in our hearts who that really was.

[Liz/TL]

Ohoho...

[Meg/ED]

For anyone who isn’t already aware, whenever Lina mentions something that happened to her in the past or someone she used to know, that’s often (if not always) a nod to events and personalities of other Slayers canon (namely the prequel/side story novels).

[Liz/TL]

Yeah, like the story of how she first met Wizer, I believe, was originally a side story. Will we get to those ourselves some day? Here’s hoping!

[Meg/ED]

I’ll second that!

[Liz/TL]

This is a little bit of a digression as well, but the experience of being an anime fan in the West has always been a strange one, hasn’t it? With the way we frequently only get the tip of an iceberg in a franchise. Back when you and I were new to this, we’d usually only get the anime version of something (which was occasionally a two-part OAV or a movie that just animated “the good bits” and was incomprehensible on its own) without any of the manga source material.

Things are so much better nowadays. Publishers can get fully caught up to a currently-running light novel or manga before the anime adaptation even airs (in simulcast form at that!), and for the really big franchises we might even get the games and merch and stuff. Basically, we get to have an experience that’s a little bit closer to what the original audience gets.

So if some day we do get to bring the short stories over, you could read through them in publication order and get a taste of that experience. It’s just such a cool idea. I wonder how differently it would make some of these mainline novels read, you know? Interesting thoughts for potential futures, at least!

[Meg/ED]

I’m so grateful for how far we’ve come since back in the day, but yeah, it’d be great if we could have the full context of the series in English eventually for people to enjoy. Myself included. I’d love to explore that.

[Liz/TL]

(stares straight into the fourth wall) If we do, it’ll be thanks to a lot of awesome people who bought the mainline novel series and proved that the demand was there. (ahem) Anyway, anything else to discuss this time around?

[Meg/ED]

There’s a lot more we could touch on (like, we never got to the dwarves!), but I’m feeling heartened after our discussion so far. What about you?

[Liz/TL]

The dwarves! What’s up with the dwarves? But yeah, there’s not much to discuss there except “I really wanna know what’s up with Slayers dwarves”... so yes, I think it’s time to move on. See you next time for... almost assuredly... more tragedy? (laughs weakly, sweats)

[Meg/ED]

Things have to look up at some point, right? Right?



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