Slayers - Volume 7 - Chapter SS

Bonus Translator/Editor Chat!

[Meg/ED] 

Welp, we’re back to Slayers NEXT for volume 7, which covers about episodes 18-21. And they kinda kick off with the big bomb that closes this volume... That is, meeting the much-rumored Gaav!

[Liz/TL]

Gaav is important! It’s a long way getting to him, too.

[Meg/ED]

Gaav is a big player in this game—and, holy cow, has said game gotten intense! There are a lot of moving pieces on the board at this point, some of which we won’t even get to until next time.

[Liz/TL]

Yeah we’re going to have to walk a fine line so we don’t get into spoilers, which is tricky since my head is already in volume 8 and they kinda flow together a little! We see Raltark get owned, at least, and Xellos get kind of half-owned.

[Meg/ED]

This book and the next really do go hand in hand in a way we haven’t seen before in the series. It’s hard to think of them as distinct stories because of it. I’m glad you mentioned Raltark, though. He might be a fun place to kick off our discussion since he’s notably missing from the anime. Rashart too.

[Liz/TL]

Yeah, as was the case in the volume 6 adaptation they’re replaced by another character who fills a similar role. And which character is that? Why, it’s our old pal Seigram! Since NEXT starts with the “Sorcerers of Atlas” arc and doesn’t cover Zuma at all, he had to go somewhere I guess. It’s actually a pretty good conservation of characters, given the anime’s priorities.

[Meg/ED]

Agreed. And Seigram’s extra scary now that he’s super-charged with Chaos Dragon’s power. This allows him to fill in the Raltark/Rashart role pretty nicely since it enables him to go toe to toe with Xellos.

[Liz/TL]

Yeah, I suppose it’s a little less interesting from a “lore” perspective, since you’re not getting the same drip of information about Priests and Generals and demon hierarchies. But it does what it needs to do, which is to give the heroes a known face to punch (and to loom threatening in the OP sequence).

On the subject of Seigram getting transplanted from the Zuma arc to here, though, I think this section of NEXT actually serves as an interesting contrast with the Revolution adaptation of volume 6. As we discussed last time, that one followed the plot of the novel to the letter, more or less, but ended up in a very different place at the very end. Whereas I feel like this arc in NEXT ends up at a similar place but takes a different route to get there at pretty much every turn.

[Meg/ED]

It’s absolutely fascinating. There’s so much good stuff to chew on here. Volume 7 is probably our most lore-rich installment since volume 1, and the anime definitely truncates that by arranging elements of the story differently.

But whereas we have a mounting tension in this book because of the looming threat that is Chaos Dragon Gaav, that danger is very upfront in the anime because he appears much sooner. And the man comes in swinging. I guess, simply put, we’re trading intrigue for action. I thought that would result in a huge departure from the novels, but in the end, it’s simply a more visual way to get to the same place.

[Liz/TL]

Yeah, it’s an understandable trade given the formats involved. In a visual medium, you want to get to the spectacle a little earlier, and you need to have at least one big spectacle per episode. NEXT also made “searching for the Claire Bible” kind of the framing device throughout its runtime, both in plot episodes and comic relief episodes. So instead of taking us through the mystery in Dils that introduces Rashart, they made an interesting choice to include a sequence with a “hard copy” of the Claire Bible (which is comically huge and located in a pocket dimension) and give us Gaav early. Incidentally this is also the first place we learn that Xellos is a demon, which in and of itself says a lot about how different our journey getting here is!

[Meg/ED]

The Sand Temple is quite interesting to me. I initially suspected the perfect manuscript located there would be a way to bypass our trip to Dragon’s Peak, but nope! It’s basically just an extra-dimensional excuse to introduce us to Gaav... and also to Grammie Aqua, an anime-original addition!

[Liz/TL]

Now she is a character I’d completely forgotten about before the rewatch, but I think she becomes extremely interesting when viewed through the lens of the novels. At first I thought she was just there to humanize Lina a little by showing that she can be unflinchingly kind and respectful to her elders (which is nice to see). But she also adds something to the Claire Bible mythos that makes the Bible seem... more innately benevolent?

In this volume, I feel like the Bible comes off as this very neutral thing, just a kind of natural force that doesn’t care how you use its power. But the anime gives it a kind of personification, and that personification is portrayed as a noble and protective force that likes our heroes. I’m extremely curious as to whether the revelation we get there is one of those things that’s Kanzaka Canon that he just couldn’t find a way to fit into the story here, or if it’s something the anime added to make us feel a little more confident in Lina’s choices.

[Meg/ED]

Hmm... I was thinking that Grammie Aqua was an attempt to inject some lore back into the anime, but you’re right. She does have a humanizing presence, especially when she reappears for the scene at the actual Claire Bible in Dragons’ Peak.

[Liz/TL]

Yeah, which is another sequence that’s very similar to the novels in a lot of ways, but also adds its own flavor. Again, partly since “search for the Claire Bible” has been the season’s framing device up to this point, they’ve been dealing with a lot of red herrings throughout. This means Xellos doesn’t openly lead them there, and Lina doesn’t have quite the same eyes-open quality about the degree to which she’s being manipulated. So when we finally get there, it’s less the culmination of a steady buildup and more of an “ah, finally” feeling of release after a series of frustrations. That means you can have the same events happen here—the first meeting with Milgazia, the dragons taking flight, the revelation of Xellos’s role in the Incarnation War, then the trip into the rock face—but they’re colored very differently. 

[Meg/ED]

We could probably go on at length about the nuance in the differing details of the Claire Bible scenes (for example, how does it change things when Lina learns the truth about Gaav’s reincarnation from the Claire Bible rather than Xellos?). I have to say that Milgazia is a character that really came alive for me in the show, though. I read him as stony in the novels, but there’s something really wrenching about seeing the fear on his face when he talks about Xellos.

[Liz/TL]

I think the anime and the novel compliment each other well there. Like you say, I think having the visuals and voice acting helps to add more character to his stoicism in the novels, but having some of the extra novel content (like the scene where Lina wants to talk to him but feels too intimidated, which is present but abridged in the adaptation) as a backing makes the anime character feel a little richer.

And... if I may say so, this is not the last we’ll be seeing of him in the novels! So some of his later characterization may also influence my opinion. (I confess, as a teen, I saw Milgazia as kind of a non-entity. That was wrong and I was wrong. He’s awesome.)

[Meg/ED]

You’re so right. I hadn’t even realized the extent to which I was regarding the novels as context for the characters, rather than seeing them as separate entities. Let me put on my thinking cap for a sec...

Another defining moment of Milgazia’s character for me is the moment he tells Lina that it’s okay to be concerned about her own life, even amidst some grand plot. That the struggle for survival is a natural thing. So in the novels, I saw Milgazia, Lina, and Gaav as an odd sort of trifecta, because they’re the three characters in this volume who are doing the struggling to survive.

But that doesn’t really carry with anime Gaav, who’s cast as a much grander villain. Sans all the supplementary context of the books, that is.

[Liz/TL]

I see what you mean. I think you technically get that scene in the anime, where Gaav talks about how he’s also doing this to survive and that maybe they’re the same because of it. But maybe since you don’t have the same long buildup of Lina reflecting on Hellmaster’s plan and the demons’ manipulations of her, it comes off a little more like fight trash talk than a thematic focal point?

[Meg/ED]

Yeah, it’s kind of perfunctory.

[Liz/TL]

One thing that strikes me as you mention that though is how maybe TRY tried to add a little bit of that sympathy for Gaav back in, retroactively, with the Valgaav character.

[Meg/ED]

That’s true! And on the subject of sympathy, there’s someone else I’d very much so like to talk about, but I’m a bit scared of an alabaster hand popping out of my chest... Maybe it’ll be safer next volume?

[Liz/TL]

Almost assuredly! Yeah, our chat this month is a little harder than usual, partly because of how this arc runs into the next one, but also because of how, well, like I said before... Some of the adaptational differences are extremely noticeable, whereas others are much more subtle outcomes of having a very different buildup. I think that’s a sign of a good adaptation, though, that we’re talking less about whether or not things are working, and more about how the two formats contrast or compliment each other thematically. NEXT was always my favorite as a young’un and I feel like this illustrates why it worked so well for me, even if I didn’t have the knowledge of what was going on in the novels to tell me why it was working.

[Meg/ED]

I was always partial to the first season myself, but I admit I’m gaining a profound new appreciation for NEXT as we go along. We’ll definitely be closing it out next time with our biggest bang yet... Cue cliffhanger!

[Liz/TL]

It’s exciting! The end of an arc!

[Meg/ED]

I honestly can’t believe how fast we’ve gotten here!

[Liz/TL]

And after this... a whole new world! But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.