Matt Schley
January 8, 2025 
Slayers, the seminal fantasy series that started life as a series of light novels before being turned into a popular anime, just turned 35.
The first volume of the long-running series of adventures starring sorceress Lina Inverse by author Hajime Kanzaka was published on January 17, 1990. The anime adaptation, starring Megumi Hayashibara as Lina, went on air five years later in 1995. Since then, there have been 17 volumes of mainline Slayers novels, multiple season of anime, animated films, spinoff novels, manga and more.
In reviewing the first three seasons of the anime back in 2009, our own Joseph Luster said: “Slayers holds up not only in regards to its production, but its tone. It balances ridiculous slapstick humor with grave situations nicely, never leaning too heavily on one for too long a period of time.”
Celebrating the anniversary, the official Slayers X account promises “various special projects under development,” including a memorial year salute in the volume of Dragon Magazine that goes on sale January 18. It also includes an New Year’s card with a 35th-anniversary logo.
J-Novel Club began publishing the original Slayers novels back in 2020, and here’s how they describe volume 1:
Beautiful and brilliant sorcerer girls just can’t have nice things, huh? All I wanted to do was swipe a little bit of bandit treasure. Now suddenly I’m being chased around by icky trolls, nasty demons, mean mummies, and brooding golem bad boys. And for what? A tiny little artifact that can bring about the end of the world? Hah! I’ll show them there’s a reason you don’t cross Lina Inverse…
Source: Otakomu
