Slayers is a sword and sorcery fantasy series chronicling the adventures of a powerful young sorceress named Lina Inverse. It started as a short story series called Slayers Special written by Hajime Kanzaka with illustrations done by Rui Araizumi. A series of Slayers novels followed. Later, a TV anime series was made based on the Slayers storyline and aired on Japanese television in 1995 as Slayers. Two more TV anime series have been made since, Slayers Next and Slayers Try.

General Info

Slayers is basically divided into two storylines: Slayers and Slayers Special. In the Slayers series Lina's main companion is Gourry while in the Slayers Special series Lina travels with Naga. The Special series describe the events in Lina's life which took place before those in the Slayers series, so Lina is younger in Special. Naga is no longer with Lina and seems to have disappeared altogether by the start of the Slayers storyline.

There are currently 14 Slayers novels, 14 Slayers Special novels, 4 mini Slayers Delicious novels (which also follow the Special storyline) as well as 6 MAGIUS Slayers RPG books. There is a Slayers manga collection of short comics put out in Dragon magazine by Rui Araizumi (story by Hajime Kanzaka), and an ongoing Slayers manga series Chou-baku Madouden Slayers, currently 6 volumes long done by Shoko Yoshinaka (story also by Hajime Kanzaka).

There are two 3-part OVA series, Slayers Special and Slayers Excellent, based on the Special storyline. There have been 4 movies, Slayers, Slayers Return, Slayers Great, and Slayers Gourgeous also roughly based on the SP. storyline.