About the Mangaka

Kanzaka Hajime is famous for his entire series of Slayers, which at the current time runs to fifty light novels, four anime series, several OVA’s and movies, as well as a number of manga adaptations.

The art for this stand alone volume was done by Tommy Ohtsuka, and beyond the fact that he’s done some work for Marvel, there’s nothing else available.

About the Manga

slayers premium

Now this is the what I’d come to expect, and hoped for from the Slayers universe!!

Hajime’s story is funny, pointless, and goes no where, which in a way makes it perfect for a stand alone volume. Though it’s not a good introduction to the series since there are a lot of references and characters you won’t know unless you’ve seen the rest. Despite this though it’s still a decent introduction, since I found myself interested to find out about the other characters.

Tommy’s art is exceptional, or at least by Slayer standards. Rui may have created the concept arts for the characters, but I never really liked his style. Tommy expands the concept, makes them cleaner, crisper, and more consistent.

Some of the characters in this story had me laughing so hard I was seeing spots :)

Ruuma’s fanaticism over the octopus is just so damned funny. Her personality just fits the story so well. When mixed in with Lina’s and Gourry’s personalities, and you’re guaranteed to have chaos, and that’s indeed what we get.

It’s certainly a new twist on the use of tentacles in manga, and I like the way it’s been done.

That said this does have a few flaws in both the story and the art. Primarily it’s the characters. Pretty much every character from the Slayers universe makes an appearance in one form or another. However if you’re new to the setting this can be a big problem, since if you don’t know them, you won’t fully understand all of the humour.

The other problem it ha is the support characters art. While it’s true that the art for this volume is exceptional, however it fails on several occasions. Though this isn’t a huge problem and easy to over look, but given that Tommy seems to be a professional, I wonder if he couldn’t of put them right.

This is a CPM release, and one of their first right to left un-flipped titles. As it’s a CPM it’s out of print.

Though I have to admit that they did (to my eye) a good job on this volume. The translation is smooth and consistent. Though it’s hard to tell if they did any rewrites. CPM didn’t have a reputation for it though (unlike Viz). There are a few minor editing issues, mainly spelling mistakes and punctuation mistakes. These aren’t to bad though, and for the most part are easily over looked.

As I said, it’s not a bad volume, but since I’m not a huge fan of the Slayers universe, I wont be adding this to my list, but it’s not bad. I think it’s worth picking up if you can spare the cash.

Where to Buy

As a CPM release this is now out of print. However it is still available from the likes of Amazon Market Place, eBay and some specialty comic stores.

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