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98-545: Slayers ( Japanese : スレイヤーズ , Hepburn : Sureiyāzu ) is a Japanese light novel series written by Hajime Kanzaka and illustrated by Rui Araizumi. The novels have been serialized in Dragon Magazine since 1989, before being published into individual volumes. They follow the adventures of teenage sorceress Lina Inverse and her companions as they journey through their world. Using powerful magic and swordsmanship they battle overreaching wizards, demons seeking to destroy

196-535: A salaryman until, on a whim, he submitted Slayers to the 1st Fantasia Awards (1989). It was nominated as the runner-up, and due to his home not having a telephone, he received the news via the mail. The same year, Slayers began serialization under the Dragon Magazine , making his official debut. During the early days of the light novel industry, most writers came from other non-writing professions, but nowadays most light novelists debut due to winning awards,

294-624: A benefit from the in-group to the out-group) means "[I/we] explained [it] to [him/her/them]". Such beneficiary auxiliary verbs thus serve a function comparable to that of pronouns and prepositions in Indo-European languages to indicate the actor and the recipient of an action. Japanese "pronouns" also function differently from most modern Indo-European pronouns (and more like nouns) in that they can take modifiers as any other noun may. For instance, one does not say in English: The amazed he ran down

392-414: A distinct language of its own that has absorbed various aspects from neighboring languages. Japanese has five vowels, and vowel length is phonemic, with each having both a short and a long version. Elongated vowels are usually denoted with a line over the vowel (a macron ) in rōmaji , a repeated vowel character in hiragana , or a chōonpu succeeding the vowel in katakana . /u/ ( listen )

490-419: A glide /j/ and either the first part of a geminate consonant ( っ / ッ , represented as Q) or a moraic nasal in the coda ( ん / ン , represented as N). The nasal is sensitive to its phonetic environment and assimilates to the following phoneme, with pronunciations including [ɴ, m, n, ɲ, ŋ, ɰ̃] . Onset-glide clusters only occur at the start of syllables but clusters across syllables are allowed as long as

588-479: A listener depending on the listener's relative social position and the degree of familiarity between the speaker and the listener. When used in different social relationships, the same word may have positive (intimate or respectful) or negative (distant or disrespectful) connotations. Japanese often use titles of the person referred to where pronouns would be used in English. For example, when speaking to one's teacher, it

686-407: A new author, he said he was not good at submitting plot summaries to his supervisor, who wanted them before he started writing. When the supervisor passively accepted the plot summary of the third Slayers novel, but was then ecstatic with the finished book, he stopped asking for plot summaries. Kanzaka assumed that he had finally realized that the finished story was always going to widely diverge from

784-491: A nostalgic classic to many. According to Anime News Network 's Daryl Surat, 1996 was the best year of Slayers anime with the releases of Next and Return . Slayers Next took the third place as the overall best anime of 1996 in the Anime Grand Prix '97 awards (in addition to winning in the category best female character), while the next year's series Slayers Try placed second but technically also third (the first place

882-473: A part of the world within a magical barrier, through which only demons could pass. There are four types of magic within the Slayers universe: Black, White, Shamanistic, and Holy. Black magic spells, such as the famous Dragon Slave, call directly on the powers of the demons and are capable of causing enormous damage. White magic spells are of an obscure origin and are used for healing or protection. Shamanistic magic

980-408: A sentence need not be stated and pronouns may be omitted if they can be inferred from context. In the example above, hana ga nagai would mean "[their] noses are long", while nagai by itself would mean "[they] are long." A single verb can be a complete sentence: Yatta! ( やった! ) "[I / we / they / etc] did [it]!". In addition, since adjectives can form the predicate in a Japanese sentence (below),

1078-428: A single adjective can be a complete sentence: Urayamashii! ( 羨ましい! ) "[I'm] jealous [about it]!". While the language has some words that are typically translated as pronouns, these are not used as frequently as pronouns in some Indo-European languages, and function differently. In some cases, Japanese relies on special verb forms and auxiliary verbs to indicate the direction of benefit of an action: "down" to indicate

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1176-627: A trend seemingly started by Kanzaka. Later, he would be a judge for the Fantasia Awards. In-addition to publishing with Fujimi Shobo , he has also had science-fiction and fantasy works published under Kadokawa Sneaker Bunko , expanding his readership. When the Slayers anime adaptation was released in the late 90's, Kanzaka ranked highly in the author category of the Japanese High Tax Payer Registry  [ ja ] . This article about one or more people who work in

1274-675: Is compressed rather than protruded , or simply unrounded. Some Japanese consonants have several allophones , which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese language up to and including the first half of the 20th century, the phonemic sequence /ti/ was palatalized and realized phonetically as [tɕi] , approximately chi ( listen ) ; however, now [ti] and [tɕi] are distinct, as evidenced by words like tī [tiː] "Western-style tea" and chii [tɕii] "social status". The "r" of

1372-421: Is topic–comment . Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or form questions. Nouns have no grammatical number or gender , and there are no articles . Verbs are conjugated , primarily for tense and voice , but not person . Japanese adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a complex system of honorifics , with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of

1470-445: Is also seen in o-medetō "congratulations", from medetaku ). Late Middle Japanese has the first loanwords from European languages – now-common words borrowed into Japanese in this period include pan ("bread") and tabako ("tobacco", now "cigarette"), both from Portuguese . Modern Japanese is considered to begin with the Edo period (which spanned from 1603 to 1867). Since Old Japanese,

1568-519: Is also used in a limited fashion (such as for imported acronyms) in Japanese writing. The numeral system uses mostly Arabic numerals , but also traditional Chinese numerals . Proto-Japonic , the common ancestor of the Japanese and Ryukyuan languages , is thought to have been brought to Japan by settlers coming from the Korean peninsula sometime in the early- to mid-4th century BC (the Yayoi period ), replacing

1666-440: Is appropriate to use sensei ( 先生 , "teacher"), but inappropriate to use anata . This is because anata is used to refer to people of equal or lower status, and one's teacher has higher status. Japanese nouns have no grammatical number, gender or article aspect. The noun hon ( 本 ) may refer to a single book or several books; hito ( 人 ) can mean "person" or "people", and ki ( 木 ) can be "tree" or "trees". Where number

1764-684: Is associated with comedy (see Kansai dialect ). Dialects of Tōhoku and North Kantō are associated with typical farmers. The Ryūkyūan languages, spoken in Okinawa and the Amami Islands (administratively part of Kagoshima ), are distinct enough to be considered a separate branch of the Japonic family; not only is each language unintelligible to Japanese speakers, but most are unintelligible to those who speak other Ryūkyūan languages. However, in contrast to linguists, many ordinary Japanese people tend to consider

1862-483: Is because of the plot point concerning a character's death. Although he speculated he could have written around the healing spells, it would have taken a lot of extra steps to get there and dragged everything out a lot longer than necessary. In the afterward of the fifteenth novel, the original final installment of the series, Kanzaka said he wanted to end the story in an open-ended way in order to allow readers to imagine what happens next to Lina and Gourry. He also described

1960-462: Is better documentation of Late Middle Japanese phonology than for previous forms (for instance, the Arte da Lingoa de Iapam ). Among other sound changes, the sequence /au/ merges to /ɔː/ , in contrast with /oː/ ; /p/ is reintroduced from Chinese; and /we/ merges with /je/ . Some forms rather more familiar to Modern Japanese speakers begin to appear – the continuative ending - te begins to reduce onto

2058-509: Is correlated with the sex of the speaker and the social situation in which they are spoken: men and women alike in a formal situation generally refer to themselves as watashi ( 私 , literally "private") or watakushi (also 私 , hyper-polite form), while men in rougher or intimate conversation are much more likely to use the word ore ( 俺 "oneself", "myself") or boku . Similarly, different words such as anata , kimi , and omae ( お前 , more formally 御前 "the one before me") may refer to

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2156-543: Is focused on manipulation and alteration of the basic elements of the natural world (earth, wind, fire, water and spirit) and contains spells for both offense and convenience, such as Lei Wing, Fireball, or Elemekia Lance. Holy magic uses the power of the gods, but the aforementioned barrier made its usage impossible for anyone inside before the death of the demon Hellmaster Phibrizzo. As a rule, demons can only be harmed by astral shamanistic magic, holy magic, or black magic which draws power from another demon with greater might than

2254-417: Is important, it can be indicated by providing a quantity (often with a counter word ) or (rarely) by adding a suffix, or sometimes by duplication (e.g. 人人 , hitobito , usually written with an iteration mark as 人々 ). Words for people are usually understood as singular. Thus Tanaka-san usually means Mx Tanaka . Words that refer to people and animals can be made to indicate a group of individuals through

2352-722: Is less common. In terms of mutual intelligibility , a survey in 1967 found that the four most unintelligible dialects (excluding Ryūkyūan languages and Tōhoku dialects ) to students from Greater Tokyo were the Kiso dialect (in the deep mountains of Nagano Prefecture ), the Himi dialect (in Toyama Prefecture ), the Kagoshima dialect and the Maniwa dialect (in Okayama Prefecture ). The survey

2450-420: Is often called a topic-prominent language , which means it has a strong tendency to indicate the topic separately from the subject, and that the two do not always coincide. The sentence Zō wa hana ga nagai ( 象は鼻が長い ) literally means, "As for elephant(s), (the) nose(s) (is/are) long". The topic is zō "elephant", and the subject is hana "nose". Japanese grammar tends toward brevity; the subject or object of

2548-489: Is preserved in words such as matsuge ("eyelash", lit. "hair of the eye"); modern mieru ("to be visible") and kikoeru ("to be audible") retain a mediopassive suffix - yu(ru) ( kikoyu → kikoyuru (the attributive form, which slowly replaced the plain form starting in the late Heian period) → kikoeru (all verbs with the shimo-nidan conjugation pattern underwent this same shift in Early Modern Japanese )); and

2646-402: Is the version of Japanese discussed in this article. Formerly, standard Japanese in writing ( 文語 , bungo , "literary language") was different from colloquial language ( 口語 , kōgo ) . The two systems have different rules of grammar and some variance in vocabulary. Bungo was the main method of writing Japanese until about 1900; since then kōgo gradually extended its influence and

2744-471: Is used for the present and the future. For verbs that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form indicates a continuous (or progressive) aspect , similar to the suffix ing in English. For others that represent a change of state, the -te iru form indicates a perfect aspect. For example, kite iru means "They have come (and are still here)", but tabete iru means "They are eating". Questions (both with an interrogative pronoun and yes/no questions) have

2842-405: Is why some linguists do not classify Japanese "pronouns" as pronouns, but rather as referential nouns, much like Spanish usted (contracted from vuestra merced , "your ( majestic plural ) grace") or Portuguese você (from vossa mercê ). Japanese personal pronouns are generally used only in situations requiring special emphasis as to who is doing what to whom. The choice of words used as pronouns

2940-603: The Ainu , Austronesian , Koreanic , and the now-discredited Altaic , but none of these proposals have gained any widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), extensive waves of Sino-Japanese vocabulary entered

3038-505: The Japonic language family, which also includes the Ryukyuan languages spoken in the Ryukyu Islands . As these closely related languages are commonly treated as dialects of the same language, Japanese is sometimes called a language isolate . According to Martine Irma Robbeets , Japanese has been subject to more attempts to show its relation to other languages than any other language in

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3136-567: The Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people . It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan , the only country where it is the national language , and within the Japanese diaspora worldwide. The Japonic family also includes the Ryukyuan languages and the variously classified Hachijō language . There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as

3234-504: The Philippines , and various Pacific islands, locals in those countries learned Japanese as the language of the empire. As a result, many elderly people in these countries can still speak Japanese. Japanese emigrant communities (the largest of which are to be found in Brazil , with 1.4 million to 1.5 million Japanese immigrants and descendants, according to Brazilian IBGE data, more than

3332-419: The Slayers franchise, the anime has by far reached the largest audience and is considered to be one of the most popular series of the 1990s, both in Japan and abroad. As it is a parody of the high fantasy genre, the series' driving force lies in comic scenarios alluding to other specific anime, or more general genre tropes and clichés . Its focus on humor and entertainment and "old school" anime feel make it

3430-406: The Slayers novels had 18 million copies in print by 2015. As of 2018, this number had grown to over 20   million copies. Writing in 2020, Iyane Agossah from DualShockers opined Slayers "is still rarely equaled 30 years later, with an incredible mix of comedy and tragedy, an intricate amount of world-building, great story developments and iconic characters." Of the various media which make up

3528-750: The Slayers universe, the ultimate being is the Lord of Nightmares , the creator of at least four parallel worlds. An artifact known as the Claire Bible contains information about the Lord of Nightmares' task to regain its "true form", which is only attainable by destroying these worlds and returning them to the chaos (sea of darkness) that it itself is. For unexplained reasons, though, the Lord of Nightmares has not acted upon this desire by itself so far. On each of these worlds are gods ( shinzoku , lit. "godly race") and demons ( mazoku , lit. "demon race"), fighting without end. Should

3626-443: The Slayers video games, television shows, and comics as "parallel part 3 stories". Kanzaka makes references to people and events not depicted in the novels, such as Lina's older sister and Gourry Gabriev 's first visit to Sairaag, which he referred to as "flavor" to stimulate the reader's imagination and clarified that they are not foreshadowing . He explained that the fictional world would feel smaller if everything that appears in

3724-716: The United States (notably in Hawaii , where 16.7% of the population has Japanese ancestry, and California ), and the Philippines (particularly in Davao Region and the Province of Laguna ). Japanese has no official status in Japan, but is the de facto national language of the country. There is a form of the language considered standard : hyōjungo ( 標準語 ) , meaning "standard Japanese", or kyōtsūgo ( 共通語 ) , "common language", or even "Tokyo dialect" at times. The meanings of

3822-794: The de facto standard Japanese had been the Kansai dialect , especially that of Kyoto . However, during the Edo period, Edo (now Tokyo) developed into the largest city in Japan, and the Edo-area dialect became standard Japanese. Since the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages has increased significantly. The period since 1945 has seen many words borrowed from other languages—such as German, Portuguese and English. Many English loan words especially relate to technology—for example, pasokon (short for "personal computer"), intānetto ("internet"), and kamera ("camera"). Due to

3920-603: The "spike-wolves and stuff", from his love of yōkai and kaiju , the "words just flew off the page". Kanzaka set the second book in a city so that Lina could not solve the story by simply casting one big spell. He said that this taught him how using circumstances and setting could change the "flavor" of a story. The author also said that the second book is intentionally "heavier" than the first. Kanzaka described his writing process as like trying to put together puzzle pieces that have been scattered about, figuring stuff out as he goes instead of following an outline written beforehand. As

4018-518: The 1.2 million of the United States ) sometimes employ Japanese as their primary language. Approximately 12% of Hawaii residents speak Japanese, with an estimated 12.6% of the population of Japanese ancestry in 2008. Japanese emigrants can also be found in Peru , Argentina , Australia (especially in the eastern states), Canada (especially in Vancouver , where 1.4% of the population has Japanese ancestry),

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4116-467: The English version of the series, with dialogue being recorded in both New York City and Los Angeles. NYAV Post was able to reunite most of the original Central Park Media main character cast for the new season. However, Michael Sinterniklaas replaced David Moo as Xellos . Other notable characters, such as Sylphiel, Prince Phil, and Naga the Serpent were also recast with new voice actors. Funimation released

4214-565: The Funimation Channel on September 6, 2010. In North America, Slayers Special was initially sold as two separate titles, Slayers: Dragon Slave and Slayers: Explosion Array on VHS by licensee ADV Films . All three episodes were later compiled into Slayers: The Book of Spells , shipped on November 21, 2000. Most of the films were produced by J.C.Staff and licensed for home video release in North America by ADV Films. Slayers Premium

4312-482: The Japanese language is of particular interest, ranging between an apical central tap and a lateral approximant . The "g" is also notable; unless it starts a sentence, it may be pronounced [ ŋ ] , in the Kanto prestige dialect and in other eastern dialects. The phonotactics of Japanese are relatively simple. The syllable structure is (C)(G)V(C), that is, a core vowel surrounded by an optional onset consonant,

4410-524: The Lord of Nightmares, constitute a fifth form of magic: Chaos magic. The protagonist of Slayers is Lina Inverse , a teenage wandering genius sorceress with many nicknames and much infamy attached to her that she refuses to acknowledge. Lina narrates (within the novels) the history of her various adventures, ranging from whimsical and silly to dramatic to even outright world-threatening crises, in which she becomes involved along with her traveling companions everywhere she goes. The first Slayers light novel

4508-643: The May 2018 issue of Dragon Magazine , which was published in March 2018, to celebrate the magazine and Fujimi Fantasia Bunko's 30th anniversary. He described it as "kind of a reunion" and said he had not decided to relaunch the series yet. Volume 16 was published on October 20, 2018. A third story arc began in the November 2019 issue of the magazine, released in September 2019. The author described this as "Rather than an official history,

4606-724: The Old Japanese sections are written in Man'yōgana , which uses kanji for their phonetic as well as semantic values. Based on the Man'yōgana system, Old Japanese can be reconstructed as having 88 distinct morae . Texts written with Man'yōgana use two different sets of kanji for each of the morae now pronounced き (ki), ひ (hi), み (mi), け (ke), へ (he), め (me), こ (ko), そ (so), と (to), の (no), も (mo), よ (yo) and ろ (ro). (The Kojiki has 88, but all later texts have 87. The distinction between mo 1 and mo 2 apparently

4704-591: The Resurrection War ( 降魔戦争 , Kōma-sensō , alternately "War of Demon Conquering") against one of the parts of Ceifeed, the Water Dragon King, also known as Aqualord Ragradia. Ultimately, the piece of Shabranigdu won, but Aqualord, using the last remnants of her power, sealed him into a block of magical ice within the Kataart Mountains. Nevertheless, Shabranigdu's lieutenants remained at liberty, sealing

4802-488: The Ryūkyūan languages as dialects of Japanese. The imperial court also seems to have spoken an unusual variant of the Japanese of the time, most likely the spoken form of Classical Japanese , a writing style that was prevalent during the Heian period , but began to decline during the late Meiji period . The Ryūkyūan languages are classified by UNESCO as 'endangered', as young people mostly use Japanese and cannot understand

4900-543: The addition of a collective suffix (a noun suffix that indicates a group), such as -tachi , but this is not a true plural: the meaning is closer to the English phrase "and company". A group described as Tanaka-san-tachi may include people not named Tanaka. Some Japanese nouns are effectively plural, such as hitobito "people" and wareware "we/us", while the word tomodachi "friend" is considered singular, although plural in form. Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present (or non-past) which

4998-476: The anime. Slayers began serialization in Dragon Magazine in 1989 as a short story series written by Hajime Kanzaka and with artwork by Rui Araizumi. The chapters were then published as light novels under the Fujimi Fantasia Bunko imprint across 15 volumes from January 17, 1990 to May 10, 2000. Although the original story ended with the 15th volume in 2000, Kanzaka began a new arc 18 years later in

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5096-547: The deadly serious Record of Lodoss War , with a cynical cast modeled on argumentative role-players. (...) Ridiculing its own shortcomings, Slayers has successfully kept a strong following that watches for what some might call biting satire, and others bad workmen blaming their tools." Joseph Luster of Otaku USA called it "the very definition of an all-encompassing media franchise. (...) Slayers certainly has that in its memorable lineup, and they'll likely cast some sort of spell on you, regardless of age." Paul Thomas Chapman from

5194-564: The effect of changing Japanese into a mora-timed language. Late Middle Japanese covers the years from 1185 to 1600, and is normally divided into two sections, roughly equivalent to the Kamakura period and the Muromachi period , respectively. The later forms of Late Middle Japanese are the first to be described by non-native sources, in this case the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries; and thus there

5292-559: The first Slayers Revolution boxset on March 16, 2010. Funimation released the first four English-dubbed episodes of Slayers Revolution to YouTube on January 19, 2010. They have also uploaded the first two English-dubbed episodes of Evolution-R to YouTube and released Evolution-R on DVD in June 2010. Funimation released both Slayers Revolution and Evolution-R on Blu-ray on October 26, 2010. Both Revolution and Evolution-R made their North American television debut when they began airing on

5390-455: The flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly, and words from English roots have proliferated. Japanese is an agglutinative , mora -timed language with relatively simple phonotactics , a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent . Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, and sentence structure

5488-609: The genitive particle ga remains in intentionally archaic speech. Early Middle Japanese is the Japanese of the Heian period , from 794 to 1185. It formed the basis for the literary standard of Classical Japanese , which remained in common use until the early 20th century. During this time, Japanese underwent numerous phonological developments, in many cases instigated by an influx of Chinese loanwords . These included phonemic length distinction for both consonants and vowels , palatal consonants (e.g. kya ) and labial consonant clusters (e.g. kwa ), and closed syllables . This had

5586-620: The gods win the war in a world, that world will be at peace. Should the monsters win, the world will be destroyed and returned to the Sea of Chaos. In the world where the Slayers takes place, Flare Dragon Ceifeed and the Ruby-Eye Shabranigdu are, respectively, the supreme god and demon. Long ago, their war ended more or less in a stalemate, when Ceifeed was able to split Shabranigdu's existence into seven pieces in order to prevent him from coming back to life, then seal them within human souls. As

5684-411: The initial summary. The first three books were written as the author thought up stories, but volume four on tell a grander epic. Because the first novel was written as a one-off before evolving into a series, there are some inconsistencies with the later installments. A few of these inconsistencies were corrected in the 2008 reprints. Kanzaka stated the reason Zelgadis and Amelia do not appear in "part 2"

5782-430: The language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese . Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords . The basis of the standard dialect moved from the Kansai region to the Edo region (modern Tokyo ) in the Early Modern Japanese period (early 17th century–mid 19th century). Following the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853,

5880-453: The languages of the original Jōmon inhabitants, including the ancestor of the modern Ainu language . Because writing had yet to be introduced from China, there is no direct evidence, and anything that can be discerned about this period must be based on internal reconstruction from Old Japanese , or comparison with the Ryukyuan languages and Japanese dialects . The Chinese writing system

5978-449: The languages. Okinawan Japanese is a variant of Standard Japanese influenced by the Ryūkyūan languages, and is the primary dialect spoken among young people in the Ryukyu Islands . Modern Japanese has become prevalent nationwide (including the Ryūkyū islands) due to education , mass media , and an increase in mobility within Japan, as well as economic integration. Japanese is a member of

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6076-427: The large quantity of English loanwords, modern Japanese has developed a distinction between [tɕi] and [ti] , and [dʑi] and [di] , with the latter in each pair only found in loanwords. Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has also been spoken outside of the country. Before and during World War II , through Japanese annexation of Taiwan and Korea , as well as partial occupation of China ,

6174-539: The novels digitally, with the first chapter uploaded to their website that day. Their physical release of Slayers began in July 2021 and is a 3-1 hardcover omnibus edition based on Japan's 2008 revised edition that featured new illustrations and covers. Between July 26, 2008 and March 2009, a new manga series entitled Slayers Light Magic ( スレイヤーズ ライト・マジック ) was serialised in Kadokawa Shoten 's Kerokero Ace . The series

6272-474: The one for the Super Famicom ) were released in 1994. Three 32-bit / CD-ROM games followed in the late 1990s: Slayers Royal in 1997 and Slayers Royal 2 and Slayers Wonderful in 1998. In addition, Lina and other Slayers main characters have been featured in several other video games in crossover and guest appearances, in particular in mobile games since the late 2010s. Including the spin-off series,

6370-425: The only strict rule of word order is that the verb must be placed at the end of a sentence (possibly followed by sentence-end particles). This is because Japanese sentence elements are marked with particles that identify their grammatical functions. The basic sentence structure is topic–comment . For example, Kochira wa Tanaka-san desu ( こちらは田中さんです ). kochira ("this") is the topic of the sentence, indicated by

6468-470: The out-group gives a benefit to the in-group, and "up" to indicate the in-group gives a benefit to the out-group. Here, the in-group includes the speaker and the out-group does not, and their boundary depends on context. For example, oshiete moratta ( 教えてもらった ) (literally, "explaining got" with a benefit from the out-group to the in-group) means "[he/she/they] explained [it] to [me/us]". Similarly, oshiete ageta ( 教えてあげた ) (literally, "explaining gave" with

6566-415: The particle wa . The verb desu is a copula , commonly translated as "to be" or "it is" (though there are other verbs that can be translated as "to be"), though technically it holds no meaning and is used to give a sentence 'politeness'. As a phrase, Tanaka-san desu is the comment. This sentence literally translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mx Tanaka." Thus Japanese, like many other Asian languages,

6664-463: The project to dissipate. A fourth anime series, Slayers Revolution , premiered in Japan on July 2, 2008. Megumi Hayashibara , the voice actress for main character Lina Inverse, performed both the opening and ending theme songs. The new plot is told across two 13-episode arcs and follows an original storyline that has subplots based on events in the novels, with series director Takashi Watanabe and production studio J.C.Staff reprising their duties from

6762-477: The proposed larger Altaic family, or to various Southeast Asian languages , especially Austronesian . None of these proposals have gained wide acceptance (and the Altaic family itself is now considered controversial). As it stands, only the link to Ryukyuan has wide support. Other theories view the Japanese language as an early creole language formed through inputs from at least two distinct language groups, or as

6860-564: The rights to broadcast Slayers but eventually did not air the anime since it would be too heavy to edit it for content. The first North American television broadcast of The Slayers was February 17, 2002 on the International Channel . In 2009, MVM Films began releasing the series in the United Kingdom on a monthly basis. The first series was released on four DVDs between January 5, and April 6, 2009. The first volume of Slayers Next

6958-445: The same magazine voiced a more reserved opinion on the "franchise whose remarkable longevity and popularity is matched only by its remarkable averageness," especially regarding various aspects of the TV series, to which nevertheless he returned for "light entertainment". Japanese language Japanese ( 日本語 , Nihongo , [ɲihoŋɡo] ) is the principal language of

7056-459: The same structure as affirmative sentences, but with intonation rising at the end. In the formal register, the question particle -ka is added. For example, ii desu ( いいです ) "It is OK" becomes ii desu-ka ( いいですか。 ) "Is it OK?". In a more informal tone sometimes the particle -no ( の ) is added instead to show a personal interest of the speaker: Dōshite konai-no? "Why aren't (you) coming?". Some simple queries are formed simply by mentioning

7154-413: The souls are reincarnated, the individual fragments would wear down until Shabranigdu himself would be destroyed. However, Ceifeed was so exhausted by this that he himself sank into the Sea of Chaos, leaving behind four parts of himself in the world. A millennium before the events in Slayers , one of Ruby-Eye's fragments (which was sealed in the body of Lei Magnus, a very powerful sorcerer) revived and began

7252-439: The speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned. The Japanese writing system combines Chinese characters , known as kanji ( 漢字 , ' Han characters') , with two unique syllabaries (or moraic scripts) derived by the Japanese from the more complex Chinese characters: hiragana ( ひらがな or 平仮名 , 'simple characters') and katakana ( カタカナ or 片仮名 , 'partial characters'). Latin script ( rōmaji ローマ字 )

7350-797: The state as at the time the constitution was written, many of the elders participating in the process had been educated in Japanese during the South Seas Mandate over the island shown by the 1958 census of the Trust Territory of the Pacific that found that 89% of Palauans born between 1914 and 1933 could speak and read Japanese, but as of the 2005 Palau census there were no residents of Angaur that spoke Japanese at home. Japanese dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent , inflectional morphology , vocabulary , and particle usage. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this

7448-433: The story is explained; something he learned from a teacher's comment in design school. Although some of these he has not even thought about, like Gourry's visit to Sairaag, others he has created a backstory to, such as Lina's sister. Zuma's backstory was omitted because the novels are told from Lina's first-person perspective , but Kanzaka gave some of the material to the staff of Slayers Revolution so it could be included in

7546-476: The street. (grammatically incorrect insertion of a pronoun) But one can grammatically say essentially the same thing in Japanese: 驚いた彼は道を走っていった。 Transliteration: Odoroita kare wa michi o hashitte itta. (grammatically correct) This is partly because these words evolved from regular nouns, such as kimi "you" ( 君 "lord"), anata "you" ( あなた "that side, yonder"), and boku "I" ( 僕 "servant"). This

7644-532: The target. Above all other magic, however, are the immensely destructive spells drawing power from the Lord of Nightmares. The two spells of this class are the Ragna Blade, capable of cutting through any obstacle or being, and the Giga Slave, which can kill any opponent, but which could also destroy the world itself if the spell is miscast. Some have claimed that these terrible spells, drawing their power directly from

7742-491: The third arc is going to be more like one of the possibilities, a parallel existence to the TRY TV anime and the Water Dragon King manga, I guess." Volume 17 was published on October 19, 2019. On September 7, 2004, Tokyopop began publishing the novels in English, ending with the release of volume 8 on January 2, 2008. On July 3, 2020, J-Novel Club announced their rescue license of the series at Anime Expo Lite. They first release

7840-556: The three original TV series. A fifth Slayers series titled Slayers Evolution-R is the second 13-episode arc of Slayers Revolution and was aired on AT-X starting on January 12, 2009 in Japan. Central Park Media licensed and distributed the anime in North America under the Software Sculptors label on VHS and Laserdisc between 1996 and 1998, collected in eight volumes. It was a commercial success for Central Park, which led them to license Slayers Next and Slayers Try ; Next

7938-601: The topic with an interrogative intonation to call for the hearer's attention: Kore wa? "(What about) this?"; O-namae wa? ( お名前は？ ) "(What's your) name?". Negatives are formed by inflecting the verb. For example, Pan o taberu ( パンを食べる。 ) "I will eat bread" or "I eat bread" becomes Pan o tabenai ( パンを食べない。 ) "I will not eat bread" or "I do not eat bread". Plain negative forms are i -adjectives (see below) and inflect as such, e.g. Pan o tabenakatta ( パンを食べなかった。 ) "I did not eat bread". Hajime Kanzaka After graduating Kobe Art Technical College, Kanzaka worked as

8036-419: The two consonants are the moraic nasal followed by a homorganic consonant. Japanese also includes a pitch accent , which is not represented in moraic writing; for example [haꜜ.ɕi] ("chopsticks") and [ha.ɕiꜜ] ("bridge") are both spelled はし ( hashi ) , and are only differentiated by the tone contour. Japanese word order is classified as subject–object–verb . Unlike many Indo-European languages ,

8134-577: The two methods were both used in writing until the 1940s. Bungo still has some relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers (many Japanese laws that survived World War II are still written in bungo , although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language). Kōgo is the dominant method of both speaking and writing Japanese today, although bungo grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect. The 1982 state constitution of Angaur , Palau , names Japanese along with Palauan and English as an official language of

8232-472: The two terms (''hyōjungo'' and ''kyōtsūgo'') are almost the same. Hyōjungo or kyōtsūgo is a conception that forms the counterpart of dialect. This normative language was born after the Meiji Restoration ( 明治維新 , meiji ishin , 1868) from the language spoken in the higher-class areas of Tokyo (see Yamanote ). Hyōjungo is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications. It

8330-407: The verb (e.g. yonde for earlier yomite ), the -k- in the final mora of adjectives drops out ( shiroi for earlier shiroki ); and some forms exist where modern standard Japanese has retained the earlier form (e.g. hayaku > hayau > hayɔɔ , where modern Japanese just has hayaku , though the alternative form is preserved in the standard greeting o-hayō gozaimasu "good morning"; this ending

8428-412: The world, and an occasional hapless gang of bandits. Slayers inspired several spin-off novel series and has been adapted into numerous manga titles, anime television series, anime films, OVA series, role-playing video games, and other media. Including the spin-off series, the novels have over 20 million copies in print. The anime series is considered to be one of the most popular of the 1990s. In

8526-548: The world. Since Japanese first gained the consideration of linguists in the late 19th century, attempts have been made to show its genealogical relation to languages or language families such as Ainu , Korean , Chinese , Tibeto-Burman , Uralic , Altaic (or Ural-Altaic ), Austroasiatic , Austronesian and Dravidian . At the fringe, some linguists have even suggested a link to Indo-European languages , including Greek , or to Sumerian . Main modern theories try to link Japanese either to northern Asian languages, like Korean or

8624-623: Was a tie between the films Mononoke Hime and The End of Evangelion ) in 1998. Slayers was sometimes compared with Record of Lodoss War , another hit Japanese fantasy franchise that began around the same time. In Anime Essentials: Every Thing a Fan Needs to Know , Gilles Poitras wrote: "More humorous and less serious looking than the characters in the Lodoss War series, the stars of Slayers provide action and laughs." In The Anime Encyclopedia: A Guide to Japanese Animation Since 1917 , Helen McCarthy similarly called it "the antidote to

8722-542: Was able to obtain the license and it aired as part of the new owner's programming block on CoLours TV, as well as the Funimation Channel . The first bilingual DVD box set after Funimation's rescue of the license was released on August 21, 2007, retaining the Software Sculptors-produced English dub. A boxset of Slayers , Next and Try was released by Funimation on August 4, 2009. Fox Kids won

8820-409: Was animated by Hal Film Maker . The series was adapted for two role-playing games (RPGs): A collectible card game (CCG), Slayers Fight (スレイヤーズふぁいと), was developed by ORG and published by Kadokawa Shoten between 1999 and 2001. A series of five Slayers role-playing video games were released exclusively in Japan between 1994 and 1998. Two different 16-bit games titled simply Slayers (including

8918-535: Was based on 12- to 20-second-long recordings of 135 to 244 phonemes , which 42 students listened to and translated word-for-word. The listeners were all Keio University students who grew up in the Kanto region . There are some language islands in mountain villages or isolated islands such as Hachijō-jima island , whose dialects are descended from Eastern Old Japanese . Dialects of the Kansai region are spoken or known by many Japanese, and Osaka dialect in particular

9016-455: Was first shipped from April 1999 in a similar format; a box set of the first four volumes was released in July of that same year, and a box set of the second four volumes in October. Slayers Try was released later in 2000. The first three seasons were subsequently re-released on DVD (in season box sets). Months before Central Park's license for the anime properties expired, Funimation Entertainment

9114-718: Was imported to Japan from Baekje around the start of the fifth century, alongside Buddhism. The earliest texts were written in Classical Chinese , although some of these were likely intended to be read as Japanese using the kanbun method, and show influences of Japanese grammar such as Japanese word order. The earliest text, the Kojiki , dates to the early eighth century, and was written entirely in Chinese characters, which are used to represent, at different times, Chinese, kanbun , and Old Japanese. As in other texts from this period,

9212-465: Was lost immediately following its composition.) This set of morae shrank to 67 in Early Middle Japanese , though some were added through Chinese influence. Man'yōgana also has a symbol for /je/ , which merges with /e/ before the end of the period. Several fossilizations of Old Japanese grammatical elements remain in the modern language – the genitive particle tsu (superseded by modern no )

9310-418: Was published in North America on July 5, 2005. The self-titled first season of the anime adapts volumes 1 and 3 of the light novels. The second season, Slayers Next , adapts volumes 2, 4, 5, 7, and 8 of the light novels. The third season, Slayers Try , is an original story. However, a fourth season, Slayers AGAIN , was rumored following the success of Try , but early scheduling conflicts caused interest in

9408-447: Was released on May 11, 2009. Episodes have also been made available on the streaming video sites Hulu , YouTube , Crackle , Anime News Network , Netflix , and Funimation's website. Funimation licensed both Slayers Revolution and Slayers Evolution-R for American release; the episodes in Japanese with English subtitles were uploaded to YouTube, as well as Funimation's website in July 2009. Funimation contracted NYAV Post to produce

9506-505: Was written by Hajime Kanzaka for entrance into Fujimi Fantasia Bunko 's first annual Fantasia Chōhen Shōsetsu Awards  [ ja ] in 1989. After it won, the new author was asked to create a follow-up. Kanzaka initially thought this was an impossible task as the characters had already defeated the Dark Lord. He called the second book a turning point for him and said it was initially very difficult to write. However, as soon as he added

9604-572: Was written by Yoshijirō Muramatsu and illustrated Shin Sasaki, and set in a technological world instead of a fantasy world. In July 1998, Central Park Media announced they had licensed the manga for distribution in North America. On June 15, 1999, Slayers: Medieval Mayhem was released. The four-volume series Slayers Special was published between October 12, 2002, and June 25, 2003. A seven-volume series Super-Explosive Demon Story followed between July 9, 2002 and December 1, 2004. Finally, Slayers Premium

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