Tagged: the slayers

“I CAST FIST” – It’s Rune Soldier Louie (And Some Other Fantasy Anime)

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There are quite a few comedy fantasy anime in the vein of The Slayers and, unfortunately, most of them are varying degrees of quite sexist. Even The Slayers has some episodes that really don’t hold up as very good, although it also has some extremely funny episodes and some action scenes that work quite well. There are certain tropes that come through in a number of the series in this vein that, depending on execution, feel a little awkward; lots of cross-dressing, lots of jokes where the punchline is pretty much “man tries to spy on woman and gets punched” and so on. The execution varies for better or worse, but nevertheless it seems this sort of adolescent humour is a recurring theme and it’s wholly understandable that that might not appeal to people so much. Konosuba goes perhaps even further by having a masochist-fetish defender and various other more direct sex jokes.

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Sympathy and Subtlety in Black Lagoon

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In my previous article about the series Black Lagoon I wrote predominantly about its first season and the often repulsive and unsympathetic violence of it. The characters within were alienating – the sympathetic fish-out-of-water protagonist was often more than simply the butt of jokes but actively presented as an impediment to the expected lifestyle of those he was forced upon. What this did was make the group of characters that would usually be presented as relatable and entertaining seem particularly unlikeable not in a comedic fashion but in a way which undermined how entertaining the series ended up being. Many of the conflicts, once the initial introductions were out of the way, were ultimately petty and inconclusive ones with high body counts but no real catharsis in the violence.

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