Where Does The Slayers Anime End In The Light Novel?

These days, you could throw a rock and hit six comedy fantasy anime. However, Slayers is the series that set the standard for all those, and remained so wildly different from anything back in the day that it’s stayed stuck in the hearts of so many.

Where To Start The Slayers Light Novel After The Anime?

TL;DR – While the anime follows the novels in some ways, it would be simplest to read them from the beginning.

You know how Slayers, the anime, is kind of like a fantasy story with some innate ADHD built into the storytelling? Well, Slayers adapts its source novels like it has ADHD as well.

If you watched the Slayers anime and want to continue the story in the light novels, you can start at:

• If you watched the original 1995 Slayers anime – The first season of Slayers adapts the story of Novel 1 and Novel 3
• If you watched the Slayers Next anime – Slayers Next adapts content from Novel 2 as well as Novels 4 through 8, but overall Next is freestyling the story points from all those novels in its own unique way.
• If you watched the Slayers Try anime – Try is almost so disconnected from the novels, save for a few plot points, that it should be treated as anime-original.
• If you watched the Slayers Revolution anime – Revolution is a more diligent adaptation of Novel 5 than you saw in Next where it was sped through, but also pulls in content from side stories and later Slayers novels to differentiate itself.
• If you watched the Slayers Evolution-R anime – Evolution-R works with a lot of the things skipped in the first 8 novels by the other Slayers anime, and adds in its own large dash of anime-original content.

Obviously, jumping into the novels after the anime is difficult at best, and certainly not really recommended. While the anime, at least, adapts the first novel very faithfully, you will want to note that the novels are all pretty much told from Lina’s inner monologue, which means that things are depicted a little differently from the anime.

It means that there is still even some merit to reading the first novel, despite it being the only one covered really well by the anime.

As for the movies, they are all anime-original stories, though Premium and Return did have their storylines adapted to manga later.

Finally, the Slayers Special and Slayers Excellent OVAs were both based on the 30-Novel Slayers Special prequel novels. They, as should be expected from this series, jump all over the content of those novels, adapting none of them in full.

Is The Slayers Light Novel Over?

The Slayers novels are, perhaps surprisingly, still ongoing. Since launching in 1990, the author took a very long break in 2000, and started publishing again in 2018. Since then, only one additional novel has been released in 2019.

The Slayers Special side stories, however, has been complete since 2008 with Novel 30.

They also released an additional five novels of side stories called Slayers Smash, which ended in 2011. They are also Slayers prequel side stories.

You may also find 4 Novels of Slayers Delicious that were since shuffled into the Slayers Special novels. They are also prequel side stories.

Where To Start The Slayers Manga After The Anime?

TL;DR – There’s no good way to “continue” the Slayers story in manga, as all the manga are either re-tellings of small moments in the light novel/anime, or re-imaginings/alternate universes.

With that TL;DR up there in mind, let’s just run through all the Slayers manga series.

• Slayers – AKA Slayers Medieval Mayhem – 1 Volume, Complete – One-shot stories of Lina traveling with Gourrey
• Slayers: Super-Explosive Demon Story – 8 Volumes, Complete – Covers the first 8 novels, which is roughly what was covered in the anime, but also pulls in some anime-original content from the anime that was not in the novels. Also adapts the story of the Slayers Return movie in there as well.
• Slayers Special – 4 Volumes, Complete – Manga adaptation of the prequel Slayers Special novels/OVAs
• Slayers Premium – 1 Volume, Complete – Adaptation of the Slayers Premium movie. Slayers Premium Plus One serves as the epilogue.
• Slayers: Knight of Aqualord – 6 Volumes, Complete – As it was later revealed, this series was an alternate retelling of Try as well as some of the later novels.
• Slayers Revolution – 1 Volume, Complete – Retelling of the Revolution anime
• Slayers Evolution-R – 1 Volume, Complete – Retelling of the Evolution-R anime
• Slayers Legend – 2 Volumes, Complete – Compilation of chapters from the original Slayers manga and Slayers: Super-Explosive Demon Story as well as including a chapter from The Hourglass of Falshes manga. No new content here.
• Slayers: The Hourglass of Falshes – 1 Volume, Complete – Manga-original adventure, but the first manga appearance of heretofore novel-only characters Luke and Mileena (though they are on their own manga-original story separate from the novels)
• Slayers Light Magic – 2 Volumes, Complete – Lina and Gourrey doing what they do—but in a sci-fi setting.

Will There Be More Slayers Anime?

There has been no official announcement of any modern Slayers anime, but given how strangely enduring the fandom is, I don’t know if all hope is lost.