What A Cartoon! - Slayers "PASSION! Shall We Give Our Lives for the Stage?"
Added 2025-09-01 04:00:10 +0000 UTCThe anime drought officially ends on this month's What A Cartoon podcast with a VERY long episode about that '90s VHS fantasy/comedy classic, Slayers! While this charming series tragically never found a home on American television, it still thrived in its own bubble; and if you were part of the anime subculture around Y2K, it's likely you were briefly involved in Slayers-mania. It's a series worthy of exploration, and to fully plumb the depths of this animated D&D session, we've recruited Slayers fan and Wife of the Show Nina Matsumoto to help out—and she's brought some original research never-before-heard by an English-speaking audience. So listen in as we transport you back to an era when Pocky was still an incredibly rare and valuable commodity.
Comments
My sibling Sidd really enjoyed your Slayers episode and wanted to leave some thoughts: There was actually a fun Slayers cameo/crossover in the Pokemon anime! In the Pokemon Sun & Moon episode “Lillier and the Staff,” there’s a scene showing Jessie dressed up as practically all of Megumi Hayashibara’s other anime characters as a tribute to her career, ending with Lina Inverse. For the dub, Lisa Ortiz voiced Jessie for the one line she says while she’s dressed up as Lina! I asked Lisa about the scene when I interviewed her at ANYC in 2019. She said that on the day they came in to record the episode, people excitedly came up to her and told her “You got to watch this!”, and it really made her day. The decision to have Lisa dub over Jessie-as-Lina in that scene was decided almost immediately by everyone in the studio. Lisa said she had a blast having a chance to play the character again, and merge two franchises she’s spent a lot of time with in her career together. I like how both the original Japanese and dub versions of the scene have different in-jokes about the shared voice cast connections between Slayers and Pokemon. Also, Bob’s observation that Lisa Ortiz’s Lina voice is like a tough New Yorker is apt, because Lisa has said she based her performance for Lina on Mae West, an actress who was known for her tough and bold female roles in pre-Hayes Code films and Broadway. Lisa was also a big Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan at the time, so she channeled a bit of her into her Lina performance as well. It’s sad that all of the dub actors who played the Team Rocket trio have passed away except for Eric Stuart. At the very least, I’m glad that James Carter Cathcart was able to retire as a voice actor around the same time the original Pokemon anime continuity ended, so he could play James and Meowth through to the end of the show. He’s also the only dub actor to have played the same character in the first and last episode of the original anime series, as he played Gary in both the first episode in 1998 and in the last episode in 2023. I agree that Slayers would probably be better remembered and more available in the US now if it had aired on a major tv network. It did eventually air on a US TV channel, just not one that many people got, but was actually how I discovered it as a kid. Slayers aired as part of the Funimation Channel programming block on ColoursTV, which was a niche Dish Network exclusive channel dedicated to “entertainment and educational programming about urban and ethnically diverse cultures,” only available to about 12 million homes at its peak. They only ever aired the first season, though they aired it every weeknight for almost two years. I got into Slayers in 2006, so I caught up with the series right in time to watch the revival seasons when they came out in 2008, which I think were the second anime I kept up with weekly fansubs for after Naruto Shippuden. It’s a shame Slayers never got to air on Toonami, because Jason DeMarco has said they wanted to get it, but the Fox Kids deal prevented them from doing so. I think it was a missed opportunity for them not to pick up the revival seasons for Toonami when it came back as part of Adult Swim in 2012.
VLordGTZ
2025-09-21 06:00:15 +0000 UTCI distinctly remember in the early-mid 00's Comcast would have anime on their section of pre-recorded stuff (they had music videos and the like, oh those were the days) so that's mainly how I was introduced to anime.
Thoren Murphy
2025-09-13 02:43:56 +0000 UTCI’m the guy who’s been complaining about anime—I still call it Japanimation and say that it’s only for perverts. Don’t listen to me! Anyway this is a good episode! I also recently saw this thread about the Slayers PC-98 RPG from Japan that’s been translated and it’s super bright and colorful! https://bsky.app/profile/sharkabytes.bsky.social/post/3le5xizacs22p
Mike Mariano
2025-09-10 14:20:17 +0000 UTCI appreciate how much this network caters to western animation fans such as myself but I also enjoy these episodes which broaden my horizons with anime and world animation I'm not already familiar with. I watched the episode in question which isn't always necessary with say, Disney movies or Simpsons episodes I've seen a dozen times. Plus, it's always interesting to hear a history segment completely unrelated to anything that's been covered before.
Joshua Marchant
2025-09-08 01:13:02 +0000 UTCEnjoyed the podcast episode very much, but found very little to enjoy about the anime itself. Maybe it would be better watching more from the start, but save for some interesting animation, I didn’t care for it at all.
Norman Benford
2025-09-07 19:59:20 +0000 UTCThe people have spoken: we love anime!
Blake R.
2025-09-04 22:02:05 +0000 UTCIt’s 2025 and apparently soldiers are still enlisted in the Dub vs. Sub Wars
Bob Mackey
2025-09-03 23:48:31 +0000 UTCThe episode spends an awful lot of time talking and joking about how long the episode is going to end up being, then end up wasting a lot time talking about random people that had nothing to do with the production of the show speaking English and replacing all the audio. It’s great to have episodes cover anime every now and then, just always ends up with a lot of talk about how expensive VHS tapes were in the 90s and English voice actors that have nothing to do with the shows production.
Phillip
2025-09-03 22:32:27 +0000 UTC
