The Slayers Revolution is the fourth season of The Slayers anime series, which only consists of 13 episodes. In this series, Lina Inverse is being pursued by inspector Wizer Frayon for “the crime of being Lina Inverse.” Lina, along with Gourry, Amelia, and Zelgadis, try to clear Lina’s name. In the process, they meet a new character named Pokota, and new adventures await our heroes.

The Slayers Revolution
English Publisher: FUNimation Entertainment
Format: Blu-ray
Release Date: September 21, 2010

According to what I’ve seen, The Slayers Revolution, as well as the followup season, The Slayers Evolution-R tells one story arc, which is made up of new plots with subplots based on events from the light novels. This would probably help to explain the pacing in The Slayers Revolution.

While each individual episode has a good flow, the timeline from episode to episode is rather choppy. In addition, the timeline for some of the events in the series is also questionable, because conflicting information is given within the 13 episodes of The Slayers Revolution. Also, the story just kind of stops at the end of this series, since the rest of the story is in The Slayers Evolution-R. While there is some enjoyable humor in The Slayers Revolution, I feel that this series is weaker than the previous three series of The Slayers.

When FUNimation released The Slayers Revolution in the United States, a two-disc DVD pressing was released in March 2010, while a two-disc Blu-ray pressing was released in September 2010. This review will focus on the Blu-ray pressing, since that is the one I watched.

The Blu-ray pressing includes nine episodes on the first disc and four episodes and the extras on the second disc. When it comes to the Blu-ray menus, the only thing FUNimation did to differentiate between the two discs is that the second disc includes an option for the extras. Outside of that, the background images and the music are identical to the menu on the first disc.

When it comes to the packaging, the box has a slipcover, but there is no booklet included inside the box. All you get in the box are FUNimation advertisements. It should also be noted that when you watch the episodes with Japanese audio with English subtitles, the subtitles are done as thin white text without a black outline, which makes them a little hard to read, especially when they’re over a light background. If the subtitles appeared over a darker background, they were easier to read. If the subtitles were a darker color, such as yellow, or had also included a black outline, the subtitles would have been much easier to read. Unfortunately, the issues I had with reading the subtitles hampered the enjoyment I could get from watching this release.

As to the extras included on the second Blu-ray disc, there is a textless opening song, a textless closing song, and trailers for properties that FUNimation was promoting at the time this Blu-ray set was released.

If you’re a fan of The Slayers and want to have every episode in your home video collection, then you definitely need to pick up a pressing of The Slayers Revolution. Since I haven’t seen the DVD pressing, I don’t know how the quality of that pressing compares with the Blu-ray. Obviously, if you can only watch DVDs, then a DVD pressing is what you need. However, if you have the ability to watch Blu-rays, then this Blu-ray pressing might be worth it if you can find it for a decent price.

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