スレイヤーズREVOLUTION Ep. 13 (final)
Slayers REVOLUTION Episode 13 (end)

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

With the civilian population of Saillune City evacuated, Prince Phil has his mage troops attack Zanaffar with a rain of Fireball spells while the artillery rains cannon balls and fiery ballista bolts on the beast, all to no effect. Duclis plans to eliminate Lina but Lina figures that his true reason to remove her has less to do with protecting Zanaffar and more to do with keeping her knowledge out of Zanaffar’s hands. Duclis declares that fate will decide what is right based on if Zanaffar wins or loses the battle.

Back down in the arena, the mannequin Ozel comes back to life. She asks “Rezo-sama” if this is her destiny t0 die and be reborn constantly. She also wonders if Rezo has entrusted “that person” who has the power to overcome destiny.

Back on the surface, Zanaffar decides to speed up Duclis’s conversion into a Zanaffar by attacking him and thus activating the Zanaffar army. Zanaffar knocks Duclis out of the battle area where he is followed by Pokota. Duclis refuses a healing spell, stating that the moment he put on the Zanaffar armor, his fate was sealed as Zanaffar began to consume his mind from that time forward. Duclis figures the reason he wasn’t consumed earlier was due to his hatred of those he considered had betrayed Taforashia.

Outside, the battle against Zanaffar does not go well with the beast being amused at the humans not accepting him as their new ruler. He explains to Lina that he was created in the city of Sairaag by arrogant humans who thought they knew it all. He was designed to be a foil to the mazoku but in creating the first Zanaffar armor, something did not go right. Now, Zanaffar plans to not only consume all humans, but the mazoku and the gods (kami) as well. Hearing this, Lina informs Zanaffar that she won’t allow it.

Lina, having arranged this with Sylphiel earlier, as the miko and all of the mage troops cast Aqua Create. The streams of water form and pelt Zanaffar. Some of the mages, including Lina and Amelia, begin casting ice-based spells which then freeze upon impacting Zanaffar. Combining with the water from Aqua Create, Zanaffar is quickly sealed in ice. Lina begins casting Ragna Blade, but Zanaffar begins to break free from his ice prison. Duclis, now half tiger-man, half Zanaffar, attacks Zanaffar’s eyes, scoring damage. That gives Lina time to finish casting Ragna Blade, upon which she and Gourry issue a double attack on Zanaffar. The damage done, Zanaffar thrashes around but is not dead. Because they’ve made cracks in his armor, Lina casts an amplified Dragon Slave which finishes the beast off.

The following day, the remains of Zanaffar are emitting shouki, creating a toxic cloud. Pokota takes a seed from the holy tree Flagoon and plants it nearby since Flagoon had the power to cleans the shouki from Sairaag years ago. Duclis arrives and asks for Pokota to execute him for his crimes, but Pokota is unable to do so. Prince Phil declares that Duclis’s punishment will be to remain in his current form. With that, Lina and company along with Pokota set off with the mystery of Rezo, Ozel, and the sealed citizens of Taforashia to deal with.

Thoughts/Review:

 I had figured that Lina would kill Zanaffar with the Ragna Blade spell since that’s how she killed the beast in the novels. The anime took a different tact by having Ragna Blade be one of three attacks that actually injured Zanaffar. However, considering that Dragon Slave is Lina’s trademark spell, I don’t have a problem with how things were done here. With those other attacks having pierced Zanaffar’s hide, I could believe that an amplified Dragon Slave would then be able to kill the beast. So kudos to the writers there.

While Xellos has all but dropped out of the series lately (he did have a cameo along with Wiser though to observe the battle), I think the mazoku plans for Zanaffar were made clear in this episode. Since mazoku feed off of the negative human emotions, having a single Zanaffar rampaging across the country would be good for the mazoku. However, having multiple Zanaffar creatures would be bad since they would likely have enough power to overcome higher-ranking mazoku. Consuming those mazoku would then make it easier for the Zanaffar to defeat the mazoku lords. Since Xellos didn’t stop Lina from killing Zanaffar, the mazoku must have been willing to accept the loss of the single Zanaffar with no problem. It will be interesting to see what else Xellos and the mazoku have in store for the next series.

As to the specifics of the episode itself, things got a bit talky, didn’t they? One would almost think I were writing. *lol* The exposition on the purpose of Zanaffar was good, but the banter between Lina and Zanaffar was mostly filler. Fortunately, it didn’t cross the line into boring territory and the chit-chat was broken up by action. It got close on the Pokota-Duclis talking scenes though. In a lot of ways, I’m sorry that we’ll have to deal with Pokota in the next Slayers series but that’s another issue.

I’m glad to see that Sylphiel has a useful role to play in this episode. It is always nice to bring back old favorite characters, but when they don’t have a purpose, things become awkward.

Also, Phil was used in a logical way most of the time (rallying the troops, which is what a good leader would do). The tribute scene of him and Amelia doing a Pacifist Crush attack on Zanaffar was likely done for laughs, but I didn’t find it funny.

Overall, I have to say I enjoyed the episode. Plenty of action with a reasonable way of taking down Zanaffar. I’ll have some final thoughts on the series soon.