スレイヤーズ EVOLUTION－R Episode 03
Slayers Evolution-R 03

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Lina and company are heading up a mountain road with Lina complaining about it and Nama-chan also complaining. Lina gets angry since Nama was the one who told them about a dragon living in this mountain who might have collected the Hellmaster Jar. However, Amelia is kind to Nama and the later appreciates it very much. A sudden storm causes flooding and a mudslide, which causes Amelia to get swept away. Nama swims after her and upon catching her, Nama places Amelia within her armored body and get her to safety. When Amelia comes to, she’s happy to be alive but horrified to learn from Nama that she’s trapped inside the suit of armor.

As Lina and company begin searching for Amelia and Nama-chan, Nama-Amelia manage to walk to a nearby village, having to learn to move together. They are received with open arms and it reminds Amlia of her father and her childhood where her father raised her alone after her mother died. Nama finds the story sad, but has her own story of a father raising her alone after her mother died and Nama felt very lonely. Amelia wants to do something nice for the villagers who’ve been so nice to them and convinces a skeptical Nama to do this. However, everything they do causes more problems, so much so that the village elder feels they need to be removed.

The village elder sounds the alarm and says the dragon of legend has been spotted. Amelia wants to take on the dragon and has to get Nama to go along with it. After agreeing to take care of the dragon, the village has a big sendoff and are relieved when Amelia-Nama are gone, though some are concerned about lying to them. Amelia soon learns from Nama that Nama made up the dragon story for Lina, but then thy discover first a hatching dragon, then the mother dragon. After Nama passes out, Amelia has full control of the armor to fight but when Nama comes to, Amelia is blocked as Nama wants to flee.

Lina arrives in the nick of time to distract the dragon, and Amelia uses that time to convince Nama on fighting. To Zelgadiss and Gourry’s amazement and excitement, Amelia-Nama perfectly perform a series of attacks, ending with Prince Phil’s “Pacifist Crush” attack, which knocks out the dragon. Zelgadiss is in tears over what he’s seen, but wonders how Nama would know such an attack. Amelia gets free of Nama and the two are pleased with their victory, which annoys Lina somewhat as she had to take a back seat. However, when a group of dragons emerge, Lina leaves the dragons to Amelia and Nama. The two flee back to the village, where the dragons persue them, burning everything they see.

Thoughts/Review:

Woo!hoo! I loved this episode a great deal. Clearly, the writers sensed a hunger for character development both of Naga and Amelia. Granted, we haven’t had it confirmed that Nama-chan is Amelia, but I think it is safe to say that they are one and the same, though sadly I suspect that we won’t get a true Naga-Amelia reunion. I think that the writers should just go for it since they’ve never followed Kanzaka-sensei’s novels that closely. Plus, he shows no signs of ever picking up the main story again, so go for it.

The interesting thing here is that Amelia and Naga had different perspectives on their father. Amelia always hero-worshiped her father and no matter what, trained hard along side him for the physical aspects (learning shiro (white) magic in classes I’m guessing since Prince Phil is not a mage). Naga didn’t find that harsh training to be something wonderful and her own memories of their father are somewhat different. Naga felt very lonely after her mother’s death. I guess Phil (in the anime world at least) spent more time with Amelia, who was clearly interested in doing this where Naga was not. Thus, Naga leaves and wanders the world.

In addition to those nice, character-developing moments, there was some nice humor too with Amelia trapped in Nama-chan’s armor. With Amelia’s attempts to do good works combined with Nama-chan’s less than willingness, to say nothing over the control issues with the armor, there were plenty of comedy moments that worked pretty well for me. The dragon attack on the village at the end made me laugh too.

However, lets face it — the best moment was Amelia and Nama doing the Pacifist Crush attack on the dragon. ^_^

So, onward, ho! Hopefully I’ll be able to keep watching this.