Slayers Evolution-R 04
スレイヤーズ EVOLUTION－R Episode 04

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Lina and company are eating in an unnamed town’s inn and Lina is not happy with Nama’s lack of helpfulness when it comes to finding the Hellmaster Jar. A pink fish-person named Kuppi enters, wishing to again thank “Gourry-san” for helping the former “Miss Mermaid” escape the captivity of the pirates and introducing him to his family — a boy and girl fish-people named Yappi and Uppi. So Gourry goes off to start a new life with them, working hard to provide for his family, where he fishes and even works as a blacksmith.

A week goes by and Lina is not happy with the current situation. Since they need to locate the Hellmaster Jar, she says they can just leave him, but the others know that Lina cares a great deal about Gourry and misses him. So the group pays Gourry a visit and while he’s happy to see his friends and former comrades, he’s not returning to the life of adventuring. Lina and the others leave with Lina annoyed by everything. They encounter Kuppi returning home from the market and since Lina is annoyed with Kuppi’s gushing over Gourry, Amelia gets excited over the makings of a classic melodrama.

After Kuppi leaves, Lina’s group is met by Toppi, Kuppi’s former husband. Because he’d been foolish with what little money they had, Kuppi had left him. However, he’s desperate to return to Kuppi. Zelgadiss is not interested in all this love stuff, so he leaves, only to be met by young Uppi, who’s fallen in love with Zelgadiss. So when Lina and the others return to Kuppi’s house, “Zel-sama” and Uppi also show up.

Kuppi isn’t happy about Toppi’s return and Nama confuses things more by claiming that Gourry is the father of her child. After a great deal of mayhem, a tsunami hits the city and carries all the fish-people back to sea. Nama says that the reason the fish-people had been acting odd was because of this event, which annoys Lina since they wasted time dealing with it. Gourry is a bit depressed that his family is gone, but Lina is glad to have him back on her team.

Thoughts/Review:

OK, a pure filler episode, but not without some nice elements. The parody of Japanese melodramas was amusing in an of itself, but what I rather enjoyed was seeing Gourry as a father figure. So even though he’s with Kuppi, I kept thinking, “You know, if he and Lina ever got married, Gourry would be a good father.” Touching on the Lina-Gourry romance was a nice element. Now, if only the anime would make some more advancements on the Lina-Gourry front, that would be nicer. I rather doubt that happens as I suspect this episode was the only real nod we’ll get for that romance.

I’m glad the fish-people haven’t been much of a factor in either Slayers REVOLUTION or Slayers EVOLUTION-R. I’ve never been a fan of the species in the Slayers franchise, save for the joke where one of them got fried by a spell and ended up being consumed by by his former comrades (which was a funny joke). Still, the times Kuppi has shown up hasn’t been annoying, so that’s good.

Beyond that, there’s not much to say since this is a filler episode. I will say in close that the last quarter of the episode did get somewhat funny though.

Xellos and Zuuma return next episode and we’ll finally get some story advancement.