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J-Novel Club Releases Slayers Novels in Both Print, Digital

J-Novel Club announced during its Q&A panel at the Anime Expo Lite online event on Friday that its release of Hajime Kanzaka and Rui Araizumi's Slayers light novel series will be available both digitally and in print.

The first omnibus volume of the novels is tentatively slated for release in July 2021. J-Novel Club also tentatively plans to have a dust jacket on the physical volume, but is still looking into the costs for the addition. The release will be based on the new revised version of the first 15 volumes that Kadokawa began releasing in 2008 with new color illustrations and covers. J-Novel Club added that it may not be able to include the classic color illustrations.

J-Novel Club describes the classic fantasy comedy light novel series:

Beautiful and brilliant sorcerer girls just can't have nice things, huh? All I wanted to do was swipe a little bit of bandit treasure. Now suddenly I'm being chased around by icky trolls, nasty demons, mean mummies, and brooding golem bad boys. And for what? A tiny little artifact that can bring about the end of the world? Hah! I'll show them there's a reason you don't cross Lina Inverse...

Fujimi Shobo's Fantasia Bunko label published the original Slayers! novel in 1990, and the 15th novel, Slayers 15: Demon Slayers!, in May 2000. Tokyopop published eight of the novels in English. The 16th volume volume shipped in October 2018 as the first new volume in nearly 18 years. Kanzaka launched a "third part" for the novel series in Kadokawa's Dragon Magazine in July 2019.

The main novel series and the 1991 side story novel series Slayers Special have together inspired five television anime series, two original video anime, five anime films, and multiple manga adaptations. The franchise's other novel series include Slayers Smash, Slayers Delicious, and Slayers Select.

Thanks to Kalai Chik for contributing to this article.

Source: Anime Expo Lite livestream