What is Lost Universe?

While Slayers was still young, Hajime Kanzaka started a second series in the same pages of Dragon Magazine: Lost Universe, a science-fiction comedy of trouble contractors, ancient starships, and a holographic ship’s computer. Five novels ran under Fujimi Fantasia Bunko from December 20, 1992 to April 20, 1999, illustrated and later drawn as manga by Shoko Yoshinaka, the same artist who drew the main Slayers manga adaptation.

The connection is cosmological and deliberately loose. Slayers takes place in the Red World, one of the four worlds created by the Lord of Nightmares; Lost Universe takes place in the Black World, where that world’s Dark Lord, Dark Star Dugradigdo, never walked in person. In the Black World the gods and demons exist as Lost Ships, intelligent ancient starships, and the hero’s Swordbreaker is one of them. Kanzaka, asked directly in the final novel’s afterword, answered that “there is little relationship between the two stories,” which fans have treated as a challenge ever since. The bridge object is real, though: Slayers’ novel 8 reveals the Sword of Light is Gorun Nova, one of Dark Star’s five weapons, a Black World artifact sitting in the Red World’s most famous sword.