From my first look at the LD cover for the Slayers TV series, I knew who my favorite character would be: Zelgadis Graywords. OK, I've only seen the first four episodes, so I'm by no means an expert, but... I do know that his seiyuu is Hikaru Midorikawa [blech! -Eddie], who also speaks for Tamahome in Fushigi Yuugi, Heero in Gundam Wing, Reinhard in the new Legend of Galactic Heroes OAV series, and, regrettably, Michael in Marmalade Boy.

He's also cool because he's cursed. His grandfather (I'm daintily stepping around spoilers here) made his skin into stone. Actually, he tricked Zel by promising to make him tough. Zelgadis found this idea attractive because he was bullied a lot as a scrawny kid. Well, needless to say, he's not pleased with his current appearance, but it does make him less than vulnerable to conventional melee arms. He's out to fix this problem and smash his Gramps by finding the Philosopher's stone, so he joins the Slayers team. To this amazing fighting force, he adds a bit of swordsmanship and a lot of magic; specifically shamanist magic (seirei majutsu), which specializes in the spiritual area. The other areas are the well-known 4 elements (of which Lina takes an interest in fire).

Zelgadis, everyone says, is a chimera. Technically, this means that some of his body cells have a different genome than others -- often, experimental mice or flies or whatever are made this way (for fun). In fact, every human female is a chimera! This is because women have two X chromosomes -- if they both expressed their genes, there would be too much of some things, and problems would occur. To avoid this, one of the two X chromosomes inactivates itself; it turns itself off. This happens early in development, but not every cell turns off the same X. So some cells are using the first X and others the second X -- hence a chimeric organism. It does seem that Zelgadis is in fact a chimera, too. Some areas of his skin have chunkier-looking pieces -- around his eyes, for example -- but others are just plain blue; if this is a genetically determined effect, then Zel is a chimera. Calico cats are this way, too -- the black and orange pigments are variants of the same gene on the X chromosome, and some areas are black, while others are orange (the white is caused by something else, not X inactivation).

Bet you didn't expect to learn something like that at CJAS!