When we last left the Slizer saga, a war for control of the technology of Time Travel had ended with the Slizer forces remaining intact and Time Travel being kept in the hands of the powers that be. At this stage of the narrative, you can tell that Anime had started to hit the West and the stories I was making up drifted to more of that style. Certainly the focus of the Slizer stuff moves more towards individual characters rather than epic space wars and the like. Those of a certain vintage will start to recognise more specific Lego sets and brands in the story too, as I had more money of my own and could decide on my purchases.
In the wake of the war, eight pilots chosen from the Slizer team and the aliens and future people with who they work to take on the responsibility of the new Slizer weapons. At this point it's probably worth mentioning that the name "Slizer" is recurrent in the narrative, first appearing as the name of the "Ship" that our heroes traveled through time in and now being revealed to be these weapons. There's a whole thing about a predestination paradox that will come full-circle at the end, but it's probably not as clever as I think it is. To begin with, there are eight Slizer units, Judge, Energy, Jungle, City, Fire, Ice, Sub and Rock, each with a set pilot who must attempt to "bond" with the unit on a mental level. Each unit has its own specialty, though some are more esoteric than others, so the team has to learn a new synergy whilst putting aside their differences to become an effective unit. Of course, all the time, war is brewing again.
One of the big reveals for this arc is that the "big bad" behind the antagonists is actually Daniel, the person who invented time travel and started the group's adventures and betrayed them before Calvin got stranded in the Old West. Daniel is doing a "Kang The Conqueror" bit by working with different versions of himself from across the time stream. As the conflict ramps up again with small incursions and raids, the new technology of the Slizers and the new dynamic of the team keeps putting our heroes on the back-foot. Calvin teams up with his main rival, an alien in the team whose friend he killed way back in the "time traveling adventure" days, to investigate and uncover the enemy base without the Slizer weapons. This doesn't quite go to plan and the Slizers have to come in to save the day, but this is essentially the "team coming together" moment. Some of the inter-member conflict continues, and will play a role later, but the Slizers can work together and the conflict starts to go their way once again. Daniel, however, escapes and rebuilds his group.
Needing something to strike back against the Slizers, Daniel sides with another alien faction that fought in the previous war against the Slizer forces and starts designing a new weapon; The Razors. Much like the Slizers, the Razors are biomechanical weapons, somewhat alive, and requiring a living "pilot" to operate. Whereas the Slizers grow to accommodate their pilots and the synergy provides more power, the Razors feed off theirs and pilots burn out after a while. Due to the limited numbers of both Slizers and Razors, the two sides play around each other and skirmish for a while, with neither coming off the better. Getting impatient, Daniel decides to take a run at the Control Centre of the Slizer organisation, using all the Razors at once and even piloting one himself. All the Slizers launch in response and the largest battle since the war takes place. In the chaos, Calvin and Daniel find themselves squaring off; although Daniel's more powerful machine puts him at the advantage, Calvin and the Jungle Slizer achieve a higher level of synergy than anyone else for a few moments and get the win. Seeing their leader killed, the rest of the enemy forces retreat or surrender, though most of the Razors are destroyed.
Following the battle, the higher ups of the Slizer programme are concerned about the high Synergy achieved by Calvin but that doesn't hold them back from announcing more Slizer units in production...
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