Slayers: The Motion Picture...for the Wannabe Anime Expert

"Slayers" is another series I knew I would have to check out sooner or later. You can call me cheap, but with a series that has so many videos, I figured I would wait for the release of one full story in say 90 min. It is not the first time I've done this, and I won't quit this practice which has only back fired on me once with "Macross 7: The Movie" (30 minutes in full length, anta baka?).

For a more in depth review (i.e. second guessing myself), check out AnimeFlow.

Never mind how I finally sampled this series, but the bottom line is I saw this film and really enjoyed it. You can't help but like the characters of Naga and Lina, so, like "Tenchi Muyo!" they are the main draw to the series. Also like Tenchi's movies, if you are looking for a long running story (episodic) this isn't it. Slayers is a great comedic picture with a decent, but cluttered story which maintains one's interest. I probably won't buy too many of the videos in this series, but one or two might be worth getting. Especially when I have a little sister who acts a lot like Lina. Thank god she doesn't check out my pages^_^.

Lina wakes up from a weird dream involving some blue haired kid, ignores it, and heads to the continent's coast. Before she gets there, she is involved in a misunderstanding with some bandits. She comes out of this scenario unscathed and a tad richer, but the persistent bandits hire their own sorceress to represent them, Naga. After Naga is taught by her friend not to mess with fire, she decides to finish the issues with the bandits once and for all. With their foes defeated, Naga finds the fallen have passes to Mipross Island, home of many of the finest hot springs. Feeling obligated to use them, she quickly makes for the port not realizing she has dragged little Lina along. Since their ship's food isn't bad, our heroine decides this trip to be worthwhile.

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Once they reach the island, the two have to deal with many of the top ten strongest fighters/magicians of the island all of which have some thing related to a pink octopus on them or with them. After an old sage plants a dream in Lina's head, Lina is hired by the king of one of the villages to investigate why all this is happening. She still is not sure about going through with this investigation until the sage tells her she can visit the Spring of Growth afterward which seals the deal. Is this unknown foe going to be able to be defeated by these two sorceresses, and is the Spring of Growth all it has been made out to be.

The first two acts run pretty smoothly, and excels in its ability to put so much action and twists into itself. If it wasn't for the great characters though, the film would have really fallen apart two-thirds the way through it. I guess that is what happens when you create a villain that is way to powerful. You have to come up with a really implausible and hardly understandable way of defeating it like "Tenchi Muyo! in Love". Otherwise all the other villains work well especially with the attacks that one could only compare to a bad acid trip (so I've heard).

The animation quality is great, better than any U.S. forms except for Disney's. The soundtrack is good, but nothing really exceptional, and the dub really stretches from original script to sacrilegious levels. No villain would recite Sylvester of the "Looney Tunes".

I am not much for mid-evil fantasies, but "Slayers: The Motion Picture" is definitely worth watching for its comedy, its characters, and pretty cool action sequences. It's still not for everybody, but I don't think it would hurt anyone to sample the Slayer universe. Of course this is the cheapest method which was the best way for a high schooler to build a relatively vast and varied anime collection.

www.fancyowl.com - My Favorite Japanese Animated Film: Princess Mononoke