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R2 DVD Reviews
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Written by maehara
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Friday, 19 December 2008 00:00 |
 MVM take a trip back to 1995 by bringing us the first UK release of the Slayers TV series. Now, very few long-time anime fans will deny that Slayers is a classic, but not all classics survive the passage of time with their appeal intact. Is this one of the few..?
1 - Angry? Furious Lina's Dragon Slave
Throughout the land, there's one person that even the most hardened bandit fears: Lina Inverse, the diminutive sorceress who will let nothing stand between her and a good haul of loot. She's not evil, per se, she just knows what she wants - and what she wants usually already belongs to somebody else. There are some who try and take her on at her own game, but they always lose. Her latest heist brings her face to face with perhaps the one man in the land who hasn't heard of her, though: brainless swordsman Gourry Gabriev, who refuses to believe that Lina isn't some damsel in distress. Lina finds his clueless nature appealing, though, and the two begin travelling together - and it's not long before Gourry gets to see Lina in action...
2 - Bad! Mummy Men Aren't My Type!
Lina may have forgotten about the bandits she tangled with last episode, but some of them haven't forgotten her, including one of the band's own sorcerers, who's now out for revenge. The Dragon Slave she cast means he's got a good trail to follow, and he and his companion are soon on their way. Lina and Gourry, meanwhile, are in a nearby town where Lina's selling on her loot (magically altered to get her the best price, of course) - but one of the items is a cursed dagger, which causes problems when everyone who touches it becomes eager to kill her...
3 - Crash! Red and White and Suspicious All Over!
After having seen off the Mummy Man, Zolf, and his hired trolls, Lina and Gourry receive a visit from Zolf's employer, Zelgadis. She has something he wants: an item she took from the bandits, and that he's prepared to pay any price to get back. Well, almost any price - Zelgadis soon realises that Lina's dreams of riches are beyond his ability to pay, and when she refuses to come back down to reasonable prices, it's time for more direct measures to be taken. But now someone else is on the scene - and if Zelgadis is trying to do what the newcomer claims he is, the world is in real trouble...
4 - Dash! Run For It! My Magic Doesn't Work?!
Hearing that Zelgadis may be trying to revive the Dark Lord Shabranigdo has Lina genuinely worried - the dark lord is evil incarnate, and having him back in the world really wouldn't be a good thing. It had taken the intervention of a god to seal him away last time he was free to roam the earth, and god's aren't exactly easy to come by. But what to do about it, and about her instinct that Rezo can't be trusted, either? Especially when it's "that time of the month" and her magic isn't working...
5 - Escape! Noonsa, the Flaming Fish Man!
Lina's been captured, and is now in the tender care of Zolf, Dilgear and their fishy companion Noonsa. Of Gourry there's no sign - so if she's going to escape, it looks like she'll have to do it on her own when her powers return. There's nothing as frightening as an amorous fish-man, so does setting him on Lina count as torture? She certainly thinks so. Meanwhile, in a nearby village, Gourry's looking for Lina in all the wrong places, while Rezo reappears to fulfil his promise to help Lina...
6 - Focus! Rezo's the Real Enemy!
When she sees Zelgadis and Rezo come face-to-face, it doesn't take Lina long to figure out which one is truly evil. After making a quick getaway - Zelgadis is smarter than to take Rezo on directly - Zel explains what's really going on. It's not him who's trying to revive the Dark Lord Shabranigdo, but Rezo himself. One of the key items he needs to complete the resurrection is the Philosopher's Stone, which is hidden within the orihalcon statue that Lina took from the bandits - so clearly, he can't be allowed to have it. Meanwhile, Gourry is still wandering around, knowing that he's forgotten something, but not quite realising what it is...
So. On top of the core pairing of Lina and Gourry, we soon get introduced to other characters that will play a key role in the series – chimera Zelgadis, whose once-normal body has been transformed partly into stone; and Rezo, the legendary blind Red Priest, who by reputation is one of the holiest men in the land but who, when you meet him, appears far more ominous and dangerous. He's also the man responsible, in a classic case of "be careful what you wish for, lest you get it", for turning Zelgadis into a chimera. Along with them are various sidekicks, including hapless sorceror Zolf, clueless werewolf Dilgear, fish-man Noona, and more besides. Don't worry about paying too much attention to them. Rezo claims that Zelgadis is trying to resurrect the Dark Lord Shabranigdo, Zelgadis claims he isn't but Rezo is up to something equally nasty, and Lina just wants to make sure that the only mayhem unleashed on the land is hers. Got that? Good.
Slayers is one of those shows you'll either love or hate. If you've got a liking for fantasy or slapstick comedy, you'll be off to a good start – although those are by no means the only two groups who find it appealing. There's some more subtle humour in here as well and, as the series goes on, some underlying romantic comedy to get your teeth into as well. There's also a large group of anime fans who see around five minutes of the series before deciding they hate it with a vengeance. I'm in the "love it" category, and the appeal, to me, comes from several things that the "hate it" crowd often cite as reasons to avoid it.
First, there's Lina and Gourry themselves. They're clueless and of dubious morality, and they make a great couple – but their interactions are of the sort that can go either way, and either entertain or just grate horribly. The series also throws a lot in the pot – comedy, romance, magic, action, epic scale adventure and more run-of-the-mill stories – and the way it comes out often feels a bit… unstructured. For fans, that's part of the appeal – for detractors, it's a sign of bad planning and execution. Your mileage may vary.
But enough of the overview. This volume introduces our two heroes and their first set of adversaries, as what had seemed a simple raid on a group of bandits soon turns out to have greated implications for Lina, as one of the objects she acquires is key to the plans of both Rezo and Zelgadis. What those plans are isn't made entirely clear in these episodes, but by the end of the disc it's fairly clear which one of the two villains of the piece is the real threat. That threat takes us straight into saving-the-world territory, which given Lina's sorcery skills is right up her alley (as long as the rewards are suitably good). It is mostly just setup, though, to give you an idea of what these characters are capable of (including the first outing for Lina's trademark Dragon Slave sure-win spell), with the introduction of other key characters and the real action left for subsequent discs.
There's more than enough to give you an accurate feel for the show, though, and those love-it and hate-it feelings will certainly have developed by the end of this disc. For me, it was great fun coming back to the series after not having seen it in almost seven years – yes, it no longer looks "the part" against all the visually gorgeous computer-animated shows we're used to nowadays, but the core of the series is still sound and for the most part does what it sets out to do.
There's one potential can of worms that could spoil the party, though. There were two versions of Slayers released in the US – the original release by Central Park Media, and a remastered version released more recently by FUNimation. Most people would have been expecting MVM to release the remastered version, but it appears that's not the case as there are no FUNimation credits on the disc, only CPM ones. The opening and closing credits also include hardsubbed song lyrics and the overlaid episode titles that were used on the original CPM release (which I have here for comparison), which makes me fairly certain that this is the CPM version of the show - and that brings some serious black marks into the picture. While the marking below is purely for content, if you insist on having the best version of the show available then you may want to think carefully before picking this release up.
Even on the content level, though, thanks to Slayers' reputation this disc is probably a poster-child for "try before you buy" – if you enjoy it, you're safe to buy the rest of the series, if not, there's no money wasted. It could also be argued that the price is a bit steep for a series this old, especially if this is the old CPM version of the series. The bottom line, though, is that this is a classic series with lasting appeal (as witnessed by its recent revival in Japan) and is well worth checking out.
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