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R2 DVD Reviews
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Monday, 15 March 2010 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..?
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...
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. Rezo claims that Zelgadis is trying to resurrect the Dark Lord Shabranigdo, Zelgadis claims he isn't but that 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. The first disc in the set 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 greater 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 until later in the series, but even on first appearances there should be no prizes for guessing which one of the two "villains" 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 coming later.
The series turns out to be split into two main parts. The first is covers the attempt to resurrect the Dark Lord Shabranigdo, which is one of those storylines that you would usually expect to be saved for the end of a series – the Dark Lord has been sealed away for centuries, thanks to one of the world's Gods who decided that he was for too powerful and destructive for his own good, and his reappearance is portrated as potentially world-ending stuff. Far too serious to be tackled when we're only at episode ten, unless you have something truly spectacular to unleash later in the series. In truth, the arc seems to be more concerned with setting a benchmark for just how powerful our heroes are, with Gourry given a chance to show off his Sword of Light – an inherited magical blade with more than a touch of light saber about it, and something that Lina instantly decides she wants – and Lina allowed to take her magic to the next level. Let's just say that the Dragon Slave ain't as "sure kill" as it was made out to be.
On the one hand, this is good – there's action, drama, and high-level magic in play, all of which keeps the adrenaline going and makes for a very enjoyable few episodes. On the other hand, it's too early in the series for this sort of sequence, and the following episodes feel decidedly flat as the series comes back down to earth with a bump. There's also a little voice in the back of my head that tells me that it's not such a good idea for characters to become this stupidly powerful at the first major battle.
Such ideas can be put to one side for a while, though, as the second arc brings Amelia to the show. Small, but determined and possessed of a sense of justice that only someone with a very sheltered upbringing could have (she is a princess, after all), she's also been reading too many comic books and has a very strange idea about how justice should be dispensed. To her mind, ideally from a striking pose on top of a tree or column of some sort, and never mind if getting up there entirely ruins the flow of your "evildoers beware!" speech. She's the comic highlight of the series, and really sold me on the second half of the set – yes, Slayers is primarily a comedy anyway, but Amelia just sells the humour that little bit better for me than Lina or Gourry do, making her introduction a real shot in the arm for the series just when it was beginning to fall a bit flat.
The second half of the series leads the gang to the holy city of Sairaag, with some decent comedy episodes used to tell the story of how they get there. For starters, you'll laugh at Gourry's cross-dressing exploits (which became a 17th-episode "tradition" in the seasons following this) – he looks worryingly good in his Sailor Moon-style hairdo, and so it's no surprise when he starts gathering unwanted male attention. Lina and Amelia aren't about to give him much help, either. The other two comic episodes, which look at Lina's premature marriage to young rich kid Hallas Ryzu, and the gang's efforts to make a living on the stage, are both also good fun to watch. In all of these episodes, early-arc adversaries Zangulus (a swordsman who really just want to match skills with Gourry) and Vrumugun (a very ominous-looking sorcerer) all play at least some part, trying to persuade the gang to head for Sairaag, but they're not the main focus.
Once we get to Sairaag, though, the tone changes rather quickly as old friends and enemies re-appear – Zelgadis rejoins the gang, and the villain of the piece is soon revealed to be the thought-dead Red Priest, Rezo (..or is it?), who is joined by somewhat deranged sorceress Eris, erstwhile employer of Vrumugrun and Zangulus. There's also the introduction of a new character for Lina's team, priestess Sylphiel (a childhood friend of Gourry's – although typically it takes him a while to remember that – who still has the hots for him), who packs quite the magical punch herself and who ends up joining the gang when Rezo unleashes his own little apocalypse on the city. She comes across as quite a shy and quiet type, but she fits in well with the rest of Lina's group and is a nice addition.
How did Rezo survive Shabranigdo's destruction? Just what is he after now? How did he get to Sairaag, so far away from the scene of his last battle? And how did he get to be so freaking powerful? Err, pass. Some of these questions are touched upon, but you're not going to get any definitive answers from these episodes – Rezo's too busy trashing the place. But you can do some figuring out and guessing with the hints that are dropped. As for the other 'villains' - Zangulus has a point to prove to Gourry ("I'm harder than you!", essentially), Eris has a point to prove to the world, and Vrumugrun.. well, he just pops up to cause some magical mayhem every so often. These three are all powerful up to a point, and keen to prove it against a group that have so far easily dealt with every challenge placed in front of them – namely, Lina and co. That's been the thinking behind luring them to Sairaag and then into Rezo's labyrinth, and as an excuse for some good action scenes it works well. There's even a decent dose of comedy in there, especially with the appearance of Tiiba, a monster who looks suspiciously like a chicken and who gets coerced into guiding Lina and the others through Rezo's lab.
All this never really feels like the main event, though – you know that Rezo's waiting in the background, the person who's going to be the last one to be faced and who will no doubt be the real challenge. How we get to that point is a surprise, but get there we do – and the closing arc almost instantly goes from "meh" to "woah!". Unlike his original, you see, Rezo is able to keep control of his own personality after summoning and being possessed by the demon Zanaffar – the power of the demon beast is there, but it's firmly contained, and only used by Rezo in pursuit of his own aims. If he can defeat Lina and the others, he'll have surpassed his original and staked his own claim to immortality, and he doesn't mess about in pursuing that goal. At times, it does genuinely look as though the good guys could lose, especially with Lina reluctant to use the Giga Slave again – she spends the best part of an episode unconscious while Sylphiel tries to heal her wounds, for example. For once, there's real tension in the story as they work out a way to tackle Rezo that has a chance of succeeding, and it makes the closing episodes riveting viewing.
It's not quite perfect, though. When a way to defeat Rezo presents itself, you almost want to yell at the screen thanks to the "oh, that's convenient" way in which it's introduced, while the arrival of Prince Phil on the scene brings a dose of comedy that really feels out of place, given the battle that's going on, and breaks the tension when it really shouldn't have been. The series does also suffer from its age a little – I'm so used to seeing flash, CG eye-candy for my end-of-season climaxes now that Slayers managed to look a little primitive, and certainly less impressive than it did the first time I saw it (many years ago…). Sometimes the onward march of technology isn't kind. One thing Slayers always tries to do, though, is give its season-ending battles a truly epic feel – it's not a one-on-one battle between good and evil, but a conflict between a group of people who are powerful enough to level cities and slay gods, and despite the flaws that are undoubtedly here, that feeling is captured really well. There's really not much else that does comic fantasy quite this well.
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' love-it-or-hate-it reputation this set is probably a poster-child for "try before you buy" – if you rent & enjoy the first disc in the set, you're safe to buy the rest of the series; if not, there's no money wasted. 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.
For full episode summaries and screenshots, check out the reviews of the individual releases:
» Volume 1
» Volume 2
» Volume 3
» Volume 4
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