Slayers Gorgeous (1998) Anime Movie Review

Slayers Gorgeous is a comedy fantasy anime film directed by Hiroshi Watanabe and written by Hajime Kanzaka. The cast includes Megumi Hayashibara, Maria Kawamura, Akira Kamiya, Kyoko Hikami and Junpei Takiguchi. Released on August 1st, 1998, on a double feature with Martian Successor Nadesico: The Motion Picture – Prince of Darkness, it was the very last Slayers prequel feature film to be released during this decade  and it was one of the last gasps of the franchise as it had been squeezed by executives ever since 1995.

Lina and Naga wander around a little town but they are surprised by the attack of a girl riding a gigantic dragon. Lina confronts her but she is stopped by one of the local guards. Turns out the girl riding the dragon is the King's daughter, Marlene, who decided to turn on her family and kingdom when her dad wouldn't give her enough money, using the kingdom's fleet of dragons to her advantage. Lina agrees to help the king stop her but Naga allies with the dragon princess looking to gain something out of it.

Instead of a sprawling adventure with a variety of environments and places we have a very self-contained story secluded to a few locations inside a small kingdom. This is fine as we get a tightly constructed script involving the royal family feud with the help of the girls on each side. Relying more on strategy and the cleverness of each side rather than discovering a mystery or something. Naga joining the villain's side is a bit too automatic though, taken for granted, but coherent if you already know the character. It doesn't even feel like a retreat of Slayers Great because there was more of a motivation there but it still works here as it never goes against what the characters are. It all makes sense.

The combat sequences are more focused and rely more heavily on the characters game plans and the construction of the motion and position of the characters rather than discontinuous shots of violence at a grand scale like other fantasy or action shows do when it comes to storyboarding and direction. In a similar fashion to Slayers Return, we have more intricate action sequences in which the animators can skillfully pull you into the set-piece without lazy bombasticness. Not only that, but the humour is solid enough and is incorporated into the animation with ease, as usual for the Slayers franchise, but because of the purity of the premise it stands out even more in this highly comedic plot that doesn't take itself seriously at all, making fun of itself at every chance.

The new characters are enjoyable and are the perfect comedy fodder that Slayers often takes full comedic advantage of. A spoiled brat like Marlene only could have worked in this series in a way that you both like her and find her brattiness funny and not annoying in any way. They accomplish this by both her well built characterization and her hilarious failures.

A very cool Slayers entry. The prequel movies go out with a bang in this funny and charming little film. Completely recommended.

Knights (1993) Movie Review

Knights is a 1993 post-apocalyptic action sci-fi martial arts movie written and directed by Albert Pyun, starring kickboxer Kathy Long, Kris Kristofferson, Scott Paulin, Gary Daniels and Lance Henriksen. Shot in Utah and distributed by Paramount straight to the home video market, the film is now considered to be one of the most likable Pyun movies and one of the movies that best exemplify his work, especially when it comes to his muscular female leads in action roles.

In a futuristic and technologically advanced dystopian world, Job and his army of cyborgs enslave and capture humans to feed off of them. Nea (Long) is rescued by a cyborg named Gabriel (Kristofferson), a good cyborg who was created to get rid of the evil cyborgs, and trains her to become a killer of half-human machines. 

This is an insane and wild post-apocalyptic wasteland movie about the human capabilities for survival in the face of devastation and destruction of order and civilization, an idea incarnated in the human of flesh and blood who fights for the survival and well being of captive humans against humanoid but technically perfect and enhanced cyborgs, a cyborg killer. All with a wonderful female lead who grows and becomes a badass with a fantastic final battle that's extended to unbelievable lengths. 

Long is quite great in the title role but she kind of gets her action role activated somewhat late into the movie after her training. However, when the violence starts, it stretches itself all throughout a long climactic battle with an unstable array of punches, kicks, martial arts throws and stabbings to the max. It's a show that delights and amazes by its perfect handling of the timing and millimetrical editing to achieve the maximum effect. Pyun was a master at action and the choreography in this movie lives up to his reputation. He shoots the film like sci-fi wasteland fever dream with his wide angle lens close to the actor's faces and extravagant but precise shot compositions.

The plot itself is simple and straightforward, which is very helpful when it's concentrated on driving the action to the next place and when Pyun gets a good excuse to throw in some nice physical artistry he is known for but when it's introducing the setting and the characters it might get a little messy, that's mostly because the physicality, the movements and bodies Pyun focuses on, exists in the filmmakers work before the story concerns or plot. 

It achieves a rough look quite well in this dirty and ravaged setting, but everything is technically polished and has some more than functional practical special effects that aesthetically add a lot to the grungy and unclean post-apocalyptic world the film takes place in. So it all has a very proper appearance, something that's quite impressive given its low budget.

A totally recommended movie for anyone looking for a relentless action flick if they can stomach some low budget oddities and a wild tone.

Slayers Special (1996-1997) Anime OVA Series Review

Slayers Special (also known as Slayers: Dragon Slave, Slayers: Explosion Array and Slayers: The Book of Spells) is a comedy fantasy OVA series directed by Hiroshi Watanabe and written by Hajime Kanzaka. The series was released from 1996 to 1997 and consists of three self-conclusive stories featuring Lina Inverse and Naga the Serpent, these stories are adaptations of the light novel series of the same name also written by Kanzaka himself. The cast includes Megumi Hayashibara, Maria Kawamura, Akira Ishida, Rihoko Yoshida, Shigezô Sasaoka, Ryûzaburô Ôtomo, Hidekatsu Shibata and Banjô Ginga.

The first episode, The Scary Chimera Plan, is a humorous tale of an alchemist wanting to create a super chimera with Lina's resemblance, when she refuses he goes after her with ten Naga clones who get along with the original and a lot of silliness ensues. The second one, Jeffrey's Knighthood, shows Lina and Naga being hired by a mother to accompany her son in an adventure. The problem is, the young man isn't made for any type of quest or battle. In the third and final episode, Mirror, Mirror, our two sorceresses are after a magician with a bounty on him but the sorcerer creates copies of the girls using an ancient mirror. These copies are the exact opposite in personality, soft and meek, and become a nuisance to them.

This is a solid trio of episodes put together that follows the adventures of our two favorite sorceresses in the franchise. All of the episodes are clever, imaginative and have nicely constructed narratives that encompass the quintessential elements that give Slayers its unique and singular appeal, these charismatic characters trapped in a sea of dumb and creative shenanigans in a fascinating fantasy setting. It's top of the line.

While the episodes are grouped together there is zero real connection between them and they could have easily been their own movie each one, but I think it was a wise decision to keep them shorter and made them tighter so they don't run for too long and the comedy shines better because of this as well, making this three-chapter OVA very much worth a watch due to the completely efficient and refined storytelling method of Slayers by director Watanabe, who by now surely got the hang of the Slayers narrative sensitivities and got it down to a science.

It relies very heavily on both your prior knowledge of the characters and their relationship, one that's odd to begin with because it fluctuates so much from story to story and within a single story, but it takes advantage of this last fact by playing around with comedic ways to solve the plots while having the protagonists clash often and to turn the tables on the antagonists in rather unpredictable ways. The fact that it's an episodic mini-series allows it to have more freedom and less gravity in its tone. If there are similarities between the episodes then those would be the recurrency of copies or clones of Lina and Naga, and the fact that you can't do most of these stories without magic, which makes sense as Slayers always relied on magic, but these specific chapters rely on it at their core and couldn't be solved nor initiated in any other way. 

Totally recommended for any Slayers enthusiast and particularly those who enjoy the comedic duo that Lina and Naga make. This is a trio of funny and well animated stories.