Slayers Try (1997) Anime Series Review

Slayers Try is a 1997 fantasy anime TV series and is the third one in the Slayers franchise created by Hajime Kanzaka. We talked about the previous seasons here but Try is different in the sense that it's the first Slayers show that doesn't pull from the original light novels to craft its main storyline. In fact, this series is 100% original material by Kanzaka. It's also directed by series regular Takashi Watanabe, with fundamental contributions by artists like Rui Araizumi and Katsumi Hasegawa. This season isn't often as mentioned and remembered as the previous one but it has its fair share of nice moments. 

Lina and company meet a strange woman named Filia who wants to hire the team. She puts them to the test and turns into a golden dragon, Lina's powerful spell she summoned to destroy the golden dragon ends up creating a huge tsunami that annihilates the port they sailed from. Filia comes back to tell Lina that her sister has a very important mission to accomplish: stop the possible destruction of their world. So they decide to embark to the outer world outside of their realm.

Making one of the means of transportation a ship, this change from land to sea, was a very obvious and kind of cheap trick to do something innovative but it works wonders and helps to change things up a bit, giving us also more variety in settings than before since we are now able to witness a wider variety of locations and places by going outside their known land. Lina and friends encounter fantasy creatures, more powerful magicians, kingdoms at war and much more since now they are even more out of their element.

The hilarious slapstick antics and shenanigans also reappear with precise execution, the animation is a bit slicker and the overall technical quality either stays the same or improves in this season. The structure of the episodes and the overall macro structure of the season is practically the same as always, with enough balance between somewhat self-conclusive episodes that have a very particular set up and payoff, usually comedic, and the multi-part story heavy episodes that require more amounts of exposition of lore but never going overboard with it. While everything seems more streamlined and there's less room for side-quests, there are a few of those that are very reminiscent of the previous seasons like the Alice in Wonderland episode, the Super Sentai parody or the romantic one with the fish people. 

During the more intense fights and magical combats the show keeps itself firmly serious and a bit sober, but since these episodes abound in this season they try to space them out and give us some tonal variety with some of the other characters while the main action goes on or during certain intervals featuring comedic moments. It’s all helped by a brisk pace and a good balance of dramatic elements around 26 episodes and very little filler. 

Filia adds more to the character dynamics by keeping the group in check and also with her rivalry with Xelloss. She is kind of like the opposite of Martina from Next, in that she helps the team and supports them and guides them but ultimately has some friction and conflicts with them on occasion, setting up some very funny jokes along the way. This makes her a different companion and alters the dynamic between the group. So she is a nice new addition. 

Overall, I would totally recommend Try to anyone who had a good time with Next and the original series since it continues what was presented in those shows leaving the core intact but with enough refreshing components to make it feel like an advancement instead of a step back.

Supergirl (1984) Movie Review

Supergirl is a fantasy superhero movie released in 1984 and directed by Jeannot Szwarc. The film was made to expand the Superman franchise, which had gotten a very respectable success with the 1978 feature film directed by Richard Donner. The rights to the franchise were picked up by Alexander and Ilya Salkind, who also got the rights to Supergirl in the seventies and decided to go ahead and produce a blockbuster film based on the character as a spin-off. With a 35 million dollar budget, the film starred Helen Slater as Supergirl, Faye Dunaway as Selena, Hart Bochner, Peter Cook, Mia Farrow, Brenda Vaccaro, and Peter O'Toole, Marc McClure came back as Jimmy Olsen from the other Superman movies. The film underperformed at the box office and it was one of the reasons why the franchise was sold to The Cannon Group later on.

Kara Zor-El lives in Argo City, a place filled with survivors of Krypton. She is given a mystical object known as the Omegahedron by a wizard but she loses it. The orb lands on planet Earth and she embarks on a quest to retrieve it. Selena, a malicious witch, picks up the orb and decides to use it to her own advantage. Kara arrives on Earth and discovers the powers the planet's environment grants her, exactly like Superman. She goes to school and gets new friends, posing as Clark Kent's cousin. All goes well for the kriptonian girl, but things change when the fiendish Selena sets her eyes on Supergirl.

Supergirl is a very hard beast to tackle properly since its backstory conditions most of its components. It's a mix between sensibilities that tried to relaunch camp and fantasy with a new honest appreciation for the source. The movie itself seems to be lost between different settings and cultural elements that intertwine without much cohesion or sense. The oddity begins with the dissimilar styles of fashion, costumes and tone throughout. While the campiness of the source material was acknowledged by the Superman movies made up to this point, this is probably at that stage where they were really trying to jam in some of the self-aware cheesiness with goofy jokes and slightly corny lines but I gotta say that it's all balanced pretty well. The performers bring some naturalism and deliver the lines in a believable fashion, the music adds seriousness to the scenarios and the script, while a bit shaky, isn't half bad.

There's some beautiful cinematography at work here with some lovely high contrast, soft-focus images decorated with gleams and glints, the high key lighting gives this a very soothing and approachable look and the vibrant colors infuse it with some personality and make it stand out. The very intricate special effects add a sense of grandeur, these impressive practical VFX elevate the rather pedestrian material and conception of most of the action while delivering the joy we expect out of a superhero movie post-1978 Superman. The ending is particularly amazing with a lot of visual stylization, the art department and set department really did a fantastic job in this aspect. The comic book origins aren't betrayed since we still get a lot of outlandish sets and almost baroque ornamentation in some shots, at several points the frame is filled with details and elements that add life to the shot.

Some elements keep it from achieving its full potential though. The apparent disconnection of the antagonistic factions and the slap-dash, nearly episodic nature of the narrative almost give this one the feeling of a stretched out TV pilot instead of a tightly written feature film, this is also because Supergirl herself doesn't really have a goal to accomplish with any urgency, being thrown into a different environment she has to adapt to and gets to know in a variety of ways. This sounds more like a TV series setting to me.

One thing I enjoyed very much is how they turned the Supergirl story into a fairy tale, not only with its whimsical tone applied to a coming of age story but also because of the villainess being an evil witch jealous of a younger girl who is the embodiment of purity and goodness. It's a very clever and imaginative way to both do something unique with the character but also tie it to the childish sense of wonder of those old stories while still being relatively faithful to the essence of the comics.

It's very much recommended for those who are into the character as well as those who enjoy some cheesy eighties movies back when there was a lot of merit and fun with these summer blockbuster films. If you feel like it needs a rewatch I would suggest to go ahead, it certainly kept a lot of the virtues and also improved in some ways since I last watched it.