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.

The Quick and the Dead (1995) Movie Review

The Quick and the Dead is a 1995 action western movie directed by Sam Raimi and written by Simon Moore (with contributions by Joss Whedon). It stars Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe and a young Leonardo DiCaprio. Originally written by Moore in 1992 as a tribute to earlier spaghetti westerns but with a female protagonist, Sharon Stone decided Sam Raimi should be the director after watching his work on Army of Darkness (1992) and the film got a slightly more campy tone in a similar vein to Raimi's other films in the Evil Dead series. While production company Sony wanted a less serious tone and hired John Sayles to do rewrites, Moore came back and pretty much stuck closer to his original vision regardless. The film became a notable box-office bomb when it was released but it has since been reevaluated as a good post-modernist western and a homage to the films of Sergio Leone.

A mysterious female gunslinger named Ellen "The Lady" McKenzie arrives to an old west town named Redemption to seek revenge on John Herod, a dangerous and criminal leader who runs the place. She enters a fast-draw shooting tournament Herod has set in order to win the prize. Ellen meets an ex-gang member turned priest and a young gunslinger as she blasts her opponents in this ruthless town.

Turns out Raimi's eclectic and kinetic style of constant movement and weird angles perfectly fits the artificial and unique cinematic conception of the western by the likes of Sergio Leone and other spaghetti western directors. This film delivers awesome action by creating several highly fragmented segments of events, actions and reactions and joining them together through editing in order to achieve a certain effect or convey some meaning. The dutch angles and zooms are done in such a way that very few other westerns, especially American ones, can even come close to, it's totally unfamiliar in that aspect.

The story and characters are portrayed in a very two dimensional cartoonish manner, following tropes and archetypes but slowly charging them with some gravitas or charm due to the performances. Stone's character is a perfect example as she is, on paper, a very basic character: the mysterious, silent loner who arrives at a violent town and disturbs the social order (this element is more radical here because she is a woman) but by the end it is revealed that she is looking for revenge as the characters personal relationships are exposed and explored. However, Stone is such a good performer that her stoicism works and is believable, which gives her character more of a presence and layers.

A fancy split diopter shot.

It's not a well rounded film, it's sometimes too clunky in its storytelling and pacing, slowing down at points or focusing on the least interesting parts of its storyline, but it has some top notch production design and art direction as well as cinematography and camera work (something expected from Raimi), elements that certainly help at giving the film not only very distinctive look but also to become slightly lyrical and beautiful at moments, details like the way they shoot the rain falling down or the large skies decorated with clouds are always a joy to gaze at. 

Very recommended for western movie fans since it will not only give you some expected action but it gives the conventions an interesting twist, creating the needed element of variation and originality that good movies from a genre need.

Slayers Great (1997) Anime Movie Review

Slayers Great is a 1997 fantasy anime movie directed by Hiroshi Watanabe and Kunihiko Yuyama. It was written by the creator of Slayers himself Hajime Kanzaka. The cast features the great Megumi Hayashibara, Maria Kawamura, Kikuko Inoue, Takehito Koyasu and Seizô Katô. Great was the third theatrical Slayers film and was released on august 2nd, 1997.

In this adventure, Lina and Naga meet and help a girl named Laia, who happens to be the daughter of a great golem maker. The sorceresses want a reward and go to the toymaker, Galia, who lacks inspiration. He wants to use Lina as a model as her appearance renews his inspiration. Huey, Galia's son, also makes golems and doesn't share his dad's vision of how to make them so he uses Naga as a model. The two golems then fight it out during a local event sponsored by feuding lords who want to control the town.

While a little smaller in scope and ambition when compared to the previous movies, this one is very polished in the animation department allowing for some very impactful and greatly animated golem-mecha battles between the overendowed Naga figure and the silly Lina doll, a hilarious contrast. This movie also shows us more intense and direct conflict between Lina and Naga, to the point where Naga becomes an antagonistic force for a lot of the runtime, this rivalry, which is never truly serious, is at the center of the storyline and even gives us a very awesome magic fight between Lina and Naga, something we haven't really seen before, at least in this level and taken this seriously (not really serious because ultimately it is cut-off comedically but for the most part it was played straight).

The short duration works to its advantage because of its good pacing and also because this is really a very long episode of the Slayers series, even more so than what we have seen before from the other films considering the fact that it's mostly restricted to a couple of settings, the lack of severity of its stakes and the overall lighthearted nature, filled to the brim jokes, all contribute to give this one a minor but more relaxed vibe that make it easily digestible.

I forgot to mention before but the soundtrack in these movies is a highlight, the music for almost all of the movies and OVAs was done by Takayuki Hattori and it's are quite sweet, with songs vocalized by the great Megumi Hayashibara as well. Listening to that alone should get you in the mood to watch this piece of classic anime cinema from the nineties along with the rest. As a whole, it's a perfect example, or time capsule, of this type of animated product due to its structure and manner of wacky but well done storytelling.

Totally recommended for any Slayers fan out there, even if you haven't delved deeper into the Slayers franchise you can still have a good time because of how simple and quick it is, it was definitely one of the first few Slayers movies I watched and it still holds up.