Slayers Excellent (1998-1999) Anime OVA Series Review

Slayers Excellent is a comedy fantasy anime OVA series directed by Hiroshi Watanabe and written by Keiko Watanabe, basing his scripts on light novels by Hajime Kanzaka. The cast includes Megumi Hayashibara, Maria Kawamura, Sho Hayami, Aya Hisakawa and Kumiko Watanabe. Released from October 25th 1998 to March 25th 1999, it was the very last Slayers prequel series during this time and it was one of the last gasps of the franchise as it was squeezed by executives ever since 1995.

With this one being a prequel the first episode, Laberynth, shows how Lina and Naga met. Naga interrupts Lina's meal at a diner by making it blow up in flames, revealing that the busty sorceress is obsessed with the little redhead and wants to forcefully become some sort of rival to her. The angry villagers want the girls to inspect some haunted ruins where a vampire lives. In the second episode, A Frightening Future, Lina becomes the bodyguard of a spoiled princess and stages a fake kidnapping to teach her a lesson but Naga ruins things by defeating the false bandits. In the third and final episode, Lina-chan's Lovely Makeover Operation, Lina and Naga face off once again after two rival fashion designers engage in warfare.

Excellent excels at the combination of goofy antics and fantasy-adventure quests and worldbuilding. The first episode is such a pitch perfect introduction to the entire Slayers franchise that it can actually be a good first impression if this is your first exposure to the show, even if it is one of the last classic entries. The interactions between Lina and Naga are better than ever, with every comedic moment revealing something about them and the nature of their relationship. The jokes all land since they also show us a facet of the characters and even expands upon what we already thought we knew about them, like seeing Naga with shoulder spikes that she would later remove for example.

The tightly written episodes, specially the first one, really wrap everything in a nice structure that lets the humorous factor infect every plot beat, but never actually becoming intrusive as the payoffs to these jokes are exactly what create the fabric of the world and tone of the franchise, so if a climactic battle has to be cut short for a laugh, then it's more than valid considering that the writers made sure the action department already did its job at building the tension only to be released in a comedic way, so it's relieving either way.

It kind of feels like they knew this one was gonna be the last one, certainly the last one in the mini-series because not only does the final scene encapsulate what is charming about these characters but also gives Lina a moment that ultimately conveys how much fun she has even though the antics can irritate her from time to time she always has a great time, and so do we.

This is a very nice "until next time" that the franchise did before going on a temporary hiatus and coming back later in the following decade. It's one of my favorite Slayers series and the one I first watched back when I got started in the franchise. I think that if you are new to Slayers it will charm you and make you a fan. Worked for me, at least. Highly recommended.

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.