Slayers: The Motion Picture (Special Fifth Year Anniversary Review)

While traveling the countryside, dreaded sorceress Lina Inverse and her on/off again nemesis Naga the Serpent win a trip to the fog shrouded island of Mipross.  Between bewitched hotsprings and non stop powerful warriors with prices on their heads, it looks like a genuine vacation for these two magnets of trouble.  However, Lina’s been having dreams of a life not her own, the tragic love story of an elf and a young man, whose lives and home were torn apart by a powerful demon.  Now the great sage Rowdy has reached out to Lina to put an end to the demon who has ruined Mipross, Joyrock, and restore the island to its former glory.  The price of victory: access to a hotspring that could solve Linas endowment issues.  If there’s demons to slay, wizards to bust up and food to be had, The Slayers are on the case.

Watch enough Anime series and youre bound to stumble across a movie version of it eventually.  Even shows that run really short lengths are bound to have a theatrical release out there, especially if theyre popular.  Well you better believe Slayers was popular enough to merit a slew of movies.  And today for the 5^th Anniversary of the Gundam Anime Corner (plus since we’re spending so much time with them this year in general), I’m tackling the first of these theatrical features (the only one I own and have seen).  So, how is Lina Inverse’s first foray into movie stardom?  Does it match the heights of the first two seasons we’ve covered so far?

 

Like the other films and OVAs that follow, the events of Slayers: The Motion Picture act as a prequel to the TV Series.  As such, the only regular character starring here from the show is Lina herself (makes sense, it is her show after all).  So anyone expecting to see Gourry, Zelgadis, Amelia and Xellos popping up might be a little let down.  However, The Motion Picture makes up for this greatly by doing the reverse, introducing a character who doesn’t appear in the TV Series.  Naga the Serpent is a perfect foil for Lina.  She’s busty, taller, more theatrical in her mannerisms and she’s got plenty of sex appeal to get anyones attention.  The two characters play off each other quite well, both as temporary adversaries and as friends (textbook frenemies really).  Naga can go over the top, especially with her trademark laugh, but she never feels like she doesn’t belong here, even stealing the show in certain scenes.  Which makes it strange that Naga is all but absent from the big climax of the movie.

 

Slayers: The Motion Picture bears the look of a theatrical film with all the right elements in place.  The animation looks touched up from the TV Series, surpassing the improved quality of Slayers Next.  There is a good amount of equal parts action and humor present, it feels like a Slayers story, albeit it takes a serious turn in the second half.  Though in terms of structure, the film is very uneven.  The first half sees Lina and Naga basically cleaning house with various powerhouses on the island, warriors and wizards, before Lina has a continuing dream about a young romance that isn’t her own.  This repeats itself at least three times before the halfway mark hits and we get to the “true” story…at which point there’s only half an hour left in the film.  While the action does look good, and the spell work looks sooo much better than the TV series, especially any of Naga’s more elegant spells and Lina’s always awesome Dragon Slave, the second act moves super fast, as if trying to quickly wrap things up just as theyre getting started.  In the process it leaves a few questions unanswered while not allowing adequate time to explore other possibilities.  We get time travel, a character who has a tenuous possible connection to a series favorite, and a tragic history all fighting for equal amounts screentime before the movie is over.  I feel like this movie could have been an extra 15 minutes long to fix all of this.  Also, in the end, while the final battle feels epic enough, especially with the time travel factor included, the movie never rises above a standard Slayers TV episode, it even has the makings of a small island arc if you were to have Lina and Naga take on their many opponents one at a time per episode.  Some moments feel big thanks to the animation and genuine sense of excitement, I just know some episodes of the first two seasons did the same thing and with more room to breathe with their storytelling.

When “Midnight Blue”, the end theme song of the movie starts playing, I should have felt like an hour of my life had been wasted because Slayers: The Motion Picture does feel a bit rushed and incomplete.  If anything, the theme song is one of the best parts of the film because it sounds awesome and yet it leaves me wanting more.  If anything, I can actually give the movie points for that.  Were this my entry to Slayers, it would make me want to seek out the series, the other movies or the OVA to watch more Lina Inverse action (though id likely be disappointed Naga isn’t around in the show…yet anyway).  Slayers: The Motion Picture feels like a solid arc of the Slayers TV Series rushed into a one hour feature.  There’s good ideas, fun action and the fantastic comradery shared between Lina and Naga.  In the end, I don’t hate the movie, in fact it could almost be a guilty pleasure.  As a movie, it stops its run just as it gets good and rushes to an ending.  As a time killer, it isn’t bad and will at least get your interest piqued, a great gateway to one of the now underrated Anime Classics of all time.  It could have been better and ive seen better by this point.  Maybe I will seek out the rest of the films one day.  And I should probably wrap this review up with a score.

 

Slayers: The Motion Picture gets…a 6/10-Good Animation and a fun pairing of zany characters can only do so much when the movie takes its time in the beginning then rushes the end, though there is some fun to be had along the way.

Lina Inverse and her normal crew of misfits will return to the Gundam Anime Corner at the end of April with Slayers Try.  And keep an eye out for my back to back coverage of the 4^th and 5^th Seasons, Slayers Revolution and Slayers Evolution-R, coming later this year.  And thank you dear reader for checking out my blog and celebrating my fifth year of typing all of these reviews.  I’m hoping Year 6 is the best one yet…and many more to come.