Review: Slayers Box Set

Unfortunately one of the things she picked up in the raid turns out to be extraordinarily valuable... if only she knew which one it was!

And so we lead into a labyrithine plot to prevent the resurrection of the Demon Lord Shabranigdo (think "Satan incarnate")... with lots of laughs along the way.

There is an updated release which fixes these problems (although the phase inversion is still present with some episodes, this is being fixed with a reissue). However, Australian anime fans are advised to purchase the R4 release planned towards the end of this year.

OK, on to the review proper.

Slayers is a comedy first and foremost. It does get serious from time to time. However, when it does, it usually takes time-out for a self-deprecating aside. All is doom... the world is about to end... and Lina announces that there is only one thing that they can do... which is to have dinner at a nice restaurant.

The anime consistently pokes fun at itself and at fantasy archetypes in general. For example, in the first episode Lina is about to fry a group of bandits who are attacking her when Gourry crops up to "rescue" her. She's about to help in the fight when she stops to think that, no, she's being rescued and so should act appropriately shrieky and afraid. :-)

The humour varies from the obvious (Lina's obsession with food) to the weird (the aforementioned poking fun at the fantasy genre) to the truly bizarre. Much of it is driven by the characters of the main protagonists - Lina as the greedy, brash but ultimately goodhearted "munchkin" sorceror and Gourry as the clueless but competent sword-swinger. Minor characters also play a great part, from Prince Phil, a pacifist who can mix it with the best of them ("Pacifist CRUSH!"), to Zelgadis, who principally plays the straight man to Lina's antics.

The series follows a couple of story arcs; there are occasional one-off episodes, particularly in the second half of the series, but for the most part there's a logical progression. For the most part it's pretty light stuff, with the occasional earth-shattering catastrophe thrown in.

Essentially it's a pretty funny series, with lots of variety, interesting characters, decent plot and a rich background. It's rare for it to be extremely funny, but it is consistently funny. I found the Ranma series funnier, but Ranma is far more episodic with a much thinner plot, whereas Slayers has more depth.

Animation is of decent quality - not outstanding, although there are oustanding moments, but the emphasis is on the humour and dialogue, not on the visuals. Some of the spell animations are spectacular.

The English dub is headed by Lisa Ortiz as Lina Inverse, who as usual does a sterling job. I honestly think she's the best anime voice actor for the English language around; I've never heard her in a dub I disliked. Unfortunately some of the others don't really suit their parts and drag down the English VA quality (it would be about a 9 if only Lina/Lisa were taken into account.) Note that some of the other actors are quite good, but the minor characters in particular fare badly. THe English dub is also a fairly decent translation of the Japanese.

The Japanese VA is similarly headed by Megumi Hayashibara, who similarly does an excellent job. Megumi, however, is backed by a superior cast for the other parts - unlike the English VA, there were no outstanding failures in the VA casting.

Other audio is of fairly standard quality for TV anime. Nothing terribly outstanding.

The Japanese track does suffer from a phase inversion issue; on my player this manifests as the stereo soundtrack playing through the rear speakers, which I found bearable but others do not. The introductory note for this review discusses this a little more.

Packaging is a mixed success. The box itself is reasonably sturdy, although the cover design is a little too "busy". The main problem is the actual DVD cases. The covers for the individual cases are better designed than the main box, but they have two problems. The first is that the DVD hub is of a design that is particularly easy to damage (and in fact did not survive shipping intact). The second is that the cover slips have material (such as episode titles) on the reverse, but the cases are black and hide all that detail.

DVD-ROM content includes: an art gallery, character gallery, English and Japanese cast details, additional pages from the graphic novel, character sketches, copies of some reviews of the series, and written versions of the the English VA interviews. The prize item is complete scripts for the English dub for the entire first series. So you, too, can act out a Slayers episode. :-)