Slayers

I remember as a child, my mom got me Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie on a library rental; in the bonus features was a trailer for Slayers: The Motion Picture. I watched that trailer over and over, being in love with the song.

Years later (actually, this was 10 years ago! I would've been 13 at the time) I recalled that trailer and song, and found the whole film available on YouTube to watch. It was amazing - met my expectations! Beautiful main characters, good humor, exciting action, well-added drama...

The English dub was excellent, as well. Cynthia Martinez really brings out Lina Inverse's fiestiness; while I expected Naga to sound more seductive, I appreciated the haughtiness to her voice, brought by Kelly Manison. Upon my first viewing, I was wondering if these characters, given by their names, were really meant to be European, and also if Naga's laugh sounds like the original Japanese. It turned out I might as well be right!

I also learned afterwards that this is based on an anime series. Thankfully, you don't even need to watch it first in order to understand this. It's short, sweet, and stands as its own. And if it wasn't for The Motion Picture, I wouldn't have checked out and fallen in love with the Slayers show.

I went through a period of time when I was obsessed with the theme, "Midnight Blue" by Megumi Hayashibara (Lina's original voice actress). I'd listen to it endlessly, much to the annoyance of my family!

I love this movie so much, I added it to my Christmas list in 2015, and got it on DVD in the mail.

É um filme que não é muito ruim, se não dormir, dá para assistir. It's a movie that's not too bad, if you don't sleep, you can watch it.

Slayers is one of those things that's been on the list of "something I should probably watch one day" given it was one of those cornerstone 90's anime that all my friends love. The opportunity presented itself for me to watch this today, and I took it, making it the first piece of Slayers media I've ever seen.

And it's fun! But also kind of weird, in the way movies based on series tend to be, where the first half of this movie is basically just all these little vignettes where villains queue up one by one to get destroyed by Lina and Naga in a single hit. It's breezy and it's funny, don't get me wrong, but it does feel like it goes on a little too long for a bunch of dudes that are ultimately inconsequential.

When the movie finally starts moving on its central plot, it almost feels begrudgingly so. But at least it's well-established that Lina and Naga are basically unstoppable, so that when a credible threat emerges, it's that much more impressive.

The glue that holds all of this together is the animation, which is A+ prime 90's anime gold. The monsters, the spell effects, all of it is gorgeous, and there's something about the hand-painted cels on real film stock that makes it feel that much sharper and more colorful than a lot of modern digitally-produced anime. This era of anime at its peak in terms of look and style.

Also, count me among the many who are amazed that Naga, a pretty iconic Slayers character, only ever appears in these movies and is not from the actual Slayers series at all. Weird!

My son introduced me to anime not that long ago. Like most things, there's a lot of junk, but "Slayers, the Motion Picture" is definitely NOT junk! I was unaware that it was originally a tv series in Japan, but this movie can stand entirely on its own: Heroines, villains, good writing and characterization, great animation, and, finally, an evil foe with great power and no conscience whatsoever. I do have to agree with my son, though, that it's best to watch this movie with subtitles rather than dubbing. Dubbing cannot capture the same character qualities as the original- and often very witty- Japanese dialogue does.

Nahga the Serpent is a great addition to Slayers in that she brings another level of comedy with her. But what separates this film from the rest of the movies and the Specials is that Lina's and Nahga's adventure intertwine with the story of a human whos memories and quest are perhaps more important to the audience than that of the two sorceresses. Slayers the Motion Picture had everything I wanted from a Slayers film and more: love, heroism, wit, adventure, and comedy.