Slayers

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.

The English dubbed version of the Japanese 'Slayers - Gorgeous'. Although some of the dubbing was really badly done (ex. Dill Brand = Explosion Array, Dragon Slave spell was mixed up), and Lina's Seiyuu (voice actress) got kinda annoying after a while, it was overall a solid effort and was another great success in a great series... Slayers!

Lisa Ortz (Lina's regular Seiyuu) was off recording Record Of Lodoss War - Chronicles of the Heroic Knight when this was being dubbed, so they had to get someone else. Naga's Seiyuu was, however, a true tribute to her Japanese voice!

If your looking for a good time with a couple of smart-ass gals who like to blow stuff up, welcome to 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.

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!

Had never seen any of the series before, so this was my trial run...

Damn, that was funny. I love the way the Nahga and Lina play off each other (and how everyone feels the need to point out the obvious physical differences between them). The battles are well done, and often to comedic ends (look at the whole battle at the docks).

A well done, simple anime flick.

I highly recommended the DVD... original Japanese dialog with subtitles always strikes me as better than dub.