Slayers OVA

[meganbmoore]

I watched two episodes.  It took less than an hour.  It felt like five.  There's was serious danger of my love for Lina  being chipped away at, and I'd rather leave it whole and shiny.  Like my love for Slayers.

Actually, Lina herself wasn't so bad as far as things go, but that character had no business calling herself Lina Inverse.  All of Lina's

Comments

[inversecalico]

TokyoPop is in the process of releasing the original novels. The first two seasons of the anime basically correspond to them. The ones that I've read have been light, easy, breezy reading written from Lina's POV. I enjoyed them and there were some LOL moments, but they're not exactly world changing.

Some of the manga have been licensed, but I believe they may be out of print now or their companies out of business. Something that makes them difficult to locate. I found them to be kinda mediocre anyway as far as manga fare goes.

[meganbmoore]

Ah. I'll probably just try to find the novels, then.

[sanada]

The novels are really cute. They're quick reads but some of the more annoying anime-only characters/episodes are absent and the translation is well-done and often witty (unlike some of the truly painful Gundam novels I've read...) The only problem is that I think Tokyopop is in a sort of limbo with the Slayers novels - they weren't marketed very well, so sales were low, and I'm not sure if they're going to continue releasing beyond volume 8 in the near future. At least they finished the story arc. The manga isn't bad, but there's not much that you haven't seen before and they can be kind of hard to find. I think it's the animation and voice acting (both Japanese and English) that really brings Slayers to life, no matter how much fans bitch about the English dub.

[meganbmoore]

"They're quick reads but some of the more annoying anime-only characters/episodes are absent "

Meaning no annoying princess or fox guy, I hope. (Sadly, no Filia, either, as I understand she was created for season 3)

I started watching anime with only dubs, so I always just leave a disc on whatever language it defaults too(barring bad subs or teethgrinding dubs) so I end up watching most animes about half and half. The Slayers dubs (for the main cast, at least) were all pretty good, I thought. Actually, I kept thinking of Xellos's English voice as the main character yesterday when I was reading Nightmares for Sale. And the character made me think somewhat of D from Petshop of Horrors, meaning there was an odd, 3-way crossover fic going on in my head while I was reading.

[sanada]

Wow, I think we're the only people in the universe who like dub Xellos. I think his Japanese voice is *better*, but soft-and-creepy doesn't work nearly as well in English as nasal-and-irritating does. Hehehe, oh that is a bizarre crossover but on some twisted level it works...

[meganbmoore]

Yeah, "soft and creepy" in English tends to set off stalker/pedophile alerts. "Nasal and irritating" makes you want to dismiss the character out of hand, until you realize that it's also sly and calculating, so you start paying attention.

The crossover was interesting. There was much plotting and muted chuckling and cackling, not to mention handwaving and covering the mouth. And tea, I think. IIRC (since it WAS what I was reading at the time) Maria showed up at the end and destroyed all their fragile male egos with a few words. It seems to be what she does.

This reminds me that I need to start watching for the Petshop sequel in stores...

[therck]

I do recommend the fics I mentioned earlier, particularly this one. That one is very, very good.

The one with Sylphiel and Copy Rezo is pretty good, too, if you like that sort of story, but I don't recommend it as highly.

[meganbmoore]

I'm actually not sure yet if I'll be checking out Slayers fic.

[bzoppa]

I watched a few of the OVA available from netflix until I realized I didn't have to watch absolutely everything about the series.

I will recommend trying to find a copy of Slayers Premium, you can probably youtube or whatever methods you have. It's a short episode that came out in 2001 (a good three years after the last influx of Slayers material). The animation is a little different but I liked it, it's cleaner and the characters are a little younger/smaller. Gourry/Lina have some really good lines and I don't think you'll be wishing you had those 20 minutes back after you finish watching it. (As I felt after a couple of those OVAs.)

[meganbmoore]

I want that hour of my life back. I also want what was no doubt meant to be a sexy image of a naked, extremely young, sleeping Lina burned from my brain.