Slayers: The Motion Picture ADV 75 minutes Japanese English Subtitles Released: 02/08/2000 Reviewed: 04/12/2005

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I've got a relatively massive anime collection. When I say "relatively massive" I mean I've got well over five hundred DVDs. The funny thing is that of that "relatively massive" number, only about 5-10% of them are anything that even remotely resembles something watchable. It's a weird sort of situation I've gotten myself into, but I guess everyone's a masochist in their own way. At least I don't have a curious predilection towards chastity belts or ball gags. Slayers is something in that category. Something I spirit away to the two binders of DVDs I leave under the couch and try mention as little as possible. While I don't find it as outrageous to my senses as something like Harumi's Excellent Anal Adventure it's still not exactly what I'd unveil to polite company. I was never in the exact mind set to enjoy fantasy anime anyway, which doesn't help, but I guess if that's your thing then Slayers is probably one of the more reasonable things you'll find to do with your time when you're not too busy gluing together plastic models of chicks from harem shows and masturbating to the aforementioned Colonic Constitutional.

I'm sure normal people watch Slayers too. I just don't know any of them. The series, for those that don't know, involves the misadventures of a gang of "antiheroes" that travel around saving the good people of the world... for a price. It's split into two continuities, the one were examining here consists of the travels of two sorceresses, Lina Inverse and Nahga the Serpent, as their wind their way around an enchanted island where mythical elves once made their home. Through their travels the girls belch out excessive names for spells like "Explosion Array" that would only sound cool if an impetuous young robot pilot was hollering them at the top of his lungs while trying to battle back the forces of hell, which are comprised of lizards who make their home at the red hot center of the earth. What's irritating about these spells are they are used for the dual purpose of killing the bad guys and "hilarious" slapstick comedy. Lina is just as likely to use her Flaming Arrow to dispatch a team of bandits as she is to wake her lazy partner up in the morning. I don't get it.

If you've been living under an anime-free rock for your entire life (lucky dog) then I'll clue you in on the running joke of Slayers: Lina has small breasts. That's it. Of course, small breasts to an anime character is a hideous misnomer by the standards of any normal person, so the gag kind of falls flat. Lina fills out her tunic rather well and such humor is lost on the common man who won't understand why these people are defiling the poor girl's sensibilities. If Lina has small breasts, then so do 90% of the women in the world. Isn't this behavior usually restricted to picture posts in Counterstrike forums where pimply fourteen year olds rail on any woman who doesn't resemble Farrah Fawcett circa 1976. It's an old, stupid joke that just bores me. The rest of the "boring" in this thing comes from the fact that Slayers can never decide whether it's a straight faced fantasy epic or a total lampoon. Cute scenes with the slimes from Dragon Warrior and enemies that refer to themselves with laughably generic titles like "Sorcerer A" and "The fifth strongest man" put the viewer in the mood to just sit back and have a few laughs at the fantasy genre's expense. These contrast wildly with dramatic battles against demons of the underworld where the heroine is getting her arm impaled by evil demon spikes. Generally the TV series from which this spawns would at least keep the two in separate episodes. There is no such focus on decorum here.

The dub doesn't help matters either. It's packed to the brim with annoying references to Dragonball, Dragonhalf and a host of other crap I don't want to hear about and am entirely sure did not exist in the original copy. When the main villain, who's actually a relatively cool looking lizard guy, introduces himself as "Joyrock, Michigan J." it just about tore it for me. When he belted out "Sufferin' Succotash!" it DID tear it for me. Slayers just seems like a pain in the ass to watch. It's very pretty, the character designs generally have something going for them, but it's just so dumb. It's not even offensive, just bland. Like a beautiful soup that tastes like cardboard, or the sexy woman to whom I gave my number and now she won't call me back, so I've decided that she's probably mentally damaged or something. Nice exterior, pretty good concept, but fails entirely in the execution. I have better things to do than watch a movie that forces me to decide what genre it's in while it closes on a boob joke. Not much better, but you don't exactly have to reach for the sky to top something like this.