Game OVA Season 4: Episode 6 — Slayers

I've been looking for something to help me through the hot 'n' humid summer months and what better way to beat the heat than to stay indoors watching questionable anime and playing questionable games based on said anime? For a rundown of this little project, check out the first episode.

The Property

Slayers is a fantasy comedy light novel series created by Hajime Kanzaka that was adapted into anime and video games in the mid-'90s and beyond. It features the mildly psychopathic teenage sorceress Lina Inverse as she travels across the land nuking monsters, stealing treasure from bad guys, and gorging herself at various eateries. From 1989 the novels were serialized in Japan's Dragon magazine, a monthly periodical that focused on fantasy shounen but occasionally branched out into other genres, and were later collected and published as separate works. In 1995 it saw a long-running TV anime that was broken up into five seasons that collectively comprise just over 100 episodes. Three of these seasons—Slayers, Slayers Next, and Slayers Try—aired consecutively while the fourth and fifth seasons, Slayers Revolution 1 + 2, were reboots that arrived more than a decade after the third season ended. It also saw four movies and two short OVA seasons, most of which were released concurrently with the first three seasons of the show.

Since Slayers is set in a world riffing on fantasy RPGs like Dragon Quest and Sword World RPG (the Japanese equivalent of D&D and the TTG that led to Record of Lodoss War) there's been a few video game RPGs based on it too. The most notable one is the Super Famicom RPG that saw a fan translation (and will be our centerpiece here) while others include games for the PC98, the Saturn, and the PlayStation. We'll get into all those in the relevant section.

Slayers is something I've been meaning to get into for a hot second but its high popularity made it seem a bit out of place on Game OVA, which typically explores obscure underdogs. Then I remembered that I've already covered City Hunter and Dirty Pair and Slayers is right about on that level. Plus, you gotta end a season on a big finale, right? So here we are, poised to learn more about how Slayers takes RPG clichés to school in much the same way isekai spoofs like KonoSuba would several decades later. Actually, I suspect the closest equivalent to this anime that I've seen is the equally Looney Tunes-coded fantasy parody Dragon Half, which was something else I bandied around as a possible Game OVA subject until I realized I'd already covered its only game a little (well, a long) ways back. Either way, I'm looking forward to both the anime and the game this time (a rarity) so let's get into it.

The Cast

Lina's the redhead up front, Gourry's the blond guy bottom left, Zelgadis is the gray-skinned dude top right. The top guy is Rezo, who appears in episode 3, and the other two I only recognized from the game: Sylphiel on the far left, Amelia on the bottom right.

Lina Inverse: A famous and powerful sorceress despite her young age, Lina is the protagonist of the show but not necessarily a virtuous soul. Her black magic spells are all sourced from demon lords and tend to be called things like "Dragon Slave" while her main motivations for her adventuring are money and fine dining.
Gourry Gabriev: An exceptional swordsman that joins Lina's quest as her muscle. Loyal and courageous, he's also not particularly bright and Lina tends to take advantage of that. Often acts as a straight man, frequently several steps behind whatever scheme Lina has cooking.
Zelgadis Graywords: Zelgadis is a chimera, a fusion of man and beast, and despite being presented as a villain at first he eventually joins Lina's party to look for a means to change back to normal as well as have his revenge on the man who transformed him in the first place. A taciturn, serious type.
Naga, the Serpent: Another sorceress of equivalent power to Lina who uses ice magic rather than Lina's fire-based spells, Naga is both an ally and an enemy to the woman she perceives to be alternatively her rival and nemesis. Has a classic "ojou-sama" villainess laugh that gets on Lina's nerves, as does the fact she far better fits the glamorous sorceress aesthetic with her vampy costume. She doesn't appear in the show but will pop up in the games.

The Anime

The Slayers anime debuted in April 1995 and went through several staff changes as it moved from season to season, including the animation studio itself. Since we're covering three episodes from the first season we'll just talk about who made that: E&G Films, with Takashi Watanabe directing and Takao Koyama as the primary screenwriter.

E&G Films were founded in the '70s as Easy World Pro but it wouldn't be until much later that they built themselves up enough to take on solo projects, as opposed to assisting as a contractor—which they did for western-produced Rankin & Bass shows like ThunderCats and SilverHawks (theme tunes linked for posterity but also because they're rad). In 1994 they made the anime adaptation of Ginga Sengoku Gunyuuden Rai (another potential Game OVA candidate, if I could figure it out) and then the first three seasons of Slayers, their most successful show. Sadly, they didn't manage to leverage that success and eventually disbanded in 2003 due to constant budget troubles. Takashi Watanabe was still relatively new to directing in 1995 with only a few prior projects but not only stuck around for the entire Slayers run—including the 2008-09 reboots—but also shows like Madhouse's Boogiepop Phantom, the excellently named Rave Master, the New Fist of the North Star OVAs (that's the one where they added Blue Toad and Yellow Toad as playable characters), and... huh, several of the Ys OVAs. Well. Isn't that something to ponder for later. Finally, Takao Koyama—who only worked on the first season of Slayers, replaced by Jiro Takayama for the rest—also had a similar stint getting classic shows like Urusei Yatsura and Saint Seiya off the ground with their early seasons before moving on. He also wrote a considerable chunk of Dragon Ball as well, and that led to working on Dragon Ball Z (and Kai) for which he was the primary screenwriter for most of its run. Apparently he wrote a single episode of Zillion as well? So that's a nice way to tie us back into the start of this Game OVA season.

As usual, I'll be checking out the first three episodes to get a feel for what we're working with here. Slayers is probably going to be a very well-known property to a segment of anime viewers of let's say a certain vintage but maybe there's enough young people who still read things on the internet instead of just watching videos about them (or asking ChatGPT, which will probably have all kinds of interesting answers for you some of which might even be true) that'll discover this show along with me. Fingers crossed, yeah?

Episode 1: Angry? Lina's Furious Dragon Slave

We're introduced to Lina in her element: absolutely nuking a clan of bandits (and roasting their leader to death) just so she can steal their shit. A contingent of the surviving bandits are able to catch up to her on the road, largely because she's carrying a big pile of twice-purloined treasure and has tiny legs, but she's "saved" (just prior to her nuking them herself) by the courageous wandering swordsman Gourry. Intrigued by this dashing hero, her hopes are then quickly dashed when he mistakes her and her petite form for a lost child and she decides she'll grit her teeth and bare the long humiliating journey to the city of Atlas after he volunteers to escort her back to her parents or whatever. After all, she could probably get a few free meals out of him.

Lina's attack on the bandit stronghold starts (and ends, pretty much) with a standard fireball. You ever play one of those RPGs where it feels like the magic system might be a little overpowered?Lina and Gourry have big appetites, turns out. I imagine it's what powers all their high-level combat skills. Or maybe that's the excuse.

The two pig out at a local bistro when suddenly they're met with the village elder. After the elder identifies Lina (to a surprised Gourry, who figured she was a fishmonger or a waitress despite her sorceress apparel) he implores her to take care of a dangerous bandit group operating in the area. Fulfilling one of the more time-honored RPG clichés, one that we have our own wiki page for even, Lina informs him that she already dealt with all the bandits and that she'll take her reward now. The elder is aghast: she took down all the bandits and the mighty black dragon they had chained up? Uh-oh. Said black dragon has just broken loose of its chains after being abandoned by the defeated bandits and is now tearing up the countryside. Realizing what's at stake, the pair come up with some ideas: Gourry believes they need to go kill this thing before it incinerates everything in a twenty mile radius while Lina's happy to just bail before either the dragon or the restaurant bill arrives. The dragon, however, does appear at that moment and Lina realizes she can't resort to her True Neutral methods: so she does the responsible thing and negotiates with the elder for a decent payout if she kills this monster as the village collapses around them. It shrugs off her usual fireball spell (guessing the fire dragon has an immunity to fire) and is too big for Gourry to effectively fight, so Lina has Gourry distract it while she casts a spell with a little more oomph to it: her trademark Dragon Slave. It nukes the dragon... and also the town, and the local castle, and Gourry mostly. The elder already died in an earlier scene (but not really, because it's a cartoon) so Lina doesn't get her fee, but there's not much of a town left to pay it anyway. Ah well, at least she got to eat like a queen and blow stuff up today, so it wasn't a total wash. Lina reverts to her original plan to bail out of there at high speed away from the angry villagers, and that's our introduction to Slayers.

To be fair, this seems like the spell to use if you're fighting a dragon.Task successfully completed. The dragon can't rampage through your town if there's no town left to rampage through *taps temple*.

OK, so a few things to note here. First, Lina's VA Megumi Hayashibara sounds super young here (as opposed to her more mature-sounding Rei Ayanami or Faye Valentine voices): I guess they're leaning into the joke that Lina is built too much like a middle-schooler to be the sort of buxom seductive sorceress she imagines herself to be that you might find in other fantasy fiction such as Brandish. We immediately establish the type of guileless (but nice) fool that Gourry is, creating a stark contrast to Lina's shrewd and selfish persona, and that Lina is absurdly powerful but maybe doesn't have the best rep for a reason. I don't imagine nuking a whole village is going to help it either. Sort of reminds me of Dirty Pair so far, both in the inadvertent collateral damage played for comedy and the more career gal minded pursuit of stacks of cash, fine dining, and a handsome guy they can maybe string along for profit. Actually, the male and female leads of Tales of Destiny had a similar dynamic and I really liked that relationship (Gourry's almost a dead ringer for Stahn Aileron too). Pretty decent '90s anime butt rock OP ("Get Along!") and ED ("Kujikenai Kara") as well. So far so good, then; let's move onto the second episode.

Episode 2: Bad! Mummy Men Aren't My Type!

The second episode opens on the nice big smoking crater Lina left behind for the villagers as two mysterious cloaked individuals observe from a distance, having followed Lina from the bandit fortress. One, covered in bandages, is revealed to be a bandit mage who was left horribly burned by her fire spells; the other has blue skin and scales, and seems the less unhinged of the two. Lina, for her part, is counting her treasure and using magic to increase the value of a few of the rubies, being of a fire element like her spells, and tries to sell her goods to the local magic pawn merchant. Unfortunately, that also includes a cursed dagger which turns the friendly elderly shopkeeper into a murderous killer. Stuck between not wanting to kill the guy but not wanting to hang around and wait for him to stab them, Lina and Gourry ponder their options for a while as they dodge the knife-wielding lunatic in their midst only for him to be shaken out of his reverie by his angry wife, yelling at him from a window above the shop. I guess that cliché was still relatively new back in the show's vaguely medieval setting.

Lina's acute magic control really only comes in clutch if there's a reward in it for her, like this ruby purification process.Lina's a busy gal who doesn't have time to waste on things like 'descaling' or 'filleting' or 'chewing' her fish meal.

Forlorn that she couldn't yet hock her stolen plunder, the duo head to the next town while fishing for some dinner. Lina proves somewhat adept at smaller spells in addition to her cluster of god-killer nukes, using a simple charm cantrip on her lure to entice a fish. She then proceeds to eat the thing whole, figuring "waste not want not", though Gourry points out that by eating the fish's stomach she's also eating the weird bugs she used as bait. Later enjoying a proper meal at a tavern, the bandaged man and his coterie of humanoid monsters (not sure where he found those) finally catches up to her and sics his minions on the pair. As she heroically kicks one of them in the balls, Lina protests her innocence: it's not stealing if you steal from other stealers. Two wrongs making a right, or something. She attaches a spell to each of the trolls which reverses their high regeneration rate and causes their bodies to implode with the smallest amount of damage; both a cool and kind of disturbing way to dispatch troublesome foes with nigh immunity. She threatens to nuke the tavern with the bandaged man and his goons inside and it's enough to send them packing. However, the hooded man with the scales later knocks on her door looking to buy something from the stash she stole: Lina wonders who he might be, then tells the viewers directly to tune in next episode to find out.

Lina has an unsuccessful roll on her bluff attempt. Points for trying though.Trolls regenerate most damage so this is probably one of the few ways to actually harm them. Still, though. Not cool.

I am enjoying the idea that what seemed like a regular occurrence of nuking bandits and stealing their shit now has had quite a tail on it, with survivors stalking her from one town to the next and there apparently being some significantly powerful item hidden among the lucre that has caused some more dangerous types to take up this pursuit. Like a tiny match flame starting a raging fire, or in this case a bored sorceress dropping fireballs to solve minor inconveniences getting in the way of her next meal. Didn't expect this amount of fourth-wall breaking either but the show is taking on more of a Looney Tunes vibe as it continues, with Lina (the Bugs Bunny of this outfit) very rarely approaching anything like actual danger despite her occasionally acting otherwise for presumably her own amusement. Gourry's been an effective straight man/audience surrogate too, tricked by Lina's deceptive command of the situation as frequently as we are. Next episode looks to introduce an important character and, well, Lina's already told us to tune in so I guess I've no choice but to continue. (Incidentally, if you're wondering about these weird episode titles, Lina has a tendency to pepper in random bits of English into her dialogue to, I guess, sound more sophisticated and worldly. The first words of the titles are also spoken in English.)

Episode 3: Crash! Red and White and Suspicious All Over!

The masked man introduces himself as Zelgadis and he's interested in buying a specific item from Lina's haul but won't say which, as that would tip his hand during the price negotiations. So, instead, Lina charges several million for each of the more notable items—the cursed knife from the last episode, a goddess statue made of orichalcum, and several ancient coins—and Zelgadis leaves in a huff, promising that the next time they meet it will be as enemies. Lina trusts the guy as far as she can throw him but secretly admits to herself that he's probably the kind of guy that will at least stick to his threats. The next day the pair wander through a forest and get attacked by what they call "Berserkers"—they look like blue-skinned mummified soldiers, not too dissimilar to Mumm-Ra from ThunderCats (which makes sense since this studio previously worked on it)—and figured that Zelgadis must've hired them to ambush the two. Lina proposes later that the statue is the most likely candidate as the object Zelgadis wants as something made of orichalcum can also work as a magical beacon, beckoning interdimensional creatures to this world such as those lost in the Astral Plane, but Gourry fell asleep a few seconds into the explanation such is his interest in spellcraft.

She said, with absolutely no self-awareness.Lina also has a sword in case she wants to give the sorcery a break or, in this case, the enemy's already gotten too close. Pays to have a back up option.

Later that night at a different inn, while Lina recovers from an injury she received fighting the Berserkers and tried to brush off as a scratch, her room is invaded by another group of trolls led by an older male human warrior, but she gets the drop on them and leaves them inside the room with a fireball. You can tell the writers of this show are familiar with D&D type games given throwing a fireball into a small enclosed room and quickly closing the door is a tried-and-tested strategy for completely ruining someone's day. It doesn't quite kill anyone but pisses them off sufficiently to come charging after her, except they immediately fall to the ground asleep. This was the work of a tall man in intimidating robes who calls himself Rezo: a famous cleric hero who Lina immediately recognizes by name, even if Gourry's not quite on the same page. Rezo explains that Zelgadis is his enemy and a mixture of human, golem, and demon who is seeking the resurrection of the Lord of All Monsters, Shabranigdo. Though he asks Lina for the item that Zelgadis seeks so she could be spared his attentions, she instead decides to hang onto it and act as a decoy so Rezo can ambush him from the shadows. Whether she suspects something is up with Rezo (who looks suspicious as all hell, but then I did already read the character synopses for this show) or wants a more active role in stopping this demon lord revival plan is left unclear. We then end on a cute moment as Lina sleeps on the floor in Gourry's room—since her own is likely to be attacked again—and Gourry also insists on sleeping on the floor out of courtesy, leaving the bed empty.

Gourry carrying Lina back to the inn after her injury with the Berserkers. These two can be cute sometimes.Super tall guy wearing ominous robes who never opens his eyes? Sure, he passes the sniff test. Probably not a villain.

So it seems kinda bunk to end the reviews here given this was a table-setting exposition episode for the first big arc of the series, but three episodes is the usual rule here and I think I have a pretty fair impression of what this show is about. Lina's a fun character, one that's far more shrewd and wise than how she typically acts given her childish demeanor and love for money and food, and Gourry's an equally enjoyable foil who's nice and gullible enough to follow along with whatever Lina suggests, feeling an obligation to keep her safe despite her self-reliance. One last note, I really love the backgrounds of these scenes. They're usually pretty detailed and in the case of the ramshackle interiors indicate how cash-strapped most people are in this world thanks to bandits or certain avaricious adventurers. It is the case I suppose that all the villagers we've met so far were victims of the hoodlums that Lina torched at the start of the series—not that Lina's in any hurry to return their valuables to them unless it's in exchange for a heap of blue plate specials—but these backdrops play their part in establishing what the reality of this setting is like for all the poor suckers without prodigious amounts of magic (or a holy sword like Gourry's) to keep them safe and financially secure. Speaking of poor suckers, it's due time I tried out some of these video game adaptations...

The Game(s)

Slayers has five video games from what I've been able to dig up, all of which are (perhaps unsurprisingly) role-playing games. The one we're focusing on today is the Super Famicom adaptation, simply called Slayers. It was developed by BEC and published by Banpresto, which at the time were both Bandai subsidiaries (and still are today too, albeit Bandai Namco). BEC—short for Bandai Entertainment Company—was a studio formed between Bandai and Human Entertainment (of Fire Pro and Clock Tower fame), with most of the staff coming from the latter, while Banpresto was a struggling arcade company named Coreland until Bandai bought them and gave them their new name (a portmanteau of Bandai and "presto", the magic incantation). Banpresto's best known for the Super Robot Taisen series and several other crossovers, employing Bandai's many toy/manga/anime licenses to great effect. Both brands have since been merged into something called Bandai Namco Forge Digitals, which sounds like an internet crime that would get you in trouble with the fraud squad.

So, I spent my weekend playing this thing and though it has some interesting ideas for a parody RPG as well as plenty of funny writing (the fan translation by Dynamic-Designs did a good job with that) it can be quite the slog with its high encounter rate and maze-like dungeon design. Plus, perhaps owing to its parody status, the difficulty curve is all over the place. I could enter a new dungeon and be one-shotted by some of the normal enemies there, but then completely stomp on the next boss: the characters that filter in and out of your party (a very Final Fantasy IV-type of revolving door approach going on) could be completely useless or a new pillar carrying your party. It does give the game some unpredictability that helps ameliorate the long stretches of dungeon-diving but I probably wouldn't call this a hidden gem of the SNES's prolific RPG library. Its suitability as a Slayers game in particular though? Well, I'll get into that in the usual segment below. Time for some screenshots:

Welcome to Slayers! I've already mentioned Hajima Kanzaka was the author of the Slayers light novels, but Rui Araizumi is the artist of the cover illustrations and the manga. He also assisted with the art design in this game too, with several close-ups of the characters and some splash screens before/after major events.OK, stop trying to make Lina seem cool and mysterious.This is more like it. Passed out on the side of the road. What an auspicious start.How kind.The townsfolk decide Lina can pay off their hospitality by being dropped in a goblin hole so she can slaughter them all.

Connie is our first party member, who we just happen to bump into while wandering around this goblin cave. She appears to be a character invented for this game. She's a basic fighter type with no magic that mostly exists as someone else the enemies can target. Her special (every character has one of these and they're all unique) is Assault: a stronger but less accurate version of her regular attack.

While we're here, Lina Inverse is our protagonist and balances magic and physical combat like in the show. She lacks most of her spells due to a bout of amnesia but can acquire them (or reacquire them) later by talking to specific NPCs, sometimes in the course of a questline. Her special, such as it is, is to change the CPU behavior mid-battle (default is player-controlled).

The game brings back these classic menu options to search and talk to people but there's also a context-sensitive button (it's Y by default) if you want to skip going into this menu each time. You do have to come here to use healing magic, items, equip yourself, or check your status.Here's the combat screen. Everyone takes turns based on their speed stat, like a typical game of this genre. The options here include physical attack, magic, special, defend, running away, and using items. As you can see, we have room for four party members total.Minna is our itinerant save point, often popping up in inns in towns and halfway through dungeons.She's also Lina's self-appointed chronicler and offers to let you see her journal entries. They're mostly sarcastic doodles like this.Turns out the leader of the goblins down here is... Naga?She's sort of a pushover (there's even a Retro Achievement for beating her without ever levelling up or using magic) but it's probably more the case she let you win. As you'll see, she's Lina's rival for a reason.We seem so stoked that Naga forced herself into the party.

Naga the Serpent is sort of a joke character. She's far stronger than anyone in the party but unable to level up (which means keeping an eye on her MP usage, since everyone levels up so much they tend to get all their MP back on a regular basis) and refuses to listen to the commands you give her in battle, arbitrarily choosing her own spells and targets. Her special is Invisible Act, a group spell with random elemental effects. She makes this first portion of the game considerably easier than it perhaps should be, if not always the most reliable party member.

We got our payout for eliminating the goblins, even if Naga was instigating them somewhat, though it does leave the village destitute. Should've thought of that before tossing me into that hole.Naga notices something amiss about Lina's now way nicer personality, which is an important plot detail the game will continue to revisit.Well, not that her personality has completely changed...Naga doesn't feel like joining us for the mission given to us by the innkeeper, destroying a hydra living nearby, which sucks because she makes battles a lot easier.Oh, OK? I guess a little reverse psychology was all it took.Here's the world map with some delicious SNES Mode 7. It's purely a menu-driven thing though, with a list of destinations across the bottom.A funny little feature is that every region of the game has its own bandit den that you can just waltz into and clear out for some minor rewards. Each one eventually refills its encounters and items after enough time too. It's a good source of strong potions, a good healing item this early, and spider's thread, which lets you escape dungeons (very handy).Oh boy. Situational awareness isn't really a thing with the bandits of this world. Probably why they're an endangered species now.Lina has no chill with these guys, as is her wont. They're total pushovers too.

On the way up the mountain to the hydra lair, we bump into someone who introduces herself as Claire, a mage apprentice and fan of Lina. She's also mostly useless, being level 1 (we're closer to 5 now) with a much smaller spell pool. She's a temporary character though, as we'll soon find out. Her special Harsh Talk occasionally paralyzes enemies.

We found a baby hydra at the end of the cave and, because none of these gals have seen cartoons, assume this is the scary hydra everyone's worried about. Being the inquisitive magic student she is, Claire decides to adopt it.And as soon as we heard something very loud and angry bursting through the back of the cave, Claire decides she has somewhere else to be and takes the baby with her. Gee, thanks.So here we go with the first proper boss of the game. Big encounters like this get their own splash screen, which is cool. I do love the art in this game.The hydra hits hard and regularly poisons our crew, which is one of the few status effects that persist after battle. You can eventually learn a spell to remove it and any other status effect (Dicleary) but Lina doesn't know it yet. Good thing we found some Cure Poison items in here.Claire apparently took credit for slaying the hydra, leaving us with no reward. Naga's not best pleased either. She loves adoration from peasants.We decide to move to Johannes City to look for more opportunities for treasure hunting. Lina's also hoping to learn more about herself as she visits new places, here half-remembering Lina's usual self-aggrandizing introduction.For some reason this treasure hunt involves following a dog around for a while as it pees in the town fountain and eventually hands over a treasure map it was keeping in its doghouse. Good thing Naga didn't go through with her threat to destroy it.Presented without context.The treasure on the map is situated in a cursed castle inside a volcano, so here we are traversing that volcano with our typical gracefulness.Yeah, it was a goose chase. The vampire that lives here was hoping we'd inadvertently unseal it while looking for the treasure it made up.Instead, we just kill it. It has two forms, with this bat form being somehow stronger with its magic usage, but... well, Naga's here and her spells are seriously strong (when she decides to actually use them, that is).Starting to lose our temper with all these false promises of treasure. Sadly, we can't commit mass murder without remembering more of our spells.At some point we're tasked with destroying an orc encampment on top of a mountain. We don't see them so Naga, in her impatience, explodes the mountain and causes most of it to fall on Atlas City (which is a place mentioned in the show too). She gets dragged off to help fix it and that's the last we'll see of her for a while. Damn, our 'win every battle instantly' option is gone.

Connie also bails at this point, replaced by Lemmy.

Lemmy, or the Ace of Blades as I call her, is a character from the Slayers prequel novels. She's a mad swordswoman that replaces Connie in her dignified role as designated meatshield. Has a few unique weapons that only she can use (that she also named and treats like her family). She also refuses to follow orders, though since she's limited to just physical attacks it's not a big deal. Her special is Chaos Slash, a multi-hit attack that is randomly distributed across enemies and is useless against foes with high defense due to the way damage mitigation works in this game.

NPCs that teach Lina magic can also include villains too: this is Liddick, a mad alchemist that has been kidnapping children for experiments. His explanation for how his magic works awakes something in Lina, letting her cast the same spells.You can consult the magic list in Lina's status screen to see what's new. Sometimes her in-battle menu of magic spells will reorganize itself to be a bit more intuitive, grouping attack spells by element for example.

All right, I'm going to fast-forward through the rest of the game now, showing off other party members and a few memorable moments:

I went to all the trouble catching a spirited but wild horse for this lord and he just eats the thing. Well. I'm glad I didn't name it.

Sylphiel is a character from the show (you saw her in that cast image) and is a generally kind and demure priestess, excepting the times she talks about her "Sir Gourry" with a certain degree of salaciousness. She's also a support powerhouse, capable of top-level heals and buffs. Relatively defenseless but buffs can fix that. Her special Holy Power lets her spend extra MP to make her spells affect all party members, which is arguably the best character special in the game.

Lina gets pissy about a dungeon boss that set up shop right next to the dungeon entrance. Saved me a trip and a hundred random encounters at least.

Black Fox is, I believe, a character introduced in the manga adaptation of the novels. He's a master thief with a certain degree of theatricality and flirts incessantly with Lina, who got the ick with him almost immediately. He literally only joins your party for this one dungeon, and it's not even a big dungeon. His special Plunder can steal items from enemies, sometimes.

At some point Lina is forced to fight a clone of herself, giving the player a big hint as to why our protagonist has no memories of being Lina or any of her spells.Sylphiel gets sexually harassed by a minor assassin villain and, well, sometimes repression takes its toll.

Gourry finally makes his presence known close to the end of the game, joining your party while kicking out Lemmy (since he has the same role). He arrives equipped with his Blessed Sword, which is also the strongest weapon in the game (and only he can use it), as well as being max level with ridiculous stats. Ah, so that's probably why he shows up late. His special Kneeling Slash can occasionally kill enemies instantly, like Odin's Zantetsuken, and its odds of proccing are way higher than you'd expect (still doesn't work on bosses though).

Amelia's another better known character from the show (she was in the cast picture too) and, like Gourry, arrives late because of how OP she is. She's a monk princess with a small selection of offensive and support spells. Proactive about "justice" but not too bright; reminds me quite a bit of Alena from Dragon Quest IV (probably a deliberate parody, even). Also joins at max level and rarely listens to you, like Lemmy and Naga. Her special Fists of Justice hits all enemies moderately hard though is rarely her best option for damage.

The final character is Zelgadis, who has a similar amount of overpowering strength. Makes the final few dungeons a breeze to have all three of these powerhouses assisting you. He's a stoic "demon fencer" that's also part-rock monster, like Thing but without all the clobberin'. His special Dangerous Dance allows him to spend twice the MP for twice the spell's effect, in case you really needed to kill something in a hurry, though his elemental spells are limited to wind and earth (Amelia's are limited to fire and ice, for balance).

The big twist (sorry for spoiling) is that our Lina isn't the original after all, but an evil clone that nonetheless managed to find her humanity after spending time with all of Lina's friends. The clones have all been products created by a villain from the novels, Zelas Metallium, whom we're here to defeat.After defeating Zelas Metallium and beating the main story of the game, Lina (the real one) is revived and becomes available to join your party. To make things less confusing, you now have the option of changing your protagonist's name.

Lina Inverse is the actual final character to join the party. She has all of the other Lina's spells plus Dragon Slave, which is a huge nuke with an equally huge MP price tag. Her special Surprise Attack has her automagically cast a random spell at the start of combat (including Dragon Slave, sometimes) for no MP as long as she's in your party. Easily the most powerful character in the game, as she should be.

The game continues after the story though, sending you on a scavenger hunt across the world to find seven colored keys to unlock the secret actual final dungeon. In its depths are Ley Magnus, the world's most powerful magician, and his patron Shabranigdo, the Demon Lord of Monsters. Well, if you're not going to go all out and let players defeat the series' biggest villains, why make a game in the first place?

Does it do right by the anime? Absolutely. The writing is on point and the way it plays around with conventions of turn-based RPGs seems more deliberate than the sort of amateurish mistakes you see in other RPG also-rans trying to cash in on the success of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. You also get many Slayers characters popping up including those from outside the show, a semi-reasonable explanation for a depowered Lina Inverse, some decent enough visuals including splash screens from the original illustrator (though less said about the music the better), and an episodic arc-like format to the narrative that feels more in line with how its stories are presented in the novels and anime. Not necessarily an excellent RPG in its own right but a great Slayers game and one I'm glad I saw through to the end, occasional random encounter tedium notwithstanding.

In addition to that, we also have Slayers for the NEC PC98, about which the internet can't seem to agree on who made it. They suggest AIC Spirits, which at the time was a video game subsidiary of another anime production company that did not work on the Slayers anime (which, confusingly, later created an internal anime studio also called AIC Spirits after the game division folded). Either way, it looks to be a first-person dungeon-crawler with some turn-based combat a la Wizardry with the slight gameplay shift of removing levels and XP since Lina starts the game just as OP as she is in the show. Wow, an RPG where you don't level up, sounds fun. Well, it is meant to be a parody so maybe they approach things a bit differently. (Screenshots borrowed from That Other Wiki.)

Gotta love those crisp PC98 visuals. Not sure who this bartender is but everyone else is familiar to me now.Gotta love a dungeon crawler that puts more emphasis on the map than the first-person view. That's what I call having your priorities straight.Combat seems fairly straightforward, though I like all the icons down there. Are those separate buttons for each elemental spell?

Next is Slayers Wonderful and looking at screenshots they really did just make "Final Fantasy VII but it's Slayers now". Even the polygonal models for the ATB-like combat look similar. Contract developers TamTam is a group we've met before on Game OVA: they made the Hyper Iria SFC game as well as the Mamono Hunter Yohko adventure game for PC Engine CD-ROM that we briefly looked at. In a smart twist, the story has Lina and Gourry no longer being able to rely on their most powerful attacks and their quest involves looking for answers behind their nerfs. Nothing like a nice power drain plot device to make a video game based on canonically OP characters actually viable.

Welcome to Slayers Wonderful! I thought that might've been a localization of subarashi or something but, nope, that's 'Wonderful' in katakana right there in the title. Lina's random English flourishes at work again.The story of this game has some mysterious cloud drain the powers of everyone in town, including a slumbering Lina. Since we're on PlayStation now, there's a whole bunch of animated FMV. Most of it looks pretty good too: we're past the point of the super scratchy Mega CD/TurboGrafx-CD limitations.Characters have this chibi style outside of combat, and......This more realistic style in-combat. Sure does remind you of something, right? Well, gotta steal from the best, I suppose. Lina would tell you that herself.

Last, we have Slayers Royal 1 and Slayers Royal 2, both of which were released on Saturn and ported to PlayStation shortly thereafter. Developed by the intriguingly named Onion Egg (no other credits, but sounds like they might have been an ESP Software subsidiary or else linked to them in some way), the Slayers Royal duo are isometric tile-based strategy RPGs with huge, dorky-looking pre-rendered sprites. They'll typically have a lot of cutscenes between battles too, some of which are rendered with FMV with full voice acting. They limit what spells Lina can use based on whether or not it's an indoor map or an outdoor map, which is very funny to me. Wouldn't be smart to drop one of her usual nukes when you're inside a volcano or something. The two games' stories aren't connected so it doesn't appear to matter too much which you play first.

It's Slayers Royal! Royal is once again spelled out in English via katakana. No-one's buying the whole sophistication thing, Lina. (Screenshots are taken from the PS1 version of Slayers Royal.)More Slayers anime FMV for you. The SNES really couldn't compete, even with its wonderful splash screens.I thought this was a screen that offered separate campaigns for Lina and Naga, making the bold choice of turning the most deranged Slayers character into a protagonist, but the labels reveal the truth: these are just the 'new game' (Lina) and 'continue' (Naga) options.Classic strategy RPG map screen. Not a whole lot of nodes though, but I guess those get added as you travel.And here's what combat looks like. Man, these haircuts look so much more goofy in this chibi style. Gourry alone is like 70% glam metal hair.

OK, that's probably enough Slayers. Excellent choice to end on, I hope you'll agree. Thanks for checking in on this season of Game OVA and be sure to click that link at the top of the blog (or this one here to spare you from tapping PgUp a few times) for everything we covered this summer. For now, I think I'll recuperate in what's left of August and prepare for my wild September plans. Also, maybe, finally, get back to Lies of P already. I kinda left that poor Chalamet puppet man in the lurch to focus on a pair of so-so SNES JRPGs this month. Sorry, little dude. And also sorry to my muscle memory, because a Soulslike game is a hard one to revisit after this long away...