Slayers Premium

While Slayers Premium begins traditionally with our heroine Lina about to feed herself, this is the first Slayers OVA to feature the characters from the TV series rather than Lina’s adventures with Naga (though she does put in a fleeting appearance).
 
This is a great episode of Slayers with the usual off-the-wall humour provided by a story involving octopus!
The town that Lina and her travelling partner Gourry are visiting offers octopus as a regional delicacy; but being understandably upset about being the main course, the local (intelligent?!) octopus’ plan to bring about the demise of mankind by infecting them with a dreaded curse that leaves people babbling nothing but nonsense- of course, the fear and anger caused by this will resurrect the all powerful Octopus Guardian. Pretty much standard stuff then!
 
Whilst the story and jokes are as good as the best of the Slayers specials, the visuals earn a special mention. As the latest (but hopefully not last) of the Slayers OVAs, the time and effort spent on design, background and effective (but unobtrusive) CG and 3-D work put this amongst the most attractive of the Slayers releases. There is even a brief poke at (or homage) to the “Matrix”-made ‘bullet-time’ special effects.
 
Beautiful to look at and hugely entertaining, it’s such a shame that we only get a half-hour show; by offering this as a full price DVD when many of ADV’s other releases provide four series-episodes with dual languages and extra features, you can’t help feeling a little cheated.
Having said that, if you can ignore the disappointing value for money then Slayers Premium is a great show and definitely one of the best Slayers titles available in the UK; it does make me hope that “the powers that be” decide to produce more in future.
 
As well as the main feature being top quality there are some decent extras on the disc too.
The commentary with Cynthia Martinez and Crispin Freeman (the English dub voices of Lina and Zelgadis) is fun, though more jokey than informative as the voice actors basically have a laugh and muck about.
The behind the scenes featurette consists of a twenty minute conversation/interview with the ADV Slayers dub producer Sandra Krasa talking to Crispin Freeman about revisiting Zelgadis in Premium and where he would like Slayers to go next.
Both these features are worth watching and do add a bit of value to the disc.
 
Apart from these you also have the trailer for Premium and the standard ADV previews of Rune Soldier, Final Fantasy: Unlimited, King of Bandit Jing and Angelic Layer.
 
As a fan of subs, I have to say that the English dub for Premium is very good and different enough to warrant watching both versions back to back, especially to hear the zany English version of the Octopus in the show.
 
In Summary
 
Slayers Premium is the best of the Slayers releases I’ve seen yet. Funny, interesting and gorgeous to look at, it even features extras beyond the usual trailers and picture galleries. The only drawback is that it’s so short and that it may be the very last Slayers instalment; but if you can afford it then I urge you to seek this out, it’s definitely something you’ll come back to. Great stuff!