Slayers Next

By Kenneth Lee     February 18, 2002
Release Date: November 07, 2000



The Review!
"The Slayers" anime series has proven to be one of the more successful and popular anime in both Japan and the US in recent years. The Slayers phenomenon spawned at least 3 complete TV seasons, 2 OAV series, and 4 movies to date! A few months ago, CPM released the entire first TV season of Slayers in one DVD box set, and they've continued the tradition here, by releasing the entire second TV season of Slayers, "The Slayers Next," in a tidy DVD box set, surprisingly quickly, a mere few months after the first set. While Slayers is definitely popular, it never caught on with me. Essentially a wacky-comedy / fantasy anime series, it tells the tales of Lina Inverse, the "genius sorceress" who's also known as the "Bandit Killer" and "Dragon Spook." She loves money and food above all else, and she's accompanied by a band of fellow adventurers: Gourry, the Sword of Light-toting fighter, Zelgadis, a "chimera" (actually, his skin's just cursed to a stone consistency) magic-user, and Amelia, princess of Seiruun, magic-user, and "Defender of Justice."
The first Slayers TV season was funny at times, but overall lacked proper pacing, had many filler episodes, and just wasn't well executed. I took a chance on the second season of Slayers, and imagine my surprise when I found out that "The Slayers Next" is a far superior anime series when compared to the first one, and overall, an excellent comedy series that is infinitely enjoyable and fun to watch.

In terms of DVD production, The Slayers Next DVD Collection is pretty disappointing. I had wondered how CPM managed to release entire seasons worth of TV series in DVD collections mere months apart from each other, whereas Pioneer was taking upwards of half a year or longer to release their box sets. But after watching this, the reasons are clear.

Audio:
Audio-wise, it is standard mastering. Thankfully CPM fixed the inverse-phased sound problem from the first Slayers DVD Collection, so everything sounds normal here. Nothing special or poor, as everything is just standard 2.0 stereo.

Video:
Video quality-wise, it is one of the poorest transfers I've seen *based on source material* - in a completely different way from the disaster that is Manga Entertainment's DVD, "Wings of Honneamise." The source material looks like it was an SVHS Master (yes, some analog tape source) dumped directly to DVD. There's a ton of rainbowing (shimmering) effects showing on complex lines and edges, and the colors are actually bleeding! Upon closer inspection, you can see that it's not really the DVD authoring that's bleeding the colors and edges, but rather the source material (some scenes have it while others don't). The blurry, bleeding edges look just like you were watching a cleaned-up VHS tape. There's also slight artifacting on various areas, but thankfully not that bad. There's also plenty of jitter apparent in many still scenes, which detract as well. The strangest and most frustrating thing is after seeing other CPM DVD releases like Wild Cardz and Geo Breeders - which are by far, their sharpest, cleanest DVD's and far better than this - it's strange how badly this video transfer turned out.

Packaging:
Like with the video, it seems the DVD packaging was pretty rushed as well. The best part of the packaging was the really nice and clean DVD box that stores all 4 DVDs, but the individual DVDs didn't fare so well: Just one look at the spine, and you'll see that all 4 DVDs' individual spines don't even match up! In other words, the first DVD spine has the title "The Slayers Next" written in about the center of the spine. The next DVD has the title listed about half an inch *lower* than the first DVD, and the third and fourth don't line-up either. It's minor, but overall, it smacks of rushed production / shoddy quality control.

Menus:
The DVD Menus are standard CPM fare - what you'd expect seeing their previous DVD's. Nothing fancy, but to its credit, they are very fast and easy to navigate.

Extras:
In terms of Extras, the Interview with the Dub Actors is nice for dub fans, but I passed that up since it's not my preference. It's unfortunate that they couldn't obtain more original materials, or original interviews with the Japanese director, original Japanese voice actors, etc. Overall, the Extras are pretty sparse since I don't have a DVD-ROM. And this brings me to another issue with this DVD Collection: Most of the material listed on the back of the DVD Collection case - Art Gallery, Scripts, Character Sketches - are only available if you have a DVD-ROM on your computer! Since the majority of DVD players sold in the US are actually stand-alone DVD players (and not DVD-ROM drives on your PC), it puzzles me as to why the majority of the cool bonus material is put there. As it stands, the majority of the people buying The Slayers Next DVD Collection (and many other CPM DVD's) won't be able to see them.

Content:
As aforementioned, after seeing the first Slayers TV season, I was pretty unimpressed, and I thought the whole "Slayers" phenomenon was overrated. The Slayers Next (second TV season), is far superior and much better than the first season. Everything from the content, to the pacing, to the storyline, to the jokes, to the animation are much better than the first season.

The Slayers Next is essentially about strange monsters that begin appearing and hunting down Lina (or disturbing the peace at various key areas). Lina Inverse and gang realize that things are beginning to get a little strange, and soon discover that the Demon Dragon King Gaav - one of the most powerful Monsters of legend - is after Lina! She decides to seek the Claire Bible to hope to find a source of power strong enough to destroy her pursuant. Along the way, hilarious comedy, exciting adventure, and genuine character development occurs. Talking more about the story would ruin many of the twists and surprises in the story, but suffice to say that the climax is great, and the ending is fitting.

The original Japanese voice actors are the same as the first season, and come across phenomenally - Lina Inverse is the highlight, voiced by Megumi Hayashibara (female Ranma (Ranma ½), Nuku Nuku (Nuku Nuku), Rei (Evangelion), and many others), and she does an inimitable job - no one can do Lina Inverse like Megumi! The music also has improved - the vocal songs were always a highlight of Slayers, and with Slayers Next, the Opening and End songs are two of the best songs in the entire Slayers anime universe; very upbeat and energetic. In addition, the Opening song is sung by Ms. Hayashibara herself!

One other area of disappointment is the lack of the original Japanese voice actors' names in the End Credits Roll. This is one area that will hopefully be rectified on future CPM DVD's; not only do the fans want to know who played what role, but it's just also just out of respect for the voice actors and giving credit where credit's due. To make matters worse, CPM only used the first episode's Ending Sequence for the entire DVD Collection! So in other words, it only shows the first episode's original Japanese end sequence, for every episode. But since so few of the customers in the US would even be able to read the Japanese writing, I can understand why they did that (time-saving measure).

At this point, most readers would probably be expecting me to denounce this DVD as "hell spawn," but actually, despite the poor video quality, rushed quality control, and other "cut corners," I would still recommend The Slayers Next DVD Collection to anyone looking for a great fantasy-comedy anime series. Why? Simple: Value. Although I am extremely disappointed in how sub-par this turned out to, say, Pioneer's "Fushigi Yugi" TV DVD Box Set, to its credit CPM has given fans a great value by putting the entire 2nd TV season (episodes #27-52) in one DVD collection! It's far cheaper than buying the VHS Box set and takes up far less room, and despite its video quality, is still superior to the VHS tapes.

And lastly, it's just FUN. From the new characters, to the better storyline, to the overall execution, this is a really fun, light-hearted (at times) anime series that never takes itself too seriously. If you gave up on Slayers after watching the first season, I'd definitely recommend giving it a second chance with this second season TV series, The Slayers Next DVD Collection. One other important note is that you do not need to watch the first season to enjoy the second season. It is mostly stand-alone; you can enjoy it without worrying too much about anything earlier. Now here's to hoping all future DVD's from CPM get a proper upgrade (video quality, proper End Credits (w/ Japanese actors' names), and Extras you can view on your stand-alone player). With that in place, CPM would be well on its way to becoming a solid leader in the anime industry, especially with so many interesting upcoming titles.

Review Equipment
Pioneer DV-606D (Code Free) DVD Player, Mitsubishi CS-3503R 35" TV, Yamaha RX-V2095 DD / DTS Receiver, MIT S-Video cable, KEF C85 Front speakers, B&W Center, Infinity Rear speakers, and NHT Subwoofer.