Slayers Premium

This is THE black sheep of the Slayers franchise. It's not interesting, it's not clever, it's not funny, it's not aesthetically appealing, and one hopes that it's not canon. Returning characters are sloppy mockeries of themselves, and very little besides that. The plot is more or less on par with a particularly weak mid-season comedy episode from any of the Slayers series. The 'takogo' gags are stupid, obnoxious, and repetitive. The art is not good, and the facial expressions manage to look like some kind of emoji vomit even in the context of the over-the-top Slayers universe.

If you know and ... love Slayers for what it is, this anime is not for you. If you're not familiar with Slayers, this anime is not the place to start. This is Slayers for young children.

If you want to see Slayers at its worst then Slayers Premium is for you. With two films, five OVAs, three seasons of its original run and two of the newest run, this specific....OVA? stands out like a sore thumb. And its a bad sore thumb. Like a sore thumb that someone slammed on with a hammer. Calling it an OVA is honestly a little too generous--while the majority of Slayers OVAs clock in around about an hour and a half at least, Premium can barely labor its way to the 30 minute mark. Its a single episode that can barely carry its own ... weight.

Okay, so what's the story? Well, the story is about octopus. Lina and Gourry want to eat octopus. Amelia and Zelgadis waltz in somewhere along the line because they want to eat octopus too. But the octopus is cursed and makes them speak octopus. And while our one time filler character bumbles around in the background trying to find the cure, everyone is getting cursed and also a bunch of octopus are waging war on the town. And...that's about it, really.

Now, to clear things up, I'm aware that the Slayers franchise is perchance to silly. There's a giant squishy golem in Slayers Great that looks like Lina. In Book of Spells they made an army of Naga the Serpant clones. Hell, all of the Motion Picture is put into motion because Lina wants bigger titties from a magical spring. But there's a line of believability, and boy does Premium absolutely take that line and rip it apart. This OVA is like a really bad filler episode that you would usually skip in a show--except here, its the main attraction for some reason. Did they just have some discarded episode that they wrote out and REALLY wanted to make?

The art is actually quite good. Before Slayers Revolution, this was the first time that we ever saw the main cast of the series in a more polished animation style since all other OVAs focused on Lina and Naga. It's pretty smooth with nice lines and nice colors. There's no real complaint here, I suppose--it's just a step up from what we're used to seeing and that's nice to see. Gourry's design here looks a little odd, though, since they cutified his face and make it more standard to the style. Which looks a little weird if you're used to Gourry having a longer face.

But aside from that, there's really nothing to bother with when it comes to Premium. It's a 30 minute waste of your time that really had no place existing.