Lina Inverse is your average sorceress and bane of bandits, putting them down where ever she finds them. Okay, so she keeps a little of the loot rather than returning it - a girl’s got to make a living. On one particular sortie against bandits, a small, seemingly innocuous, statue comes into her possession which will change her world forever and place her on a path that may save the planet...

The Slayers: Volume 3, or in this case ‘C’ (ever get the feeling that the publishers just broke up a box set?), continues this dungeons and dragons show. If you have not picked up the previous volumes it’s important to know that one of the themes of the show is to subvert the traditional D&D - that said, there is an awful lot of fighting compared to the story arc, so even the inclusion of these stock elements are often accompanied with a knowing wink to the audience. If you’re expecting a post modern reimaging of the genre you’re likely to be disappointed, the show is primarily aimed at young adult males.

So this penultimate volume contains episodes fourteen to twenty, which takes up the story with Lina’s growing entourage, including Amelia. The whole group travel to Sairaag to try and discover why wanted posters of Lina have started to appear. Lina considers herself one of the good guys who retrieves booty from bandits even if she doesn’t quite give it all back. Of course, no journey - indeed no episode - of this show is without its fights and the group don’t get to Sairaag until episode nineteen. In the interim Lina gets involved in a marriage proposal and the gang star in a play. When they get to Sairaag they discover just who is tarnishing their reputation, but this is only the start of a new journey to Old Sairaag. The episode listing is as follows.

14. Navigation! An Invitation To Sairaag!
15. Oh no! Lina's Wedding Rhapsody?
16. Passion! We Give Our Lives for the Stage?
17. Question? He's Proposing to THAT Girl?
18. Return! The Red Priest Is Back!
19. Shock! Sairaag Falls!
20. Trouble! Rahanimu, the Furious Fish Man!

One of the things you can’t argue with about this series is its value for money, seven episodes with a combined running time of over two and a half hours. Okay, there are no extras, but then a lot of anime extras are textless sequences, or watch once affairs. Audio is a clear 2.0 affair with either an English dub or the original Japanese with subtitles.

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Charles Packer