The Slayers Try Volume 2   Starring (voice): Hikaru Midorikawa, Masami Suzuki, Megumi Hayashibara and Yasunori Matsumoto MVM RRP: £15.99 MVD2267 Certificate: 12 Available 05 October 2009

Lina Inverse is your average sorceress and bane of bandits, putting them down wherever she finds them. Okay, so she keeps a little of the loot rather than returning it - a girl’s got to make a living. Through her adventures, Lina has collected together a motley crew of friends to fight against the rising evil in the world. With their greatest battle behind them, a new era of exploration has opened when the magic barrier disappears from the kingdom opening up the outer lands for an enterprising sorceress and her motley crew...

Slayers Try: Volume 2 is a bit of a shot in the arm for the series, following on from the rather lacklustre opening disc. True, with the move to another land and the introduction of a whole new set of adversaries some time had to be devoted to setting the scene, but the first disc spent too much time here.

Ever generous the DVD contains a further six episodes - 59: A Peace Conference? 60: The Plan has Begun! 61: Continuous Fire! 62: Ready for Exile! 63: Jiras' Hidden Power! 64: Pursuit Through the Labyrinth! and 65: The One Who Holds the Key! - of the show, though this is evidently at the expense of the extras as there are none. The disc, once again, comes with a choice of either an English dub or the original Japanese track with subtitles, both in 2.0 stereo.

With all the pieces in place the show not only gets on with the story, but has also found time to reinvigorate its brand of knowing and inclusive humour.

We rejoin the story which the party having reached the Temple of the Fire Dragon Kings, where they meet an elder who seems to be in cahoots with Filia - obviously not a great turn of events for the gang. What follows is a labyrinthine plot which involves the appearance of Valgaav and Almayce who still have the hots for the sword of light carried by Gourry. In the ensuing story allegiances slip and slide before focus is once more restored and the gang head off to collect a number of weapons which will be needed in the coming fight.

If you have followed Lina’s journey this far in the series, nothing I can say will stop you buying this latest release. At least it was nice to see more time spent on the story and less spent on eating and goofing about.

6

Charles Packer