OBSCURE O.V.A.S, *Slayers: The Book Of Spells

The first Slayers OVA series was based on the Slayers Special prequal manga taking place before the first Slayers TV anime. It was 3-episodes long, which was first released in English through ADV Films as two separate VHS volumes(Dragon Slave and Explosion Array), and then later in a collected DVD titled Slayers: The Book Of Spells.

Taking place sometime after Lina and Naga reunited from Slayers Excellent, their first adventure has Lina almost dying of the sheer shock of a crafty alchemist who created ten clones of Naga to subdue Lina to use her as part of a crazy looking giant chimera to take over the world. The real Naga eventually catches up to them and her clones bond to her like bees to a queen, and they go to rescue Lina. The next adventure sees our heroines being hired to help an aspiring wouldbe knight to join the royal guard, but continuously being confronted by his mother makes the situation nearly impossible. The final chapter has Lina and Naga hunting down a renegade sorcerer who plans to use a magic mirror to make reverse copies of any adversary he comes across, except that when he uses it on our girls it produces embarrassingly peaceful versions of them who do nothing but cry and plead for peace, leaving the world with yet another wandering Naga copy.

Slayers Special(as its originally called in Japan)works out as a good intro to the world of Lina Inverse in her travels, even though the OVAs and movies operate on a different tempo than the TV series, sometimes taking a little more time in drawing out the comedy instead of following along with a season-long story arc. The animation is just as good as the first few Slayers movies, although the third episode seems to suffer a little too much like being a promo for the OVA soundtrack with some AMV segments added in for padding. Worth a look on its own, or combined with the Slayers Excellent OVA collection.