I was honestly planing to do this entire review as Tony the Tiger but that would be stretching a joke too far, even for me. Also I'm not a giant orange tiger...anymore. Though I'm not really sure that would make talking about this movie anymore interesting anyway. Sorry to play my hand so quickly, but that's all I can say about this film. There is nothing to rave about or get properly annoyed at it's just sort of there.
Let's talk background in hope of reaching an arbitrary word count of lets say:648. Slayers Great came out in 1997 alongside the third and for a while final season of the anime. Slayers Perfect had it's weird atmosphere and mood going for it. While Return was more of a return(I'll be here all week) to a more humorous story with better pacing. This one has no such thing instead trying to mix the two previous films and creating a portal to the mediocre dimension.
The story is serviceable with a slant towards the serious but has no weight to it. Yeah the plot in Return was bog-standard but it still had me invested in it. Here the plot is resolved in a pretty anti-climatic way and I never really felt like anyone was in any danger to begin with. The first half of the movie goes towards building up to the golem battle with a few interesting moments here and there Then the climatic golems battle takes up the rest of the short run time and is just ungodly boring outside of a few decent sight gags. It feels slow and plodding despite being billed as a big exciting battle to decide the fate of the town.
The whole production just doesn't really know where it wants to go trying to keep the moody tones of Perfect and the more comedic twists of Return. However it just doesn't have a big comedic set piece to make that leap and just sort of coasts by with mediocre humor. Plus the ending just sort of happens with very little accomplished letting the plot be resolved fully in the credits.
The comedy here is really hit and miss lacking the true laugh out loud moments that some of the other movies possess. The first half more relies on the dialogue and putting the one-shot female character through the ringer and it does elicit a chuckle here and there. The second half consist of goofy reaction shots and some decent sight gags that both become stale after the first five minutes. If the kept up the female character's despairing then maybe...no it still wouldn't help the second half. Again nothing truly unfunny but nothing great either.
Lina and Naga as characters are in rare form this movie and it does play up how volatile their relationship actually is and it actually drives a majority of the plot. Too bad this is not a plot worth piloting as they'll have to wait till Gorgeous to do it better. It does play on some more subtle characters traits for Naga such as her talent for golems. The new characters are actually pretty funny with at least one or two good lines and as mentioned the female leads despairing is great. The villains are weird and ineffective but less in a funny look how stupid they are way and more they were never a credible threat to begin with way. They play out like a watered down version of the villains from the Sorcerer of Atlus story albeit lacking a third villain that plays them for chumps.
I am just going to skip being witty and say don't bother with this one. It's not that funny nor that interesting. This was a struggle to talk about and probably a struggle to read. I'll see you next time for probably Slayers Gorgeous or maybe Diabolik Lovers.
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