Slayers Special (OVA)

Slayers Special (スレイヤーズすぺしゃる, Sureiyāzu supesharu), also known as Slayers: Dragon Slave, Slayers: Explosion Array and Slayers: The Book of Spells in North America, is a series of three comic fantasy themed OVA self-conclusive episodes adapted from the Slayers Special series of light-novels by Hajime Kanzaka, serving as a part of the prequel to the main Slayers saga. The three episodes were all directed by Hiroshi Watanabe and originally released separately in Japan in 1996-1997. Both Special and the second OVA series, 1998's Slayers Excellent, were directed by Watanabe and share the same soundtrack (Slayers The Motion Picture "S"), although each series had their own production committees and has its own opening and ending themes.

In the first episode, "The Scary Chimera Plan" (恐怖のリメラ計画, Kyōfu no rimera keikaku), Lina Inverse refuses to take place in a chimera experiment so the wizard scientist makes clones to force Lina; however, he clones Naga the Serpent instead, which leads to his downfall. In the second episode, "Jeffrey's Knighthood" (ジェフリー君の騎士道, Jefurī-kun no kishidō), Lina and Naga are hired to train a pathetic yet overconfident young man by his mother, who follows him around and beats up anyone who talks negatively about her son. In the third episode, "Mirror, Mirror" (鏡よ鏡, Kagami yo, kagami), Lina and Naga are hired to find and destroy a magic mirror that makes clones of whoever is reflected; the only difference is the clones have the opposite personality of the original, as Lina and Naga personally find out.

Sorceress Lina Inverse is contacted by an alchemist Diol, who had requested her help in one of his experiments. She then finds out that Diol plans to use her in creating a super chimera which would combine her with a lesser demon and a sea serpent. Lina turns him down, and after Lina's on-and-off companion and rival Naga the Serpent arrives and agrees to the plan, destroys Diol's lab in anger.

A month later, Lina and Naga are attacked and Lina accidentally knocks out Naga with a spell. However, when she corners the last enemy, she finds that it is Diol, who has ten cloaked figures with him and says he created them from a single strand of hair found in his wrecked lab. Lina thinks that the copies are of her and challenges Diol, knowing that the copies will be unable to use her magic. However, when Diol unveils the copies, they are all copies of Naga, whose sight and sound (ten Nagas laughing together) frightens Lina so much that she faints.

Diol then spirits Lina away and is met by Vista, a brigand with a grudge against Lina, who sponsored Diol's experiments. They find out that Naga was looking for Lina and Diol sends his Naga clones to confront the sorceress. However, instead of defeating Naga, the clones bond with her. Realizing the mistake he made, Diol ran back to Vista, where the both of them find that Naga and her clones (all laughing maniacally) are on their way. In a panic, they abandon the lab, leaving beyond Lina under the influence of a sleep spell. Naga finds and revives Lina and accuses her of leaving her behind to make an alliance with Diol. Lina claims that Diol had broken their agreement and took the money all to themselves. Together, the two then catch up to Diol and Vista and capture them. Lina, with Naga, then collects the reward money for their capture and wonders how to deal with ten more Nagas in the world.

Lina and Naga are contracted by Josephine, a woman who is seeking to have the girls tutor her son Jeffrey in a quest of be a member of the royal guard. To accomplish this, Josephine told them that she has hired actors to pose as brigands so that the boy could easily defeat them and gain confidence in his abilities. They meet Jeffrey and are disappointed to find the boy was a sorry excuse for a soldier - he is skinny, clumsy, not to mention his bad habit of blundering headstrong into any battle to show off. However, whenever Naga tries to point out his deficiencies, she is met with an angry masked Josephine who clobbers her with a huge mallet. Apparently this sort of thing happens quite often, but Jeffrey is completely oblivious to her actions, despite them being obvious to everyone else. When the three arrived at the brigands' hideout, Lina and Naga are shocked to find that the real bandits had captured the actors, but they are able to defeat them using their magic.

Later, Lina and Naga are asked by Jeffrey to aid him in defeating a warlord's army of beast men. He informs them that Josephine had contracted an army for her son, for which he named "the Flaming Knights". It turns out that the men Josephine hired were as weak, if not weaker, that Jeffrey is, and prone to panic. Lina and Naga defeat the monsters but are stymied by the warlord Galda, wearing a magical armor. But when Galda insults Jeffrey, he is quickly defeated by Josephine, who comes out of nowhere and mallets him into submission.

Galda then leads Lina and Naga to his patron, the evil baron Goldias. While Galda and Goldias fight each other, Lina and Naga are forced to fight an army of living armor. Knowing that Galda would need her help, Lina then kicks Naga into the armor army and is surprised to find that she dispelled the magic animating the armor. It is at that point that Jeffrey stupidly charges Goldias, tripping and falling over the fallen armor. Then a surprising thing happens - Goldias backpedals away from Jeffrey, calling him by name. It turns out that Goldias is Jeffrey's father, after which Josephine shows up and mallets her errand husband. Lina, Naga and Galda leave the castle, abandoning Jeffrey's family to their reunion.