Slayers Return (1996)

Slayers Return arrives from 1996, a Japanese comic fantasy in which two mercenary sorceresses, Lina Inverse and Naga the Serpent, bicker their way across a landscape of bandits, magical golems and an elven superweapon. It is the second film in a franchise and behaves accordingly. A village has been enslaved, a megalomaniac named Galev bluffs his way toward world domination with an organization consisting largely of himself, and the long-sought treasure turns out to be a giant metal construct with control issues. The plot exists to generate chases and explosions, which it does with the efficiency of a studio that knew its audience.

For the purposes of this index, the film offers almost nothing to measure. Two women share top billing, and they are vain, greedy, and prone to flinging spells at each other over dinner. Their presence is not an argument about anything. There is no commentary on race, no environmental appeal, no critique of the economic order, though the villains do stiff their henchmen on wages, which plays as workplace comedy instead of systemic indictment. Bodies are drawn uniformly slender. No character is identified as neurodivergent, and the film has no interest in diagnosing anyone. The fantasy world is invented, so history escapes revision. Nobody lectures. Nobody undergoes an arc of awakening. The movie simply wants to be funny.

It largely succeeds. The pacing is brisk, the physical comedy is well timed, and the sight of unpaid henchmen pursuing their former employer for back wages suggests a certain low cunning about human motivation. There is no sermon here, no lesson, no invitation to improve ourselves. On the instruments this office maintains, Slayers Return registers nothing at all. It is a film about greed and golems, and it is content to remain so.