Much like its successor Slayers Excellent, Slayers: Book of Spells is made up of three completely separate OVA episodes that feature Lina Inverse and the utterly annoying Naga. Slayers: Book of Spells is also one of the most misleading titles of all of the Slayers features: there is no book of spells at all. *GASP*!

Slayers veterans will quickly recognize a new Naga in this OVA series: a calmer, gentler Naga. A Naga who just goes along with Lina and works alongside her. Needless to say, I was a little disturbed by this new Naga. I was expecting her usual over-the-top antics like in all of the other Slayers features, but all I managed to get was Naga-Lite, the far less interesting version of Naga. To paraphrase a quote from this very series, "She can't really do anything but laugh and give people headaches."

Unfortunately, Lina wasn't too spectacular either. She just wasn't as wacky as she usually is, and I'm sad to report that Megumi Hayashibara, my favorite voice actress, just wasn't as amazing as she usually is. Thankfully, there were still quite a few parts that made me laugh. In the first episode, I couldn't hold in my giggles when I saw ten clones of Naga running through a forest and trampling everything in their path. I'm even ashamed to say that I laughed at the predictable conclusion to the third episode. I won't spoil it, but I'm sure you'll figure it out in the first few minutes.

Another thing that I found nice was the artwork and animation. Looking at all of the detail put into the characters, it's really hard to see how this OVA series could have been made when it was. The vocal music, performed by Megumi Hayashibara as usual, was also rather nice though most of it was just played in the last episode (with the exception of the music played in the credits after every episode).

One of biggest flaws of Slayers: Book of Spells is its length. Each story is only about twenty-five to thirty minutes long. There really isn't much room for any sort of character development or expanding on the villains. Also, all three episodes pretty much end the same way: the "bad guy" turns out to be a bumbling fool and shamefully loses to the Lina and Naga "team". Hmm... then again, is that formula any different from any of the other Lina/Naga movies?