Lina and Gourry were enjoying some seafood at a local town but find out slightly too late that one of the delicacies, some local octopus, is tainted by a magic spell. Gourry has eaten it and is told that he'll be speaking nothing but octopise (the language of octopus) in no time. Lina's magic has apparently unearthed a long buried demon and the demon attempts to capture emotional energy in order to take over the community. Lina goes deep into the sea in order to fight the demon and his multitude of minions, taking some of her friends with her.

The problem I had with this release is that the whole thing lacked the chemistry a Slayers release usually has. This was obviously due to the missing Naga and the majority of the jokes fell flat. What would Abbott be without Costello, Ricky without Lucy, Laverne without Shirley or Cheech without Chong? That's how I felt about this one and I'm a fan of Cynthia Martinez's Lina Inverse character (even more so than the Japanese voice actress. This leaves me in a predicament since I liked the extras more than the feature itself (although it was far too short). That made the movie worth only a Skip It unless you are a huge fan of Crispin Freenman, who got the lion's share of the extras this time.

Picture: The picture was presented in anamorphic widescreen with a 1.85:1 ratio as originally shot. The colors were on the dark side, befitting the subject matter here, and there was some grain with video noise but not enough to cause me to avoid this DVD. I saw no compression artifacts or print scratches. In short, it looked pretty solid compared to some of the older releases in the Slayers Universe.

Sound: The audio was presented with a choice of 5.1 Dolby Digital stereo in the original Japanese with English subtitles or a dubbed English language track. I think the original audio track was superior this time although the sound effects and music were about the same in each. There was enough difference on the subtitles compared to the dubbed track that I wouldn't call them dub-titles but they weren't the strongest set of subtitles I've seen of late.

Extras: The best extra for me was the audio commentary with Cynthia Martinez (voice of Lina Inverse) and Crispin Freeman (voice of Zelgadis). Cynthia's over the top style of speaking is always a delight and Crispin's deadpan responses were enough to give her plenty to work with. The other decent extra was a lengthy interview of Crispin Freeman by producer/director, Sandra Krasa. He discussed his life and how he sees the anime industry as well as the show itself. Other extras were the usual trailers, minimal paper insert and some credits.