Last night, I watched the last two episodes of Slayers: Try and, with that, I've finished watching all three seasons of Slayers . The last fifth of Slayers: Try made me appreciate how good the whole rest of the television series was, because those last several episodes weren't nearly as good. The animation was great, but it seemed the well had finally run dry for the writers, and they couldn't figure out an interesting way for Lina Inverse and her companions to save the world from the latest big, all powerful daemon god. Not that Slayers was ever perfect. The show began by wanting to be a parody of medieval fantasy but it couldn't resist being halfway serious. And by the end of the first season, the show was about 75% serious. But it was okay, since it was still pretty interesting. But it made the mistake of keeping a number of characters around while letting their stories languish. After the first season, Gourry hardly does anything but provide dopey comic relief or some nice action sequences (that is, after the animaters learned a thing or two about swordplay. Some of the early stuff was just plain funny). But Slayers had Megumi Hayashibara as Lina Inverse and I never get tired of her, no matter what. Sure, I cringed in the last episode when she started preaching a little to the daemon god about how humans lead full lives and we're all building a better world . . . But even though the song she sings at the end in English was completely embarrassing, it was still kind of cute. Last night I also watched Stanley Kramer's The Defiant Ones . It was an attention holding movie, although some of Kramer's techniques were just barely on the verge of being too obtrustive. And he used time-lapse shots too much. Sydney Portier was pretty good, although I hope he wasn't under any illusion that he could actually sing.