is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the comic fantasy-themed light novel, manga and anime series Slayers. Lina Inverse is a young yet very powerful sorceress travelling the world in search of adventure and treasure. Lina has been consistently voiced by Megumi Hayashibara in Japanese, dubbed by Lisa Ortiz in the English version of the TV series and by Cynthia Martinez in the English version of the films and original video animation episodes. Slayers novels are narrated by Lina herself from her point of view.
She was one of the most popular anime characters of the late 1990s and has since retained a sizable fan following. There have been also characters based on or inspired by her in both Slayers and in other works.
Creation and design
The Slayers creator Hajime Kanzaka had originally created the characters of Lina and Luna (the name of Lina's unseen sister in Slayers) as the heroines of his science-fiction story that he had written when he was in high school and in which Luna was the protagonist and Lina was her clone. Years later, when Kanzaka began writing Slayers as a Western-style fantasy saga of Lina Inverse, his friend and the series' illustrator Rui Araizumi took an inspiration for her visual design when he by chance came upon a vintage film with the actress Audrey Hepburn on TV. According to the NTUT's John Lance Griffith, "To the extent that Lina is an independent, powerful woman ('a girl today' in contrast to the traditional Japanese woman), she follows in the tradition of Western lady knights and sorceresses: the tradition of Spenser's Britomart, of Tolkien's Arwen and Eowyn."
As envisioned by Kanzaka, Lina has a petite body type and is 147 cm (4 feet 10 inches) tall. She has two moles on her forehead, which are usually covered by her headband. Despite her supposed to be having a very flat chest, so much she can be confused for a boy, Lina is often depicted by Araizumi with larger breasts due to his personal preferences, which would be then carried over to much of other media too. Lina's appearance whilst wearing her homeland's folk clothing in the film Slayers: The Motion Picture is a nod to Ranma Saotome, the titular character from Ranma ½, who too (like Lina) is voiced by Megumi Hayashibara in Japanese.
Character and appearances Lina Inverse Lina Inverse was born in the fictional kingdom of Zephilia. Since her mother used to be a mercenary magic user, Lina, suffering from inferiority complex to her sister, decided she would like to be a sorceress and coaxed her parents to send her to the Sorcerer's Guild school. Her older sister, the Knight of Shiphied Luna Inverse, was the darling of both her parents and the town, excelling in martial studies and quickly beginning to make a name for herself.
Although Lina has faced down dragons, monsters, and even dark lords with little fear, the mere mention of Luna's name sends her into terrified hysterics. When Lina was a child, she sold images of Luna naked in order to earn money and, in turn, Luna punished Lina so severely that Lina has feared her ever since.Slayers Revolution episode 8. This incident stemmed from an already ongoing, somewhat abusive dynamic, where Luna's harsh discipline traumatized Lina while paradoxically shaping her unshakeable mental fortitude and bold demeanor.
Lina has many different nicknames, including "Bandit Killer" and "Dragon Spooker", neither of which she likes. To her, her most embarrassing nickname is "Lina the Pink", which is her official title amongst the Guild.Slayers The Ruby Eye by Hajime Kanzaka, chapter 2.
After leaving home, Lina became an independent adventurer and sorceress. During this period, she met Naga the Serpent, a powerful but eccentric sorceress who proclaimed herself Lina's greatest rival. Naga subsequently began crossing paths with Lina, and the two became involved in a series of comedic misadventures, frequently taking on odd jobs, mercenary work, and fighting local bandits and monsters. These adventures form the basis of the Slayers Special and Slayers Smash prequel light novel series, which span roughly one to two years of Lina's early journey. Although Lina and Naga constantly compete and argue, they repeatedly cooperate when facing common enemies. It was during these early travels that Lina earned a formidable reputation for relentlessly hunting down bandit gangs for fun and profit, routinely confiscating their ill-gotten treasure for herself. Her crusade against them was so thorough that by the events of the later Slayers Revolution, bandits have become an "endangered species," prompting her to take up pirate hunting instead. Her loose partnership with Naga eventually came to an end shortly before the start of the main series. However, in the children's novel adaptation Slayers (Tsubasa Bunko edition), Lina and Naga continue traveling together and ultimately meet Gourry Gabriev as a duo.
Although she is an adolescent (aged 15 to 17Dragon Magazine October 1994, p.9. in the main series, and even younger in Slayers Special), Lina is an exceptionally powerful mage with a strong passion for money, treasure — particularly magical artifacts — and food. She commands high-level black magic spells, most notably the devastating Dragon Slave, which serves as her signature attack. In the anime and manga adaptations (unlike the original light novels), she frequently uses collateral destruction with little provocation, albeit portrayed in a comedic context. Consequently, Lina has earned a reputation as a calamitous "Enemy of All Who Live", among many other similar monikers (such as "Empress of Destruction", "Natural Disaster Mage" and "Flat-Chested Demon"). Despite her notorious infamy and lack of physical maturity, Lina views herself as a charismatic, dignified, and beautiful sorceress. In addition to her volatile personality, Lina is characterized as selfish, short-tempered, and gluttonous, and harbors an inferiority complex regarding her bust size — a trait frequently ridiculed by her well-endowed rival, Naga. Beyond her comedic flaws, Lina has achieved historic feats, including destroying two pieces of the Demon King Shabranigdo and assisting in the destruction of high-ranking Mazoku such as Demon Dragon Garv and Hellmaster Phibrizzo. In anime she also played a pivotal role in defeating Dark Star, Shabranigdo's counterpart from a parallel universe. Due to these monumental achievements, Lina constantly attracts the attention of demonkind, making her a primary target of their sinister plots and attacks.
At the beginning of the main series, Lina encounters the swordsman Gourry Gabriev and the chimera warrior Zelgadis Greywords. When forced to fight a reincarnated fragment of Shabranigdo, Lina invokes the Giga Slave — a spell drawing power directly from the Lord of Nightmares, the supreme deity of the Slayers universe — destroying the Demon King, though she vows never to cast it again after realizing its potential to erase existence. the highest deity of the Slayers universe, but has no plans to ever use it again after almost ending the world. She later befriends Princess Amelia Wil Tesla Seyruun and the priestess Sylphiel Nels Lahda. As her journey progresses, she is manipulated by the enigmatic priest Xellos into the conflict between the Mazoku Lords Chaos Dragon Garv and Hellmaster Phibrizzo. Later in the light novels, Lina teams up with the mercenary duo Luke and Milina, eventually confronting Mazoku Lord Dynast Grausherra and uncovering his conspiratorial schemes. In the anime continuity, which branches off into original storylines, Lina is recruited by the dragoness Filia Ul Copt to prevent the awakening of Dark Star in Slayers Try. In Slayers Revolution and Evolution-R, she is arrested under false charges, leading to an adventure involving the synthetic creature Pokota — who can also cast the Dragon Slave — and a second confrontation with the legendary Demon Beast Zannafar.
Since their initial meeting, Gourry has served as Lina's primary traveling companion, appearing alongside her across most Slayers media. Across the light novels, manga, audio dramas, and video games, their dynamic remains a strictly non-romantic friendship based on mutual trust. Author Hajime Kanzaka deliberately omitted romantic developments in the original works, as the adult man, Gourry primarily views himself as her guardian. Most adaptation writers and spin-off authors generally maintained this stance, refraining from altering their dynamic due to an age gap that makes romantic involvement inappropriate; for instance, in the Slayers (Tsubasa Bunko edition ), Lina's age was lowered to 12 to further emphasize this dynamic. However, an exception occurs in Slayers NEXT, where the anime staff included brief romantic overtones that led to a momentary, unconscious kiss during Gourry's rescue of Lina from the Lord of NightmaresSlayers NEXT episode 26.. Both characters immediately forgot the event afterward, returning their relationship to its original status for the remainder of the series.
Lina's adventures remain open-ended, with her story continuing to unfold in a new narrative arc of the main light novel series without a definitive finale in sight. As a notable piece of trivia, a comedic pseudo-closure to her journey is depicted in the audio drama Slayers Kita Kaette EX #4. Set decades later, this story features an 84-year-old Lina and Naga drinking tea and reminiscing about their deceased companions, only for a heated argument about their past to spark a spell-dueling battle that leaves both elderly sorceresses with broken hips.
Lina is also the main protagonists through the entire official series of the non-canonical Slayers role-playing video games from the 1990s, and further appears as a player character or an avatar option in the role-playing video games Elemental Story, Heroes Phantasia, Fantasia Re:Build, and Toram Online, with Naga in the action video game Magical Battle Arena and in the role-playing video game Valkyrie Anatomia: The Origin, with Gourry in the role-playing video games La Tale and Langrisser and again in Valkyrie Anatomia, with both Naga and Gourry in the role-playing video game Granblue Fantasy, and with them as well as other Slayers main characters in LINE Rangers, Puzzle & Dragons, Tales of the Rays, Overlord: Mass for the Dead, Ragnarok M (only in China), Guardian Tales, and Elemental Story. Her character has been also featured in a range of Slayers merchandise, such as food in the Slayers theme cafe in Tokyo, many various figurines and dolls, including Nendoroid and Dollfie among others, licensed cosplay outfits, a perfume line, another perfume, and even an augmented and virtual reality compatible digital figure.
Derived characters Several different versions of Lina populate the world of Slayers due to various plots. In one story from the prequels, Lina and Naga are exposed to a mirror that creates an exact opposite of whoever looks in it. The wizard using it expects this to produce dark and violent version of the two that would side with him and destroy the originals, but the mirror copies turn out sweet, kind, generous, and extremely concerned about the feelings of each other and everyone around them. In their attempts to break the spell, Lina and Naga actually wind up creating dozens of such doppelgängers of themselves, which go on to found an entire village full of philanthropic Linas and Nagas. A slightly adapted version of this story, which resulted in the mirror being destroyed without creating more than the initial copies, served as the basis of the Slayers Special OAV episode "Mirror Mirror".