, read as is a fictional character in the light novel, anime, manga, radio drama and game versions of Hajime Kanzaka's media franchise Slayers, who was introduced in Dragon Magazine in 1990. She is also often known as Naga the White Serpent, which is a more literal translation from Japanese , and an early English version by ADV had her name transliterated as "Nahga". The name she is best known by is in reality an alias of Princess .
The character has great magical powers and an unstable but resilient personality. She is particularly obsessed with a fellow wandering sorceress and the central character of Slayers, Lina Inverse. While occasionally referred to as Lina's sidekick and traveling partner, Naga's arrogance and self-imagined rivalry made her just as likely to antagonize Lina during the course of any story. Naga is a few years older than Lina and takes great pride in her much more voluptuous appearance, but like her she has numerous character flaws, often played for comedic purposes. She was well received by anime critics and general audience alike.
Naga's Japanese voice actor is Maria Kawamura, and her English voice actresses are Kelly Manison in the OVAs and movies. In the anime series Slayers Evolution-R, Naga appears as a cameo character named , voiced by Kawamura in Japanese and by Eva Kaminsky in English.
Character
Background Naga's real full name is Gracia Ul Naga Saillune, making her the first daughter of the Holy Kingdom of Saillune's crown prince Philionel El Di Saillune and the older sister of Amelia Wil Tesla Saillune. She has one living uncle, Christopher Wil Brogg Saillune, one deceased uncle, Randy Saillune, and a deceased cousin, Alfred Saillune. Her grandfather, Eldoran Saillune, is the king of Saillune, although Philionel acts as regent. Naga's mother was murdered several years earlier by the infamous assassin Booley. The teenage (16 or 17 years old at the time) Naga immediately took revenge and killed him with the crown princess' original spell, Chaos String.BLASTER! I to VI. p.58. After the funeral, the traumatized Naga found the outfit she currently wears inside her mother's closet, and shortly after this, she left home to learn the ways of the world and gain more magic powers. Naga still keeps in touch with her homeland and occasionally she is sent living expenses money through a messenger.BLASTER! VII and IX p.9. All this was disclosed only in interviews with the Slayers creator Hajime Kanzaka, but was hinted in Naga's "White Serpent" nickname (a white serpent being the coat of arms of Saillune).Aleksandra Janusz (Ina, Błękitna Czarodziejka), "Slayers nie tylko w TV: Filmy kinowe oraz serie OAV." Kawaii 40 (October–November 2002), p.12-15. In Slayers Next, Zelgadis states that Saillune has a "runaway princess", also implied to be Naga.
Naga had originally planned to simply challenge to a duel and defeat the famed teenage sorceress Lina Inverse to inherit her supposed title of the "Invincible Dark Lord" (which Naga apparently invented herself). However, as the story progressed, her obsession with Lina has quickly become more complicated and in some ways even more irrational. Naga becomes associate with Lina, is traveling with her supposed archrival and aiding her in battle, yet also often turning against her whenever someone offers Naga enough gain from it. From her side, the cynical and neurotic Lina is often abusive towards Naga and in total disregard of her safety even when they work together (such as repeatedly blowing her away with explosive spells or using her as bait for the enemy), but Naga almost never gets seriously hurt and usually just laughs it off, rarely seen as a serious enemy even when they are fighting. On the other hand, both Naga and Lina also directly saved each other's lives on a number of occasions.
Attributes The novels describe Naga as a remarkably beautiful young woman of about 18 or 19 years with a distinguished appearance, long hair (either dark-blue, violet or raven black), and intelligent blue eyes. Tall, very well-endowed, and flaunting her sexuality, Naga is in a striking contrast to the diminutive and insecure Lina. She takes pride in being physically intimidating, preferring a menacing and revealing black leather outfit, which is as a keepsake from her mother but Naga also personally enjoys to wear it (though the exaggerated size of her spiked spaulders is so unpractical that Naga has at times jabbed them in her own face when spellcasting). Naga's introduction in the novels describe it as an old-time 'evil sorceress' fashion style that, according to Lina, used to be popular centuries earlier. The large magic swordDragon Magazine October 1994, p.9. that she carries around is purely for a show, and can be only used defensively for blocking and parrying, due to Naga's hemophobia after witnessing the killing of her mother; in effect, she has a severe aversion to the sight of blood which can cause her to faint. To her dismay, Naga, who believes herself to be Lina's "greatest, strongest and final rival", is often referred to as Lina's sidekick or "that other girl". The usually dismissive Lina likes to compare Naga's irritating habit of following her around as akin to goldfish's trailing feces (in the words of Lina: "She might be a useless ally, but having her as an enemy can sure be amusing"). However, Naga also often makes her very annoyed (even to the point of rage), especially when Naga makes fun of her small breasts, playing on Lina's physical inferiority complex and her envy of Naga's bust size.
Naga is much more graceful than Lina and has an outrageously loud boisterous 'noblewoman' (ojousama) laugh (which Kanzaka said is similar to the laughter of Naga's motherBLASTER! I to VI p.30. ) that most people in the Slayers world find unbearably obnoxious (to the point of rendering them physically powerless). While a princess, Naga does not boast of that (her heritage is never mentioned in any series and has only been acknowledged in interviews and supplemental materials), however the way she acts makes it quite apparent: when she stands before other members of royalty, she speaks to them as equals, while Lina will bow her head and speak only when spoken to. Many of her very self-confident and 'dramatic' poses and speeches are similar to those of Amelia or Martina, another Slayers princess. Naga's inflated ego, her carefreeness and vanity, recurrent appetite for good food, considerable greed for money and magical treasure, frequent and excessive drinking of alcohol, and often-displayed overconfidence along with her notable lack of common sense (including a notorious tendency to have her careless and ill-considered spells to backfire), all mean she often gets herself, and Lina, into trouble.
Abilities Despite Lina's mockery of Naga's magical skills, she is an exceptionally talented sorceress, and may, in fact, be Lina's greatest rival. She is well versed in black magic and capable of casting healing spells and golem-forming and dragon-conjuring spells. Naga is especially proficient at white magic, though she only uses it when absolutely necessary, and also specializes in shamanistic magic, in particular spells of earth and water and ice variety. She enjoys creating golems (even if they usually do not turn out very well and sometimes go berserk and turn against her), has developed several of her own spells (including Bogardic Elm, Freeze Rain, Gu Ru Dooga, Mega Vu Vraimer, Void Breath and Vu Raywa), and her most common spells to use are water/ice-based (such as Freeze Arrow) in contrast to Lina who uses fire-related ones. Naga knows and can use the ultimate shamanistic and white magic spells (Ra Tilt and Resurrection), is able to stop living-dead powered via necromancy with a powerful Flow Break spell, and has learnt Levitation by just observing its use by Lina.BLASTER! VII and IX p.58. According to Kanzaka, Naga and Lina are the mightiest human magic users in the world of Slayers and Naga actually has a larger potential magical capacity, while Lina knows the ultimate black magic spells (notably the devastating Dragon Slave).BLASTER! I to VI p.25. One of Naga's roles is that she is "constantly reminding Lina that however great her magic, she is still lacking in this regard."
She also has an ability to control jellyfish,BLASTER! VII and IX p.2b. and is skilled at hand-to-hand combat (punching and kicking), as well as talented artistically and good at cooking. She carries around a large sword yet never uses it. Naga's un potential to survive any dangerous situation was surprising to Lina, who has actually left her for dead on a few occasions, before she got used to it and began to take it for granted.
Appearances
Novels and drama CDs Naga has first appeared in the 1991–2008 Slayers Special series of light novels, which was later (from volume 30 onward) re-titled as Slayers Smash (an ongoing series since 2008). Like in the case of other Slayers novels, most of the Special series stories were first published in Dragon Magazine. Some of them were first collected in the Slayers Delicious series and some are subtitled as "Slayers Excellent" or "Slayers Superior"; some were also later re-published in the series Slayers Select. The Special series, which axis are the joint adventures of Lina and Naga, serves as a prequel to the main series (starting about three years prior to the first meeting of Lina and Gourry Gabriev) and is less serious in its content. Naga is the main protagonist of Slayers Special 3: Nāga no Bouken ("Adventures of Naga") and is the titular subject of the 2012 bonus book Slayers Addition: Nāga Ijin-den ("Legend of Naga the Great"). An exclusive side-story of Lina and Naga, "Slayers Gaiden", was published in the issue #200 of Dragon Magazine in 2002.
Hajime Kanzaka was originally going to make Naga appear in The Battle of Saillune (volume 4 of the main novel series) but had a trouble to implement this idea properly. This led him to create the character of Amelia. Kanzaka said Naga would not appear in the main series due to Amelia being there,BLASTER! I to VI p.7b. but the two actually meet in Slayers VS Orphen, a novel and CD drama crossover of Slayers and Sorcerous Stabber Orphen, where the masked Naga appears incognito and keeps her identity secret to Amelia.Slayers VS Orphen p.110.
Naga also appears in the first volume of Kadokawa Shoten Tsubasa-published alternative series of Slayers children's novels written by Nambo Hidehisa, where her outfit was redesigned to be a less skimpy (wearing a miniskirt instead of a thong) by the artist Yuji Himukai. When they first meet, Lina mistakes Naga for Gourry's mother due to their similar looks and guesses she is "about 40 years old."
The 2006 audio drama Slayers Kita Kaette EX #4: Kita kaette Naga!? provides a closure to the entire Slayers saga, with the retired Lina and Naga, now elderly in their eighties (with almost all other characters already dead) and vacationing together. After Lina revives the choking Naga (who meets her mother in a near-death experience), the two recall their past but their versions do not match, leading Lina to challenge Naga to a final fight as to decide who is right. The battle ends in both of them trying to cast top-level black magic spells (Naga's Dynast Brass and Lina's Dragu Slave) but breaking their own hips in the process.
Anime and manga