Lila (Japanese:ライラ Raira) is a fishwoman and a minor character in a single episode of the Slayers TRY anime. Like many of her race, she has the body of a fish (a more brightly-colored, tropical variant) with normal eyes, arms, and legs of a human. She is voiced by Slayers mainstay and well-known voice actress, Megumi Hayashibara (林原めぐみ) with her English dubbing voice being provided by Rachel Lillis.
In her brief, one-episode appearance, her personality is shown to be quiet, kind, hospitable and understanding but rebellious, mischievous, risk-taking when need be.
History[]
Raised by her single father, Honar, on a remote island surrounded by the sea that resembles a fish in itself, Lila lives her days tending to her home, father, and the island she occupies.
One night, during an intense storm, a young teenage boy named Kerel is swept into the sea from a ship and loses consciousness, prompting an underwater Lila to save him and drag him back to shore, though, without sustaining injuries to her human right arm and scaly right side before passing out onshore with Kerel in her arms. She presumably also took herself and Kerel to recover in a local hospital.
Ever since this incident, she and Kerel have madly fallen in love, secretly but consistently visiting each other in the dead of night by the shore in which they first cradled in each others' arms
As her father explains, fish people like herself need to spend half of each day in saltwater in order to avoid dying by dehydration and/or asphyxiation before conforming to their cold-blooded, one-track-mind sensibilities and flopping on the floor, remain in damp environments, eat nothing but fish-specific meals, and never travel very far from the sea. This experience, dubbed a common tale, is what drove away Honar's human lover (and presumably Lila's mother) away from them.
Honar's story and bickering wit Kerel causes Lila to lament her flat outward form, but Amelia and Kerel reassure her that it will work out. Impressed, her father describes one method of helping Lila change from fish to human: an ancient fish-people transformative treasure that will allow those who collect it to freely change their form. In order to find the treasure, a beautiful princess will be needed to summon the guardian treasure.
After comical events involving a cross-dressing Mr. Gourry to summon the serpent-like guardian with the treasure residing in its forehead, they collect the stone and break down into a potion and transform Lila into her most desired form: a human. However, the potion doesn't work and can only be activated with a kiss by a human and a fish person who truly love each other. If their love is true, the human and fish person will exchange forms
Agreeing to the deal, Lila and Kerel both drink the potion momentarily before kissing switching they're forms.
Lila, now a human, and Kerel, now a fishman, hug and share a kiss under a sunset on the shore where they first fell in love. Her father laments the lack of courage he had to actually become a human, Amelia assures her she is now happy.
Abilities[]
Given her scaly physique, she has the ability to traverse and breathe underwater with ease, though, to an uncertain extent as she sustained injuries while rescuing her eventual boyfriend and overboard human during a harsh storm, Kerel. This factor may also indicate that she is much more durable than she seems to be, as she is able to remain to stand and focused to still watch her shipwrecked lover recover in bed despite the injuries she received to her fragile, fish body.
Trivia[]
- As suggested by her father, her bed is always coated in a thick layer of slime and loves eating meals consisting of seaweed, slugs, and earthworms.
- Her voice actress, Megumi Hayashibara, also voices Slayers' main protagonist, Lina Inverse.
- She also voices Rei Ayanami from Neon Genisis Evangelion.