anime series, Slayers Revolution, premiered in Japan on July 2, 2008. Megumi Hayashibara, the voice actress for main character Lina Inverse, performed both the opening and ending theme songs. The new plot is told across two 13-episode arcs and follows an original storyline that has subplots based on events in the novels, with series director Takashi Watanabe and production studio J.C.Staff reprising their duties from the three original TV series. A fifth Slayers series titled Slayers Evolution-R is the second 13-episode arc of Slayers Revolution and was aired on AT-X starting on January 12, 2009 in Japan. Central Park Media licensed and distributed the anime in North America under the Software Sculptors label on VHS and Laserdisc between 1996 and 1998, collected in eight volumes. It was a commercial success for Central Park, which led them to license Slayers NEXT and Slayers TRY; NEXT was first shipped from April 1999 in a similar format. A box set of the first four volumes was released in July 1999, and a box set of the second four volumes in October. Slayers TRY was released later in 2000. The first three seasons were subsequently re-released on DVD (in season box sets). Months before Central Park's license for the anime properties expired, FUNimation Entertainment was able to obtain the license and it aired as part of the new owner's programming block on CoLours TV, as well as the FUNimation Channel. The first bilingual DVD box set after FUNimation's rescue of the license was released on August 27, 2007 retaining the Software Sculptors-produced English dub. A boxset of Slayers, NEXT and TRY was released by Funimation on August 4, 2009. Fox Kids won the rights to broadcast Slayers but eventually did not air the anime since it would be too heavy to edit it for content. The first North American television broadcast of The Slayers was February 17, 2002 on the International Channel. In 2009, MVM Films began releasing the series in the United Kingdom on a monthly basis. The first series was released on four DVDs between January 5, and April 6, 2009. The first volume of Slayers NEXT was released on May 11, 2009. Episodes have also been made available on the streaming video sites Hulu, YouTube, Crackle, Anime News Network, Netflix, and Funimation's website. FUNimation licensed both Slayers Revolution and Slayers Evolution-R for American release; the episodes in Japanese with English subtitles