Lina Inverse (リナ・インバース, Rina Inbāsu) is a fictional character and the main protagonist of the comic fantasy-themed light novel, manga and anime series Slayers.

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.

[2] 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,[2] which would be then carried over to much of other media too.

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.

[1][2] 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.

During that time, Lina earns her reputation of someone who tracks and destroys numerous bandits for fun and profit, stealing their ill-gotten gains for their own use.

[13] Although she is an adolescent (between 15 and 17[14] years old in most stories), she is an extremely powerful mage, with a great love for money, treasure (especially the magical sort) and food.

As such, she is widely reputed to be an evil and calamitous "Enemy of All Who Live",[15] among many other similar monikers (such as "Empress of Destruction", "Natural Disaster Mage", "Raven-Black Witch" and "No-Breasts Demon").

Lina encounters and destroys a part of Shabranigdo with her ultimate Giga Slave spell, which draws power from the Lord of Nightmares,[20] the highest deity of the Slayers universe, but has no plans to ever use it again after almost ending the world.

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.

Furthermore, a super deformed, giant, toylike fighting golem named "Piko-Piko Lina-chan" is constructed in the film Slayers Great in a distorted image of Lina's that emphasises her kawaii (cute) attributes, much to Lina's dismay and anger as she believed she had been chosen to model for its creation because of her (self-imagined) great beauty; it is also featured in the video game Slayers Royal 2.

[60] In 2020, from Anthony Gramuglia from Comic Book Resources ranked her and Usagi Tsukino from Sailor Moon as the best anime heroines of the 1990s, describing them as "two fantastic characters who have remained popular and iconic for decades.

[64][65] Anime News Network's Lynzee Loveridge put "Lina Inverse and Company" at second spot in "Traditional Fantasy Parties", while Gia Manry from the same website ranked her first among all anime's "Easiest Good Guys to Make Angry", as well as placing Lina second on her lists of "Destroyers of the Fourth Wall" and "Most Destructive Heroes".