Lodoss-tou Senki

Overview: Record of the Lodoss War was a HUGE hit when it came out in 1990 Japan. It also gained strong popularity among the tiny US anime fandom of the early 90s. Unfortunately, this anime has not aged gracefully. Normally I hate using the phrase "aged poorly". It's something that young punks use too often to just shit on anything over 10 years old. In this one instance though, I'm afraid it's kind of unavoidable. Background: Record of the Lodoss War was a 1990 OVA based on a Japanese short novel... based an a Japanese tabletop RPG...which was a ripoff of Dungeons and Dragons. Take the most clicheWestern high fantasy tropes and they are ALL here in Lodoss War, distilled down to their most basic. The characters go well beyond archetypes and into the realm of laughably generic. The plot was already just a standard D&D campaign in the novel, but the 10 episode OVA had to cut out a LOT of the novel. If Wheel of Time is like bare bones high fantasy, this OVA is like sucking the marrow from those bones. Popularity: As I mentioned previously, this OVA was a smash hit and spawned a ton of video games, radio dramas, manga, and a 27 episode sequel! So HOW did it get so popular?! To understand this, we have to go back to the year 1990 and look at it from that perspective. Ring the bell sucka! School's in session! Just as it used to take a few years for a Japanese fad to spread to America, it took a little bit for American trends to spread to Japan. In the early 90s, Japan was heavily influenced by American culture of the 1980s. High fantasy was HUGE in the 1980s. The utterly mediocre Wheel of Time books were dominating the best seller lists in America. WOT gained such popularity in the Southern US that Atlanta created Dragon Con as a WOT convention. To this day it is the largest geek convention in the Southeast US! Dungeons and Dragons was an absolute cultural phenomenon. He-Man was the most popular toy in the US. You couldn't go anywhere without running into Tolkien inspired high fantasy with elves, dwarves, orcs, and all the rest. There were plenty of high fantasy based video games in Japan by 1990, but not really any high fantasy anime or manga at the time to meet this demand. Record of the Lodoss War was created to fill a hole that NEEDED filling back in that time. Today, there really isn't the same thirst for Tolkien style high fantasy and there are already 100 fantasy anime better than Lodoss War. Keep in mind that Japanese gamers LOVED Hydlide when it hit home PCs back in 1984. Today...there isn't much of a Hydlide fandom. Lodoss isn't THAT bad, but at times it feels close. There is one other reason that Lodoss sold like hotcakes back in its day. Deedlit the Elf chick and her sex appeal. Deedlit was in many ways the first true "waifu" in anime. Before this you really didn't see lonely virgins collecting TONS of figurines and body pillows of their favorite anime girls. You've probably heard lots of people online waxing nostalgic for the anime heroes of the 80s. They all had chiseled muscles, hard jaws, broad shoulders, and looked MANLY! When have you heard people talk about how they want female designs from 80s anime back? That's right. You haven't. Look at the top 300 waifus on MAL. You'll see Yoko Littner, Senjougahara, Rei and Asuka, Lucy Heartfilia, Nami, Erza, Hinata, etc. NONE of these were around in 1990. Even Android 18 and Major Kusanagi weren't around yet. The only rivals Deedlit had were Lunch from Dragonball and Cutie Honey from the 1970s! Story: A young swordsman with no parents must team up with an elvish archer, an axe wielding dwarf named Gim, a Wizard, and a thief to go on a long journey and thwart an evil God. Did I mention this series has little imagination of its own? The only creative thing to come out of this series was an evil sword called "Soul Crusher" that took possession of its owner and had a giant eye in hilt. The game Soul Calibur BLATANTLY stole this from Lodoss War. I mentioned this before, but the novel had to be very abridged. In one episode, our heroes decide they need to go meet an old wizard and learn the weakness of an evil sorceress named Karla the Grey. In the next episode, it just announces that they have returned from seeing the wizard and learned all about her. Lodoss has a firm policy of "Tell, don't show." Characters: The characters once again are SO generic that I can't really say much about them. Instead I'll focus on Deedlit, who is the only character ANYONE remembers from this series. She was drawn with long blonde hair, massive bouncy breasts, and very soft facial features. Deedlit was being drawn by a young Satoshi Urushihara, the KING of breasts! That's all I need to say. She IMMEDIATELY falls in love with the young swordsman right after meeting him and plays his sexy sidekick. She doesn't really have any chemistry with our leading hero Parn, but her looks still win her "best girl of 1990". Fuck Bulma! She was still being a total bitch on Namek at this point. Art: The art by Studio Madhouse is decent for the most part, but this wasn't Madhouse's top performance here. In the 80s and early 90s, Madhouse was at its best with feature films like Wicked City or Ninja Scroll. It could also do 3 episode OVAs like Cyber City "God Damn Vampire" Oedo, which looks WAY better than Lodoss. With a 10 episode OVA, the budget got so strained that we end up with a still image of a dragon getting dragged across the screen in a moment of unintentional hilarity. Music: The soundtrack is pretty damn limited and plays the same tracks over and over. The closing theme is awesome though and contains the line "please fall asleep on my breasts." Overall: Lodoss is not an anime that's going to knock the socks off new anime viewers in 2018. Still, if you are interested in anime history and want to see a neat time capsule of the year 1990, it is worth checking out. Just go into it knowing what to expect and put on your archaeologist hat.

Nostalgia can be such a nice feeling, evoking vivid memories and moods. On the negative side, it can result in a depressive malaise or obsessive longing; more positively, it can lead one to aspire to something new, even greater. In the case of media, though, the rose-tinted image from memory is usually better, especially if it leads back to childhood. That's certainly the case for Record of Lodoss War: It's visually striking enough and well presented to the point that it can seem grander of a fantasy than it really is, and contrary to the emperor with no clothes parable, RoLW is an emperor peacockingin lavish and ornate robes at the behest of his advisors who hope to distract the populace from realizing their puppet king's drooling idiocy. As is so common to the fantasy genre, it loses any sense of the fantastical due to the mundanity of its endlessly recycled, clichéd roots, and the production values tank so often that the illusion of solidity cannot be maintained. Anime has often been known for its limited animation, usually making up for this with more calculated direction and editing of highly detailed and shaded (ahem, maybe not so much now...) character designs and backdrops—exposition, dialogue, and storytelling are all prioritized a bit more heavily than is the norm for animation as well. Madhouse is a solid studio, but they take the above formula to its extremes here. The character designs, even if some of them are on the generic side, are often rendered with so much detail, you'd be hard-pressed to believe these characters will be animated at all, and the staff often heap loads of stills on us with the bare minimum of movement. The dragons look immense and fearsome next to our puny heroes, but good luck not laughing once you see them tugged across the screen like a kite on a wire that is stiff as a board. The animation can be striking when they pour in enough time or budget. The opening is lovely, and the first episode is filled with stellar work: notably, the scene with the dragon, with Toshiyuki Inoue being responsible for most of the choice bits. There are often bursts of stylish limited animation throughout, but the relief becomes scarce. Of course, they make sure to squeeze the most detailed animation into Deedlit so they can sell their endocrine-disrupting PVC figurines, which you need to make absolutely sure to never touch, should you be brave enough to wander into the dungeon of a weeaboo or otaku, torch in hand. There is a greater problem at hand than the animation, however. In fact, the series often manages to transcend the sometimes poor animation via solid storyboarding and directorial magic. What cannot be so easily dismissed is that the story, the setting, and almost everything about this anime is impressive, first and foremost, in how it is the most generic of all generic fantasy stories to have ever been generic. It's so generic that I have to use the word a plethora of times to emphasize how generic it is and to make it absolutely clear that I am not exaggerating by calling it generic—not in the slightest. This is the quintessential generic fantasy: a basic elemental magic system, sexy female elves, a short and stout dwarf with a battle axe; mindless hordes of goblins, kobolds, orcs, etc., and a few big dragons along the way; bog-standard D&D-styled classes for all of the characters, such as priest, thief, warrior, etc. While this is a fairly standard tale of good guy versus bad guy, there are some betrayals and shifting alliances, but most of the "complexity" comes from the most tiresome cliché in fantasy, where a god or the heroes have to maintain the world's balance. I'm getting sleepy already. I hate this in fantasy. I mentioned this in my reviews for Ellcia, Final Fantasy... and while I'm not sure if I broached the subject with Mizuno's Crystania, it does apply there as well. I'm sure if you did a large survey of fantasy anime/manga, you'd find a similar pattern (I feel this tends to be less pronounced in isekai, but that is in no way an endorsement of the genre). You'll see this concept often in novels, video games, TV series, movies, and whatever other medium. That's probably part of what led to Made in Abyss being so popular. It has a fantastical, unique world, and the thematics are more personalized and meaningful than "Okay, gang, we gotta make sure the fire spirits are nice and toasty over here and we water the earth spirits" or whatever inane variant. With RoLW, it's a little more realistic, with a powerful witch/warlock entity conspiring to ensure that no great power conquers the continent, playing the different sides against each other and manipulating them directly. It's actually more of a political realist take on the genre than any kind of ecological or spiritual focus that is more common. Yet the presentation of it is diluted into tedium because of the focus on the witch so effortlessly pulling Jenga blocks out of empires, as opposed to a more complex conspiracy that might lend this the depth it sorely needs. Mizuno, as far as I can tell, is something of a hack fantasy writer. I've only seen his adapted work, so I can't say much about his novels. It probably doesn't help that the novel series this anime was based on was actually a novelization of the transcripts of some kind of D&D game. That's why this series is so generic and cliché, and it feels like the characters were ripped straight out of an RPG—that's because THEY WERE, in the most literal sense possible of an actual BO-drenched dork fest, and when the budget drops and we're panning over slideshows of dragons and knights, I feel like Ken Burns was there that day and made a documentary comprised of paintings documenting the epic and valiant D&D game and charted the perilous journey that inspired the legendary RoLW franchise. Most of the characters don't have much of a purpose to the story. The whole point of these characters is to form a party like in an RPG. Most of them are not useful. Woodchuck hardly ever does anything, and Etoh is pretty much dead weight other than to heal characters after battle. The two mercenaries feel as if they were written in at random (they were) and almost none of the characters have distinct personalities or even motivations to maintain the party or do anything in particular. The dwarf at least had a motivation separate from the party, but nothing about his story was compelling. Why was Deedlit even there in the first place? Because there was a sexy female elf quota, and all that fetish fuel merchandise isn't going to sell itself. Parn is kept as everyman and bland as possible so any schlub can imagine himself wooing Deedlit. Parn and Deedlit lack any chemistry, but what was especially amusing is when he was asking her to stay behind and not enter the war. The intent was to show he cared about her, but he never appeared very interested in her up to that point, during, or after. Honestly, he spent more time casting googly eyes at King Cashew for like an entire episode than anything substantive with Deedlit. The Parn-Cashew tension was so thick I probably would have mistaken this for a yaoi, where the sought after Parn had grown jaded with female company and rejected numerous beautiful female suitors so he could mosey off with his tall and tan dessert man (don't worry, I'm sure there are plenty of fanfics fulfilling this function), and the two of them being swordsmen leads to all kinds of potential jokes that even I am tasteful enough to forego. With the immense genericness that I've alluded to, it's hard to even recognize whether or not the writing is good, as it's so unbelievably familiar, like you could have written it yourself and then start to wonder if your fanfic was plagiarized. For what it's worth, it doesn't seem too badly scripted—just unoriginal and predictable to the point of tedium. Half of the time, I didn't pay attention to the story, my eyes glazing over in boredom, yet I never felt like I missed a plot point at all because none of the specifics really matter. Everything they do revolves around acquiring knowledge or an item that will allow them to thwart an antagonist or some such. It could even be said that the world building is horrendous, but it's probably more accurate to state that the world itself is too dull for there to be any world to build upon at all. The way this story was plotted was a little weird, and I wouldn't say it worked too well. The first episode is the best, and it takes place somewhere in the middle of the plot, then we're back to the beginning with Parn being a wuss, and it remains a long, bloated story that never really goes anywhere. The last few episodes are more viscous than the Great Molasses Flood of 1919, and I thought they would never end. Instead of an open ending, it's really unfinished, and you'll have to watch the lower-budget TV series that remakes most of the OVA and then continues the story. Both are mediocre at best. Immersion into the world is broken either by tedious storytelling, Ken-Burns'-tier direction, or a subpar bout of storyboarding or bad and reused animation (they even reversed some of the footage's orientation and shifted the colors in an attempt to trick the audience). What is RoLW? A fantasy, if you can keep it. A fantasy should transport you to another world, but I don't get any sense of that at all. When I'm watching this, I feel like I've been transported to Mizuno's dank basement in the 1980s with a bunch of lard-asses (now I'm spinning fantasy—fat people don't exist in Japan) with cheese poof-fingers huddled around in a circle. It smells like death and the air is thick with sweat. They're pushing around cheap figurines that look just like the heroes in the dreck we know as RoLW. Mizuno is madly recording transcripts and there's the palpable dread of knowing he'll adapt this tripe into a novel that will become a sensation.

Knights, clerics, elves, dwarves and dragons occupy some of our biggest inner-nerd imaginations. Some of my fondest memories were playing old school dungeon-crawler video games on the PC, and interacting with this type of fantasy lore. Lord of the Rings, Willow and the Chronicles of Narnia all come to mind when reminiscing of some of my favorite fictional fantasies, and there’s plenty of anime out there that scratch the itch. Legendary anime studio Madhouse attempted to tackle Record of Lodoss War in the early 90’s, a time when fantasy novels and movies were undoubtedly on the rise. It has a palpable Dungeons and Dragons feel,and is nostalgic of those all-nighters with friends, chugging our Mountain Dews and munching on Doritos while rolling the 20-sided die one more time. Unfortunately Lodoss is plagued with a sense of “generic” that’ll have you thirsting for more depth… which’ll sadly never come. Coupled with some of the most inconsistent English voice acting I’ve ever heard, it’ll be an anime you’ll probably forget soon after watching it. My biggest complaint about Lodoss is that it wasn’t given the proper amount of episodes to expand its story properly. It has such an engrossing atmosphere and massive worldbuilding potential that is squandered terribly due to a lack of time investment. What we’re left with is a marginalized “good vs. evil” approach, thinning the cast of characters to generic protagonists and antagonists. A series with this much imagination needs the proper nurturing to ensure success, and 26 episodes would’ve given it more of a fighting chance. On top of that, they decided to drop the viewers into the middle of what is chronologically after the 5th episode… only leading to the confusion. I don’t know if different mediums of media were trying this reverse storytelling at the time, but it was entirely unnecessary and only confused the hell out of me, and I’m assuming a lot of other people. You follow Parn (yep, sounds like porn) and his stereotypical group of fellow travelers (a cleric, wizard, elf, dwarf and thief) as they seek to prevent the destruction of the planet by baddies that want to control the universe. Sound intriguing? Well, I can assure you that this is the Dynasty Warriors button masher of plots. Considering the source material is actually written to emulate a D&D experience, the dungeon master must’ve been rather disappointing. The main character transforms from useless fodder to going toe for toe with the most powerful foe on Lodoss (which has definitely never happened in an anime before), all in the course of like 5 episodes. There's a loose backstory referencing his father and restoring his family’s honor, but it’s unconvincing at best. Generic quotes like “I'll get you!” and “you're no match for me!” resonate from his vocabulary on occasion, and you sense there isn't much there are on his intellectual level. Parn’s childhood friend Etoh, the with perhaps the worst English voice actor of all time, accompanies him as a sworn companion. Deedlit, a high elf and Parn’s hinted love interest, is a princess that randomly decides to join the adventure. Given the fact that she’s actually of royalty, she naturally drops everything to answer the underlying question of what is happening to her people. And honestly, the rest of the main pack is irrelevant. A gaggle of genericized fantasy tropes, which doesn’t create the best selling point. The most interesting character in the entire series is Ashram, a knight who seeks the highest power, but has some serious self-identification and reflecting to do in the process. He’s initially perceived as a villain, but can actually draw some empathy and understanding as the series elapses. In addition to being a relatively generic series, Lodoss is littered with bits of randomness along the way. Although the “potential” romantic relationship between Parn and Deedlit never actually develops, there are plenty of awkward exchanges or long stares that force the viewer into thinking there’s something there. I’m just not buying it, there’s almost no chemistry between the two. Not to mention the interest fellow traveler Shiris (the girl with the berserker friend) has in Parn…. something that's awkwardly left by the wayside. There's also the evil witch Carla, with perhaps the most unassuming name in anime villainy existence, and another dark elf that sporadically falls for Ashram along the way. The more I get frustrated with the lack of finesse in writing, the more I realize what the anime was modeled after: a D&D quest. Speaking from experience, the element of randomness doesn’t even scratch the surface of the ridiculous stuff me and my friends used to come up with when we played. So…. I guess there’s that. Sometimes I don’t consider it fair to criticize animation from the 90’s or earlier, because it’s merely a sign of the times. In Lodoss’ case, the art style isn’t necessarily my cup of tea but it’s consistent with the art out at the time in terms of quality. From what I remember reading, the studio actually utilized a sizable budget in order to get exactly what they were looking for in terms of emulating various fantasy elements and characters. Some of the fight scenes are actually quite fluid as well, something that earlier anime had issues with. No choppiness or quality drop during the heavier action sequences, something I can really appreciate. Especially when you consider the issues modern day anime have with frame drops and inconsistent animation, likely without any legitimate excuse. Did I mention how bad the voice acting is? Central Park Media, a NYC based company took the reigns dubbing Lodoss. It was clear they had no idea what they were doing. Some acting is decent, but others are absolutely atrocious. It’s almost as though when the producers signed off on it they were doing more of a “screw it”, knowing they’d be out of a job anyway. If you’re a fan of dubs due to convenience, I strongly suggest you watch the Japanese version or avoid it altogether. It’s THAT bad. Performances like this employs hopefulness for my future seiyuu career… I digress. The rest of the music is slightly unfitting, but about what I expect from an early 90’s series. Anime was largely in a learning period, starkly evident by the slow female ballads present in their OPs. For a show so focused on action and fantasy elements, the OP just...doesn’t work. As a standalone track it’s quite present, reminiscent of “Fly Me to the Moon” from NGE, but not an anime fit. The background tracks depict the genre much better. They’re full of orchestral life, and build crescendos left and right. As much as I disliked certain aspects of Lodoss, I enjoyed it overall. However, one must understand that most of my enjoyment comes from a mix of nostalgia and relatability. I was a HUGE nerd in my high school days, so Lodoss speaks to me in some ways other anime cannot. On the other hand, it’s leaps and bounds from being “good” by any normal definition. Perhaps I would’ve enjoyed it more if I had watched the Japanese dub vice the English, but a generic plot, short run time and forced romance all work to cripple Lodoss, dooming it from the start. I would recommend this series to fans of other fantasy anime or earlier shows, or those just looking for something different. As always, thanks for reading!

Story: Overall though this was a good OVA. However, the Story is very scattered and doesn't have proper closure. The completest in me tells me I have to at least see the TV series that follows. I haven't had any luck finding it, however. This anime has a special place in my heart due to the nostalgia factor. I only hope that the TV series that follows this up somehow gives better closure. And one minor gripe, I think all of us understood the backstory of Lodoss by the 3rd episode so it really wasn't nessesary to retell it prior to every episode. Art: It's very good lookingfor an older piece, however it's not so old as to forgive some of the shortcuts and mistakes that are noticable. Sound: I love good sound. This doesn't really diliver however. IMHO there's no excuse for 2.0 now that dvd has been on the market so long. other wise it's got repetative music that you'll never forget. But that doens't make it good. Sigh... Character: All of the characters have some sort of charisma to them. Parn and Deedlit are still one of the most recognized anime couples of all time. I just wish there was more down to earth characters like Woodchuck. Enjoyment: I really do like this anime alot. It's more nostalgia than anything but I do like it. I recommend this Anime to fans of Lord of the Rings and Dungeons and Dragons or other swords and sorcery stories. Overall: Fanboy opinions and nostalgia aside you should... Borrow it! See reviews and more at my site BRANS!: http://bumrapanimeneverseen.blogspot.com/

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