Lodoss-tou Senki

I don't know what it comes down to. Maybe it's the color composition and background art. Maybe it's the contrast of digital vs. hand-drawn animation. Maybe it's the fact that the characters are all adults or at least adult-looking, rather than children or teenagers. Maybe it's a combination. Maybe it's all of the above. Maybe it's something I'm missing. Whatever the case, watching fantasy anime from before the advent of Sword Art Online is a wild, quasi-mystical experience. They just have such a different look and feel to them. The result is a world that instantly captivated me from its opening sequence.

In today's day and ... age, even some of the better fantasy anime that do not outright copy the SAO formula, their worlds and environments still somehow end up retaining that same plastic, candy-colored look and feel. I believe that Martin Scorsese’s point about contemporary superhero cinema very much also applies to the state of the modern isekai and fantasy genres. Exceptions always exist, certainly, such as Kouta Hirano's Drifters, but there's a reason they are called exceptions. They are few and far between. We've become so accustomed to the SAO aesthetic, that it's not until we see a fantasy show that came before it, that we realize or are reminded of what was lost, and how different and unique each show used to look.

The OVA opens on a narration scene of the universe’s history, very much akin to Galadriel’s exposition at the beginning of Fellowship. Is it as tight? Is it as concise? Is it as relevant? Is the premise as unique and inspired? No, absolutely not, but after more than a decade of being brainwashed by SAO clones and derivatives, a return to classic fantasy made me feel as though I was awoken from a deep sleep and I was instantly drawn in.

There’s not much point in me talking about the plot, for an abridged version of the aforementioned narration scene will be featured at the start of each and every single episode, but the basic idea is as follows. War is once more coming to the island-continent of Lodoss, and it is up to our merry band of 6 adventurers to prevent it, and if they can't, then they must at least make sure Lodoss itself still exists in the aftermath. This gave the show a sense of purpose I had forgotten was possible in fantasy. What do you mean this isn't a journey to collect bitches for your harem?

Parn is our swordsman hero protagonist, and he is accompanied by Deedlit, the beautiful elven user of spirit magic, Ghim, the stoic dwarf axe-user, Etoh, the priest healer, Slayn, the sorcerer, and Wood, the skeevy rogue. Do any of these characters have even a sliver of an original bone in their body? Not a chance, no, but there is a qualitative difference between the unoriginal characters of today and the unoriginal characters of yore.

The overwhelming majority of characters today are clichés and stereotypes that pander to the fans’ desires and fetishes. That's why a lot of them feel like they don't belong. Fate/Apocrypha‘s Atlanta isn't a cat girl in because it made sense for the story. She's a cat girl because weebs love cat girls. Did the story of Re:Zero need Ferris to be a trap? Do Rem and Ram need to be wearing maid outfits? No, again, Ferris is a trap because weebs love traps. Rem and Ram are dressed as maids because of how popular the look is. None of it serves the story’s universe. It simply serves the fans, hence the term fanservice.

All of Lodoss’ characters, though wildly derivative and unoriginal, feel like they belong to the world they’re in. None of them feel shoehorned in. They are all stereotypes that serve the story and setting, not the audience, and you would be surprised what a massive difference that makes.

The resulting effect was so radically different, that even something as generic as chanting spells through poetry, which is a trope so trite that even modern isekai shlock makes fun of it, somehow felt compelling to me here. The first time we see Slayn chant a barrier into being to protect his mates as they retreat, I could not be more enthralled and wanted to know more!

Record of Lodoss War was an OVA released by studio Madhouse in 1990. The anime was based on a Japanese short novel, which was in turn based on a Japanese tabletop RPG, which was in turn a rip-off of Dungeons & Dragons. The OVA was such a smash hit that it spawned a litany of video games, radio dramas, manga, and even a 2 cour sequel, though this initial OVA is the only entry in the franchise that found any substantial success in the West.

I often see terms like “cliché” and “breath of fresh air” thrown around a lot in conversations like these, typically in order to describe one's positive or negative experience with any given story. Before we can have an intelligent discussion about the subject, however, we need to define our terms, for they do not always mean the same things at all times. When talking about whether or not something is a cliché or a breath of fresh air, rather than “what”, the more important question is “when”. Would it have been reasonable to call the content of Lodoss cliché back in the 90s? Perhaps, but is that assessment still fair today?

Consider the following. The 80s and 90s were saturated with super serious and overdramatic fantasy and sci-fi stories that, after years and years, had become exhausting and stale. Enter Mike Myers’ big dumb green ogre. In 2001, DreamWorks Animation released an instant classic in Shrek. Shrek was the solution that Hollywood came up with in order to fix the state of cinematic fiction at the turn of the millennium. It felt like a breath of fresh air because it beautifully parodied the pretentious and predictable tropes of Disney movies. Alas, like I said, it's a matter of when, not what. In the words of Terenas Menethil, “No king rules forever, my son.” By its third installment in 2007, Shrek’s own formula, which originally made it such an international runaway success, had itself become cliché in turn.

Regardless, DreamWorks opened the floodgates to the parody genre. Every single armchair writer who previously never got anywhere because of a lack of creativity, was now free to rip-off every already-existing IP in their purview under the guise of parody and satire. This led to the genre completely jumping the shark with dumpster fires like Meet the Spartans, The Comebacks, Scary Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, Date Movie, Stan Helsing, The Starving Games, You Don't Mess with the Zohan, and so on, and so forth.

We now live in the world of 20 years later, and every single mainstream movie in recent memory has either been some kind of openly satirical work, or has at least contained substantive satirical elements. Granted, while the MCU had a humoristic tint from the beginning – what with RDJ’s Iron Man – starting with the success of the Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel has turned this into an exact science. There’s a reason the phrase ‘Marvel humor’ exists. Some of their latest entries, such as Thor: Ragnarok and Thor: Love and Thunder, are legitimately difficult to categorize into a genre. Do they even count as primarily action movies with comic relief anymore? Or are they just straight up comedy movies with some action relief? And herein lies the importance of asking “when”.

After all, what is a cliché? A cliché is a trope that has become overused in recent memory. Well, when every single piece of entertainment that has come out in ages is a parody or satire of some sort, then the turns table, and the parody becomes the cliché and the serious drama becomes the breath of fresh air once more.

For the benefit of the jury, I present to you Exhibit A: Aquaman. In spite of being inextricably linked to a sinking ship of a cinematic universe and its protagonist having been the butt of every superhero joke for the past half a century, the success of Aquaman proves that audiences were clamoring for a return of the unironic fantasy genre – a classic, archetypal hero’s journey that takes itself seriously and attempts to sincerely sell you on its premise without subverting it with self-deprecating humor or self-aware meta gags. Mind you, the relative failure of the Aquaman sequel, which included a whole lot more of the aforementioned self-satirizing elements, serves only to further prove my point.

As such, it is my contention that, to a contemporary audience that has spent the last 2 decades being force-fed a constant stream of media that mocks everything that is beautiful and sincere, it is inappropriate to describe Lodoss as cliché. If you are as desperate as I am for even a whisper of a genuine story, then Lodoss will feel like, dare I say it, a breath of fresh air.

Nevertheless, nostalgia for a bygone era can only take you so far. What matters at the end of the day is the quality of the material itself. Does Lodoss hold a candle to the heavy hitters of Western fantasy? Surprisingly, until the release of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, many considered Record of Lodoss War the de facto king of cinematic fantasy. Even after it was dethroned, in the eyes of many critics, it still reigns supreme in the realm of animated fantasy.

Alas, as is the case with all trends, the genre became populated by and bigger and better IPs, and Lodoss slowly became lost to the void of cultural oblivion. The shadow cast by Berserk was too deep and too dark.

The tragedy of Lodoss is that it lives and dies with its aesthetic. I so wanted to like it more. I really did. Regrettably, once the retroactive novelty of the non-SAO fantasy feel wore off, and the return to a Tolkienesque aesthetic alone was no longer sufficient to keep me engaged, it became utterly transparent that the show had little to offer beyond that.

Though the setting and worldbuilding initially drew me in, before long, it became apparent that the emperor is wearing no clothes. Now, you might think to yourself, and you would not be wrong, that Lodoss has better worldbuilding than 90% of fantasy anime, so how can I possibly be unhappy with it? It has always been my belief that any given work of art needs to be judged, not by some universal standard, but by the standard of what it is attempting to be. Lightweight entertainment like Cautious Hero, My Next Life as a Villainess, and How Not to Summon a Demon Lord have no real worldbuilding to speak of, but then again, they don't need it. They have no lofty aspirations to rise to any kind of standard of fantasy excellence. Lodoss, on the other hand, presents itself with all of the haughty pretense in the world. It expects itself to be taken seriously as definitive epic, and it simply falls utterly short of said expectation.

The main narrative thrust of Lodoss is the big war backdrop constantly going on in the background. Our main characters are not OP light novel guys and gals. It is made very clear to us that they can't solve everything single-handedly through brute force. For most of the story, their primary goal, more than anything else, is to just stay alive, for the war is too vast and unwieldy for them to get involved. They eventually get dragged into it in spite of their best efforts, and they don't really… do anything. For all the hype about wars and battles, there’s not much of either. When actual battles are shown on screen, it's mostly either stills or recycled shots of the same action animation over and over again. And then, at the end, through some kind of pretzel logic, Parn solves everything single-handedly through brute force.

In a sense, I was reminded of Made in Abyss. You are constantly told that this is a world full of cool shit, and you are told that cool shit is always going on, and it is – just never really around you. All of the cool shit is contained in the stories other characters tell you about things that happened elsewhere or in flashbacks, but what you actually see happening around the main cast is fairly mundane. If I were inclined to be cruel, I would say that a more fitting name for the show would be Record of Lodoss People... Which Tangentially Touches on the Lodoss War... Briefly... Sometimes. Fortunately, I am a very polite and kind person and would never say that.

Perhaps the best (worst) example of this is the fact that for the first few episodes, the party’s main objective is to find this wise old sage and ask for his advice concerning the coming strife. You spend several episodes with them struggling on their way to meet this dude. Naturally, you can't help but get a bit excited about what he's gonna tell them, what they're gonna learn, the things that are about to come to light. Then, midway through episode 6, you learn that they're back in the kingdom and the meeting with the sage happened off-screen. You then get a CliffsNotes version of what they learned from the sage. What's the Japanese expression for “show, don't tell”?

Much of the same goes for the characters. They have very little to offer beyond the appeal of their archetypes. They are all very nice for as long as you can indulge in the feeling that you’re watching anime LotR, but as soon as that spell wears off, it becomes apparent that what you're watching is something more akin to Rings of Power – mind you, minus the political poison, just the hollow characters.

Speaking of which, even accounting for my initial enchantment with the characters and their designs, I disliked Deedlit from the get-go. Make no mistake, she's beautiful and all that, but literally one of her first speaking lines is some tsundere shit where she's blushing while frowning. Remember how Akira Toriyama-sensei used to draw pouting girls as having inflated cheeks? As though they’re blowing air into them, all ready to burst? That’s exactly the visual I’m talking about. I think she was mad she wasn’t getting enough attention. Maybe she was quarreling with the dwarf? Fuck if I remember. No, I'm sorry, we haven't yet come full circle to making that cliché cool again. As far as I was concerned, she was kind of dead in the water from that point on.

As time moved on and the series progressed, I grew to genuinely dislike Parn, the protagonist. If I've said it once, I've said it 100 times. I don't understand the appeal of protagonists who are the literal worst at everything and easily the least interesting and likable out of the entire main cast. As a wanna-be swordsman, Parn is not the best melee fighter of the group. That would be Ghim, the dwarf. He can't use offensive or protective magic like Deed or Slayn. He can't use healing magic like Etoh. He's also not as cunning and crafty as Wood. In terms of conventional intelligence, the argument can credibly be made that he is legitimately the dumbest of the group. So, then why is he our protagonist? Why is this the dude we follow around? Why is everything centered around him? Why does everyone take him so seriously?

The one thing he's got going for him is bravery. Full disclosure, even there, I don't accept that he is any braver than some of the other party members, but let's pretend, for the sake of argument, that he is. Ok. In principle, I don't have a problem with a protagonist who's got nothing going for him except bravery, because the bulk of the enjoyment stems from the journey – his journey to become cool, that is.

The rub here is that Parn never really goes through any meaningful change. He is the epitome of hype without action. He is the leader of the group and we are told he is a born leader, but we never see any evidence of that being the case. In fact, we never really see any evidence that he is exceptional in any way, shape, or form. We are told that he is our last hope for this, that, or the other, but we never see any evidence that he is special or uniquely equipped to do much of fucking anything. He will often be praised and honored for his actions, and he is the one chosen to inherit Lodoss’ version of Excalibur, but again, we never get any indication of tangible growth or evolution on his part, so as to be worthy of any of it. By the resolution of episode 13, he still very much felt like the same dickhead from episode 1.

The finale was a rush to get to the main bad guy and save the day. On the way there, various threats and obstacles interfere with Parn et co. Every one of the obviously stronger, more experienced, and more competent supporting characters stays behind to deal with said obstacles and they all tell Parn some variation of “Go! You have to make it! All of our hopes rest on your shoulders! You are the key!” and I'm just left thinking, why? Literally why? Where's this assumption coming from that he would somehow perform any better than any of you? What's special about him? It was a feeling very reminiscent of The Philosopher’s Stone, when Ron said: “Harry, it's you that has to go on, I know it. Not me, not Hermione – YOU!” Again… why?

The argument can be made that a lot of these issues are to be laid at the feet of the anime, not the source material, for the OVA had to cut the story up pretty drastically in order to make it fit the 13-episode length of the series. Would the epic have felt more fulfilling had it included all of the novel’s contents? Perhaps, but there are some problems that cannot be hand-waved away in that manner.

It got to be so unfocused, that by the end, I tuned out completely. It took me a whole ass week to motivate myself to watch the final episode.

Oh, and lest I forget, a word of advice to any aspiring worldbuilders out there. If you're going to have less than 50 names of items, characters, and locations in your story, make sure to name them something more distinct than: Falis, Falaris, Fleve, Flaim, Fianna, and Fahn. Those are all real names that all represent very different and important elements of the Lodoss narrative. I mean…

Still, Lodoss is a forgotten gem of the Japanese take on Western fantasy. If you’re at all a fan of fantasy or isekai anime, you owe it to yourself to check out the big poppa. This is ground 0. This is where it all comes from. Will it lose you eventually? Maybe, but the journey up to that point will be well worth your time, because somewhere within us, buried deep, I think we all feel this indescribable sense of loss. We’re all longing to go back, pining for something artful and perhaps a little dark, if for no other reason than just exhaustion with today’s retina-burning flashy colors.

Take Disney, for instance. If you look at Disney movies today, it’s as though Toy Story never ended. If you go back, however, and take a look at Sleeping Beauty, 75% of that film consists of frames you would be unsurprised to find on someone’s wall. Lodoss is not quite Sleeping Beauty, but it is the Oliver & Company to The Lord of the Rings’ Lady and the Tramp. That is to say that it’s nowhere near as good, largely derivative, but still very enjoyable because it is representative of the era and satiates the same deep-seated yearning. To many, to this day, it is an unshakable staple of the genre.

Besides, if you’re not as critically-minded of an asshole as I am, and it is highly unlikely that you are, most of the problems I outlined here might not even register with you, let alone bother you.

P.S.: Under no circumstance whatsoever are you to watch this show if you suffer from photosensitive epilepsy. There are so many scenes of brightly and rapidly flashing lights in this anime, that on occasion, it came dangerously close to giving even me a headache. No matter how you cut it, it’s just an irredeemable aspect of the visual production. Even in the absence of the danger of causing seizures, the attempt to fabricate excitement by way of shoving strobe lights in your face every 5 minutes is just disturbing and tiresome.

Watching Fantasy Anime part 1: The classics

I've been playing dnd and getting into fantasy books/series lately cause i like the worldbuilding,aesthetics and the story( when i'ts good of course). Decided to give a shot fantasy type anime so here we go.

Lodoss-tou Senki or Record of Lodoss war is you standard medieval high magic type adventure anime, you got your hero swordsman, elfs, dwarfs, wizard, evil warlods/witches/magicians trying to take over the world, orcs, goblins, kobolds, and most important dragons. Its inspired by a novel who also took inspiration from a tabletop game and it shows. With that out of the way lets dive into the ... aspects of the anime.

Story: Parn is a not so good swordman from a village that got attacked by a group of goblins, after helping fend then off with the help of Deedlit the elf, and others. He goes into a journey with his party members to save the continent of Lodoss from Marmo a evil empire that is trying to control everything, an evil spirit, and a crazy wizard that is trying to revive an ancient godness or something to destroy everything, thats pretty much it. I'ts old school dnd fellas, it doest not really have a very deep and interesting lore for you to get invested or a bunch of worldbuilding like other fantasy godfathers like Game of Thrones, LOTR, Narnia, Conan the Barbarian, etc. It doesn't help that the pacing very rushed and the characters barely have any time to develop, So what else does Lodoss has to to offer? lets find out.

characters:
Parn-> Anime protagonist short black-brown hair, green jumpsuit, brown armor, and holy shoulder pauldrons they are huge, thats all i can remember of him, because other then that Parn is pretty much a cardboard. He starts off like really shitty swordman, gets better and a little bit more mature and laters is able to defeat the villain that in earlier episodes could easily stomp him and his intire party if he wanted too, he doesn't have any other personality and really generic props for him for being one of the first cardboard protagonists.

Deedlit-> Honestly one of the best of the bunch in my opinion, she is a pretty elfy lady with a very kind personality, thats falls in love with our MC,their romance feels very forced again because of the rushed pacing. She is elven royalty that really cares about her people, uses nature based magic, and she is very cute i guess. Some peole i saw around here were bragging about how she was the 90s waifu or some shit because she was so hot, but to be honest other then her pretty face her design is not that sexualised. I feel like in the novels and the spinoff games there is more stuff about her backstory, more dialogue that shows more about her kind personality.

Etoh->carboard on cleric clothes, he is there

Ghim->grumpy dwarf that makes sometimes talks about how Parn is reckless and gets grumpy with Deedlit cause she is a elf, he had some backstory with some princess that made him go into a adventure to save world, i'ts not very fleshed out again because of the pacing.

Slayn->Very calm and colective wizard, i kinda love how everytime he casts spells he does a long chatting to summon then kind like in real dnd

Woodchuck->Rogue asshole, greedy and sometimes likes to annoy our MC

others: We got Lodoss Knight, Evil Knight, Evil Wizard, Evil Witch than wants to keep the balance between good and evil, and that hot black elven chick that was friends with evil Knight

Art/Animation/Music: thus far one of the best things about the anime( except the PNG moving dragon) is that in my opinion the art was really good, i love the weapon designs, the visuals of the monsters, the armors, the visuals of the dragons and for a old ass 90s anime the animation looks really good and doesn't suffer from being slow and static like a lot of counterparts. Music was alright some adult contemporary ballad for the opening, some good ambient and half decent battle music i guess.

Conclusion: it was pretty alright for a anime, loved the visuals and animations, but din't liked the pacing wich was very fast and it din't let the story breathe a little very much and the MCs dint feel very fleshed out and pretty generic.

Anyhow a 5/10

I loved the art and the tone this show sometimes achieved, but Christ did the writing make it unwatchable. Every character is a flat stereotype of their race or something like "being evil." The world building is childish with a king of goodness and puppies, king of being mean and stinky and a chaos lady “because balance” being the full extent of it. It has less moral dimensions than He-Man.

Those could have been great ideas. Having an objective model of good and evil that move on a cosmic level to be balanced or swing to and fro *could* be interesting if it were ever ... questioned what good and evil mean. If it could make those concepts relevant and personally challenging to the characters and people living in the world… But Record of Lodoss War refuses to expand on anything, leaving nothing to care about. Flat characters, a flat world and if you’ve so much as glanced at swords and sorcery before, you’ll find absolutely nothing new.