Shin Chou Kyou Ryo: Condor Hero

This is a compact review based on all THREE seasons (78 episodes) of the Legend of Condor Hero series.

*Please note that only season 1 was voiced in Japanese but all 3 seasons have been Chinese dubbed.*

Before proceeding with the actual review of this anime, I would like to clarify the name of the story. Based on the original novel written in the late 1950s, this story should be called The Return of the Condor Heroes. But somewhere along the way, the Japanese decided to change the name to Legend of Condor Hero, which to add on to the confusion is the same name as ... the prequel story to the story that this anime is based upon. So to sum this up, Legend of Condor Hero (anime) does NOT equal to the actual Legend of Condor Hero, but in fact, the anime is the sequel to the Legend of Condor Hero. For those who can read Kanji, check this out and everything should be clear.

The Legend of Condor Hero is, to many Chinese, the Romeo and Juliet of the West. Not because the story have much in common, but rather it is the reputation that it earned over the last 50 years as a romance story. You can literally go walk to a Chinese and ask them the story of Legend of Condor Hero and 90% of the time they will be able to tell you something about it.

The story revolves around Yang Guo and his lover Xiao Long Nu in their adventure against the dominating Mongolian Empire (~1250 AD) under Genghis Khan's grandson. However, what really captivates viewer to this story is the taboo/forbidden love between the two as one is the master and the other is the apprentice.

While the anime adaptation follows the actual story quite closely, there were some missing characters here and there (for example, Sha Gu played a key role in providing the background story of Yang Guo's deceased father, but she was completely taken out in the anime). However, I was glad that the production crew did a good job with the crucial Battle of Xiangyang as that was the "heart" of the story in the actual novel.

Since I have personally read the entire trilogy -the official Chinese novels- of the Condor series (The Legend of the Condor Heroes, The Return of the Condor Heroes, and The Heavenly Sword and the Dragon Saber), I was expecting a lot from this anime. It failed me in many ways, from the poor animation quality, to the overly repetitive scenes and soundtracks. All in all, it was fairly decent in terms of story retelling, but for an anime in this day and age it certainly can be a whole lot better.

This is one of the most intense love stories out there in anime. You can really feel the immense depth of the love. This together with the abundance of strong female characters in the story makes it one of my favorite anime series. The only minor point is that there is a lot of silly martial art fighting going on.
The OP and ED are addictive.

Hotness: very intense forbidden and pure love.

Bishounen: The main lead is a cutie. He could have been more intelligent and more sensitive though.

Plot contrivance is present is nearly every story. Some try to hide it and make it more natural, while other try to limit it to a few big ones that shape the entire story. This anime doesn't do that. It's an unbelievable serie of coincidental meetings, people splitting up and meeting again and splitting up again by plot demands.

This is difficult to go into details without getting into detailled spoiler territory but for instance, at one point the main character was looking for someone.
He doesn't find this person by searching for them. Instead he finding them randomly after following the people arresting a random ... guy he ate with earlier in town. That's a pretty good representation on how everything goes into that anime. (as there are many more exemples and most of the plot feels incredibly forced.)

This is by far my biggest issue with this show, which undermine when some characters says the world is a big place when the entire story has to take place in a small square for things to keep happening this way.

There are others things that I disliked about the story like the way the final villain is defeated (I guess you could say it was foreshadowed but it is still very lame), and the entire final arc is pretty mediocre in general.

Overall I'd say the story start decently enough, but quickly gets into a downhill slope until around 2/3, where it really gets quite bad.

The art is quite mediocre and I prefered the art of some older animes. In general, it is decent but it is during the fight it's at it's worst. Most of the fights are pretty poorly animated.

The sound isn't that memorable to me, either positively or negatively. It did it's job It is quite fine and didn't affect my view of the anime negatively at all.

The characters were also fine. There was the cliche "Almost every girl falls in love with the MC by being arround him for a day" but I guess that's pretty common. Of course, the final villain is basically a mustache twirling villain that's only there to serve as an obstacle between the romance between the main characters.

I will say, that at least, I didn't find the anime boring.My main issue with it really is the story (and to a lesser extend, the animation).