Lodoss-tou Senki

After watching so many fantasy story I can say finally I found the true fantasy story I've been looking for something fimiliar to final fantasy or maybe elden ring or even lots of the ring something that can the complete universe of fantasy story with various factions such as humans, elves and dragons something has hat that classic typical story about good and evil something that talking about legends and heroes, this anime could be the ultimate fantasy story you can find in anime community, no overpowered main character , and there is no friendship power , no harem bullshit , just a ... story that could be too realistic than entertaining, and trust me ain't exaggerating at all , it has some dark theme elements like berserk , ppl here can easily die and every fight they struggle and they face their weaknesses.

im sick of shitty isekai or OP MC I wanna see something that will make love all characters without favorite any one of them , with some true love story without harem and over ecchi things , and we don't have that silly or cringe comedy here like most of shows have .

the soundtrack were stunning I loved em , classic and fancy and honestly that's why I prefer 90s anime , at that time ppl create stories with pure love , you can feel how much hard work they put on it , short amount of episodes with decent stories no filler no several seasons .


i really hope this anime get a reboot because there is a lack of lore hereI feel the plot needs more episodes to explain the universe during my walkthrough I noticed they kinda rushed the story to the end and that's why can't give it full besides that I believe the source material here needs at least 25 episodes to adapt it .

Record of Lodoss War Review


Record of Lodoss War is one of those oldtaku “classics” that a lot of people have heard of but in my experience you find less and less who have actually seen it, especially with the oldtaku continuing to age out and newer younger generations joining the fandom in much larger numbers. Nowadays it’s kind of most notable for being that thing Lisa Ortiz was in before Slayers, and that series that Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth was based off. I only know two people who have seen Record of Lodoss War other than me, both only saw it once and ... one saw it over 20 years ago. Where I live, in the US, we have only received a handful of Lodoss properties but in Japan it’s quite a bit bigger with multiple novels and games in addition to the couple anime that were released in the 90s. However the two anime are meant to stand on their own and the OVA series was the first of these two making it the entry point to the series for many people, such as myself. Did it succeed in properly introducing and explaining the world of Lodoss Island to fresh audiences? Kinda.

Lodoss is a by the books fantasy story. What's the first thing that comes to your mind when I say “fantasy adventure party”? The mental image you just got there is identical to the composure of the Lodoss group. We get Parn, the warrior, his friend Etoh, the priest, Slayn, the wizard, Ghim, the dwarf, Deedlit, the elf, and Woodchuck, the thief. None of them are really all that notable other than Deedlit, who is strikingly beautiful and has a personality that isn’t as easily summed up as just stating her character class. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Parn, who at times comes off as so empty he feels like an RPG player character still awaiting a player to come in and personalize him. Parn is the main character. The people in charge of the anime though clearly knew who you were gonna watch it for however. Both the opening and ending heavily feature Deed, with the ending cutting all party members who aren't her. Pretty artwork of a pretty elf to keep you going. But other than the party make up what is Lodoss like? Pretty standard.

The basic plot outline of Record of Lodoss War is that the party is on a quest to stop an invasion by the evil emperor of Marmo, Beld, and to take down his powerful ally, the witch Karla. Ghim and Slayn are looking for Leylia the daughter of Ghim’s friend Neese who went missing seven years ago. If you want to know the particulars of why, read the novel. An English copy currently has an asking price of around $70 so hopefully you got one while they were still in print. Salyn and Ghim get roped in with Parn and Etoh after they help them fend off some goblins attacking the town they live in. They meet Deedlit when she shows up to warn them of the attack. Woodchuck they meet in prison when the party is arrested for a miscommunication later in the series. However this is not where Lodoss chooses to start. Instead the first episode is smack in the middle of their adventures when they are already on their way to meet the sage Wort. Unlike some series, Berserk for instance, having the first episode set ahead then flashing back does not help establish a tone or foreshadow anything. Instead it’s more akin to Violence Jack, just having one random episode out of order. It’s odd and confusing because the viewer doesn't know any of these characters yet and they've just been thrown into the middle of the story. In addition Parn’s first two lines are both negging Deedlit which doesn’t help endear him to you. This weird out of order episode left one of my friends so confused it effected his ability to understand the story. He told me “Yeah they were like ‘okay we’re gonna go see the wizard’ then the next episode they’re like ‘okay now that we saw the wizard’ and you never see them go there!” I had to tell him they did, they just did it in the first episode then flashed back for seemingly no reason. However this is not the biggest flaw of Record of Lodoss War. It’s biggest flaw would be its pacing.

The strength of any fantasy rests on the back of its lore. From Lord of the Rings to Game of Thrones all successful fantasy franchises have had deep lore. Record of Lodoss War is no different. It opens every episode with a brief summery of the history of Lodoss’ creation. However there are only 13 half hour episodes of the original OVA franchise, they were never going to be able to pack everything in. This did not stop them from trying. Things move at an absolutely break neck pace in Lodoss War. In those 13 episodes alone there are 4 separate villains. That means there are 4 separate climaxes. You barely have time to rest on the end of one part before the series has moved on to the next. Okay they’re fighting Beld, now they’re fighting Karla, now they’re fighting Ashram, now they’re fighting Wagnard. Those last two take place during the final three episodes leaving them feeling even more rushed and crammed than anything that came before them. Characters can be introduced and then made lifelong friends or bitter enemies in what seems like an instant because the show cannot slow down if it wants to get everything in there at once. I’ve watched it multiple times and I can’t say for sure if Wagnard is possessed by Kardis, the god of destruction, or if he just remembers his evil scheme in the middle of a battle. Personally I don’t think he should have been in the series and that they should have cut both his and Ashram’s battles using those last 3 episodes to slow the series down a bit and ending it with their battle against Karla. She was the villain with the most connection to the main party and the battle against her felt the most climactic out of the 4 villain battles. If, however, you can get past a level of pacing so fast it would pass an F-1 qualifier there are things to enjoy in the series.

Lodoss has some genuinely good fantasy action and designs. The dragons are huge and intimidating. The sorcery, while standard at times, gives you that classic fantasy magic feel. And the larger party means there’s more of an opportunity for individuals to use unique class abilities. Not to mention for those into that sort of thing Deedlit is total eye candy. Her ability to commune with the spirits of nature sets her magic apart from the type used by Slayn so it doesn’t feel like they just did the same character abilities twice. And for those willing to put in the time and attention to detail there’s some pretty interesting lore behind the scenes. Such as how emperor Beld wields the demonic sword of the demon king that he previously felled and that it grants great power but in exchange will corrupt the user. I also think the sword my crave blood and has a mind of its own but it is hard to tell given the speed at which this information is dumped and how easy it all can be to miss. Ghim’s obsession with rescuing Leylia, while lacking in the motivation provided by the novel, ads a more personal component to the group’s questing beyond just “stop evil thing from destroying world”, a personal connection later echoed when Parn has his battle against Wagnard at the end of the series. Karla makes for a fairly interesting antagonist. Unlike many fantasy villains who’s motivation is “I am evil because I am evil” Karla is trying to strike a balance in the world. She believes that the world can be neither fully good nor fully evil and will throw her weight and influence behind whichever side she deems weaker in the sake of maintaining a perfect balance. If you’re willing to look past the under cooked characters and rushed delivery you can appreciate Lodoss on its aesthetics and world then later return and finish cooking the characters yourself with additional research. It’s a very standard fantasy, but that also means it’s not a poor fantasy.

In the end it’s hard for me to recommend Record of Lodoss War, and this is entirely because of its insanely fast pacing. I personally enjoy it, and found that I liked it even more on my second viewing than on my first when I wasn’t all that impressed. The more layers of the Lodoss onion I peel off the more I enjoy it. However taken as a stand alone this OVA series is ridiculously rushed. It bites off far more than it can chew and both story lines and characters suffer because of it. It would easily be a much stronger show if it cut down on a couple of plot threads and gave the others room to breathe. The creators of the show don’t believe in pruning their trees however, and allow every tiny branch to suck away the energy of the whole rather than cut them off to allow the stronger ones to continue to grow and flourish. If you’re the type of person who really loves fantasy stories, or this sort of pacing issue isn't a dealbreaker for you then I would say go ahead and give Lodoss a shot. On the other hand if you're not big on fantasy and really need a strong, slow story to feel a deep connection with the characters then just go ahead and pass on this one, it’s not going to offer much for you. I would say it is the stronger of the two Lodoss anime but that doesn’t mean its fantastic or that it is for everyone. In the end its a heavily flawed work and the enjoyment is going to vary wildly by individual. I like Lodoss, it’s not my favorite, its not going to be topping my chart of all time greatest fantasy stories, but it’s an enjoyable way to fill my time and is a world I can get into. Maybe that will be how you feel, maybe not. But in the end the only way to really know for sure is decide if thats an adventure you want to take.

7/10

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 a bit grander of a fantasy than it really is, and contrary to the emperor with no clothes parable, RoLW is an emperor peacocking ... in 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, cliche 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 good work as well, especially the scene with the dragon—with Toshiyuki Inoue responsible for most of the choice bits. There is often bursts of stylish limited animation. 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. The reasons to abstain are multi-faceted, and I shan't go into them here, but mind your hands!

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 cliche 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 cliche, 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. If that doesn't send a thrill up your leg than I'm not even sure you have a pulse.

Most of the characters don't have much of a purpose to the story—the whole point of all 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 those PVC figurines weren't going to be able to sell themselves. 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 funny 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, and hardly even during or after that point. 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 very 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 or Ken Burns' direction or a subpar bout of storyboarding or bad and reused animation (I swear 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.