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 cliche Western 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.
