If you were a part of the 90’s Western anime fandom, it was impossible for you to not at least be aware of Lodoss. It was a staple of that era of Suncoast Video and Animerica Magazine, and its influences can still be seen today. Ever wonder why elves in anime have really, REALLY long ears? Lodoss, that’s why.
However, the thing about a lot of media which is emblematic of a specific time period is that it can age with that time period. Case in point, George Macdonald’s Lilith was ground-breaking when it was first published, but it has largely been forgotten now in the wake of its superior successors, like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.. Some shows and books can be like that local restaurant everyone in your town eats at. To those from that time and place, it’s the best and a source of precious memories, but to any outsiders, it may be nothing special, or even outright unappealing.
So, as someone who was born in this period of anime fandom, but never grew up in it, how well does Record of Lodoss War appeal to me? Well, first, let’s explain
What is Record of Lodoss War?--
Record of Lodoss War is a 13 episode OVA series, based on a series of “RPG Replays”. During the 80’s in Japan, magazines such as Comptiq would serialize replays, which were transcripts of tabletop RPG campaigns, and Lodoss began as one such replay of Dungeons and Dragons. The replay proved to be so popular, that the sessions were collected and published as three novels, which would in turn spawn short stories, audio dramas, film and tv adaptations, video games, and a new tabletop RPG based around the replay’s world and characters. It’s kind of a big deal.
While it is a pop cultural phenomenon in Japan though, the 13 episode OVA which I am reviewing now is really the only piece of this phenomenon that ever caught on in the West, though it caught on like a house on fire. Indeed, to quote Mike Crandol of Anime News Network,
“This causes many fans of the fantasy genre to fairly drool upon seeing Record of Lodoss War for the first time. In fact it was not until Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" adaptation that Lodoss War was dethroned as the king of cinematic fantasy, live-action or otherwise. In the animated realm, however, it still holds absolute sway.”
-Record of Lodoss War DVD Collection - Review - Anime News Network
So what’s the plot? Well, uh… there’s a dwarf named Ghim, and he goes looking for the daughter of a high priestess who went missing a while back. And then along the way, several characters like the protagonist Parn join him on his search. And then there are these evil dark figures who want to do something evil and their campaign to take over the world plays out in the background while our heroes go on their quest.
If you’ve noticed that the answer to this question has less to do with the actual plot and characters, and more to do with the OVA’s place in pop culture history, well, I think you may begin to see the main issue.
How does the world of Record of Lodoss War work?--
Okay, so long, long ago, Marfa, the goddess of creation, went to war with Kardis, the goddess of destruction. The ensuing battle was so huge, it ripped the earth apart, and caused a new island to break away from the continent. That island’s name was Lodoss, and it's where our story is set.
The setting is pretty barebones and basic, although I’ll admit I found myself drawn to it. Admittedly this basicness is largely a product of its inception. Tabletop RPG’s are less concerned with making worlds with intricate politics, economics, or cultures, because the main purpose of an RPG world is to give our players a place to explore, and in that regard, Lodoss succeeds brilliantly. Easily one of its strengths is that the big war which is raging between the various kingdoms of Lodoss remains a constant backdrop to our heroes’ quests, and said heroes get dragged into the war despite their best efforts. But rather than being all-powerful protagonists who are able to single-handedly solve the war on their own, the main goal of Parn’s group is simply to stay alive, with the war being far too large and multifarious for them to do anything else.
It’s a nice subversion of fantasy cliches, although the same cannot be said for the series’ handling of fantasy races. Agan, this series started out as a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, so there are certain races that exist solely as enemies for our heroes to kill. However, while this sort of thing makes sense for a game that requires player input and challenges, it makes significantly less sense for a story with characters and motivations.
In the second episode, Parn helps a young woman in his village who is being attacked by goblins, but later gets chastised by the other villagers for this. Y’see, even if the goblins are violent, the mayor of the human village has told everyone that they need to leave the goblins alone. If the humans don’t bother the goblins, the goblins won’t bother the humans, and peace, however tentative, can be maintained. While Parn was right to protect the fair maiden from the filthy hands of the goblin horde, by killing one of them, Parn has almost certainly given the goblins an excuse to gather their forces and enact revenge on the entire village. It’s a serious moral dilemma, and Parn is now faced with the quandary of what to do next.
What does he do next? Well, he and his best friend Etoh leave the village without telling anyone so that they can enter the goblin settlement and kill all the goblins before they try a raid. Really. Now, there are two possible ways to interpret this action.
The first way is that the goblins really are pure evil and monstrous brutes, and Parn is right to want to kill them all like you would want to kill some rats or cockroaches. If that’s the case, then he’s being incredibly stupid about the whole thing. At the very least, he should warn the other villagers, so that they have time to prepare if the goblins attack in retaliation. It’s clear from his earlier fight that he only killed that one goblin the first time around through dumb luck, and there’s no way he has the skill to take on an entire settlement of goblins, even with Etoh. So if he really wants to mount a raid on them, he’d do best to at least get some other people to help him.
The second way is that the goblins aren’t all evil, and the actions of the marauding band is as chastised in the settlement as Parn’s actions were in the village. The goblin leaders may be punishing the band and trying to come up with a peaceful solution of their own. If that’s the case, then either Parn is willingly escalating the conflict simply because he wants glory and hates goblins that much. Or, an even less charitable interpretation, Parn and Etoh don’t see anything wrong with killing goblins simply because they aren’t human. Their actions then are akin to someone in our world going “Hey boys, y'wanna go on down to the Rez or the Pale of Settlement and have some fun?”
Parn’s actions make perfect sense for a game campaign, when our players need enemies to fight, but they make significantly less sense for an actual story, where people need reasons to do what they do beyond simply “I need XP”. The worst consequences for a player’s actions in an RPG setting is that they die themselves, or they get their party killed. But thanks to Parn’s actions, a shit-ton of people die! He couldn’t even leave a fucking note to the mayor. Like, hey man, you should like, fortify or something. And yeah, this makes a bunch of the surviving villagers mad, but that’s the only negative consequence Parn faces. Parn NEVER looks on the events of that day and thinks “Oh, huh, maybe I should have done things differently.” or “Maybe I bear some responsibility for all those people dying.” The narrative actually rewards his actions, by allowing him to tag along with Ghim’s quest, attaining glory and honor and all that stuff, and possibly finding out what unknown dark force made the goblins so violent. And for the rest of the series, or at least what else I could get through, this pattern keeps happening. Parn’s recklessness and stubbornness continuously make things more difficult for his companions, especially since he doesn’t have the martial skill to back this attitude up. But instead of his friends calling him out or him going through some realization, everyone he meets can’t help but love him and praise him and reward him for all his actions.
And let’s take a look at the heroic group itself. From a purely narrative standpoint, it makes no sense whatsoever. Like Geralt’s Hanse in the Witcher, the characters have almost no depth or backstory of their own. They run into each other largely out of coincidence and then stay together because that’s what is needed for the plot to advance, even when there is no reason for them to stay together at all.
Take, for instance, Deedlit the elf and Ghim the dwarf. They are constantly at each other’s throats and making snide comments about each other’s races, and it all begs the question “Why?” Why do Deedlit and Ghim hate each other so much? Why does Deedlit hate dwarves and Ghim hate elves? As far as I know, this never gets answered, at least not in-story. The out-of-story answer is, of course, because that’s what Tolkien did. Tolkien’s dwarves and elves hated each other, so these dwarves and elves must hate each other too.
Okay, fine. But then, that still leaves the question, why do Deedlit and Ghim stay together in the group? Even if we leave aside the question of why they hate each other, why would they ever stick together for more than five minutes if they hate each other so much? In The Lord of the Rings, Gimli and Legolas started out hating each other, but given how the one ring needed to be taken to Mordor or else the world would end, they were willing to put aside their differences for the greater good.
In Lodoss though, even though there is SOME weird, dark force lurking around with evil plans, none of the group knows what those plans are. The main reason they are traveling together is to find the girl Ghim is looking for. That’s it. There aren’t any world-ending stakes at play here, they’re just looking for a missing girl that Deedlit doesn’t know or care about. So she has no reason to stay with the group at all, besides Parn.
And again, that’s the thing. While there aren’t any in-universe reasons for things to happen in Lodoss, there are always out-of-universe reasons, and in the case of Deedlit, her entire purpose is one massive, out-of-universe reason. Deedlit is in the group solely because she is in love with Parn. Why is she in love with Parn? Because the writer of the Replay novels, who played Parn in the RPG sessions, wants a sexy elven waifu. That’s it. You’re never going to get any other explanation besides that. Even if Parn does nothing but badmouth or ignore her, which happens CONSTANTLY in the series, Deedlit never stops being totally enamored with him. Does she have friends, family, a backstory? Who cares, she’s a sexy elven waifu, that’s all you need to know. From what information I could gather on the replays, it seems Deedlit was played by a buddy of the writer’s, and I am not at all surprised, given how Deedlit’s actions in the OVA perfectly resemble how two dudes think women act, despite these actions making no sense when you try to imagine her as a character and not a wish-fulfillment fantasy.
There is no reason why several of the main characters couldn’t have been combined or excised for this story. Indeed, that probably would have made the story stronger. If you combine Parn and Ghim, say, make the quest about Parn trying to find his mysterious dad who disappeared, that’s already a more compelling narrative than “I got kicked out of my village and am going to wander around until I find out things.” If you cut Slayn out and gave his magic duties to Etoh, it wouldn’t really change anything in the plot. And if you beefed up Deedlit’s backstory and motivation, she might honestly be more than just a waifu mascot. Woodchuck… he’s alright. Good comic relief. You can keep him.
The problem with the world of Lodoss isn’t so much the world itself, but the people living in it. I don’t mind cliche settings if the characters are compelling. But in the case of Lodoss, the characters are cardboard.
What does Record of Lodoss War have to say?--
Nothing, really. It’s a bog-standard fantasy quest, and there’s nothing in the way of deeper themes or messages. Again, it’s an RPG campaign. You’re watching an RPG campaign, but you don’t have the benefit of it being your own campaign with your own group of friends. Which leads to my
Final Verdict--
I can’t speak for everyone who plays Tabletop RPG’s, but I think I can say without fear of contradiction that the biggest draw of games like Dungeons and Dragons is the fact that you play it with your friends. Maybe you enjoy collecting the figures and designing the dungeons, but the main reason you like to play Tabletop RPG’s is that you’re with your buddies. You know your friends. You know their idiosyncrasies, their jokes, the way they play their characters, and so you know more or less what to expect from a DnD session with them.
If you are not from that friend group though, if you are an outsider looking in and you remove the element of friendship, it simply isn’t as enjoyable. The characters of Record of Lodoss War are really flat, but that’s because they were meant as vessels for a friend group to play with. They were never designed to carry an actual, proper plot on their own, but it’s because of this that I, as an outsider looking in, simply cannot get into Lodoss.
The soundtrack is indeed amazing. The animation is top quality. The world, while basic, is still pretty engaging. But the characters are dull as a brick, and even though they are my only real, major complaint with the series, that one aspect is honestly enough to kill any enjoyment I have. I’m sure that some diehard fans will complain that, because I only made it five episodes through, I’m not in a position to judge Lodoss. But if you can’t finish eating an unappetizing meal, that’s a bad meal. If you can’t sit through a boring movie, that’s a bad movie. And even if Lodoss may “get” good in the future, that would still mean I’d have to put up with the nonsense that made me quit for who knows how much longer.
I couldn’t even finish Record of Lodoss War, and when I can’t even finish a work, that gets it a 1/10. Maybe, as Mike Crandoll said, Record of Lodoss War did indeed set the bar for animated fantasy, or at least for fantasy anime. If that’s the case though, then it set the bar very, very low.
