https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTgepMNxnV0
I'm not responsible for anyone who chooses to read past this point. You've been warned. Onto the review!
Trails is one of the most distinct video game franchises in existence, boasting a long-running narrative across (as of the time of this writing) a dozen games with a continuous story that has been told across almost two decades of time, with character arcs starting at the very first entry continuing onto the latest, fully fleshed out NPCs (who are good characters in their own right) appearing continuously across arcs, actions in one arc having a massive impact on the other(s) in spite of difference in location and a strong emphasis on worldbuilding in a meticulous way that only video games can really do. It's not impossible to adapt Trails into an anime, but it's something that many a fan (myself included) are rightfully skeptical of, especially since the games' core appeal is something that'd be difficult to capture with the anime industry being the way it is, prioritizing short, hard-hitting one cour anime for the most part instead of long-running series like the mecha or mahou shoujo anime of old.
The Northern War anime occupies an interesting place in this, being a side story taking place between the second and third Cold Steel games – it tries to bridge an obvious gap in that arc, which was filled to the brim with various production issues, ranging from a change in who the MC and main antagonist was going to be, two drama CDs that couldn’t have been fit into the games yet are referenced constantly in future games, and more importantly, the invasion of North Ambria, a huge event once the player arrives in Cold Steel 3 that is explained in retrospect but never seen. This in and of itself isn’t a bad idea – the overarching narrative notwithstanding, the Trails games are filled to the brim with interesting events and subplots that could be expanded on or told even if they don’t advance the overarching narrative, and Falcom have been pretty open about the idea of expanding on the world in such a way.
The problem with the Northern War anime is that it has absolutely no idea what makes Trails as a series good; all the ingredients are there, of course, but nothing sticks due to both incompetence and misunderstanding what makes Trails work on a fundamental level. The most important ingredient – the worldbuilding – was always going to be compromised somewhat, but it goes so far that about a third of the show is set in Erebonia, a desperate attempt trying to appeal to existing fans instead of establish a reason why the audience, new and old, should care for North Ambria. There’s an emphasis on heroism but it’s something that Lavi actively seeks, missing the whole point the series makes about its main characters (Estelle, Lloyd and Rean) becoming heroes through their actions, and not because they actively seek heroism.
It’s not like Northern War is particularly convincing about itself even on its own merits; the main cast range from obnoxious and annoying to nothing characters. Lavi is someone who aspires to live up to her grandfather’s legacy and protect the homeland he defended and left behind, but unlike the characters she’s clearly written as a foil to (there’s an entire thing in the Trails games about the obligatory ex-mercenary in the cast of each arc) her characterization comes off as a trope and not as something authentic that was borne out of her circumstances – she’s stoic, but is surrounded by friendly teammates who idolize her even though she treats them like shit, and flip flops between treating them poorly one moment to considering them important to her in a monologue the next. The closest thing to a character moment she obtains is when she becomes explicitly complicit in the lies surrounding her grandfather’s death, but the show still pretends she’s on the path to heroism the literal next episode when she’s fleeing for her safety. She’s less an authentic character and more a vehicle for wherever the fuck the plot wants to go, she’s horribly written and there’s desperate attempts at making her appealing in an episode I can only describe as canonical filler where she stops a bunch of mascot costume wearing lunatics from tossing fireworks at nobles with a bomb being tossed somewhere in there. I’m not joking.
Martin’s the obligatory broken joker of the cast, an archetype the Trails games actually do exceptionally well regardless of arc – there’s nothing to his character beyond the fact he’s traumatized, has killed people and is complicit in the lie surrounding Lavian’s grandfather’s death. Past a certain point he goes to Erebonia and only shows up in scenes with Cold Steel characters, but there’s nothing I can say about him that I can’t say about several characters in the series that hasn’t been done better and infinitely more engaging and interesting – he has no charisma, is unfunny, just fucks off and naps a sizeable amount of the time and has minimal impact on the events of the story. He’s similar in a certain sense to Randy from the Crossbell games, but lacks Randy’s brotherhood with Lloyd and generally affable demeanor which made that character so damn likeable.
Believe it or not, I don’t have much to say about the other two main characters; the most noteworthy thing I ever thought about Talion was annoyance over the fact a strand of his hair kept changing color, scene by scene; his characterization is nigh nonexistent beyond being an awkward shy nice guy minus a scene where he shoots Lavi to get her to safety. As for Iseria, she’s insufferable and basically what happens if you take Musse from CS3/4 and remove any shred of character depth, almost like a flanderized fanfic idea of what Musse is as a character. Her role in the narrative is to bring out what little humanity there is out of Lavi, and the issue is that their dynamic is about as interesting as two white walls in an abandoned building facing each other for centuries.
There’s words I can use for the antagonists of this series within North Ambria, and the words I can use are uninteresting, boring and nonsensical – the idea of following a bunch of military officers, politicians and jaegers as their country is about to disintegrate devolve into infighting and backstabbing one another as the occupying force takes over is a novel one, but poorly done as for much of the side cast, we actually have no fucking idea what their motivations or ideals even are. The closest thing to a character with any shred of depth is Rogan, and I don’t mind seeing him make a pact with the devil deal with Lavi or Ouroboros. The issue is that he, too, has no charisma nor meaningful characterization for much of the series – we’re actually given reasons why he ideologically does what he does, but not much past that, making him feel like a victim of skeleton writing rather than a properly thought out character.
The narrative of the Northern War anime is unsure whether it wants to tell a meaningful story about its cast’s last stand against the inevitable Erebonian invasion or simply dick around and provide nonstop fanservice to the established Trails fanbase – as a result, it accomplishes neither and tells a story that is plain horrible. There’s an absurd amount of nonsense slice of life scenes that exist for no reason other than to take up time – they neither add nor detract from the characters, and the previously mentioned episode where a terrorist clown tries to overthrow the nobility with fireworks is perhaps one of the worst breather episodes I’ve seen in anime period. Action scenes are abysmally animated and devoid of tension while the dialogue is consistently basic at best and at worst, relegated to characters speaking to each other about information they already know for the convenience of the audience – this is not to say that dialogue like this doesn’t exist in the Trails series (I’d dare say that in specific games, CS3 specifically, it becomes kind of grating) but it’s nowhere near as prevalent to the same extent as it is here, as the show does it for the sake of an almost nonexistent audience of newbies. There’s a bizarre emphasis on the threat that is Rean (who mysteriously nobody in North Ambria nor Erebonia knows the identity of even though he’s always uncovered when going into or climbing out of his mech), which drives me insane because at no point is there any such mystery about who Valimar’s pilot is in the games and just about everyone knows Rean’s identity as the pilot come CS2’s epilogue, which this show takes place after.
That brings me to another major issue with Northern War – it retcons information that the Trails games has provided for no reason whatsoever. Altina in a comedy scene with Martin loses it (which at this point she’s nowhere near expressive enough to do), Sara’s backstory is clearly not the same as what CS3 tells us, Rean is acting far too happily for the point of the story we’re in, and random Erebonia characters just flash on screen for no reason other than fanservice to the audience. Things get even worse with characters from other entries showing up – Lloyd and Rixia talk about the events of North Ambria from a database that Rean destroys in CS2’s epilogue, with Lloyd noticeably wearing clothes that are more similar to what he wears from CS3 onwards, and in a photo of the SSS, Wazy is dressed up in how he used to dress up in Zero. Even Estelle and Joshua make an appearance, dressed up in their outfits from CS4 – even though at this point it’s just after Azure, meaning they should be dressed like they are in the Crossbell games. Rean willingly goes out of Valimar to fight Lavi, even though he has no emotional connection to her and has not done this at any point in the games with any character (he only does this once in the games to fight Arianrhod, and in that context he doesn’t have a choice in the matter).
The less I get started on the ending to this dogshit the better – the games state that Rean losing control of himself in the Northern War is specifically responsible for why he’s noticeably more downcast and depressed – here he acts the same as he does in the rest of the show, and despite everything the show ends in an incredibly boring anticlimax where all the civilians are vacated and little to no resistance to Erebonia is put up (the latter is a retcon of what we’re told about how brutal the invasion was in the games). The most audacious thing about this show is that it had the gall to make Rean’s motivation to be a teacher – something that’s subtly ingrained in him in CS2’s epilogue – something that Lavi puts in his head instead, taking a rare moment of Rean being proactive in the Erebonia games’ first half away from him in favor of giving it to a character who has done nothing by comparison.
If this sounds mundane then this is where I point out that one of this franchise’s major appeal and strengths is its continuity across arcs – while the Erebonia games are noticeably weaker than the rest of the franchise in this regard (with a major retcon involving a playable character in CS3/4 and a character being present in an event in Azure when she originally wasn’t, both being such significant gripes for people that Falcom corrected some information in rereleases for the Crossbell games), two instances do not compare to the absolute behemoth that is Northern War’s disinterest in continuity – Northern War treats the lore and continuity of the Trails games like window dressing in favor of desperately trying to appeal to the Trails fanbase as much as possible, with these attempts miserably failing because of how nonsensical the writing is.
There’s nothing noteworthy to speak about involving production values – the series consistently looks horrid, with uneven designs spread throughout and proportions constantly looking off model. Minus a few decent background shots, the show looks consistently ugly from start to finish – visual effects look consistently cheap and off-putting, with flash effects looking uniquely hideous. This is evident as early as the very OP, which has a moment where Lavi opens her eyes as the song drop kicks in, surrounded by what I can only describe as Windows Movie Maker flames. There’s horrid, rough CGI on the mechs – their designs have been simplified and there’s no payoff to it, making their appearance nothing but an eyesore. There’s skipped frames everywhere, dialogue where the sun sets despite barely any time passing, choppy editing with crowds and characters popping out of nowhere and just about nothing aesthetically pleasing whatsoever.
Every bit as offensive as the visuals are the sound design choices – Trails games have (mostly) pretty great OSTs, with some of my favorite field themes in gaming period. Some of them have been incorporated into this dogshit show, and the implementation is poor – they’re often playing in ill-fitting parts of the show and don’t fit the scenes they play in. The new tracks are immediately apparent and while the composition is fine, they suffer from the same issue (albeit not nearly as much as the tracks from games in the series). What I can unanimously shit on, however, are the sound effects – they’re awful and often have a delayed response to what’s actually happening on screen, sometimes two blades would hit each other and you’d hear the “clang” sound a second later instead of instantly, making action scenes even more annoying than they need to be as nothing is clicking together whatsoever.
The worst part about this show – and something that must be held against it more than anything else I have to say here – is that it’s fucking boring. It’s hard to watch, and if I wasn’t a Trails fan seeing through all the details, I’d have never wasted 20 minutes of my life every week on this garbage. Scenes feel unnaturally paced, often with minimal substance – while in a twisted way this is consistent with an issue the games have (the Liberl and especially Erebonia arc games had so much content they had to split games late into development, the Erebonia games going very distinctly from 2 games to 4, and at points in those games damn does it show) there’s nowhere near enough content to justify it, unlike the games, letting things abnormally pad out like I’m watching horrible filler of a long-running shonen from the 2000s.
Then, if there’s nothing redeemable about this show, why waste my precious time on writing a lengthy review like this on it? It’s so obviously garbage that anyone with even a shred of human decency would agree to it, right?
Unfortunately, you’d be wrong. There was a concentrated effort by elements of the Trails fanbase to essentially downplay the show’s problems; the exposition wasn’t so bad and just “normal dialogue”, fans were excitedly reacting to their favorite characters appearing for a split second, and the usual factionalism (exemplified by reaction cows on Twitter fishing for a response as to which arc is best/worst) took over discourse over the show as well, with arguments engaging in what I can only describe as toxic positivity – namely, that because Trails is a comparatively niche franchise next to its other JRPG contemporaries, we should be grateful for the existence of this show at all. This is the logic of someone who has no standards whatsoever, and flies in the face of anyone who authentically likes something because it’s, well, good; the fact someone likes something because it’s good, means that if something related to that thing isn’t good, it must absolutely be held to that standard. That is why I’m here writing this review even; I want something better in the name of a franchise I love, and side stories have come out of this franchise that I love – examples would be the Trails from Zero Four Destinies novel, the Ring of Judgment manga, Loewe spinoff manga or even the rushed but still pretty fun manga adaptation of CS1 (which ironically shares a writer with this show somehow). However, all of those have to live up to the golden standard that the series sets up, with a clear understanding of what people love so much about the Trails series. And that, unfortunately, is a standard Northern War has failed miserably in reaching.
Northern War is a blend of the absolute worst problems Trails has to offer, exacerbated by writers who have no real understanding of the source material they’re basing their story on, staff who are clearly overworked and inexperienced, and direction that’s malaria to the eyes. It’s a video game adaptation in the worst way possible, being a clear, shameless attempt at making money off the Trails fanbase – no one, even the biggest apologists of this worthless garbage, will care about this show in a few years, and almost no one who isn’t already a Trails fan will watch this. I do not recommend this to anyone, and would suggest anyone and everyone – Trails and non-Trails fan alike – stay away from this.
Trails as a series is better and deserves better than this garbage, and I expect better from anything carrying this franchise’s name.
Thank you for reading my review, any and all feedback would be appreciated.
