Julien Neaves, Editor
Plot: Young adventurer Parn, high elf Deedlit, Ghim the dwarf and other heroes band together to resist sinister forces and save the land of Lodoss.
Review: I have heard chatter about Record of Lodoss War on classic anime Facebook groups for some time now and all of it has been positive. I therefore decided to check out the original 13-episode OVA from 1990 and I can confirm the high praise was well deserved. With a medium SPOILER ALERT let’s dive in!
The OVA is based on a series of eponymous fantasy novels by Ryo Mizuno from work he had done as a setting for role-playing games, namely Dungeons & Dragons. And the high fantasy world of Lodoss would be a familiar one to fans of the genre. You have knights and wizards and elves and dwarves and dragons and all that stuff. There’s not a whole lot of unique elements here, but pretty much everything the anime does it does well.
The first aspect that really stood out for me were the enjoyable and fleshed out heroic characters. The protagonist Parn, son of a dishonored knight seeking to restore his family’s honour, is your prototypical brave hero but he is an untrained fighter, and that relative lack of skill remains consistent throughout. This dude wears no armour, plot or otherwise. I loved his romantic interest, the highly skilled and cheeky high elf Deedlit, determined dwarf warrior Ghim, and wise sorcerer Slayn. I also liked kindly priest Etoh and wisecracking thief Woodchuck. We also have the fun mercenary duo of Shiris and Orson and noble kings Fahn and Kashue.
The villains here are no slouches either. The most popular is the Dark Elf Pirotess (pictured above) and I actually expected her to play a larger part in the story given how often her picture was shared. The femme fatale and ill-fated love of the “Black Knight” Ashram does not actually do that much. She shows up, gives the heroes some trouble, enchants Ashram and dies not too long after in his arms. Maybe it’s her sexy design and bad girl attitude that has won her a legion of fans. And speaking of Ashram, he’s a steely and very cool looking bad guy and gave me some strong Sephiroth vibes. The demonic Emperor Beld and power-hungry dark wizard Wagnard were a bit one-note for my tastes though. There’s also the body-hopping Grey Witch Karla who had a great design and added a sense of danger and mystery throughout proceedings.
I must also commend the action in the series which was delightfully bloody and varied. And the episodes cut quite the good pace, mixing in enough adventure and battles with story and character development. I did have a couple of issues with the story itself though. While I enjoy non-linear storylines, I don’t believe it was the best choice here. While it does get the action started immediately in the first episode there was really no benefit after that. There were no major revelations or twists with the backtracking and jumping forward and it just made the straightforward story unnecessarily confusing. And all the build-up to the major dragon battle at the end led to an anticlimactic showdown as did the final battle against Wagnard’s resurrected forces.
While I had a few story issues I was entertained throughout my watch of Record of Lodoss War, and it is definitely one of the best I have seen for this era of anime. I was considering checking out the TV series, Chronicles of the Heroic Knight, but I heard it was not as good and they retconned some things from the OVA. You folks can tell me if it is worth a look.
But regarding the original series, I highly recommend it to fans of 90s anime or high fantasy animated adventure.
Editor Jules’ Score: 8.5 out of 10
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Julien “Editor Jules” Neaves is a TARDIS-flying, Force-using Trekkie whose bedroom stories were by Freddy Krueger, learned to be a superhero from Marvel, but dreams of being Batman. I love promoting Caribbean film (Cariwood), creating board games and I am an award-winning author. I say things like “13 flavours of awesome sauce”. Read more.