Record of Lodoss War OVA Review
Roudosu Tou Senki
ロードス島戦記

Since the Community Anime Reviews site has failed a lot of late, I’m republishing some of my OG reviews from there. I have corrected obvious spelling errors though. I will add new notes in parenthesis, labeled “ANB  note.”  😅 I won’t count these as part of the “Back to the Vaults” series as I have not rewatched them. HOWEVER, for this series, I am planning to rewatch the OVA series and see what I think now compared to then.

–> Buy Record of Lodoss War BD Collection on Amazon.com!

Community Anime Review of Record of Lodoss War OVA

(ANB note: This series was originally reviewed on 14-Dec-2005.)

The Story

From the first episode, it was clear to me that this anime was spawned from the popularity of D&D (or AD&D) of the late 80’s (that being based on Tolkien’s works). The first episode, while having the main party already assembled and on their quest, was pure D&D with a hint of Tolkien’s Mines of Moria. As such, it was fun as was the entire series.

Episode 2 took us back to where it all began. While this approach to storytelling is not uncommon in anime, in the end, I felt it harmed the story-telling, though at first it did not seem so. Having this story removed from the actual quest-line made the initial quest seem overly short and almost inconsequential. This problem was exacerbated by the fact that at times, characters move from point A to B to C in a moment, which doesn’t always jive with the story.

For (a made up) example, our characters could be deep in a dungeon and fleeing because a dragon is about to come to life and kill them all. In the next moment, the characters are not only outside the dungeon, but a mile away awaiting the dragon to emerge, which it does. This scene doesn’t happen in the anime, but things like it do and I found that troubling.

The Characters

There’s almost no character depth given to any of the characters. We know a bit about Parn’s father and what drives him. It was nice seeing him get trained throughout the title, which made it feel more real. We know very little about Deedlit (Deed(o) as Parn calls her) beyond her love for life, her skills with the sword and magic, and her ability to go from flighty-flirty to dead serious in a flash.

Ghim had a reason to fight but I never knew exactly what brought him to love a human family so much that he’d risk his life for them. We know that Slayn and Ghim were companions in the past, but beyond that, I knew nothing. Slayn and Leylia seemed to be in love, but this is not explored. Etoh seemed like a gay priest who wishes he could be with Parn, but sadly knows Parn is heterosexual. I exaggerate of course, but Etoh was a complete waste.

Parn x Deedlit Romance

I was hoping for a bit more in the romance between Deed and Parn. Why in the world she’d fall for this wannabe knight was a mystery to me, though I have my guesses. It was clear from their first meeting that something about him interested her. She was a bit flirty with Parn and was ready to defend him, even if he was a horrendous “hero” who wasn’t very good with a sword. Parn never notices her for a long while as anything more than a travel companion. I was amazed that he could ignore such a lovely creature at the Royal Ball and gaze longingly at King Kashue.

But maybe that’s what kept her coming — the fact that he wouldn’t pay attention to her made her work harder to gain his attention. Fortunately, by episode 10, Parn had opened his eyes to her. Still, I would have enjoyed the two being more romantic by the end of the series but didn’t get that.

Animation

Next, the animation. I’m guessing that in order to have enough money to produce 13-episodes, the animators discovered that after the first episode, they’d have to skimp heavily on the animation at times. So we get a lot of pan-and-scan moves, re-used sequences with minor modifications, and cutouts done in a way to give the illusion of movement. The later was done primarily with the various dragons seen in the anime.

The first dragon shown is done pretty nicely and the fight was pretty cool. However the remaining dragons are reduced to cutouts with the occasional eye-shot closeup or a thrashing tale. That was very disappointing.

Bottom Line

While I am being fairly hard on this title, I did enjoy it on the whole. With greater attention to character development, story flow, the romance of Deedlit and Parn, and better animation, this could have been a real winner of an anime. As it is, it is worthy of a rent, especially to fantasy RPG fans.