29-03-2010, 05:32 PM
Record of Lodoss war is a 27 episode series that follows after a 13 episode OVA (released 8 years prior). I didn't really know that at the time and figured it was just a retelling or whatever, anyway, this is a review of the TV series.
Background: The story takes place on the cured isle of Lodoss, a continent created by the battle between two goddesses (creation and destruction). Anyway, the backstory is pretty long, so I can't divulge everything, but essentially Lodoss is full of dragons, several deities, mages, dwarfs, priestesses, etc, etc, etc, etc. There is also a smaller island just to the south of it called Marmo, it's loaded with monsters and doom beasts and whatnot.
Anyway, the TV series follows a young knight in training who, incidentally, doesn't get introduced till around episode 8. Basically, he travels around with a party including a dwarf, an elf, several types of mages, priestess, and a mercenary and they have to stop the evil necromancer from summoning Khardis the Destroyer. Khardis basically kills everything when she is summoned, so this Necromancer would be the eternal king of Lodoss (because he can control the dead). So he's basically insane.
Anyway, the story has a lot going on at the same time. So, through the first 8 episodes I had a very hard time getting into it. Eventually, after the main character shows up and things seemed to flow better.
A lot of this is pretty epic: the battles with the "Black Knight", the ancient dragons (who are basically... 100x the size of a garden variety dragon), the struggle between the goddesses, all that good stuff.
All in all this series was quite good and I ended up enjoying it quite a bit.
Having said that, this anime is HEAVILY rooted in the High-Fantasy as well as the Role Playing worlds. Record of Lodoss war was derived from a series of novels that was in turn derived from "replays". A replay is a transcript of a role playing game. Record of Lodoss war was the transcript of a series of Dungeons and Dragons games played between a few Fantasy novelists to a rule set they decided to call "Record of Lodoss War Rules".
Lodoss is also HEAVILY developed, the series has one of the best opening sequences I have ever seen, has an omake after every episode, and two closing sequences (one plays after the other).
Anyway, this series only looses points for being so hard to get into early on.
8/10
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/-PLUD7gEqTA&rel=0&fs=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/-PLUD7gEqTA&rel=0&fs=1</a>
Background: The story takes place on the cured isle of Lodoss, a continent created by the battle between two goddesses (creation and destruction). Anyway, the backstory is pretty long, so I can't divulge everything, but essentially Lodoss is full of dragons, several deities, mages, dwarfs, priestesses, etc, etc, etc, etc. There is also a smaller island just to the south of it called Marmo, it's loaded with monsters and doom beasts and whatnot.
Anyway, the TV series follows a young knight in training who, incidentally, doesn't get introduced till around episode 8. Basically, he travels around with a party including a dwarf, an elf, several types of mages, priestess, and a mercenary and they have to stop the evil necromancer from summoning Khardis the Destroyer. Khardis basically kills everything when she is summoned, so this Necromancer would be the eternal king of Lodoss (because he can control the dead). So he's basically insane.
Anyway, the story has a lot going on at the same time. So, through the first 8 episodes I had a very hard time getting into it. Eventually, after the main character shows up and things seemed to flow better.
A lot of this is pretty epic: the battles with the "Black Knight", the ancient dragons (who are basically... 100x the size of a garden variety dragon), the struggle between the goddesses, all that good stuff.
All in all this series was quite good and I ended up enjoying it quite a bit.
Having said that, this anime is HEAVILY rooted in the High-Fantasy as well as the Role Playing worlds. Record of Lodoss war was derived from a series of novels that was in turn derived from "replays". A replay is a transcript of a role playing game. Record of Lodoss war was the transcript of a series of Dungeons and Dragons games played between a few Fantasy novelists to a rule set they decided to call "Record of Lodoss War Rules".
Lodoss is also HEAVILY developed, the series has one of the best opening sequences I have ever seen, has an omake after every episode, and two closing sequences (one plays after the other).
Anyway, this series only looses points for being so hard to get into early on.
8/10