Record of Lodoss War: Chronicles of the Heroic Knight[/size]
Studio: AIC
Director: Hitoyuki Matsui & Yoshihiro Takamoto
Writer: Katsumi Hasegawa, Masashi Kubota, Yasutomo Yamada & Ryo Mizuno (original story)
Producer: Makiko Iwata & Takeshi Tamiya
Composer: Kaoru Wada
Design: Azumano Takashi, Toshiko Sasaki & Kazuhiro Soeta (original character designs)
Released: April 1st, 1998
Genre: Fantasy
Format: TV series
Runtime: 27 episodes, 25 minutes each (675 minutes)
US License: Central Park Media[/b]
Back in the 90s, Sci-Fi began a campaign to introduce anime to Western audiences in the form of a block of programming that aired every Saturday morning. This campaign proved to be very successful, perhaps not for the ratings, but certainly for the fact that many anime fans of today were born from Saturday Anime. For the average, culturally ignorant, American cartoon watching pubescent, Saturday Anime was a veritable treasure trove that offered us fledgling otaku their first glimpse into a yet unseen world.
One of the cornerstones of Sci-Fi's Saturday morning programming was a show called
Record of Lodoss War[/i], a high-fantasy tale of swords, dragons and wizardry that is still regarded today as one of the shining examples of fantasy in a moving medium. Based on a series of tabletop RPG logs by Ryo Mizuno,
Lodoss captured the hearts of many who were just dipping their toes into the waters of this then strange and exotic form of entertainment.
But there was a lot more to this story. The original
Lodoss was a fairly short OVA series, running only 13 episodes before hastily concluding with an ending that was a major departure from Mizuno's adapted light novels. Almost 8 years later,
Lodoss was revisited so that the rest of the story could be told, and thus we have
Chronicles of the Heroic Knight. But is this show a blessing for those of us who had always wanted more
Lodoss, or were we better off with what we had in the short but sweet masterpiece that was the original OVA?
Jumping into
Chronicles after watching the original
Lodoss and expecting some kind of continuity will make the show frustrating for
Lodoss fans right off the bat. The last arc of the OVA was actually a transplant of the last arc of the second
Lodoss story, thus, for a follow up to exist, some retconning has to be done.
Chronicles actually picks up after the 9th episode of the OVA, so think of it less as “
Lodoss 2” and more like
Lodoss 1, episodes 10-36 and forget about all that happened in the last 4 episodes of the OVA. Parn's adventures continue, leading him across the war-torn continent of Lodoss and, for the most part, telling an extended version of the last part of the OVA. This part of the show is easily the best, and for at least awhile, it seems like
Chronicles is going to be a
Lodoss fan's dream come true. However, Parn's adventure ends fairly abruptly, and the story's focus is then shifted to a new hero: Spark.
Spark is a young man living in the Holy Capital who aspires to one day be a Knight. Every year, he checks the roster of new recruits in the town square and every year, is heartbroken to find that his name is nowhere to be found. Spark's luck is changed, however, when he is summoned by the great Warrior King, Kashue and his partner, the Free Knight of Lodoss, Parn, whom Spark idolizes. Upon this meeting, Spark's life is changed forever, as he finds himself tasked with protecting the capital alongside his boyhood hero against the invading forces of Marmo, who are seeking a pair of ancient relics that are said to be the keys to unlocking the power of Marfa, the Goddess of Destruction. The Kingdom's defenses fail and a group of Marmo spies make off with the relics, and thus, Spark is charged with recovering the stolen artifacts, and he'll need to assemble a new band of heroes to do so.
Lodoss's story has always consisted primarily of standard RPG stuff, mainly because it is merely the recordings of a very impassioned game of D&D. What made the OVA so engaging was the level of detail injected into all these standard RPG tropes and characters to make them endearing. The problem with
Chronicles is that the characters Spark assembles are all just less interesting versions of Parn's entourage, and ultimately,
Chronicles just turns out to be a less interesting version of Parn's adventure. Everything's pretty much the same, just not as fun. It's also a lot more drawn out. One begins to appreciate the OVA's brisk pace and short runtime when the plot in
Chronicles goes the way of Shonen Jump and it takes 3 or 4 episodes for any plot advancement to occur. However, to give credit where it's due, Spark is a more interesting hero than Parn. His toils with self-doubt and his frequent lack of faith give him some very relatable cruxes that make him seem a lot more human than the impossibly brave, altruistic and morally infallible Parn. But Spark alone isn't enough to hold his adventure aloft, especially with the weight of all his bland, cookie-cutter comrades holding it down.
At the very least,
Chronicles's generic adventure comes in a pretty package. Before the show even begins, you're assaulted by one of the most beautiful openings in anime history with Yoko Kanno's Sea of Miracles. While the in-show animation is nowhere near as good,
Chronicles still stands above a lot of the shows it shared the airwaves with in 1998, including big names like
Berserk and
Trigun. The animation and artwork, while somewhat inconsistent, stays well above mediocrity even at its worst. However, there is some quality of
Chronicles' animation that just isn't as charming as the more sketched and rigid look of the old OVA. Complimenting the visuals is an appropriately epic, bombastic orchestral score by Kaoru Wada. But not all is well with the presentation. While dub sports some big name actors the likes of Crispin Freeman and Lisa Ortiz, for the most part, the English voice track sounds like it was recorded using a bunch of people rallied at an anime convention to do a parody fandub. Even the usually wonderful Freeman sounds like an awkward teen whose voice is breaking, which I suppose is somewhat appropriate for Spark, but is nonetheless grating. You're much better off with the sub here.
In short,
Chronicles is something of a letdown. In terms of fantasy anime shows (which are usually god awful), I suppose it's decent, but as a follow up to the original OVA, it just isn't up to snuff. You're much better off with the short, condensed and perhaps sloppily concluded OVA. It's much more charming and satisfying. If you desperately need more
Lodoss, I suppose
Chronicles fits the bill, but plan to be a bit more than marginally disappointed.
- Shalashashka
C+
Sub or Dub: Definitely sub