So, what is there to know about Record of Lodoss War? This story is one that, if rumor is to be believed, is basically the creator’s Dungeons & Dragons campaign, and it practically relishes every expectation and convention of the AD&D/OD&D era, to the point where I’ve usually heard it compared to D&D tie-in material, particularly the Dragonlance novels, more than to later anime. At least to western audiences it sort of serves as a bridge between two spheres of nerdy media, Anime and the Western Fantasy/TTRPG scene. Given its age, it may no longer be a true “gateway” to Anime, but it probably served as one for a lot of people who were already into D&D.
I feel it’s important to get out at the start, but the age of Lodoss War really does show. Most of the things I review on this blog are from the 2000s or 2010s. But while a show like RahXephon (2002) or Noein (2005) stands closer to the release of Record of Lodoss War than it does to today, they are conceptually closer to “Modern” anime. Even Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) has a more familiar style and story structure than Lodoss War, though that may be in part due to the massive influence that Evangelion exerted.
Part of the difference may not be, precisely, when Record of Lodoss War was made as much as when it was able to be made. That is, it’s not so much a product of its times as we are looking at the fact that the industry was probably not quite as set in its ideas of what was marketable and what wasn’t in 1990 as it is in 2020, so it was probably easier to get something ‘experimental’ made.
So, I guess I need to address, even before I get started, what I mean when I say that Record of Lodoss War is different. Lodoss War is… an experience. I am genuinely going to, here at the start, recommend that you watch it if you get the chance. Some anime aspires to be good; its highest reach is existence as a fairly formulaic show, and if it is fully successful in its aims it will stand as a solid, but not revolutionary example of its kind. Some anime aspires to be great; these take risks and go the extra mile to show us something unique and different, something that is supposed to be unforgettable and that if the show is successful will go down as its own thing. Other shows aspire simply to be fun. They know they aren’t providing anything of substance, but they feel that if they entertain their audience for half an hour at a time, they’ve done a fair job. Record of Lodoss War is different from all of these: its aim, at least as far as I understood watching it, is to be kinetic art. If the experience of watching a good or great anime is usually similar to the experience of reading a good or great book, the experience of watching Record of Lodoss War is more similar to listening to a symphony or visiting an art gallery. It wants to be art, and it tugs on the mind and emotion in a way that shares more with what’s normally considered art.
That is not to say, however, that Record of Lodoss War is plotless – far from it, there’s actually quite a lot of story. Too much story, actually, for the time they had, but that’s a matter for a different discussion. However, because it does have this different experiential focus, I feel like I need to look at that story in a different way. A lot of the characters in Record of Lodoss War, perhaps all of them call to very deep archetypes, and few if any of them make themselves distinct as people. But, where in other shows having flat and archetypical characters would be a weakness, here it ultimately serves the purpose of the experience. Because you don’t get wrapped up in small details, you can enjoy the broader strokes of the journey.
This is, I want to stress, not a strategy I want to see more, or out of other shows or other writers. Pulling it off intentionally would be extremely difficult, as you would have to (like Lodoss War) defy some elements of normal structure while keeping others, and failed attempts at simply being like Lodoss War in that respect would be very painful to watch. I’m not even certain that it was done intentionally in Record of Lodoss War – we’ll look into that at the end. For now, we have to start at the beginning.
The show starts in media res with a party of adventuring heroes making their way through a dangerous dungeon. They include the heroic young knight Parn; his obvious love interest, the elf Deedlit; the old sourpuss, Ghim the dwarf; a thief named Woodchuck; a wizard named Slayn; and a cleric/healer type named Etoh. They fight their way through a few monsters before Deedlit sets off a trap and, along with Parn who dove to save her, gets separated from the rest of the group. While separated, they bump into a dragon and eventually the group gets back together to fight it. They win, but the area collapses, forcing them to flee.
That’s our first episode in which I am required to point out that we have a dungeon and a dragon. But more than that it’s just… sort of a slice out of the middle of the story. It shows us what the iconic forms of our heroes are like, briefly establishes their interactions and the broad strokes of their characters, and pits them against an ultimately irrelevant but still very iconic foe. While this is theoretically “in media res” and from somewhere down the line, we never really get the pieces that match up to it. We don’t see them traveling to the dragon dungeon, or dusting themselves off after the hall collapse. I’m not even sure, with the little context for their mission that the episode gives us, that these events could actually exist on the same timeline as the rest of the show, making it sort of a window onto the platonic ideal of the main cast in their native element.
From a narrative standpoint, this makes no sense at all. You don’t start a show with a dubious-canon side story that simultaneously does and doesn’t actually tie into the main plot that you establish later, representing something of an alternate approach to tackling the same story, but without the beginning or end to make it meaty. It is so weird that I can’t even describe it quickly. But in terms of establishing emotion, and the kind of investment that Record of Lodoss War achieves? It works fine.
I’ll have a longer tangent on this later, but there are ways in which you can compare Record of Lodoss War to the myths of King Arthur. If that’s the case, this would be like starting a round of telling Arthur stories with something like “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” – it doesn’t add in to the main plot about the life and death of Arthur, though it is connected, but it’s a story all the same and it gets everyone listening in the right mood. That works alright.
We then jump to the start of Parn’s journey. He begins as, what else, a callow youth in some rural village. He’s the son of a (disgraced) knight, but that just explains where he gets his starting gear. He fights off some goblins to save someone, and kills one in the process before Etoh meets up with him. The village heads aren’t happy that a goblin died, knowing that the retaliation will be worse, but what’s done is done. Meanwhile Ghim has gotten his quest, to find a friend’s daughter (Leylia). He runs into Slayn while Deedlit watches from the trees as the goblins rally their forces. Eventually the group ends up coming together to defend the village from the goblin incoming, and while they don’t save everything (Parn gets a slap-on-the-wrist exile for provoking the damage, and a quest to find the source of the rising evil in the world along with it) they do save a lot and take out the goblin boss. The party (consisting of Parn, Etoh, Ghim, and Slayn; Deedlit is still just stalking them) heads out.
Later, Deedlit introduces herself to Parn only for them to be immediately attacked, and thereafter arrested by some local soldiers. They meet Woodchuck in prison, because where else do you meet a thief, and we get a general picture of the legions of doom: attackers from the Nation/Continent Marmo whose leadership consists of the big tough evil emperor Beld (who pretty much looks and acts like Ganondorf), pretty boy black knight Ashram, insane wizard/cultist Wagnard, and scheming power-behind-the-throne witch Karla. The party is let out of the dungeon, and escapes the fort to which they had been taken just ahead of it falling to the bad guys
Those episodes were pretty much linear, but we have another (less jarring) skip after. Marmo’s invasion continues and we learn of new and more important kingdoms than the ones being sharply pressed before. Specifically, King Fahn of Valis (the king who gave the party their mission in episode 1) sends his daughter out and about to try to establish an alliance against Beld while the party decides that a place called “The Forest of No Return” makes for a great shortcut. It really doesn’t, as even with Deedlit’s not insubstantial protection they’re nearly driven mad by illusions. It does, however, shortcut them to where Karla is attacking the princess. She’s driven off, but Ghim recognizes her as Leylia. Beld, meanwhile, has some grudge against Fahn and is determined to go for him next.
We next catch up when everybody is with King Fahn, including the mercenary King Kashue. And Karla, though no one who knows her knows that at first. Parn geeks out over how awesome a warrior Kashue is, Deedlit proves her type to the audience by getting jealous over the attention, and Karla makes trouble. Kashue takes up training Parn, which is good because he kind of needed something of a growth arc to go from “callow youth just starting out” to “certified badass”. We also find out in this area why Parn’s father was disgraced: he rescued a princess from being dragon tribute, going against orders to do so, preserving a life and even helping his liege, Fahn, though at the cost of his honor.
Marmo’s assault comes anyway, as the party learns from an old sage (the one they were going to visit in the first episode. It doesn’t entirely not fit, I suppose, but I still think it more doesn’t quite fit than does) that Karla is an ancient being who manipulates the power balance on Lodoss and directs the flow of history, and a bodysnatcher besides. As the armies clash, Parn ends up fighting Ashram (no real result there), and when Deedlit tries to help she ends up faced by Ashram’s dark elf, Pirotess, reinforcing the idea that Parn and Ashram are somehow equal and opposite. Beld and Fahn duel, and Beld ends up killing Fahn only to be immediately killed by Karla himself. Dragons begin to awaken at Wagnard’s summons, and we sort of have a discontinuity once again after Parn vows to stop Karla so that Lodoss can finally be free of her machinations keeping it at war.
We take a break from the war front (though there’s some implication that it broke down with the death of Beld) and mess around with a couple of minor characters before really resuming the hunt for Karla. And, what do you know, they find her. Ghim tries to reason with her, asking her to just give Leylia back, but Karla is not impressed. She shows Parn some history, revealing her origin and that she believes preventing the consolidation of power on Lodoss will also prevent the continent from being totally destroyed like her old home was. She pulls the whole “join me and guide history” shtick, which of course doesn’t fly with Parn. Ghim ends up sacrificing himself to get the circlet off Leylia, freeing her, but the stinger for the act shows us that Woodchuck is thereafter possessed by Karla. For reasons. I guess the thief couldn’t keep his hands off the shiny jewelry? Really it’s probably because Thieves in AD&D have terrible saves versus things like mind control.
Meanwhile, with the bad guys, Ashram is now the boss of Marmo, and Wagnard is still crazy and intent on summoning his evil goddess, Kardis (Tiamat/Takhisis, for the D&D nerds in the audience), into the world. Wagnard wants a high elf sacrifice so Ashram sends Pirotess to go get one (who else but Deedlit?) while Karla directs Ashram to go get a magic scepter from the dragon Shooting Star, the same troublesome dragon Parn’s dad kept from getting a princess meal. This comes to a head as Kashue and soldiers, Team Parn, and Ashram and Pirotess all invade Shooting Star’s lair. The dragon gets dead and after rescuing each other repeatedly Ashram and Pirotess admit their love for each other just in time to be left to burn in molten lava. It’s… kinda touching? Probably especially for Parn who has his own “in love with an elf” problem.
We soon find out that Ashram is fine but Pirotess is dead. How? Why? Never really explained but even moreso than in the earlier parts of the show, Record of Lodoss War after the deaths of Beld and Fahn is a very broad strokes sort of affair so we don’t exactly need to know the physics of how they went from “last seen embracing as the world burns” to “one survives.”
Wagnard, however, has kind of taken over Marmo. He has the artifact Ashram was trying to get from Shooting Star’s lair, which gives him immense magical power, which he uses to go nab Deedlit when she was supposed to be having a tender moment with Parn, giving us our obvious kidnapped girlfriend hook for the final arc as the good guys muster armies and Wagnard begins his completely over-the-top ceremony to resurrect/summon Kardis into (or with) the body of Deedlit, who of course has been put in a skimpy black dress for the occasion, which she’s too unconscious to object to. Ashram and Parn make their ways to the ritual altar that’s slowly being lowered into some kind of cavern beneath Marmo while the good guy armies have their hands full fighting dragons and undead and all that good stuff.
In an extended battle, raging as Deedlit’s life force slowly ebbs away, Ashram and Wagnard kill each other and Parn dual wields the ultimate swords of both light (which was loaned to him) and darkness (which Ashram had) and breaks the magic over Deedlit to save her life so he can go princess carry her out into the light of day, where the dragon and undead have all been finally defeated. Lodoss celebrates the great victory over evil, Parn is rewarded, and he rides off into the sunset with Deedlit, leaving a bunch of things (most notably Karla’s continued existence) unaddressed, but whatever. It’s not just an ending, it’s the ending, and the only one we’d really want from something like Record of Lodoss War.
So, before I pass final judgment, I’ve got two tangents that need to be addressed. First, the budget and art of Record of Lodoss War. I don’t know what precisely changed in the anime industry that this doesn’t seem to happen anymore, and I certainly don’t miss it, but it used to be that critical budget shortfalls often hit the climaxes of shows, forcing some very unsightly cost-cutting measures in the climaxes. This hit 2003’s Fullmetal Alchemist, which featured some very distracting extremely slow pans around a same-y room when Ed was talking with Dante. It hit Neon Genesis Evangelion, of course, resulting in perhaps the most famous screwed up ending in Anime. And it hit Record of Lodoss War pretty hard as well. There are stretches, especially in the Shooting Star arc and after, where Record of Lodoss War has all the animation of your average PowerPoint presentation, and unlike certain other shows I could name (spooky foreshadowing! I’ll get to it… some day. Not soon.) it’s clearly not intentional.
In the first episode, when they fight the dragon, there’s a clear flow and constant motion. When we deal with Shooting Star and especially the dragon at Marmo… the animators produced an absolutely lovely still of a dragon. I’m not kidding at all, these are great designs, highly detailed and extremely resonant. But we just pan over the still image of the dragon, which it is strongly implied is flying or something. The ritual and the altar’s slow, slow descent into the depths of Marmo is pretty similar as we get a lot of long shots with one tiny element sliding slowly down through the background, just the minimum to convince us that the art of animation is actually on display. When I talk about Parn princess carrying Deedlit out into the light of day, there’s no real scene: there’s a still of Parn, battered and bruised, holding Deedlit princess carry style, dramatically lit for them to have just emerged into the light of day. That’s not to say there’s no animation, but fluid motion becomes the exception, rather than the norm.
And then there’s my other tangent, the one I promised about the Arthur myths. Basically, I contend that Record of Lodoss War feels like an old myth cycle more than it does a modern fantasy story. When I say it’s like the stories of King Arthur, I mean broadly a collection of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle and other famous tales, not a collected narrative like Le Morte d’Arthur or The Once and Future King. It doesn’t tell a “complete” story from beginning to end, it serves as a window onto something grand and magical.
We get used to myths and legends, authentic ones, feeling like that because of how we access them. Typically, when a modern reader approaches any mythology, not just the Arthur stories, they do so through collections and secondary sources that tell broad strokes, sometimes out of order and disjointed, but to present the tales to an audience. We read stories from the Eddas, not the Prose Edda the whole way through, in order to access Norse mythology.
Arthur is particularly relevant, though, because the Arthur myths are ultimately about the life of one mortal character and a bunch of other side characters with their own stories alongside. These tales intersect with one another, and interweave, but the picture is never complete, at least except for the efforts of later authors such as Malory to produce definitive editions. And, sometimes, there may be elements on which certain stories don’t agree, ways in which two different tales that are supposed to be part of the same greater whole don’t really agree. Elements that are important to one story might be dropped in another, timelines might get a little wonky, motivations could shift to keep the characters on roughly their right pages… there are a lot of misty edges to the body of stories.
Those misty edges, though, become a breeding ground for the imagination. I think part of the reason why Arthur has been so enduring, more than say the Song of Roland and Carolingian legends, is because the book never quite closes on Arthur. There are always gaps and hanging threads and bits and pieces that seem to be too great and too broad to be contained.
Record of Lodoss War managed to capture that same feel of misty-edged timelessness. The characters are mostly archetypes, the story is a very basic mythic arc. How the characters say what they say is nothing, but what they have to say all seems to flow from those same deep roots of myth. Record of Lodoss War, despite technically having very shallow roots in Dungeons & Dragons, manages to create something that pulls a convincing imitation of some of the oldest and most powerful stories we have.
And I think it may have been an accident.
I say that because Record of Lodoss War is really, weirdly unique in that it’s a work where the flaws are to its advantage. The story was obviously bigger than the thirteen episodes they made, and they didn’t even really have the budget to make all of those. This necessitated cuts, the narrative speeding up, slowing down, skipping, skimming, and then focusing in on the parts that the creator felt were the most important. The scattered storytelling is actually a big part of what creates the mythic impression, because the creators were still skillful enough to know how to move the broad strokes in a way we would accept, and what to show. Even the animation failure may have weirdly helped. The battle for Marmo could have been an intense anime war scene, but instead, it’s largely left to the imagination. We are shown enough to get a sense of what’s going on, because they’re trying to show us as much as they can, and it practically hacks your brain to fill in the rest. It focuses the show not on the spectacle, but on involving the viewer deeply in the world they’ve created, transporting you right there to be an active part of what’s going on.
I don’t know what came first: the desire to make Record of Lodoss war this timeless thing, or the need to find a way to cut corners and still have the result come out good. I don’t even know if it’s just a happy accident that a troubled production somehow managed to become the “distressed denim” of anime shows, able to be viewed as more beautiful for its faults, rather than in spite of them. But, in any case, it did work. The show is timeless and unforgettable in a way that I don’t think a standard and clean action fantasy Anime would have been. It’s loaded with powerful movements and powerful images, and they stand tall and proud, titans in the mist.
So, at the end, my rating for Record of Lodoss War is a C. In every technical sense, it is extremely deeply flawed. The writing is flawed, the visuals are flawed, the pacing is flawed. Everything has some pretty big black marks against when viewed objectively. But viewed in a subjective sense? I highly recommend Record of Lodoss War. I think it’s one of those animes that everyone should see, because it’s the kind of work that will make its home deep, deep inside your mind, to be inscribed alongside other timeless works. It’s the kind of thing that stays with you, and even if I’m forced to acknowledge its limitations, I will always respect it for what it did achieve.