Two months I went back to a 90s series I put on hold at the time because we weren’t in the mood. Never did I think we would come back to this 90s beauty but it possessed beauty aspect I loved.
This post had been sitting in my drafts for the past 2 months, Every time opening the draft post I was staring at the blank screen. Idea of writing anime reviews does not indeed excite me like it use to. Recent post by Irina from I Drink and Watch Anime reignited an old flame from a time of early blogging where nothing seemed easier haha. Definitely give a read if you are struggling on “I need to write this anime review street”.
Record Of Lodoss War has a lot of appealing factors up my ally, 90s show, fantasy/medieval themes, dragons, knights. A lot of that love stems from first time I watch Robin Hood and Prince Of Thieves, King Arthur, it had felt a little the two worlds had combined together here. Though Record Of The Lodoss expands outside of this mostly riding on fantasy. There are so many adaptations going on for this series originally starting out as a novel, then games and dipping into the Dungeon Dice world. The 90s series has a lot of these inspirations taken from these adaptations and put into a story were following a young warrior Parn, who adventures with six other companions to stop Karla grey witch from awakening a new evil. Sending Lodoss and the surroundings islands into a pool of more war chaos.
While I did enjoy this 90s anime, it possessed one too many flaws that affected how much more I would have enjoyed it. Parn main protagonist was practically useless half the time, all but possessing the will to do what’s right and when can I have my spotlight time. He was far from irritable unlike Sae from Peach Girl. If he didn’t have the wonderful elf girl Deedlit besides him then Parn would become boring paste to me. The story attraction was there but extending the story to 26 episodes would have for me made the things feel more solid, finding out more character backstory. Stretching out reaching to the final climax would have been more worth while. Story could have been incredible doing these little things but everything got cramped in.
Least there was enough time to get to know the main party which was a plus. But I’m just going to get straight to the main reason why I ended up enjoying this series the most: animation.
This is one of Madhouse’s earlier work and by far is the best animation I’ve seen from 90s genre. Everything in Lodoss is so detailed, I’ve never seen older animation look so vivid and stand out trance I cannot look away from. From the scaly, crevice dominating dragons to conjured elemental spells deedlit would cast, no fantasy stone is left unturned. Dripping in fantasy, medieval gorgeous factor. Especially ending theme animation looked gorgeous of all the stills included one with deedlit next to a unicorn. Every time it played I never skipped it. I don’t think I’ve ever kept watching a series just for the animation since Nagi No Asukara, of course I really wanted Record Of The Lodoss War to be so grand possessing lot of my favourite things but not everything works out that way.
Record of The Lodoss War is still a good time to whisked away to a fantasy world that has a little trickle of DnD world building mixed in there. Characters are whimsical and charming, makes for a good adventure to dive into for a few hours. But hey you want something for just animation alone then the ticket is ticked here for Lodoss.
See you in the next post!
Lita
litakinoanimecorner.wordpress.com 
You’re right! The animation does look really good. I’m honestly surprised that this anime came out in the 90’s. It looks a lot better than some of the other anime I’ve seen from that decade. I usually don’t watch high fantasy anime, but the animation looks so pretty, I might watch this anyway! Thanks for introducing me to this anime!
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