One of the best fantasy anime is Record of Lodoss War, an openly D&D-inspired tale released by Madhouse in 1990 and translated for the US market by Central Park Media. The initial series of 13 episodes was released as an OVA, or Original Video Animation, which is similar to the US practice of releasing directly to video rather than with a theatrical release. Unlike in the US, however, releasing as an OVA does not indicate low quality. To the contrary!
Record of Lodoss War had its start with a gaming group, run by Ryo Mizuno. His “Forcelia” campaign setting was the basis of a “replay” story serialized in a magazine. “Replay” stories were essentially retellings of game sessions — as if, today, you wrote down your gaming sessions in a blog — and could be as popular as short fiction and novels. Mizuno’s replays attracted a large enough following that he began to reformat them into novels. The first of these was published in 1988 — some of the earliest Japanese high fantasy novels.
With this publication, the series popularity grew even more. Anime and manga began production before Mizuno had even finished his trilogy. There eventually were multiple manga and anime, but the first OAV series is the one I’m most familiar with.
In this tale, a young man named Parn longs to be a hero, like his father who disappeared years before. He joins forces with the priest Etoh, wizard Slayn, Dwarven warrior Ghim, Elven sorceress Deedlit, and rogue Woodchuck. (A very typical D&D group, you must agree.) The first episode shows them delving into a Dwarven ruin, where a green dragon sleeps the ages away. Long ago, dragonkind had negotiated a pact to stay out of human affairs and politics, but there was nothing in the pact about eating intruders…
One of the remarkable things about Lodoss War is the sense of scale between dragons and humans. Parn rushes out to battle the green dragon, but can only reach its ankle. In other scenes, a human stands beside a dragon and only the dragon’s muzzle is visible.
Several dragons are scattered through the world of Lodoss, mostly as guardians of great treasures. Each is an individual, with its own motives, so the white dragon, Bromd, lives in the temple of Falalis, god of Light, while the black dragon Narse lurks in the evil kingdom of Marmo. The dragon with the most screen time is the red dragon Shooting Star, which ravages the countryside of Flaim. The “demon dragon of fire mountain” has a certain item in his horde that both sides want, and a couple of episodes are spent in his lair.
The characters are interesting, there’s a good swashbuckling feel, and it has some exciting plot twists. The main flaw, for me, was lack of variety in the background music. Nevertheless, this series stands up as one of the best Japanese fantasies, especially the first OVA series. There’s little blood and no sex, this is one the whole family will enjoy.
Thanks for the post! I’ll have to give this a look.
You should be able to find the episodes online.
Love Record of Lodoss War. nice taste in your review for people who haven’t watched it yet!
It’s one of my favorite OAV series, and I’ve always planned to watch the later anime so I can pick up the details. Especially Ashram, who’s kind of a cipher in the OAV but does a lot more in the novels.