Record of Lodoss War: Chronicles of the Heroic Knight

An interesting retelling of the second half of the Record of Lodoss War story, Chronicles of the Heroic Knight gives this anime classic a distinctly modern facelift. Greater depth of plot, smoother animation, more characters, and more impressive magic spells are the hallmarks of this newer Lodoss. Episodes end with a short “Welcome to Lodoss Island” skit done in a chibi style – although a lot of the jokes are Japanese puns explained in subtitles.

I’m normally a supporter of dubs, but I can’t stand the English version of Chronicles in spots; these problem areas reminds me of the Agappio Racing Team, world famous for dubs in Finnish that sound distinctly like random people thrown in front of a microphone; not all of or even the majority of the VA work in Chronicles is terrible, most is average, and a few characters are actually superbly voiced, but overall, the dub is really bad. The characters just seem uninspired all around, as if they don’t really care one way or another about much of anything. The Japanese version with subtitles is decent, and I recommend it in this case.

While not as cheap as the original Lodoss by a long shot in terms of its visuals, Chronicles does occasionally use some pretty cheesy and noticeable shortcuts in its production. As a TV series, most of the blood is gone, but Lodoss is still as violent as ever besides that, with plenty of sword fights, war machines, and attack spells.

In this series, the original events of the Record of Lodoss War OVA are changed somewhat; Wagnard the evil wizard is still attempting to revive Kardis the Destroyer, but requires two “keys”, special governor’s treasures from the ancient kingdom, Kastuul, that once reigned over Lodoss, and a “door”, a human sacrifice that one of the leading characters has the misfortune of being marked as, in order to complete the resurrection ritual. Ashram, bent on uniting Lodoss at any cost, plays along. When one of the keys is stolen, it falls on Spark, a knight in training from Flaim, to lead a rag-tag group of mercenaries, priests, and a thief to recover it and end Wagnard’s plan.