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The sub-Tolkien genre of fantasy epics continues in Ryo Mizuno's Record of Lodoss War, the anime equivalent of a Terry Brooks novel. Dwarves, elves, magicians, knights, heroic quests - if you survived a generation's worth of Yes album covers, you know what you're getting into.
Derivative doesn't mean bad, however, and Lodoss (unlike a plethora of live-action and animated attempts at sword-and-sorcery) is an entertaining if somewhat codified example of Tolkienesque storytelling. The veteran of multiple fantasy novels won't find anything new in Lodoss but newcomers will, and they will find a rare example of heroic fantasy that doesn't try to be hip or irreverant. Lodoss takes its subject matter seriously, and does a fine job at creating an animated heroic fantasy. It does a better job of this than Bakshi's Fire and Ice, and Lord of the Rings.
The nearly six-hour saga includes many story arcs and subplots, but at the core of Lodoss is the story of Pan, a young hero attempting to live up to his father's reputation as a knight. Making things more complicated for Pan are the multiple power struggles that exist between the nations of his world, and which impact on his private life. Pan also learns to deal with his feelings for Deid, a beautiful High Elf. Pan is a Luke Skywalker-type character - young, impulsive, and eager for experience. He is a typical hero for this sort of drama, and the essential fulcrum for a collection of adventurers which include (at various times) clerics, thieves, dwarves, magicians, and berserkers. Almost qualifying as a lead character is the beautiful soundtrack, derived largely from classical music.
Somewhat surprisingly, the character designs and background paintings are attractive yet somewhat standardized. Lodoss treads little new ground in storytelling, but this fault can be overlooked due to the scarcity of serious fantasy films. The visuals, however, do not live up to the imaginative standards set by the generation of fantasy illustrators influenced by Frazetta, nor do they compare favorably to other Japanese fantasies, namely those animated for Miyazaki's studios. The graphics are certainly serviceable - but I would have liked something more than a literal depiction of a "Dungeons and Dragons" handbook.
The miniseries (and the manga it was based on) was allegedly derived from the records of Mizuno's "Dungeons and Dragons" campaign, and at its worst moments, the adventures of Pan and company seem determined by the giddy dice-throwing exploits of teenagers playing a role-playing game. At its best, however, Lodoss provides almost six-hours' worth of a passport into another world.
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