From Jonathan Klotz
| Published
The explosive success of the Dungeons and Dragons podcasts, including The Adventure Zone, Not another Dungeons and Dragons podcastAnd rotating heroes, has helped make the classic tabletop game more popular than ever. Critical rolethe largest and most successful reality play podcast, even turned its campaign into an animated series, The Legend of Vox Machinaon Amazon Prime, but this wasn’t the first D&D campaign to become a series. The anime was released in 1990 Record of the Lodoss War brought author Ryo Mizuno’s self-made game to life.
Actual playback before podcasts
Record of the Lodoss War began as a running “repeat” in Comptiq, a Japanese magazine, as a transcript of Mizuno’s D&D sessions. Use Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition as the basis for the high fantasy story with the adventuring group of Woodchuck, Slayn, Etoh, Parn, Deedlit and Ghlim, each representing a different class from the game. The adventuring party takes on a mission from the king and starts by making a green dragon very angry, and things only go higher from there.
Like everyone who has ever played Dungeons and dragons Campaign knows that the adventure has a rhythm, and Record of the Lodoss War captures the same crescendo, complete with great secrets, betrayal and a final battle that shakes the heavens. NO Anime not once since then hunter or Delicious in the dungeon, brought a campaign to life in a very similar way. The original series is only 13 episodes long, making it faster than any home campaign.
Old school fantasy throwback
To say that Record of the Lodoss War To say it was an instant success would be an understatement. The original novels that Ryo Mizuno wrote before the anime have sold over 10 million copies in Japan, over a dozen video games, tabletop role-playing games, and two spin-off franchises, Legend of Crystania and Rune Soldier. The two spin-offs are set after the end of the original series and examine what happened to some of the group after the final battle. Record of the Lodoss War: Chronicles of the Heroic Knightreleased in 1998, brings (most of) the party back together for a 27-episode series that benefits from better animation and music mixing, but doesn’t have the same appeal as the original.
To date, there are extremely successful fantasy anime including Freezing: Beyond Journey’s End who pushed the medium forward with bold storytelling and fantastic new takes on old tropes. Still, there’s something to be said about a series like this Record of the Lodoss War which covers the classic tropes from young Parn’s rise to leadership, adopting all the classic RPG beats, right down to the isolated elves that Deedlit tries to save and Woodchuck, a thief, and with that one word description you know exactly , what awaits you. There’s nothing wrong with a cliché anime every now and then, and for the most part, the 1990 series has aged well and is still absolutely worth watching today.
Role-playing games, including Dungeons and dragonshave changed over the years, which is why “Elf” is no longer a class and Goblins are no longer forced to be an evil race; I go back to watch Record of the Lodoss War is like opening a time capsule containing THAC0. It’s rough around the edges, the design of Pirotess the Dark Elf is pure fan service and the plot doesn’t surpass the first seasons of The Adventure Zone, NaDDPoDor Critical rolebut it’s fun to go back to where it all began.
If you’ve never seen it Record of the Lodoss WarYou can stream it on Crunchyroll.
