By Jonathan Klotz | Published
The explosive success of Dungeons and Dragons podcasts, including The Adventure Zone, Not another Dungeons and Dragons podcastAnd Rotating heroes, helped make the classic table game more popular than ever. Critical rolethe largest and most successful real-reading podcast, even turned its campaign into an animated series, The Legend of Vox Machinaon Amazon Prime, but it wasn’t the first D&D campaign to become a series. In 1990, the anime Lodoss War Record brought author Ryo Mizuno’s homemade game to life.
Actual reading before podcasts
Lodoss War Record began as a serialized “rebroadcast” in Comptiq, a Japanese magazine, as a transcription of Mizuno’s D&D sessions. Using Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition as the basis for the high fantasy story featuring the adventuring party of Woodchuck, Slayn, Etoh, Parn, Deedlit, and Ghlim, each representing a different class from the game. Undertaking a mission from the king, the adventuring party begins by making a green dragon very angry, and the stakes only get higher from there.
Like anyone who has ever played a Dungeons and Dragons campaign knows it, there is a rhythm to the adventure, and Lodoss War Record captures that same crescendo, with great mysteries, betrayals and a final battle that shakes the heavens. No anime since, not even Killers Or Delicious in the dungeon, brought a campaign to life in the same way. The original series is only 13 episodes long, so it moves faster than any home campaign.
A look back at old-fashioned fantasy
To say that Lodoss War Record was an instant success would be an understatement. The original novels written by Ryo Mizuno 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. Both spin-offs take place after the end of the original series and explore what happened to some members of the group after the final battle. Record of the Lodoss War: Chronicles of the Heroic Knightreleased in 1998, brings together (most of) the cast 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 some successful fantasy anime including Freeze: Beyond Journey’s End who pushed the medium forward with bold storytelling and fantastical new takes on old tropes. Still, there’s something to be said for a series like Lodoss War Record which embraces the classic tropes of young Parn’s rise to leadership hitting all the classic RPG beats right down to the isolationist elves Deedlit tries to save, and Woodchuck, a thief, and with that one-word description, you know exactly what to expect. There’s nothing wrong with seeing a cliché anime every once in a while, and for the most part, the 1990 series has aged well and remains perfectly watchable today.
Role-playing games, including Dungeons and Dragonshave changed over the years, which is why “Elf” is no longer a class, and goblins no longer have to be an evil race; I go back to see Lodoss War Record it’s 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 top the early seasons of The Adventure Zone, NaDDPoDOr Critical rolebut it’s fun to go back to where it all began.
If you’ve never watched Lodoss War Recordyou can stream it on Crunchyroll.
