FIF#39-Record of Lodoss War: Chronicles of the Heroic Knight

Five years after the War of Heroes, a small semblance of peace has spread across the island of Lodoss.  Parn, a Free Knight, protects villages across the land with his beautiful Elf companion, Deedlit, at his side.  However, darkness is preparing to return to Lodoss in the form of Ashram, the last devoted disciple of the Emperor of Marmo.  As war looms again, Parn, Deedlit and a host of allies, both familiar and new, come together for the greatest battle of them all.  The stakes: the fate of all of Lodoss should the Goddess of Death be resurrected through Ashram’s actions.

For a long time, I thought Record of Lodoss War: Chronicles of the Heroic Knight was not a straight sequel to the Record of Lodoss War OVA.  Turns out after some more information, I’ve been corrected.  Chronicles of the Heroic Knight acts as an alternate telling of the latter events of the OVA series, taking place after the War of Heroes and the death of Karla and Ghim.  This means, in addition to the new faces seen in the opening animation, we get to see many favorites return as well.  However, I’m only looking at the first episode for this First Impression and there’s a reason for that. 

To start off, it is actually really good to see some of these old faces again.  Even though it’s flawed, the original Lodoss War OVA is still a grand epic in the Fantasy Anime Genre, beautiful and brutal and amazing all at the same time.  I bonded a lot with the cast so here it was like a good little reunion.  However, Parn here sounds like an old school Captain America rather than how he did in the OVA and it can get a little annoying to be honest.  Deed remains her bad ass, beautiful self who seems to help Parn out more than he actually is able to fight.  Other friendly faces you might recognize are Slayn, the Sorcerer who has married Karla’s former host, Lelia, and they now have a daughter.  Orson and Sheries both show up as well (newly introduced since they weren’t introduced in the OVA until the second half).  I hope the story can give them more to do here.  Orson’s Hulk like Berzerker freak out didn’t look too impressive and Sheries, well she still doesn’t hold a candle to Deedlit and it just feels like she’s trying too hard.  And oh man, Ashram still looks so damn cool, the Black Knight is back baby.  We only get to see one member of the new cast, Cecil, a rookie wizard, but he doesn’t leave much of an impression right away.

As much as id like to keep going with the show and see where it goes, I have hesitation after one gapping flaw…THE CHIBI SECTION.  Yep, you read that right.  Following the action packed first ¾ of the episode, we get a little comedy kiddy style info section with a chibified Parn, Deedlit, Slayn and the others doing a sort of “History and Terms” of Lodoss.

…………

WHY?

The original OVA wasn’t all gloom and doom like Berserk but it still didn’t pull it’s punches when putting the lives of its main characters in danger.  We lost people we cared about and even though the heroes won in the end, it was still costly.  Introducing a cutesy element, even to break some of the tension, feels like a betrayal of all the things that made Lodoss as good as I remember it.  Hearing the gathered chibi chanting “PA-PA-PARN!!!” made me bury my head in a pillow and cry.

Now, could there be a good story here that redeems this show despite this travesty?  Perhaps.  If Parn could tone down the Captain America act and the rest of the new cast makes more of an impression, it could work.  For now, I’ll proceed with caution.  There is some potential in a new path to follow for the heroes of Lodoss.  And that opening animation is GORGEOUS, along with a beautiful song written by Yoko Kanno herself.    It’s good to be back in Lodoss…but for God sakes keep those Chibi monsters away from me.