We’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: fantasy anime are having a bit of a moment right now, and it’s glorious. With new shows like Witch Hat Atelier, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, and Delicious in Dungeon, the Dungeons & Dragons vibe in anime has never felt higher. While every passing week of “Witch Hat Mondays” makes Bugs Films’ hopes that their adaptation will be as big as The Lord of the Rings for anime fans feel less like wishful thinking and more like manifest destiny, I can’t help but get nostalgic looking back at Record of Lodoss War and balk at how, even after nearly forty years, it’s the closest anime has gotten to that accolade.
Even if you’ve never seen Madhouse’s ’90s OVA, there’s a high chance that if you’ve ever looked up fantasy anime elves, you were greeted with an image of either Record of Lodoss War‘s Deedlit or Pirotess. It’s a series to which Western media owes a lot regarding visual motifs of what elves look like. And for good reason: Record of Lodoss War is a massively popular fantasy series that spans television, film, video games, and even tabletop role-playing games. Madhouse’s OVA is to fantasy anime what Ralph Bakshi‘s 1978 LotR animated film is to the lost aesthetic of Western cartoons. What’s more, it didn’t do anything particularly special with its story to become the legendary anime series it is today. It’s just an old-school fantasy show about a diverse party of D&D-ass adventurers trekking out on a grand adventure to save the world.
What makes Record of Lodoss War truly timeless is how it feels alive as a Saturday-morning-cartoon-style anime, with all the love in the world poured into its animation. You’re hit with that immediately by the gouache watercolor paintings that accompany Dick Rodstein’s Christopher Lee-esque voice in the opening narration, which recounts a battle among the gods whose aftermath carved out the island our heroes inhabit. It’s no wonder Frieren looks as great as it does, because Madhouse did its big one, making every frame of its character designs and action look like a painting you’d drop a bank to hang its key frames on your wall. Record of Lodoss War is arguably the most “they don’t make ’em like they used to” anime of all time.
So many of the qualities that feel fresh in modern fantasy anime can trace their lineage straight back to Record of Lodoss War. And while plenty of shows certainly borrow its aesthetics, only a few capture their spirit. I’d consider the “fantasy big three” anime to be among the chosen few. Delicious in Dungeons‘ hyper-attentive world-building, Frieren‘s quiet immersion, and Witch Hat Atelier‘s tender hero’s journey (coupled with their phenomenal action sequences) all stand tall on their own. Yet each one stirs the same nostalgic feeling that Record of Lodoss War gave me when I first stumbled upon it at my college’s anime club.
Despite this current renaissance of fantasy anime feeling novel, mostly because it’s back-to-the-basics fantasy without all the oversaturated isekai bells and whistles, I can’t help but drift back to the past and marvel at just how resplendent Record of Lodoss War truly was. Few shows from that era hold up this well, and even fewer still radiate with the same bespoke, painterly magic that defined what fantasy anime could feel like.
Record of Lodoss War is streaming on Crunchyroll.
Correction: A previous version of this article stated the release of Ralph Bakshi’s animated movie The Lord of the Rings was in 1997. In fact, 1978 is true.
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