The Batlord

If you asked me for an anime that was pure Tolkien worship then I'd have a very short number of recommendations for you. I could give you Slayers but while it's very Western fantasy it's also Japanese anime comedy to the hilt so won't satisfy your cravings. I could give you Vision of Escaflowne or Berserk but while they are more serious they go their own way, the former taking influence from giant robot anime and the latter being more alternate medieval history with a heavy Lovecraftian influence. Really the only anime I can think of that would satisfy everything and nothing else that you would want from an anime that was Lord of the Rings embodied would be Record of Lodoss war. It is the best Dungeons & Dragons campaign you ever played with your lameass friends writ large with every trope you'd expect accounted for.

The entire 13-episode series is well worth your time but while I could try to encapsulate everything involved into a blurb that would simply make it sound like every old school fantasy book you could read (cause it kinda is) I will instead tell you of the very first episode and why it is the perfect introduction to such a series and why it is also one of the most perfect small forms of Western fantasy you could ever give 25-minutes of your life to regardless of how you wanted to imbibe your fantasy.

This episode begins with a fellowship entering a cave to do... something. They are exactly what you would expect from a fantasy fellowship: you have your young human swordsman with more gumption than experience, your mystical elf in conflict with your gruff dwarf, your Swiss Army knife wizard, your snarky thief, and even a cleric who just wants everyone to be friends.

Throughout the episode you'll see hints of the forces of both good and evil preparing for conflict that is focused upon the outcome of our heroes' journey, but while we will see how this plays out in time, for this episode we are solely focused upon our fellowship making our way through this cave, an ancient dwarven stronghold that has fallen into darkness.

We will see evil creatures assault our heroes, we will see those heroes explore the ruins of what once was, and we will see a final confrontation with what must of course be at the heart of a corrupted, ancient place of civilization. No, not a balrog, **** you. A mother****ing dragon.

So yeah guy with a sword, elf, dwarf, wizard, and then they fight a dragon. And there's lore interspersed. That's the entirety of this episode and concentrated into less than a half-an-hour it is one of the most pure personifications of everything that is Western fantasy on this planet. It's not even the first chronological story in the series. It's somewhere in the middle but it's shoved into the beginning because it's a trailer, not only for the show itself, but for fantasy in general.

What? That doesn't sell itself? Maybe because you don't know how perfect and atmospheric the animation is? Because you don't know how the rest of the series will build on this most basic concept so masterfully into a sweeping epic? Because it doesn't give an indication that the characters will develop in interesting ways? Well that makes sense because episode 1 isn't about that. It's simply about being the perfect archetypal Western fantasy scene and everything else starts with episode 2 and mesmerizes you from there with more longform storytelling.

Record of Lodoss knows what it is and knows that to begin it needs to set the tone and knows that to do that you need to feel like you've been dropped in the middle of a D&D campaign with your drunk friends and does so with flourish and fun. For years one of my favorite things to do on a day off was order a pizza and watch this episode. There's just something about it I can't quantify that makes it perfect for a lazy day while eating pizza and I'm getting the urge right the **** now.

Watch Record of Lodoss War because if you're a fantasy fan and you don't then you're harming yourself.

__________________