The Series (5/5)

     If I had to declare an anime release of the year, and we do have some months left, it would have to be Funimation's release of Record of Lodoss War + Chronicles of the Heroic Knight. This OVA and series is an icon of anime, and having the OVA finally on the Blu-ray format is exciting enough, having them both remastered and on solid releases while packaged together makes this a must own for anime fans the world over.

    When I was a teenage Dungeons and Dragons geek, Record of Lodoss War seemed to be the closest I could find to a serious fantasy realization of that type of world.   The series plus OVA, and this is not meant to dissuade viewers, feels like a Dungeons and Dragons style universe come to life. The series occurs many eons after a war that created the island world of Lodoss which has a curse upon it. It follows a group of adventurers that includes a soldier, elf, cleric, wizard, and thief.  The group find themselves entangled in the events of an on going war, and as they work together find out how the events they are participating in connect to the events of the past.

    While fans of modern anime might find Record of Lodoss War a bit dated, the animation was exceptional for its time, and looks quite gorgeous to my eyes.  The follow up series is also solid, but spread along 27 episodes the narrative is not quite as concise, so there is a lot more to unpack, and the production values are a bit lower. The score for both series fit both well, and offer a nice epic quality to both.

Audio/Video (4/5)

    The Record of Lodoss War OVA is presented in a 1:33:1 1080p transfer that has nice line detail, colors, and black levels. Heroic Knight is a DVD presentation presented at 1:33:1 and also looks decent with solid color reproduction and detail.

Record... is presented with a TrueHD 2.0 tracks in English and Japanese. Both are solid and reflect the content of the series quite well.  The audio for the DVD is Dolby Digital 2.0 and sounds quite solid. I did not detect any issues with any of the audio.

Extras (1/5)

    There is a clean opening and closing for Heroic Knight, trailers for the OVA, and that is about it.

Overall

    Both Record of Lodoss War and Chronicles of the Heroic Knight are quite classic fantasy animes. The Blu-ray and DVD's are excellent presentations, and the only issue is the lack of extras. However, I basically have to HIGHLY RECOMMEND this.