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Old 05-03-2012, 05:12 AM   #1
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Legend of the Legendary Heroes

[Review of the Reviewing Critic]

This is a good series. It's an action fantasy with consistent, noticeable character development with a solid plot surrounding and binding them. One could consider it a blend of Slayers and Berserk's Golden Age, with costumes and some personalities more fit to Slayers but politics and character motivations/relationships out of Berserk. Magic isn't as suppressed/rare as Berserk, about the same as Slayers.

Ending is a bit foggy but otherwise pretty solid. Loved this series, would recommend to anyone. If current seasons dim your monitor, this would will light it up.

Also, reflect on that analogy I started this post with. I'm pretty impressed with it, it wasn't easy to think up.
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Old 05-03-2012, 10:55 AM   #2
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Will check out soon-ish. You know what's funny, I have never seen a single picture of this anime or have any idea what it's about (the legend of some legendary heroes, I imagine). And I intend to keep it that way so everything will be a complete surprise. Hopefully it'll evoke the feeling of an old timey JRPG. I miss them!
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Old 02-23-2014, 11:32 PM   #3
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Okay so "soon-ish" turned out to be "in two years". But at last I have bore witness to the LEGEND ... of the LEGENDARY HEROES!

When you were selling me on this show, you frequently compared it to Berserk. "It's just as good as Berserk!" "After the crappy first episode it's just like Berserk!" etc., and while I can see how there are some parallels, let's be real here: it's not as good as Berserk, not even close! The quality of the story was more comparable to a Fire Emblem game, and even then it lacks the quotable dialogue and likeable characters that the FE series is famous for. In my review I'm going to make a lot of comparisons between this and Berserk, which I hate to do, because it's not like I even think Legendary Heroes is a rip off or anything like that, but I have no choice because you kept making this comparison. Major spoilers for both Legendary Heroes AND Berserk!

Spoiler: show

For a lot of the themes in Berserk, there seems to be a similar, but less compelling equivalent in Legendary Heroes. Sion's rise to power, and his ambition to unite the kingdoms so everyone can live in peace. He was willing to do some drastic things (noble purge, kill Ryner if his alpha stigma got of control) but in the end was NOT willing to kill his friend for the safety of the kingdom, as per Froaude's advice. He was way less of an interesting character to me than Griffith, who had the ambition to rule his own kingdom, and would do whatever it took to achieve that ... even if it meant selling out his friends (which he indeed did).

Depiction of child abuse: We found out that Ferris was abused and put through brutal training as a child, and eventually her brother killed her father when he tried to put the moves on her. This was an interesting back story, but can't compare to Guts and his tale of failing to please his foster father Gambino, who eventually became crippled and tried to kill Guts in a fit of rage. Later on, when adult Guts was sent to assassinate one of the nobles who wanted to kill Griffith, he saw the noble putting his son through abusive training and yelling at him about how he's a big disappointment. Guts had a brief flashback to his own experiences with Gambino, and it was a nice little moment to set up an emotional connection between the two, which made it all the more heart breaking when Guts was forced to kill the young boy after he saw him.

Guts and Casca's initial rivalry made sense to me, because Casca was jealous of him for supplanting her as the 2nd strongest warrior in the Band, and getting in the way of her crush on Griffith. Ferris on the other hand, I still don't get why she kept calling Ryner a pervert for no reason! You said that this would be explained, but I must have missed something. She even falsely accused him of being a perverted rapist in front of other girls! But who can blame him for putting up with that abuse if it meant her going dere for him later. Damn, who knew they had spandex back in the middle ages?!

I thought the most interesting character by far was Froaude. The mystery of what his deal was, what he was planning, why he was so loyal to Sion, whether it was genuine, and just how strong he was. The most fun part of the show was assessing everybody's power levels. "This guy could beat this guy who's super strong, but I'm pretty sure he can't beat THIS guy!" near as I can tell, Ferris' brother was the strongest guy in the show by far. Even still, nothing could compare to the hype surrounding Guts vs Griffith II, where Guts had to fight him in order to leave the Band of the Hawk.

Some of the political intrigue was cool, but again, not as good as Berserk's (the poison arrows plot and Griffith trying to sweet on the princess to get in a position to become king was like something out of Shakespeare!). Then the show ended on a disappointing anti climactic note, right on the eve of the Gastark invasion!


Was this show enjoyable? Yes. Would I ever recommend it to somebody else? Only if they had already read the far superior Berserk, and had a hankering for some more sword & sorcery action.
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Old 02-24-2014, 12:31 AM   #4
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I think the "just like Berserk" claims were more akin to its rather serious approach to fantasy. Berserk is gritty and medieval, and until the Eclipse lacks most of the fantastical elements that have defined medieval stories these days. Everything medieval is often just an RPG depiction of a medieval universe, like SAO and Log Horizon.

The early parts with Sion's politics reminded me very strongly of Griffith's machinations in Berserk's Golden Age, and no other anime aside from these two have really approached that kind of political depiction (though Legend of the Galactic Heroes, as I have since found, does indeed).

I've forgotten why Ferris called Ryner a perv, but it's important to note that mentally she's kind of a child and has had to mature on the spot through her assignment to protect him. She grew throughout the story to the point of something resembling a sprouting infatuation with Ryner, but it was only the beginning and not like a "I loved him the whole time!" sort of revelation. She was too immature for that at first, and had to wait for her mental maturity to catch up to her body.

There's a character similar to Froaude in LotGH called Oberstein which much more clear motives. He's absolutely Machiavellian, almost like Faust's Devil, but is completely loyal to his superior so long as the superior is conforming to his ideal of what a leader should be. For example, Oberstein acknowledges Kircheis (Reinhard's best friend) as the most skilled admiral in Reinhard's fleet, and a capable leader in his own right, but he seeks to distance them because he believes a leader cannot share his throne with anyone, be it a friend or a lover. He calls it the "no Number Two" rule, where there is no second in command, ever. There is one throne, and one peak.

All in all, I'd still say LotLH is a solid show. Definitely not in the high art realm of Berserk, but when I saw it the first time a strong impression was made because it was far better than a lot of the garbage coming out of Japan before, since and during its release. By contrast, LotGH is the real deal, so if you want Berserk in space, that is your next stop!
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Old 02-24-2014, 08:14 AM   #5
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I'm definitely looking forward to the REAL legend. The one about the galactic heroes.
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Old 05-15-2014, 09:32 PM   #6
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Saw all the episodes available on Netflix because... boredom. Honestly, I just like having something on the TV while I play video games on my 2DS. I can easily pay attention to both since Fire Emblem Awakening is a turn based game.

I don't like the first episode. It kind of drops us in the middle and it feels pretty terrible. I don't know if the novels were written this way, but that first episode of the anime detracted me more than anything else. The silliness of the Ferris/Ryner relationship shown in that episode just left me a bit confused. Why was she calling him a Sexual Predator? Why was she so mean to him? And so forth.

If we make the comparison to Berserk, the first story showed us Guts as a broken man seeking vengeance. It showed how badass he was and how desperate he was to kill demon Femto. It made us want to know why Guts was like this. This is what made the Golden Age Arc as compelling as it was.

LotLH had no such thing. In fact, even the flash backs to Ryner's past was pretty lackluster. After the story involving Sion's assassination attempt and revealing Ryner Alpha Stigma and such, we then watch Ryner sit in prison for who knows how long. And then Sion is king. What? And now Ryner is teamed with Ferris to find the Legendary Hero relics?

The show really starts to shine after this. When we see the politics of Roland, how Sion deals with the nobles who oppose him and so forth. It was also a bit nice to see the Alpha Stigma stuff.

What then bothered me was how rushed and confusing the ending felt and how everything before that felt insignificant. So Ryner went around looking for relics. And he never got any back to Roland... And now Roland is going to war? And Sion is going insane? And he's the reincarnation of some Black Knight and Ryner is the reincarnation of the Lonely Demon? What? Fuck this is crazy bullshit coming out of someone's ass.

So....

Good Points:
-Roland political situation.
-Strange Ryner x Ferris relationship.

Bad Points:
-Starts poorly.
-Flashback into a time skip and it feels like a lot of interesting stuff is skipped.
-Bulk of Ryner's quest feels hollow. Nothing comes of it except we know a bit more about Alpha Stigma and the country of the pink haired people.
-Crazy apeshit ending of the series. I assume the novel/manga keep it going, but it clearly didn't feel like any kind of ending. Like the middle Hobbit movie. That's not an ending. You just stopped!
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Old 05-16-2014, 01:23 AM   #7
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I was kind of immune to the ending because the series build up such goodwill with the development of Ryner-Sion early on, but looking back yeah it's messy. Definitely one of the better LN adaptions of recent times, though...and that says a lot of the quality we're seeing these days.
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Old 05-16-2014, 01:48 AM   #8
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I just read McSweeney's post and he pretty much got it down perfectly. He even had the child abuse parallel which I had missed, although I somewhat want to add that both Ryner and Ferris were victims of abuse as children (Ryner cause of the Alpha Stigma, Ferris cause of the family).

Also, I was going to throw in a number rating before, but forgot: Giving it a 5.5/10.

If there's a second season which fleshes out more details about stuff after the ending, I can see it potentially hitting 6.5, but as it is it feels like a well done commercial for a novel.
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Old 01-14-2023, 11:37 AM   #9
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I know it's been 9 years since anyone has said anything about this, but during the pandemic I looked through my posts on the forums and came upon this thread and I had no memory of this anime whatsoever. I thought it was weird that I wrote a short review and was confused. I looked for the first episode online and watched it and had absolutely no memory of what was what. I had to read the wiki about it to jog the tiniest memory of it. I remember the country name of Roland lol. What is Alpha Stigma? Why is Ferris family about incest? What's the Relics stuff about? Who the fuck know?

In just 6 years I had completely forgotten about this anime because of how generic it was. I still vividly remember much older (and shittier) anime and anime I haven't seen in longer than 6 years, so it's not my age kicking in. This anime is just that boring and unoriginal. At the time I didn't think it was worth posting here about it, but then I thought about it and felt it should be part of my updated review of it. It's now a -6/10. Don't waste your time on this, you'll forget it almost immediately. It's not Berserk lite, it's just bad, generic fantasy.
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Old 01-14-2023, 03:07 PM   #10
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Hey, I still remember a lot about this! The FMC is an incest baby and gets hot and bothered over Ryner, Ryner is some Demon King reincarnation and Roland...admittedly I don't remember but he and Ryner were bro's at some point.

If you thought this anime was awful by 2023 standards, I think you've been ignoring the six letter elephant in the room!

Also, it's sad and funny but nothing has really captured Berserk Golden Age in the years since it came out, not even Berserk itself. There's a few isekai that try but they're just Japanese etiquitte plastered over a Byzantine setting, very few actually nail the time and place quite so well.
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Old 01-14-2023, 10:09 PM   #11
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You didn't even read my post and you clearly don't know the anime as well as you think you do, since Roland isn't a name of a person, but the country's name.
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Old 01-14-2023, 10:46 PM   #12
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That's the joke!
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Old 01-26-2023, 08:32 PM   #13
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That happens to me a lot. I remember watching a movie or even an entire TV series, sometimes I even remember enjoying it, and yet I cannot name a single character or a single thing that happens in said movie or show. This really irritates me because if you're not going to remember the things that you watch, then what's the point of even watching them? It just highlights how pointless the majority of our day to day existence is.

So next time you sit down and get ready to invest several hours into watching a show, just say to yourself, "I'm not going to remember this show in ten years, so watching it is pointless in a way, but oh well, gotta do somethin' "

The "oh well" part is important, but also remember to be bitter about it.
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