Okay there Jimmy, here we have it, one of the most well known anime features ever, but is it really a good as everyone thinks it is?  Fuck yeah it is.  First of all, just so you know, I'm not gonna be one of those reviewers who rants about how it is the most D&D accurate anime ever, that's bull.  In my opinion, even though the first 5 or so episodes did seem a whole lot like D&D, after that, it just didn't feel like it anymore, possibly because the story outgrew the normal scopes of D&D.  I will also not be spouting out stupidities about how cool Deedlit was, she was okay, but I think a lot of people like her so much because... they're stupid?  There's a bunch of people in this deal a lot cooler than Deedlit
(Orson for example).  Oh well, I suppose those may be the same people who say this is a D&D anime because they have all the usual classes: fighter mage, cleric, thief and dwarf, what a bunch of dumbasses.

          Okay, enough of me being pissed off because stupid people think dwarf is a class, on to the movie.  Umm... I'm just going to give you the general gist of the story, since if I tried to write the whole thing, it'd take way too long.  In a nutshell, this movie is about a guy named Parn who wants to become a knight like his father was.  As the story goes along, Parn meets up with others who join with him for various reasons and they all become enmeshed in a battle to save Lodoss.

          Many reviews I've seen on this have said that it has excellent character development, but the only real character development that I saw was in Parn, he went from an idiot who couldn't fight to an idiot who could fight, but they did this in a great way, making sure it wasn't like he could all of a sudden kick everyone’s' ass. 

For the most part, every character, good or evil, is very well done.  They are created and presented in a way that you believe they could actually be real.  I also loved how the people who made Record of Lodoss War were not afraid to get rid of main characters, good stuff.

          Like I said before, I don't really think that this is a D&D type movie, I think that while Record of Lodoss War and Dungeons & Dragons have many of the same elements, Record of Lodoss War took these and went in a completely different direction, creating an epic war type movie instead of a movie where you watch a group of people running around, killing monsters and finding treasure.  Because of this, and this is against what I've read in many reviews, I don't think you have to be a D&D fan to enjoy this anime.

Genre - fantasy/adventure

Animation - The animation was generally good with large bags of detail all over the place.  The only real problems were that, near the middle, the animation for the dragons was almost nonexistent (possibly due to lack of budget) and the re-use of battle action animation.  But really, it wasn't even that bad with the dragons since they were so well detailed.

Sub vs. Dub - the sub is better

the Good - Orson, not afraid to get rid of characters, amazing story and really cool characters.

the Bad - Seeing the same guys die in battle about six times (re-use of battle scenes) and not nearly enough of Orson kicking everyone’s' ass, that really pissed me off.

Overall - Definitely good shit.  As I said before, I don't think you have to be a fan of D&D to really enjoy this movie, all the good things that you may have heard are probably not exaggerated.  (13 episodes)