Legend of Crystania

This is your typical fantasy story. It checks all of the boxes for a typical fantasy tale. The most lacking areas are the artwork/animation and the sound. This did come out in the late 90's so if you don't like older animation then this isn't for you. That being said, it wasn't bad, and it does have a pretty good story.

It is filled with some decent characters. There isn't a lot of humor because it is mostly a serious story. It takes place in a different realm/universe and a couple characters visit a dream world that is referred to as the "chaos realm" a couple ... of times. There is a group trying to revive their evil master, and then there is another group trying to stop them. It has magical beasts, dragons, and magical warriors. It is more or less midieval themed to be a little more specific. It's not super complicated, but again, it does check all of the boxes for your typical fantasy story.

All in all it wasn't great, but it was worth watching. I did like it but it is sitting at a low 7 for me. To compare to something else I would liken it to the old fantasy movies from the late 80's early 90's (The Conan movies, Willow, etc.) for tone. To compare animation, it's like Heavy Metal without the boobs. It isn't super cheesy, but it does have it's cheese quality. It's better than a lot I have seen, but I have seen better.

If you're into serious and slightly cheesy fantasy movies then you should check this OVA series out. If not, then no need to watch it.

This would be pleasant to watch if it didn't have the inevitable comparison with its predecessor that is a masterpiece. Record of Lodoss War. Unfortunately, this one as in other reviews mentioned tries to tell to much in too little time. I'd have prefer to connect more with our hero Redon/Raydon. At the beginning of the film you can see his pain but that's the first 15 minutes.

I don't really understand why they changed the name of Pirotess (I am assuming it is something related to the manga). And her whole image (she was certainly whitewashed).

The ending of Lodoss left us with an Ashram ... that is redeemed. He is not anymore the evil lord of the dark island but a humane noble that wants to protect his people. Many viewers were unhappy with that outcome. I didn't. I just think it is too much information. Maybe just it would have been more enjoyable if it was a full story about Pirotess and we understand more her life in a Crystania for instance. But the attention seemed to be spread everywhere. We have Pirotess looking for Ashram, Ashram trapped then Redon living in this different land and we don't know anything else about anyone's past land or people just the present.

Animation is not bad but I wouldn't call it outstanding and the aesthetic changed a lot from the former OVAS in Lodoss. The characters look more flat with less details and shadows etc. Colour palettes are more plain. This is the result of decision-making due to a lower budget and it shows.

All in all, it seems a disorganized story. Still a solid 6 that looks flaky if compared to ROW for obvious reasons. Not a bad story. Just not a masterpiece. But masterpieces are called like that because they are unique in their kind.

It would be nice if the Legend of Crystania OVA were good. Even if it taps into a lot of the same typical fantasy tropes as Record of Lodoss War does, this is the more imaginative story, and the world is far more interesting. The problem is that this is perhaps the most compressed and rushed telling of a story I've ever seen in my life. This is like taking a 100 episode show and condensing it into a 100-minute movie. It can be done. I've seen it with the Fist of the North Star movie, which had some problems associated with that choice, but ... the staff made decisions that resulted in a pretty coherent movie, and they cut it in such a way that there weren't too many dangling plot threads, the cast was small enough that everyone got a pretty fair shake, etc. For the Crystania OVA, it's like they took the 100 episodes and tried to tell EVERYTHING in the span of what is roughly 5 episodes, and to tell everything, they have to strip the proceedings down to be as sparse and meaningless as possible.

The characters are not at all flat. Take a garbage anime like Dr. Stone: you spend time with the characters, they interact, make dumb jokes, they DO THINGS and we understand why they do them—they're flat and terrible characters, but they are characters who inhabit a functional world. In this OVA, the "characters" don't even have enough of a presence to be flat—hell, they're barely even characters. None of them have enough scenes or screen time for the most rudimentary of character traits. They're like automatons being animated and mimicking characters. The main is just this guy who stumbles through the world without any direction, swinging his sword around, talking to people about plot stuff, feeling sad about something. To be honest, like most of the characters, he hardly even matters to the messy plot.

These are just jumbled scenes of people performing random tasks, and they don't have time to tell you why they're doing any of these tasks. There are so many plot holes and hanging threads, and even most of the important characters from the movie get so few scenes and dialogue. One character from the film is revived, and I can understand why they would want to revive her, but she doesn't have any relevance to the plot and never does anything. The old man who pursues her and wants to abduct her fights with the heroes, but he is forgotten about mid-scene, and we never see him again. Nothing makes sense. Characters pop up all the time like they have importance, but they don't, so they just disappear.

The ending is a total copout and completely anti-climatic. Ashram and Barbas appear as if they'll battle each other, but they basically disappear in a poof of smoke, and it's like... is that really it? What even happened? What will happen to the world now? Who cares? Oh well.

Speaking of the film, while it probably helps to have seen it to better understand what is going on, I don't think it would make much of a difference. This OVA is its own special kind of mess.

The main highlights are the art and animation. Both of these are good, but as a whole the OVA is not as compelling in terms of fight scenes, character acting, or effects animation when compared to the movie. There are very few fights: instead, the staff focused primarily on atmosphere, confusing story telling, cool fantasy set pieces, and the surreal chaos world—mostly toward the end. The chaos world scenes are hallucinatory and it would be fantastic if this could have been more prominent.

When the animation peaks, however, it can be quite awe-inspiring. Satoru Utsunomiya especially has some great segments here. Most of the best scenes are saved for the final episode and during the chaos world. The OP also had some of the best work put into it.

There are a lot of these sloppy old movies and OVAs that I wish could be remade, but there's always a bit of a conundrum with that because you know the magic will be lost without much of the original staff, art style, and animation. There was a lot of ambition packed into this production, yet there was simply not enough time to tell a coherent story. It seems like it could have been a grand fantasy, but instead we got the equivalent of a dream that you can't remember after waking up.