Though the manga was written by Ryo Mizuno (the creator of the Lodoss mangas) and advertised as the "sequel" to Record of Lodoss War, that claim couldn't be further from the truth. Aside from the names "Ashram" and "Pirotess", Legend of Crystania and Record of Lodoss War have absolutely nothing to do with each other. It's a good thing for the Lodoss series that the two aren't related, because Legend of Crystania would completely sully the reputation it has.

There were many things wrong with Legend of Crystania, but none are more apparent than its characters. Normally, conflicts involve two main characters: a protagonist and an antagonist. Watching this movie, I honestly had a difficult time figuring out just who the protagonist and antagonist were. Redon (pronounced ray-dawn), who for the sake of reviewing this I will call the "good guy", is an annoying, idiotic individual. The first half of the movie (which is a short 75 minutes long) is completely obsessed with attempting to develop Redon and further the conflict of him avenging his father. However, that all changes when the second half of the movie kicks in and the story completely changes focus. For some reason, ol' Barbas makes his way into the movie and offers to give his power to Redon. From then on I was figuring out the story by myself, because the movie sure wasn't helping.

The other characters are just as bad as Redon, though. One of the characters, a priestess, becomes the focal point of the anime in the second half, even though she doesn't actually do anything. Numerous unexplained "bad guys" pop in over the course of the movie, but none of ever have some sort of motive revealed. Another character, Obier, is completely unexplained. Not only do we not know why he follows Redon around, but we also don't know why some annoying little girl is always with him or why he refers to himself as a zombie. I suppose he could actually BE a zombie, but then that just opens up more questions. For some bizarre reason, Obier was the only character that I actually liked in the movie. Perhaps it's because he's the stereotypical "big brute with giant sword", but I just found him to be so interesting. Not only that, but he was always there whenever the good guys needed him. Was there a pesky horse that needed its head removed from its body? BAM! Obier was on the job.

Speaking of decapitation, the action scenes in this are probably the most gruesome, violent action scenes I've ever seen. There is blood everywhere, especially that one time when a lion bit the guy's neck and... *urrrff*. Sorry, just thinking about it makes me a little queasy. The world of Crystania is a funny place, though. It is a magical place where cutting off somebody's arm is the only way to stop a fight and where the inside of people's bodies looks remarkably like a ham. Also, despite all of the constant shifting of focus, the story is actually remarkably simple. It's been tried in numerous fighting movies as well as Dragonball Z. That's right, it's the old "bad guy trying to take over the world" story that's been done time and time again.

I will admit, though, that the music was actually quite nice. Though songs weren't played very often at all, I liked the few that were played. The vocal piece in the beginning made a pretty nice transition from the prologue to the main story, and the background music made some of the ultra-bloody fight scenes somewhat more enjoyable. Unfortunately, the animation and character designs really stunk, but I'll save my rant for that for another time.

I'm in a bit of a bind trying to review this, though. Can I really call an ending where the protagonist isn't actually involved a conclusion to the story? I'm not really sure what Redon's purpose was in the story, nor do I understand why he's so darn good with a sword despite never using one before, but there is one thing that I am sure of: Legend of Crystania was a waste of 75 minutes. Who knows, maybe the OVA sequel to this will settle my questions once and for all.