One a upon a time, in an oriental archipelago far far away, a wise sensei of the literary arts told his students, “Foreshadowing can be used to masterfully hint at the future direction of your story and make the experience more interesting for your readers. This is an ancient technique passed down through the centuries and it has the power to either advance the human condition when used for good or destroy all life on Earth if it should ever fall into the wrong hands.”

Unfortunately, his lesson was soon forgotten. The Dark Side is too strong and the temptation too great. Forged by the twisted nethers of teenage angst and the passionate flames of homoeroticism, The Legend of the Legendary Heroes is a massive black hole of pure foreshadowing, unrestrained by such mundane limiters as climax or resolution.

Yes, “The Legend of the Legendary Heroes” (Densetsu no Yuusha no Densetsu) is guilty of more crimes against humanity than just its ultra-camp title.

The 24-episode anime is an adaptation of a long-running epic fantasy light novel series written by Takaya Kagami. There are dozens of books published and maybe they are all great books. I haven’t read any of them so I wouldn’t know.

Despite its title, LotLH is not a parody as I had initially hoped. The story, set in a fantasy world, starts off light-hearted with the main character Ryner Lute and his partner Ferris Eris travelling through foreign lands in search of fantastical weapons of mass destruction — powerful relics left by ancient legendary heroes who fought apocalyptic wars against mythical monsters and, probably, one another.

Ryner and Ferris were sent on this quest by the newly-crowned king of their country, who supposedly wants to locate all the forgotten relics out of a magnanimous and selfless desire to “create a peaceful world where there is no war.” Presumably he plans to do this by either nuking or conquering everyone else using the relics’ devastating powers. Most of it doesn’t make sense and no one really bothers to explain the details. This is true of almost everything any of the characters ever do.

Ferris and Ryner

Ryner can be best described by the Obfuscating Stupidity trope. He is lazy and hates the mission that he has been forced to carry out, but it is hinted that he possesses some kind of secret talent and is highly capable despite spending all his free time taking naps. Ferris is a violent tsundere swordswoman sent by the king to whip Ryner into doing his job but claims to be his bodyguard. Hilarious Japanese light novel-style comedy hijinks ensue.

Over the course of the series, as we learn more about the king, Sion Astal, and his history with Ryner, the story takes rapid descent into emo-town and eventually becomes a charcoal-grey canvas of forgotten dreams and lost hopes. There is plenty of laughter and the occasional punchline, but everything is interlaced with betrayals, broken promises and utter despair. Every character in the show carries a dark secret but hides it behind his/her friendly exterior. The sole except is the dreary Miran Froaude who is gloomy all the time.

Behind that smile, he is thinking about slitting his wrist

As a fantasy epic, The Legend of the Legendary Heroes is probably quite decent. The story is driven more by passion and emo than by logic, but it has all the fundamental bases covered: friendship and camaraderie, betrayal and vengeance, epic battles and medieval-style diplomacy, etc. Its meandering rambles on war and peace can even be occasionally thoughtful. As the story progresses and conflicts between characters and factions play out, we get the sense that a larger underlying story exists somewhere beneath all that entangled relationships that will be gradually revealed over time.

Unfortunately, what I described is as true for episode 24 as it is for episode 2. Right until the final scene of the last episode, the audience never truly gets to understand what exactly is the ultimate truth that we seek. I imagine this is what it would feel like if Scrapped Princess or Utawarerumono had ended without revealing the “catch” of their respective universe. All that is left is a handful of meaningless proper nouns and unexplained character motivations. Disappointing.

Shining Finger!

To be fair, the novel that it is based on is a pretty long series that certainly cannot be distilled into just 24 episodes. But still, I find it hard to accept the fact that LotLH, a 24-episode series, can have no discernible climax or story resolution that can stand on its own merits, especially since a second season does not appear to be a certainty. That’s 24 episodes worth of emotional investment stuck in limbo. 24 episodes of nothing but foreshadowing. I call it a crime against humanity.

And LotLH is really quite a charming show. The characters are lovable in their imperfections and the conflicts are full of moral dilemmas. Foreshadowing of a massive conspiracy at work is always a delight, but sadly in this case it never amounts to anything concrete. In fact, I did not realize that episode 24 is meant to be the final episode until 15 minutes into it.

Sion shares my feelings over the direction of the story

Sure, a second season may eventually be made to finish the story. But then again it may not. Regardless, it would have been nice to have a proper self-contained sub-plot that could be resolved within the span of the season to give the audience a sense of closure and still leave the larger story open for future sequels. Even the Harry Potter books managed to accomplish that much.

Towards the end of the series, I realized that, having lost hope that the story was going to arrive at any meaningful resolution, I continued to press on mostly in the pursue of more Ferris fanservice. Ryner, just kiss her damn it!

Ferris can hit me with her giant claymore any day, if you know what I mean. :3

Here is an appropriate video to end my post.

The first novel took me about three days to finish. For comparison, it took me a few weeks of half-hearted reading to complete Suzumiya Haruhi no Tameiki. Either Zero was that good or Tameiki really really sucked. Anyway, read on for my thoughts and some comparisons to the anime.

In case you have yet to watch the anime, the basic story of Zero goes like this: Saito Hiraga wakes up in an unfamiliar world and finds himself face to face with Louise Françoise le Bran de la Valiel, a student of Tristine’s magic academy. She was trying to summon a familiar but somehow Saito appeared instead. With no way home and no other options, Saito ends up becoming Louise’s familiar and spends his days washing her pantsu.

I only realized that I had previously read a title by Yamaguchi before when I was looking through his short biography. Apparently he wrote Green Green ~ Kanenone Stand By Me based on the original Green Green adventure game from Groover. It was one of my favourite light novels, although I may just be biased since it’s a novelization of Futaba’s story. <3 Anyway, the point is that I was quite excited about the Zero novels because of this.

After finishing the first volume, I have to say that I was not disappointed. It’s easy to be engaged by Yamaguchi’s style of writing and feel yourself immersed in the fantastic kingdom of Tristine. It’s a lot more story-centric as compared to the Suzumiya Haruhi novels and more reader-friendly than Nagaru Tanigawa with his blockbuster-length noun modifiers and random analogies.

The illustrator for the novels, Eiji Usatsuka, has quite a unique style. Some of the character designs are quite different from the anime, such as for Siesta. Speaking of Siesta, she barely gets any lines at all in the first novel. In fact, I get the feeling that she’s not really an important character at all…? Well, maybe in the later volumes. But somehow it seems that the anime is giving her a lot more screentime than necessary when you consider her role (or the lack thereof) in the story so far. I guess they realized the importance of a meido and that it’s not enough to just focus on the tsunderekko.

The first novel basically covers up to the capture of the thief Fouquet. Other than the lack of Siesta, there are a few differences from the anime that I noticed.

• Princess Henrietta is not introduced yet. I’m guessing she’s in Vol.2.
• Saito fantasizes naughty things about Louise during lesson…
• …gets locked out of Louise’s room and subsequently invited (and not taken forcefully by a giant salamander) into Kirche’s room.
• Kirche buys her sword for 1,000 instead of 500 gold.
• Louise and Kirche have a duel (of sorts) in the middle of the night to decide whose sword Saito will use.
• Fouquet steals the Staff of Destruction during this duel.

The second novel is titled 「風のアルビオン」 or “Albion of Wind”, which probably refers to the story arc involving Princess Henrietta and Prince Wales of Albion. The anime is currently at Albion and nearing its end. Considering the fact that the first novel only covers up to Fouquet’s capture, I am guessing that a lot of the episodes in between, such as Siesta’s and Tabitha’s, are actually taken from more recent novels. Judging purely by title, the fourth volume 「誓約の水精霊」 (“Covenant of the Water Spirit”) seems to be where the Tabitha/Charlotte and love potion episodes come from.

This rearrangement is unlike Suzumiya Haruhi anime where although the episodes air order was shuffled, the timeline itself is kept unchanged. In the case of Zero, because the stories have been cut and resequenced to create a new timeline for the anime, this might make a second season less plausible.

Anyway, can’t wait till I get my hands on the next book.

Other than the first episode, which I think is based on a story arc in a later novel, I have read all the things that have happened so far before watching them in the anime. I have to say that the anime is very, very good, but I still prefer the novel.

Based on my brilliant deduction skills and the huge boldface episode 4 title shown at the end of episode 3, I have to conclude that the entire 13 (or 14?) episode series will cover only the first novel in detail and with bits and pieces of substories thrown in from other random volumes. My evidences are as follow:

1. The series is titled “Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu“, which is the title of the first novel.
2. The anime is cutting a lot of stuff short and yet it is not moving fast enough. Episode 2 and 3 only managed to cover less than half of the first novel.
3. The first novel has an overall story and contains the central character information that is vital to the entire series.

Sekai wo Ooi ni Moriageru Tame no Suzumiya Haruhi no Dan

There is no way for the anime producers to cut the first novel short such that they can continue on to the rest of the novels, because the first novel is just way too important (You’ll see what I mean), i.e. they cannot have ep2-4 = vol.1, ep5-6 = vol.2, ep7-8 = vol.3. Therefore what they are going to do is to cover the first part of volume 1, throw in some random selected events from the other novels in the middle of the series, and then use the ending of volume 1 as the final climax. For example, episode four is titled “Suzumiya Haruhi no Taikutsu”, which is actually the title of the third novel. Clearly they are trying to mix in events from the other books that do not affect the overall story of the first novel.

“koko doko desuka, nande atashi tsurete koraretan desuka,
nande, ka-ka-kagi wo shimerun desuka?”

It’s probably the best way to go about making the anime considering that the producers have to introduce all the characters (many of whom only appear in the later volumes) and concentrate on the events that took place in the first novel. And it will probably work out perfectly fine considering Studio Kyoto is in-charge. But still, I can’t help but want to get the story by reading the novels first and only then watch the anime.

Guess I’m just quirky.

P.S. For those of you who have absolutely no idea what the story is about, I think the end of episode three should prepare you nicely for the surprises that lie ahead…

P.S.S. For those of you who want to improve your listening skills, go get the novels. Almost every single line of dialogue in the anime has been taken from the novels in its entirety thus making the series the ultimate listening comprehension passage.