ANIME REVIEW [Guest] . Ragnarok The Animation Volume 2

by Chris and Kris   ⋅   February 6, 2008   ⋅   Comment now   ⋅    RSS

So the anime reviews seem to be popular, not just with readers, but with guest reviewers as well! The latest guest review comes from longtime friend and literati Jeremy Walker. Read on for his review.

Disclaimer #1:
I have never played, nor have I even watched someone else play, the Ragnarok Online M.M.O.R.P.G. (massively multiplayer online role-playing game). Therefore, I’m almost certainly missing out on many references in the anime Ragnarok (which is set in the same world as, and heavily inspired by, the game).

Disclaimer #2:
I wasn’t able to get the first couple of DVDs for Ragnarok, so not only did I miss out on all of the game references, I also missed out on the first third of the series. Needless to say, Ragnarok had a bit of a … handicap, going in to this review.

But now that that’s out of the way, let’s get to the review. Ragnarok is an anime that first came out in Japan in early ‘04, and then was later released in Korea, the Philippines, Latin America, Spain, … pretty much everywhere else in the world except us and Kazakhstan. But now it has finally landed on US shores, courtesy of FUNimation Entertainment.

Ragnarok is set in a fantasy world called Rune-Midgard. Aside from a few odd bits of technology (computer terminals and telegraph relay stations being the most notable), Rune-Midgard is pretty much your standard fantasy world: it’s got warriors, wizards, priests, plenty of low-level monsters running around to level up on, etc. Some game-based movies (eg. The Super Mario Brothers) take great pains to distance themselves from their namesake; Rangarok takes pains to remind you that it’s based off of a game.

You’d expect that this might come across as kind of cheesy … and it does. But it also makes the anime very quickly accessible. If you have ever played World of Warcraft, a Final Fantasy game, or any other RPG, you’ll quickly feel right at home with Ragnarok. As I mentioned, I came in on episiode ten of the show, but because of each character’s distinctive class I was quickly able to pick up on their role in the group.

The central protagonists of the anime are Roan (a swordsman who switches classes midway through the anime to become a crusader) and his childhood friend/love interest Yufa (an acoloyte). They are joined by a short obnoxious merchant named Maya, a blindfolded wizard named Takias, an assassin named Iruga, and a hunter named Judia. As is typical of this kind of anime, this diverse group has all kinds of eccentricities and drama: Maya carries around a blob-like creature named “Poy-poy” on her head, Takias was raised by an insane wizard and has the baggage to prove it, Iruga watched Yuufa’s brother and his best friend die in front of him, and Judia … well Judia is just kinda silly and weird.

Together this band of adventurers travels around seeking to stop the central villain of the show: The Dark Lord. Now, you might be thinking “Gee, that sounds awfully stereotypical and formulaic”, and if so you’d be right. Let me make one thing very clear here: Ragnarok is not a very original anime. Both the plot and the dialog borrow heavily from other sources, and when they don’t … well, you end up with dialog like this:

Maya: It’s bad to steal from others!

Thief: I know! But I need money! Money …

That brilliant exchange comes early in episode ten, after a street thief attempts to pickpocket several party members but gets caught. It soon comes out that the thief’s boyfriend (influenced by one of the Dark Lord’s agents) has broken in to a forbidden crypt, triggering a curse that summons massive amounts of monsters in to the world. Of course, the party gets involved to help, and you can almost see the fishooks in their mouth as they get dragged in to that episode’s plot .

The party does end up stopping the invasion, by defeating the mummy boss of the monsters, King Osiris. However, they are unable to stop the Dark Lord’s agent from getting away, and when they try it’s discovered the agent is none other than Keough, Yuufa’s “dead” brother and Iruga’s “dead” friend. The rest of the series involves the group’s struggle against Keough and the Dark Lord, and it’s pretty much more of the same: generic fantasy adventure. Which brings us to what I consider to be one of the shows best and worst aspects: it’s strong lack of creativity or originality.

Take the characters moves. Now if you’ve ever watched any anime, fantasy or not, you are no doubt familiar with the convention of characters shouting out the names of their special moves as they perform them. Usually these move names are a little silly, but fun, like “Lightning Blade” or “A Thousand Year’s of Death”. Ragnarok’s move names, on the hand, range from the simply boring (”Heal”, “Lightning Bolt”), to the silly or even laugh out loud bad (”Accelerated Speed Blessing”, “Gangster’s Paradise”).

But what about the fight scenes? After all, even an anime with horrible plots and dialog can be fun if the fights are good. Unfortunately, while the fights are better than the dialog, that’s not really saying much. The animation quality varies, from at times pretty good, to … well in one (non-trivial) ten second fight I counted only three blurry frames for the entirety. Furthermore, the monsters of Ragnarok are extremely generic; after the curse is triggered, the party faces skeletons first, followed by zombies and mummies and … where do I remember that progression from ? Oh yeah, it was in that game Hero Quest I played as a kid.

Still, despite having only B-grade animation, dialog that’s at times painful, unoriginal plots and monsters, and constant reminders that the show is part of a video game franchise … Ragnarok is actually pretty entertaining. The characters may be archetypes, but they’re done well enough to keep you interested in their story. The (Japanese) voice acting is great, which somewhat helps to alleviate the painful move names and dialog. And despite being unoriginal, the plot does have enough twists in it to keep you watching.

So if you’re looking for something exceptional, or even something really good, and you’re not a player of the Ragnarok video game, you’ll probably want to pass this disc up. However, if you’re already seen Record of Lodoss War, Slayers, and the rest of the fantasy RPG-style classics, you could do a lot worse than to pick up Ragnarok. You’ll feel at home with the characters and the world almost immediately, and with a few beers in you, you might not even notice the shows weaker points.

P.S. Oh, one last thing; these discs had no special features to review, just the standard choice of subtitling or dubbing and some trailers for other anime series.

About the Author

Jeremy Walker is a mild mannered programmer by day, anime critiquing monster by night. By age 16 he had become the founding member of his high school’s anime club. By age 17, he had traveled to Japan and watched the Miyazaki classic Princess Mononoke before (almost) any other American. Unfortunately, due to his limited Nihon-go, it would not be until several years later (when he acquired the American release) that he actually understood what his host family had been babbling about when they told him “pigs mad people broke nature”. Anyhow, Jeremy’s now 26, and he’s … watched a lot of anime.