schoen.kaycee - 2015-02-09 09:27:35

Slightly biased as this was my first anime but amazing action and story. Be warned it is very gory but well worth your time.

8.8/10

abernathy.robbie - 2014-06-20 05:51:12

I often think that as long as I know what to expect from a show, it couldn’t disappoint me. First impressions from the title alone gave a sense it was trying too hard to be epic, but that didn’t matter since I expected “Legend of the Legendary Heroes” to be a fun, clichéd romp. But instead of creating a brainless fantasy flick for dumb people like myself, the show adopts a taste for complexities with writing that leaves a bad taste.

The story opens with two of the three main characters, the wizard Ryner and the knight Ferris, as they journey across the continent of Menoris in search of powerful Hero Relics to aid our third main character, the High King of Roland, Sion. The lazy Ryner and steadfast Ferris aren’t anything beyond that in the first episode, with the only noticeable interplay between them being a scene where Ferris calls Ryner a pervert. Unfortunately, this scene is a running gag throughout the show that turns the Ryner and Ferris duo from simple to cringeworthy.

Much of the show follows Ryner and Ferris’ adventures, meaning much of that time focuses on their relationship, which is Ferris calling Ryner a pervert for no reason; Ryner doesn’t so much as see a pantyshot from Ferris, so it’s not even clichéd in the way it should be, but outright unbelievable. Their relationship is 70% one running joke and 30% serious moments with no real progress between them, because they’re only sentimental when the show calls for it. Their relationship goes in a circle, or maybe it’s a see-saw; I don’t care, but neither do the writers.

In one of the show’s scenes, Ryner is going out of control for plot reasons while Ferris is trying to snap him out of it. After she manages to get through to him, Ryner breaks down and starts crying in her arms as the rain suddenly pours. This scene of clichés doesn’t work since there’s a lack of tells on their progress. Ferris blushes maybe once before this while Ryner shows no interest in her at all. And even if this scene did work, they go back into being a weightless comedy duo until the story demands their sentiments again. And this happens more than once.

But Ryner and Ferris’ relationship is harmless compared to the threads in the rest of the show. Ryner’s lack of personality outside his laziness can be made up for with his background, but the show’s storytelling often jumps back and forth from present day to flashback without any tell it’s done so, making it hard to follow. Even then, most of what little backstory he has is in the later parts of the show. It’s hard to take his tragic past seriously when the show often glosses over it for attempted comedy.

Ferris is an even bigger joke than Ryner. When she’s not wrongly calling him a pervert for whatever reason, she’s going on about dango flavors without much else to her character. Somehow, she has even less background than Ryner, and it doesn’t help that this background is little more than skin service that isn’t even charming, but a forced attempt at being dark and edgy. But, it wouldn’t be a forced attempt at being dark and edgy if Ferris was a character worth caring for, if she had real progress and most of her time didn’t focus on failed comedy.

The final main character, Sion, is also a big joke. His character arc is about learning to make tough choices that come with being High King, but his personality doesn’t show it at all. He’s equally serious and easygoing until the end of the show, which makes it easy to wonder whether story events are affecting him at all. Most of his background involves characters that have one or two lines of dialog, which isn’t enough for it to be taken seriously like it’s supposed to. He’s also incomprehensible, saying he doesn’t want to rule like a tyrant one moment, then leaves his assassin servant to take extreme measures so he can reach his goals the next moment.

Sorry, I tried jumping over one cliché and fell onto another. When the story isn’t being lazy with its characters’ progress or background, it tries TOO hard and ends up being a war and politics philosophy discussion without compelling characters to distract from the fact. These heavy themes require a delicate touch, but unfortunately most of the villains—villains, not antagonists—are wealthy, evil people that take away from any social depth the show tries to have.

Not that what depth the show does have is worth much anyway. There’s a lot more going on in the story, but most of it amounts to nothing or is rushed. One of the characters shows a thirst for vengeance without any build-up leading to that moment. The character he wants revenge on wants revenge on another character. And that final character is dealt with so quickly it disrespects the passion and empathy the first two characters (try to) invoke. If that sounds like a short plot description, then don’t worry, because the show doesn’t give these multiple story threads more than a few episodes.

But even with a lot of episodes, one of the characters still proves ineffectual.When this character is introduced, she wants to reunite with Ryner because he was her friend during her rough childhood. It makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is how bubbly she is for most of the show, badly clashing with her background. What’s worse is that this isn’t the set-up to a gag character, because she’s supposed to be taken seriously. But her serious moments don’t work, because she lacks the roundedness needed to make her bubbly and serious side believable as the same character.

The only decent characters are more like two pairings that are unfortunately not around for long. One of the characters in the first pairing appears at the early and later parts of the show. She meets someone she doesn’t like at first, but in their next scene they’re enjoying a cup of tea, and in the scene following she’s a blushing maiden. The other pairing is a classic warrior and princess story that believably flows from adoration to sweetness; in the first scene they’re smitten at first rescue, in the next scene they’re trying to hide their feelings from their friends to no effect, and then they’re enjoying a moonlight walk.

Ignoring the small amount of screentime these four characters have, they’re believable because there’s real progress to their relationships. Sure, it’s cheesy, but it’s at least an attempt at a pairing compared to Ryner and Ferris’ see-saw relationship. It’s not as layered as the other parts of the story, but being more layered doesn’t mean better, but a greater chance to be worse. When there’s more plot to juggle, it only falls down much worse when the juggle isn’t kept up, and the juggle falls the moment it starts.

This is part of why Legend of the Legendary Heroes’ writing leaves a bad taste, and what I mean when I say the story adopts a taste for complexities. It tries to execute too many threads at the same time and doesn’t give enough time for each thread to be properly weaved. At the same time, the three main characters take up most of the story’s screentime but have almost nothing to show for it. It’s this odd combination of incoherent density and weightless quantity that makes this show such a failure from a storytelling standpoint.

This leaves only the presentation to save the show, but the visual part of that falls short. Save for Sion, his assassin servant, and the four pairing characters—the last four lack screentime—most of the character designs are multi-colored to the point where it’s hard to tell them apart. For a world with swords and magic, many of the fight scenes are underwhelming for being nothing but beam spam or poor choreography that makes one question if the combatants are only as strong as the plot demands.

The best part of the presentation is the music, but music isn’t the aesthetic focus of an action fantasy show. Still, it’s loud when it needs to be, and has a surprising amount of grace during quieter scenes when it uses the art of silence to put focus on the dialog. Unfortunately, the music is held back by its odd habit of using random rock music during some scenes. This modern flare clashes with the medieval, fantasy feel of the show. I suppose it’s trying to be cool, and in a better show it’d be shameless fun, but here it comes across as trying too hard.

Which is odd, because looking at how the show’s main characters are handled, it’s like they weren’t trying at all. No respect is given to most of the characters and their stories, it tries to tell too many stories, the stories often lack chronological coherence, the social themes lack any depth with its stereotypical villains, and the presentation is best where it doesn’t matter anyway. This show does a few things right and everything else very egregiously wrong.

But the best thing I can say about this show is what Ryner goes on about from episode 1; take a nap. Sage advice, because taking a tap is preferable to watching Legend of the Legendary Heroes. Sure, you won’t be doing anything, but at least it’s better than getting Alpha Stigma-level angry at the people who made this.

gusikowski.braeden - 2013-12-31 12:48:31

The Legend of the Legendary Heroes is a 24 episode anime of the fantasy genre which details the exploits of Ryner Lute, a powerful magician and bearer of an 'Alpha Stigma.' Alphas bear a rare affliction which not only allows them to learn magical spells much more easily than a normal human, but also, when provoked to transform into a magical version of the Incredible Hulk, essentially losing control and gaining godlike destructive powers. Ryner is tasked by his friend Sion Astal, the Hero King of Roland, to hunt for artifacts of the ancient 'Legendary Heroes' (hence the title). On this journey, he faces magic, romance, treachery, and outright betrayal.

• Superb Voice Acting. With a stellar cast in general, and a particularly good performance by Ian Sinclair as Ryner, the English dub of Legendary Heroes is a cut above the usual crop of dubbed anime. There is not much in the way of annoying voice actors (except for perhaps Iris Eris, though as an insufferable little girl, her voice issupposed to be annoying), as can sometimes mar an anime. If anything, much of the voice casting sounds older than the characters are supposed to be.
• Terrifying Concepts. Alpha stigmas are scary. Not just frightening opponents, but conceptually horrifying. They're normal people on the outside who when scared or abused, lose control and turn into destructive monsters. Through most of the series, they are portrayed as victims who are just pushed past breaking, though late in the series Tiir makes the most of the 'bogeyman' reputation and becomes downright menacing.
• Sympathetic Villains. While many series have attempted to portray their villains as objects who should be pitied for having actions fated to fail or turn to evil, Legend of the Legendary Heroes is one of the few that truly succeeds at it. Friends and enemies change places and oppose each other, and previous allies are betrayed. The viewer is shown both sides of each conflict, and can see that both are not truly evil, and largely have reasons to do what is happening.

• Out Of Place Humor. Anime always walks a fine line with comedy relief, with the perils of too little or too much often swallowing a series. In the case of Legend, they seems to err on the side of too much. While the Omake segments between Ryner and Ferris are mostly amusing, sometimes the viewer really just wants to get on with the show.
• Unfinished. Legend of the Legendary Heroes is based off of an ongoing light novel series. The anime takes place through the events of the first two volumes. As such, the series seems to end right as the story is getting 'to the good part.' There's a great deal of unfinished story elements. As there is no evidence of a second season forthcoming, viewers either have to accept the rather open ended finale, or go to the light novels for resolution. Sadly, most of the book series is not even completely translated.

citlalli13 - 2013-11-22 09:52:29

I really wanted to like this, but the story was put together so horribly. The animation is good, but the story itself is so jumbled... there are a lot of words spoken rhetorically, almost like they are trying to be philosophical, however there is no point.

rory.mccullough - 2013-11-10 22:25:16

Legend of the legendary heroes overall was solid, nothing really stood out. The story was not complex or deep it was the wealthy abuse the poor and why was I born a monster; not deep or complex. LOTLH staff was too lazy to give the series the merits it deserve, you can tell this from how they tried to transition from comedy to being serious and they failed at that, there was this big ass void during the transition(you'll notice it when watching). I should've said this first, but, oh well the pacing was terrible they took the first two episodes-or was it three- to explain why Ryner Lute(MC) backstory on why he was journeying, now most series execute this in the first episode(or ten minutes) this took entirely too much time explaining how his journey began. Also, why did they travel to look for hero relics when they didn't bring a single one back, plothole! What did they learn?

The second-to-last episode was a fucking filler, what the fuck, did these dumbasses even think? Why in the hell use a filler in episode 23, when we were actually seeing improvement like fuck! We could've had a decent ending! Speak in this, that shit was stupid why leave all these answers never questioned what were the other alpha stigma powers? Why was Ryner's Alpha Stigma so special? Did everyone else Alpha Stigma like his? How did Fraoude obtain his ring? What was he ring? What Was Lucile curse? How did he know about the lonesome devil and the hero tale? Why couldn't hero relics harm him? What is the purpose of the Eris house? Why do they only serve Roland? Why was Sion going crazy? Terrible ending. Now, characters. Nobody stood out, was dull-no memorable characters. Tiir could've been, but they made him soft in the end, hell they destroyed his OP introduction. Ferris and Ryner mate the two most interesting characters, yet, still DULL! I'm going to end it here.

ynikolaus - 2013-07-02 06:08:45

The Legend of the Legendary Heroes is a surprising show in that it has quite a bit to offer that one most likely wouldn't have expected on a quick glance. On the surface it is a typical shounen action anime involving magical attacks and a search for mystical objects, and to some extent that is true. However, once the story begins unraveling, and it happens pretty quickly, Legendary Heroes shows that it has much more to offer than fighting and quirky antics. The show starts off in the middle of the protagonist's, Ryner Lute, journey for the "Relics of Heroes," a mysterious collection of artifacts that he and his reluctant partner Ferris Eris have been tasked to find and collect. While these artifacts are supposedly powerful and destructive, Ryner wants to use them to create a world full of "afternoon naps," and to achieve this goal he is supporting his old friend and the current king of Roland Sion Astal. Sion, the "Hero King of Roland," has a similarly lofty and idealistic, though simple, objective - peace. These naive ambitions would probably go unhitched in most shows where they are present, but the Legend of the Legendary Heroes turns the reality of these dreams into the main theme of the whole story; the sacrifices that the characters have to make and the way those losses affect and eventually make impossible the causes they strive for is the driving force that keeps the plot interesting. Each faction has their own needs, and when these needs clash the plot thickens, keeping the anime interesting all throughout. These sort of moments allow for plenty of character and plot progression which always comes at just the right time. The characters themselves are a mixed bag. The ones that aren't expanded upon much in the show's run come off as shameless archetypes which, though appropriate for their individual role in the story, weakens the believability a bit and makes character interaction much less provocative. The most unfortunate part of this negative aspect is that each episode seemed to have some focus on the side characters that never end up fully developing, leaving the viewer wanting more but knowing they won't get much. On the other hand, the characters that do have significant progression are endlessly interesting and show where the plot really shines. Luckily Legendary Heroes seems to know that is where most of its strengths lie and the first arc of sorts is a long flashback explaining Ryner and company's current situation, and it is definitely intriguing enough to catch the attention of anyone who might otherwise have been bored with the seemingly typical plotline that is laid out in the first episode. One would expect a good amount of action, and Legendary Heroes certainly delivers. There are plenty of fights to satisfy those looking for flashy magic moves and even some large-scale battles involving plenty of throwaway soldiers and explosions. Unfortunately there isn't much variation in the attacks themselves; for example, Ryner doesn't even use more than one kind of spell for the whole show despite being heralded as "the Greatest Mage in Roland" and being a wielder of the powerful Alpha Stigma. Most of the interesting action surprisingly comes from the otherwise mostly uninteresting side characters, who obviously don't have as many fights but when they are the center of attention they show off as much as possible, making their fights the most entertaining. The animation and art are mot much to speak of, outside of one particularly stylistic episode. Normally this wouldn't be a huge problem but the grand feeling the show should have is brought down at times by the lackluster visuals when they should ideally be on an equally outstanding level. The music is on a similar level of alright but not noticeable or memorable, again unfortunate given the creative things they could have done with the medieval-inspired setting. Legendary Heroes is an interesting and engaging plot filled with a mixed bag of generic and genuinely entertaining characters, topped off with a fleshed out fantasy world of politics and bloodshed. The things it is brought down by are significant enough to warrant some hesitation, but its assets are truly strong and warrant a chance from anyone who enjoys a well thought out and engaging plot and are willing to look past some of its clear faults and enjoy the whole.

faltenwerth - 2013-06-07 20:14:01

Anger, sorrow, hatred, despair, happiness…regardless if you are a human or a monster, these are emotions that everyone feels. What is a monster? The ones who are born unique to others and have no say, or the ones who hunt them down and kill them due to fear of being overpowered?The title of this anime in English translates to “The Legend of the legendary heroes”, which is a very relevant and fitting name for this anime. It is quite simple and at the same time quite complex. After watching just a few episodes you will understand the meaning, but what I do recommend is that as you are watching try to figure out the multiple meanings of this anime title, and try not to just categorize this anime title as a “simple one”. Now to begin the adventure of the legendary heroes!The story starts off where you meet two out of the three most important characters. Ryner Lute is with his partner Eris Ferris on a mission to try and collect these “Legendary Hero” relics. At first while watching this anime, like most animes you tend to start off confused and wondering where this show is going to go. You have Ryner Lute who is a magician and holds a secret power within himself. His partner Ferris… man on man what an interesting character to put in an anime that could have been very serious. She practically uses her “charm” as an excuse to bully Ryner. She also bullies Ryner by calling him a “monster” (in a jokingly way) that abducts and does terrible stuff to kids and women. Aside from that she forces Ryner to agree with her, and EVERY mission she has to have her dango, and she uses the excuse to go on missions with Ryner to “protect the dango”.Later on you will meet the last main character who is King Sion Astal. As you can probably tell he is a king, and throughout the anime you learn bits and pieces of why he became king, and what he wanted to achieve as king… the usual. What made this such an interesting story was how you would always learn about the pasts of different characters in like segments and at crucial times during the anime. You learn about why most of them are who they are as the story goes on. You realize though after a while, after learning about all the characters pasts, some main some supporting, that this show could be very powerful and you could learn important life changing lessons. The biggest problem I found with this anime, aside from all the unanswered questions was the character Ferris. I mean I felt like her character (being tsundere) just went overboard at some points. Like at one point it will be very serious and intense and the next she is making fun of Ryner and it completely killed the atmosphere that had been built up.Aside from that, the only minor thing that I was disappointed about was the lack of a presence of Kiefer Knolles. I felt as if she could be one of the most important characters but she kind of just disappeared and reappeared randomly and I personally think she is one of the most important characters, especially for the development of who Ryner Lute really is. Those were the two biggest issues (or really only the issues) that I had with this show. Some things that I really enjoyed about this show were the magic, the character development, the character interaction with each other, and also the character styles. I really liked the way they portrayed the characters. This also goes with the fighting scenes that happened. I really like the pace they went at and also enjoyed watching all the unique aspects that were brought to each fight, and at the same time some of the silliness that was added. This show did go into great detail during the fighting scenes, with lots of parts being cut in half and everything that you would expect for a show that is rated “R”. That was one thing I was not disappointed bout, the amount of blood that flew around and the inhumanity of how people were treated. This show also managed to show another lifestyle that isn’t as relevant in today’s society, which is hierarchy. You have a king at the top and then the lords who follow him and the commoners. At first, this sounds like an ideal way of living for the people because they believe that what the king is doing was helping the commoners out a lot, but in reality you notice that people are still treated as outcasts and excommunicated from society (shunned). This show was also able to show you that people might act nice on the outside, but deep down they have this hatred towards certain types of people just because they are different. On a different note though, the music in this anime was good, nothing outstanding but it went with the show nicely. Personally the part that I always look for is when they end a show what is the mood or atmosphere that they leave you in. For this anime I found this very fitting using a very mellow song that filled each episode almost with a suspense and sadness in our hearts. I did really enjoy them trying to bring emotion to this anime (which was quite successful), and to be able to in some cases feel the pain of some of the characters and what they had to go through. This leads to ‘did I actually enjoy this show’? As I say in most of my reviews I do enjoy almost all animes, but there is always something that leaves almost this hesitant feeling in me, and in this case was all the unanswered questions that were left. Normally animes leave maybe 2-3 questions for the viewer to think about but this anime had an amount that made the series feel incomplete. With the incompleteness of the anime also comes the hope of expecting more to come, if you look at it in an optimistic way, otherwise…. You know where I am going. At the end of the day though, once I completed this anime I was quite pleased with the outcome because at first glances I was not expecting that much from this anime.If you have any questions or comments please just send me a pm or write on my wall, I will try my best to answer to the best of my power! I will accept any type of feedback on to how to better improve my reviews, but please be constructive as well! Please also check my other reviews. Also if you want me to do a review on a certain show (whether I watched it yet or not) I will try to prioritize. Also check out my blog post (http://myanimelist.net/blog.php?eid=723679), to help me with future reviews!