Watching any fantasy genre in anime form is always a unique experience
simply because it never follows the same rules as one would expect when
watching something produced in a Western nation. Oftentimes the heroes
are completely inept at what they do or, in the case of a certain
sorceress who shall remain nameless, often seem more diabolically evil
than the villain. Rune Soldier features an interesting mix of elements
found in both hemispheres and fits the genre's standards pretty well
while breaking the mold in a few places at the same time.
STORY
The
story focuses on a group of adventurers who are handling the normal
adventuring tasks that are seen around the kingdom: exploring ancient
ruins for treasures, slaying monsters, or some other tasks that aren't
usually taken unless they're really short of money. The group initially
consists of Genie- the warrior and ex-soldier who wields a broadsword
that's almost as big as she is- Melissa- a priestess of Mylee, the
local god of war, who endeavors to devote herself to serving a hero-
and Merrill, the money-loving thief who has more part time jobs in town
than I could count. When the group runs across a magical seal on the
hidden entrance to some nearby ruins, they come to the conclusion that
they need to hire a magician to undo the seal. During their search back
in town, the city of Ohfun, they learn that almost every member of the
magician's guild is more interested than studying instead of
adventuring, except one: Louie, the adopted son of the guild's high
priest and principal. Due to some mishaps involving Louie before
learning who he was, the girls immediately reject his offer to go with
them. At this same time, Melissa presents herself to Mylee in a
ceremony in which the god would reveal the name of the hero she would
be assigned to follow and support for the rest of her life. Mylee
doesn't name names, but rather tells her that her hero would be the
next man to appear before her. By this time it's painfully obvious that
Louie is the chosen one since he literally comes crashing through the
room and lands in the ceremony chamber after having been chased around
the temple while trying to sneak in. Despite the whole thing being
against her will, Melissa convinces Genie and Merrill to let Louie join
their group.
After the initial adventure story arc that covers
the first four episodes, wherein Louie breaks his magic wand while
using it as a club and subsequently entering a nearby forest of elves
to get wood for a new one, the plot progresses bit by bit while
intermixing story progression episodes with some character development
episodes. There are a few fillers to cash in on the comedic value of
the series, but even those reveal tiny bits of info that one character
learns and utilizes in a later conflict. The climax of the series
involves an attempted overthrow of the kingdom but the politics behind
it are easy to follow and the buildup that leads towards it through
earlier episodes works quite well. While the whole story isn't an epic,
it's still worth watching the series for it.
CHARACTERS
The
main character, Louie, is more misunderstood than anything else. While
he isn't exactly the ideal knight in shining armor (as Melissa had
hoped he would be), he isn't as dumb as the other characters make him
out to be. He certainly isn't the stereotypical magician as he is
incredibly strong in terms of raw power, most especially when fighting
bare-handed, and also learns how to wield a sword along with his magic.
He can be reckless, short-tempered, and fairly naive in terms of
knowing the dangers around him, but his experiences with adventuring
also show that he has a strong talent for figuring things out that
others don't catch on to as well. One other thing that plagues him is
simple bad luck that often ruins his chances of making a name for
himself as a hero throughout the kingdom. It never phases him for long
and his strong sense of justice simply carries him towards the next
destination.
The remaining main characters are very loyal to
each other, but of course have their hesitations about Louie. Genie,
while strong and skilled with the sword, can also be short-tempered and
is the member of the group who is most biased against men. She believes
that men are always taking risks to gratify their own male pride and
looking down on women. However, she eventually comes to realize that
Louie's motives are to make sure everyone gets out of each sticky
situation alive and that he's always treated every one of the group as
an equal. Melissa is very devoted to her religion, especially when
evidenced that she doesn't renounce her faith after learning that Louie
is her hero, and compassionate. She of course has a stereotypical view
of what makes a hero and does her best to try and turn Louie into that
image, but slowly comes to realize that heroes aren't born, but rather
made and that she too has to change her attitude and ways to overcome
her own shortcomings. Merrill is money-obsessed and loud, but a very
skilled worker and a master thief. She's the one who initially labels
Louie as a complete pervert (since he accidentaly pantses her when they
first meet) and is often the greatest source of his physical pain, but
eventually realizes that he always does his best to help her out and
alleviate the burden of problems that arise for her, even if things
never work out perfectly.
The major supporting cast consists of
two more girls and they numerous appearances throughout the entire
series. The more prominent is Ila, the daughter of a wealthy merchant,
Louie's best friend (who wants to be more than friends with him), and
an avid collector of magic items. Her collection becomes a source of
help and a source of pain for the group, especially Louie of course.
She is a skilled trader but very easily faints at the sign of trouble
while remaining under-confident about her magic in those sticky
situations. The other is Celestia, a wood elf who starts off as an
enemy but becomes a valued companion during one of the story arcs near
the halfway point of the series. Her personality is conflicted as she
has to overcome her natural distrust of humans and also to get everyone
to be able to trust her as well. She is cunning and shrewd, but willing
to lend a hand whenever she runs into Louie after their initial
encounter.
The rest of the supporting cast provides slightly
smaller roles but nearly all of them are woven into the main conflict
at the end of the story. The first of these to appear is Isabella,
another priestess of Mylee and officially Melissa's rival, but they
remain friends even after she meets her own hero, Leonard. Leonard is
considered to be better hero material than Louie, due to his refined
manner and generous nature, and claims to be the son of a merchant.
He's always accompanied by his bodyguard, Jakinson, a refined man who
is increidbly fast and skilled with a sword despite his age, and is
always willing to fight for his master. This rival group of adventurers
is balanced by Lily, a quiet magician who never says much, but enjoys
being with the group during their journeys.
Other minor
characters include Louie's foster father, the refined and strict
Carwess, and Jenny, the high priestess of Mylee Shrine and Melissa's
confidant when trouble arises (even if her advice causes Melissa to
fall into a slight panic at times). Both of them fought alongside the
king prior to the establishment of Ohfun and continue to serve him by
going into battle with him near the end. The final set of minor cast
comes from three of Melissa's students who consider themselves her
bodyguards. They think of Louie as a nuisance who's forcing himself on
Melissa and often come up with tricks and traps to try and utterly
humiliate him in front of her. Of course they often backfire.
The
main villain doesn't appear until the very end, but there are several
who can be considered antagonists. The first is Conrad, a knight from
the neighboring kingdom who was betrothed to Melissa until she broke it
off by disowning herself from her family. He is conceited and boastful,
but quickly turns into a coward when separated from his magic sword. He
does have some redeeming grace very late in the series by acting as a
decoy to keep some soldiers from finding Melissa, but otherwise he
remains a pathetic laughingstock. The second is Faltess, the
2nd-in-charge of the magician's guild and a guy who insists on
pharisiacal obedience to the rules of the school while remaining vastly
unpopular amongst the students. He secretly works with the main villain
to revive some ancient, and thus forbidden magic- even if he himself
thinks that it's for a good cause. The main villain does a good job in
his schemes to overthrow the kingdom and plots it out well, but he
remains cliched and shallow to the point where I can't even remember
his name. It's something like Daktari, Dataras, Dantara, Dataeast...
but who cares? He ends up becoming the cliched guy who hides behind
something he believes makes himself invincible, only to end up staring
in stupefied disbelief when that something is destroyed and ends up
easily killed.
Despite the one-dimensional and stereotypical
nature of several of the characters and the lack of personal
development for a few, including a couple of the main characters, the
cast remains quite likable and does a great job contributing to the
overall enjoyment of the series.
ART/ANIMATION
The
artwork in the series was fantastic. Nearly every scene was rich,
colorful, and very distinct. The one exception being that nearly all of
the ruins that the group explored looked almost exactly the same, but
if they were built during the same era then that is forgivable.
The
character designs and artwork are well done as well, with everyone
having distinct appearances and, as mentioned earlier, their jobs are
easily figured out from the beginning. A generous amount of fanservice
and humorous expressions pervade the entire series as well.
The
animation is also quite good, but not as great as the general artwork
as a whole. There are numerous times when shots are re-used, especially
crowd scenes, and when character physics seem to disappear. This is
especially noted when someone is falling and very easily seen when
Louie and Celestia fall out of a tree during their first encounter.
While they're drawn to be shown as falling, their hair and clothes
don't move flap or flail from the movement at all. I was, however,
impressed by the way the animators handled the effects of magic spells
and effects that destroyed monsters.
VOICE ACTING
Once
again I simply stuck with the original Japanese language track and
bypassed the dub completely, though I am tempted to re-watch some of
the episodes in the English dub to see how the actors handled the
inconsistent spelling of character names between the DVD covers and
actual subtitles in the episodes themselves, but that's for someone who
is reviewing ADV's job on the DVDs to handle.
As I almost always
find, the Japanese actors to a mostly superb job as they bring out the
passion, emotional characteristics, and little nuances that make the
characters. The absolute best for me was Merrill's actor and her job in
being able to instantly change moods depending on what the character
was doing, be it trying to act cute, obessing over a large sum of money
to the point of ruining her health, to completely losing her voice when
calling for help after falling into a well.
There were a couple
of black sheep, however. One of Melissa's bodyguards came off as just
plain annoying while Melissa herself and her constant repetitions of
"This is against my will" whenever Louie does something reckless really
gets old quickly and becomes detrimental to the humor of the situation.
MUSIC
I
loved the music in this series, so long as it was part of the
incidental music within each episode. I didn't care for the opening or
ending themes very much at all. The opening was more on the
light-hearted side but hardly captured the serious elements of the
series at all while the ending theme was mostly some singer shouting
out the series "Love and Pain" more times than I cared to hear while
some heavy metal track served as its background noise.
The
incidental music acted as a great balance between the two themes and
did a much better job when carrying each episode along. Some of the
best are the jazz elements used during conversation scenes in the bar
to the hymn of Mylee that's heard whenever the scene shifts over to his
shrine and acts as a reminder that everyone is on holy ground. Another
thing that worked well were the several scenes that had no music at
all, simply because it wasn't needed.
SUMMARY
I
liked this series. The story is engrossing, the characters are fairly
memorable and the comedy is absolutely hilarious while the entirety of
the series is very nice to watch. Fans of fantasy series like Slayers
and Record of Lodoss War (of which this is a cousin series since it
takes place in the same world) will definitely find something to make
watching this one worthwhile.This and other reviews can also be read at my blog: http://gunarmdyne.blogspot.com
Screenshots
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