Review for Lord Marksman and Vanadis Collector's Edition

Introduction

I’m on the record as not being too fond of the swords and sorcery genre of anime. I tend to prefer my stories a little more contemporary, futuristic, cyberpunk, while the fantasy realm tends to drift a little too close to D&D territory for my liking. Of course there are exceptions; I’ve come to love the Slayers franchise, while Moribito is good storytelling, full stop. But I still approach this genre with a sinking feeling, daring it to entertain me, rather than anticipating a good time, and it usually takes me half a season or so of episodes for me to click with such a show. And then the Lord Marksman and Vanadis check discs show up, and I’m hooked before the end of the first episode. It must be the end times!


When a war maiden named Eleonora Viltaria holds archer Tigrevurmud Vorn at sword-point on the battlefield, and declares that he belongs to her now, you can bet that there’s a story behind it, especially as he readily agrees. Tigre is a nobleman of Brune, Lord of Alsace, and his country is at war with Eleonora’s nation of Zhcted. The battle of the Dinant plains didn’t go well for Brune, even though they vastly outnumbered their foes. The battle quickly turned into a rout, with most of the Brune forces fleeing from the battlefield. It’s when Tigre singlehandedly made a stand against Eleonora’s forces that he caught her eye, and indeed enchanted her. And life as a prisoner of Eleonora doesn’t turn out to be too bad, especially when he sees how the people of her nation live. That’s in stark contrast to the abuse of the common people by the aristocracy in Brune, and when a rival fiefdom attacks Alsace in Tigre’s absence, there’s only one place he can turn to for help. That decision will have lasting consequences for both Brune and Zchted.

The thirteen episodes of Lord Marksman and Vanadis are presented across 2 Blu-ray discs in this collector’s edition from All the Anime.

Disc 1
1. Wind Princess of the Battlefield
2. The Return Home
3. Return of the Magic Marksman
4. Snow Princess of the Frozen Ripple (Michelia)
5. The Storming of the Tatra Mountains
6. The Black Knight
7. To Protect
8. 2,000 vs. 20,000
9. Thunder Swirl and Luminous Flame

Disc 2
10. The Ormea Campaign
11. Two War Maidens
12. The Holy Grotto (Saint-Groel)
13. The Widening World

Picture

Lord Marksman and Vanadis gets a 1.78:1 widescreen 1080p transfer, and as usual for recent anime on Blu-ray, there’s little to complain about. It’s clear and sharp, with strong colours, and with smooth animation. The image is clear of compression and similar artefacts, and even the usual spectre of digital banding was mostly absent to my eyes. That said, Lord Marksman and Vanadis is a simpler animation, mostly bright, primary colours, and simple character designs, not too spectacular when it comes to background art and world design. It also looks a fairly low budget animation, with most of the money going on questionable boob physics (It’s one of those shows). I was also reminded of an episode of Shirobako, where a bunch of modern animators are creating a finale for a series with a lot of horses, only they don’t have any experience with animating them. So they go to a veteran of the anime industry for his help. The Lord Marksman and Vanadis animators should have gone to the same guy. The horses in this show don’t gallop, they bound like dogs, even worse when they switch to CG, which happens pretty often in this show, not only for the strategy sessions when everything switches to ‘chess’ pieces on a map.

The images in this review were kindly supplied by All the Anime.

Sound

You have the usual choice between Dolby TrueHD 5.1 Surround English and 2.0 Stereo Japanese, with translated subtitles and a signs only track locked to the appropriate audio. I went with the original language track, and was happy enough with the performances, the action came across well with the stereo set-up, and the music, while forgettable, did enough to drive the story. The subtitles were timed accurately, easy to read, and free of typos. I gave the dub a try and it seemed a strong effort, although I did think that the English narrator sounded a little bored. The surround up-mix certainly gives the action sequences added dimension.

Extras

The discs present their content with animated menus.

Disc 1 autoplays a trailer for Tokyo ESP, but the sole extra is the audio commentary for episode 6, featuring ADR Director Caitlin Glass (also the voice of Elen), along with Joel McDonald (Tigre), Jad Saxton (Ludmila), and Alex Moore (Limelisha). It’s a run of the mill Funimation commentary, appreciative of the show’s fan service.

Disc 2 autoplays with a trailer for Ga-rei Zero

You actually get two ‘pages’ of extras on disc 2, although the first panel is devoted to the “Tigre and Vanadish” Chibi Theatre, 14 mini-episodes in all, running to a total of 37 minutes if you select Play All. They’re little comedy skits featuring miniature versions of the characters, one for each episode, and one pre-season short. They are presented in 1080i and are dubbed, as well as in the original language.


The audio commentary on episode 13 features Ricco Fajardo (Ryurik), Tia Ballard (Titta), Morgan Garrett (Sofya), and Natalie Hoover (Regin), and this is one of those gigglefests that turn me off from the commentaries.

The rest of the extras are the usual short promotional material, a Preview for Episode 1 (0:32), a Promotional Video (1:42), BD and DVD Commercials (0:34), the Textless Credits with player forced subtitles, and the US trailer for the show.

There are further Funimation trailers for Kingdom, Terror in Resonance, Noein, A Certain Scientific Railgun S, No-Rin, Psycho Pass 2, Riddle Story of Devil, and Fairy Tail Part 18.

I haven’t seen the packaging or the artbook in this Collector’s Edition to comment.

Conclusion

Lord Marksman and Vanadis has a great first episode. When it begins with a woman holding a man at sword-point, declaring that he now belongs to her, that’s as provocative a start as you can imagine, and the way that the episode unfolds, using a fractured narrative to unveil the nature of this world and how it works, the feudal kingdoms, the armies, the dragons, and the magically empowered war maidens really does draw you in. It’s the way that the story is revealed, the vassal territories of Brune and the corruption within, the Zhcted Kingdom and the rivalry among its war maidens, so that by the time that the archer Lord Tigrevurmud Vorn hears of the threat to his Alsace holdings, and he asks War Maiden Eleonora Viltaria for help, the show has got you hooked, despite its early display of fan service.

It all goes downhill thereafter. Lord Marksman and Vanadis, despite its impressive opening episode is a mundane, run-of-the-mill action anime show which as so often happens these days is all about the fan service. It’s about the War Maidens, their ridiculous skimpy outfits (not the sort of thing you’d want to go to war in), and their impressive cleavages. It’s pretty much your harem set-up, although instead of your weak milksop surrounded my varying degrees of moe and tsundere, Tigre is a capable warrior in his own right, while the women that he encounters have more than enough in the way of strength to avoid the usual clichés. Boobs will be groped, blushes will occur, but Tigre doesn’t retreat, bowing apologetically, while the grope-ee is less likely to smack him out of shock. Let’s face it, if the girls in this show were tsundere, poor Tigre would end up decapitated.


But I digress. After the first episode, the story returns to conventional narrative form, told in chronological order, and ‘told’ is the key problem with this show. This is a fantasy epic, wars and battles, politics and scheming, but it’s a show that constantly relies on the narrator to keep us up to date with events, and so often, instead of an epic battle animation, we’ll cut to a map, with chess pieces moving around, signifying military tactics, battles and engagements. It’s utterly unrewarding, and makes the anime feel a little pointless. There are battles that we do see, action sequences that do make it on screen, but they’re in the minority, and not too impressive when it comes to the animation.

My final issue with the show is that it’s just too short for the story that it tries to tell. It has just thirteen episodes to it, a fair proportion of which is devoted to fan service, and on top of that it’s telling a large scale story of nations at war, politicking, scheming and betrayal. Some of the War Maidens really only get a cameo in the show, even though the opening credits promise so much more; there’s the whole War Maiden and their Dragon Gear concept that you might want explored, while Tigre’s relationship with his bow really needed further explanation. There’s a whole other plot unfolding around Brune’s king, and his courtiers, and in the middle of the story, a third nation from the south invades. This is a show that will briefly toy with an idea before wantonly discarding it, and as a result fails to satisfy in any way, other than the fan service of course.


Lord Marksman and Vanadis is all about the big-boobed, battling babes, which is as good a reason as any for an anime to exist, and it is infinitely better than Master of Martial Hearts, which was marketed that way. But it is still a tiresomely average show, significantly flawed in the way that it tells its story, and hampered by unimpressive animation, and shortcuts. If you’re into your fan service anime, then this show does enough to entertain, but otherwise there are better fantasy anime shows out there. There are better fantasy anime shows from All the Anime out there. There are better fantasy anime shows being released the same week as this by All the Anime out there. What I’m saying is that Rage of Bahamut: Genesis is the better choice.