How was the Record of Lodoss War OVA made?

Thirteen videotapes, painted like a storybook: the OVA traded motion for beauty, on purpose.

The Record of Lodoss War OVA was produced by Madhouse and released direct to video in thirteen episodes, from June 30, 1990 to November 20, 1991. Akinori Nagaoka served as chief director, Mami Watanabe wrote the scripts, Nobuteru Yuki designed the characters, and Mitsuo Hagita composed the score. Produced by Maruyama Masao’s Madhouse at its early peak, it was made as a prestige object for the booming home-video market, and it looks like one.

Its craft is a deliberate bargain. Animation is limited, sometimes to held frames and slow pans, and the budget lives instead in the density of the drawing: painted backgrounds, ornate armor, skies with weather in them. Critics of the time noted the stillness; audiences remembered the paintings. The trade made the series’ reputation.

THE PRODUCTION

Madhouse · 1990–91

Adapting a moving target

Episodes 1–8 adapt the first novel, The Grey Witch. By the final episodes the production had caught up with the still-running novels, so episodes 9–13 draw loosely on books three and four and close with an original ending.

The directors’ bench

Nagaoka chief-directed, with episode direction shared among Akio Sakai, Katsuhisa Yamada, Ryū Taiji, Hirotsugu Kawasaki, and Shigeto Makino: a studio system producing a house style.

Home video economics

The OVA existed because Japanese fans in 1990 would buy tapes. Thirteen premium volumes, sold one at a time, funded a look no TV budget of the day could have carried.

THE SOUND

Hagita, Arai, Sherry

Adèsso e Fortuna

The opening, written by singer-songwriter Akino Arai and arranged by Hagita, is sung in Italian by Sherry, the pre-debut pseudonym of singer Izumi Kato. It remains one of the most imitated anime openings of its era.

Kaze no Fantasia

The ending theme, also sung by Sherry, written by Kaoru Ito: a ballad that closes each tape like a chapter of a book.

Hagita’s score

Full orchestral writing, recorded to be listened to: the OVA’s three soundtrack albums were substantial releases in their own right, and the score is half of the series’ painterly effect.

Nobuteru Yuki The TV series

How was the Record of Lodoss War OVA made?

THE PRODUCTION

THE SOUND

THE FIRST WORD