Review of The Heroic Legend of Arslan

Arslan Senki is a relatively simple story in the war genre. It is about a prince, named Arslan, trying to regain his home from invading armies. The beginning of the story is pretty slow. You have to persevere to get to the good stuff. The fourth episode is where the show starts to get interesting, where the characters make plans for the reconquest of Arslan’s home. The strong points of the story are that it is well written. The plot was clear, comprehensible, and exhibited no major plot holes (I’ve watched many animes with confusing, badly written plots, so Arslan Senki’s strong script was quiterefreshing). The military tactics and strategy also made the series interesting. Political intrigue is another big part of Arslan Senki, and the writers succeeded in giving the story compelling political turmoil. The battles and fight scenes were also animated well, and were fun to watch (except in the beginning of the series, which was so slow that even the battles weren’t that interesting). The story is not really suspenseful, but I personally did not mind. Watching an anime with too much suspense stresses me out. As for the soundtrack, it is adequate. But what stands out in the music is the ending theme, Eir Aoi’s Lapis Lazuli. That is an amazing, powerful song. All in all, Arslan Senki is quite a decent war anime.
However, it also has the following defects. Most of the other characters have the same personality or skills, and they don’t really stand out from each other. They don’t really grow as characters either. Some of their personalities felt underdeveloped or unoriginal, or even both. Only Narsus stands out. Arslan does grow as a person, but not by much. I felt he could have grown more, given the storyline. After all, he’s in the middle of a war, and as a history writer once said, wars can either bring out the best or worst in a person. Given that, I feel the story could have improved if Arslan had developed more as a person. In addition, one of the more prominent female characters is only there for fanservice. Another problem is that while the animation for the battles was good, the sound effects were all the same. The art design of the characters was also only so-so.
But overall, the anime was enjoyable to watch. I especially liked how the story was simple to understand and had no plot holes, which is somewhat uncommon in anime stories. 8/10.